The morning air at the Apex of Mount Sages smelled distinctly of unburned kerosene and bad town management.
Frank sat on a low granite bench in the outer guest courtyard. He held a cast-iron kettle over a portable brass fire bowl. He wore faded denim overalls, his 8-Star Master Teacher star-jade medallion pinned beside a six-inch steel rule.
Beside him, Shen Shitou checked the swivel couplings on a three-inch suction hose. Princess Jiang Ling’er step by step wiped down a brass pressure gauge, her dragon boiler idling quietly.
“You’d think the highest academic power on the continent would have drinkable tap water,” Frank muttered. He lifted the kettle lid.
Inside, the liquid was a thick, purplish-black slurry with an oily sheen that separated into greasy circular eddies.
It smelled like two-stroke engine exhaust mixed with rotting seaweed.
Frank frowned at the amber pop-up alert box hovering before his eyes. He flicked it away with a knuckle.
“Motion thickness of forty-eight centistokes,” Frank sighed. “That isn’t tea water. That’s raw twenty-weight motor oil. Did someone flush crankcase sludge into the supply pool?”
