The cold water in the wooden washbasin smelled faintly of sulfur and rusted zinc.
Lin Ke stared down at his right arm underwater beneath the cloudy surface. He rotated his wrist five degrees clockwise. Then, the dim morning light filtering through the high street grate caught the glassy channels beneath his flesh.
They looked like frozen water pipes right before a hard freeze bursts the seams.
Fine, shimmering silver webs—fracture lines no thicker than a silk thread—crept across the outer surface of three main outward waveguides. Every micro-fissure scattered the internal signal. He pulsed a test packet of refined Qi through the arm. Then, the loss was noticeable: a four-percent attenuation drop, with a sharp, needle-like prickle of nearby friction against his surrounding muscle fibers.
He dried his arm with a rough hemp towel, sat on the edge of his cot, and withdrew his iron metal pen.
Tsk.
“Branch checked: main.”
In sim/spirit vein-repair-a, Lin Ke tested traditional Daoist trauma medicine.
