“Pill-Fire... your head!”
In Crater #1, Ancestor Blood-Sword pointed a trembling, broth-stained finger at the top of Ancestor Pill-Fire’s head.
“What about my head?!” Ancestor Pill-Fire asked nervously, setting down his licked-clean porcelain washbasin and reaching up to touch his scalp. “Did that flat-shovel boy put another bump on me while I was drinking the soup?”
“No! Look in the soup spoon!” Ancestor Heaven-Lock gasped from Crater #2, holding up his shiny brass ladle so Pill-Fire could see his own reflection.
Ancestor Pill-Fire squinted into the curved metal of the spoon.
For the past three hundred years, because he had eaten too many toxic, mercury-laced Lifespan Pills to keep his old body alive, every hair on the crown of his head had fallen out, and the remaining hair on the sides had turned as brittle and yellow as dead winter straw. Even the two front teeth that had been knocked out at the Mount Azure Toll Booth had left dark, shriveled gaps in his gums.
Yet right now, staring back at him from the reflection of the spoon was a face with rosy, plump cheeks!
Right on the shiny bald crown of his head, three thick, glossy, jet-black hairs had just sprouted right out of his skin like spring bamboo shoots!
