The smell of dried wormwood and boiling vinegar was thick enough to choke a mule.
Beneath the unsafe foundations of the old dead-house in the outer valley, Apothecary He’s private cellar felt less like a doctor’s clinic and more like a tomb for forgotten roots. Bunches of withered, black herbs hung from low cedar beams. Stone crocks of snake bile fermented in damp alcoves. And the only light came from three low-burning charcoal fire bowls casting flickering amber shadows across the earthen walls.
Lin Ke sat on a low wooden bench, his bare back propped against a salt barrel.
His physical body was a total test log.
The skin on his palms was raw and weeping, stripped of its top deep skin by the emergency venting in Sub-Vault Zero. His left ribs clicked with every shallow intake of breath, the fractured joint padding burning with dull, nonstop inflammation. And running through his bloodstream were trace, toxic levels of red stone and lead. Absorbed through his skin during their decomposition tests on the sect’s poisoned foundation pills.
Across from him, Meng Shan lay sprawled on a straw pallet, groaning softly in his sleep as He rubbed hot bitter pine-resin oil into the torn muscles of the giant’s massive shoulders.
