The iron casket sat on Apothecary He’s cutting-open table, frosting the surrounding oak wood until the grain turned brittle and white.
Lin Ke pried the lead seal open with the tip of his iron metal pen. Then, the cave air dropped twenty degrees in three heartbeats.
Inside lay two objects: a slab of semi-clear, sea-green jade the size of a roof tile—the Nine-Sun Quenching Jade—and a blown-crystal flagon containing four ounces of thick, milky-white fluid that moved with the heavy, sluggish thickness of cold honey.
Glacial Marrow Essence.
Apothecary He leaned over the table, his breath pluming in thick white clouds, his watery old eyes wide behind brass-rimmed glasses. He pulled a silver probe from his apron and touched the milky fluid.
The silver probe instantly turned deep, powdery blue. Frost climbed the metal shaft in a rapid, sharp-angled spiral. He reached the apothecary’s fingers before he could drop it with a sharp hiss.
“You’re going to put this in your stomach?” Apothecary He whispered, clutching his numb fingers against his ribs. “Are you fully out of your mind?”
“I need a heat-drawing sink,” Lin Ke replied, peeling off his coal-stained coat. “The phase shift from liquid Qi to a solid-state core releases one point eight megajoules of latent heat. If I don’t cool the dantian at the exact moment of crystal-forming, the heat pulse melts my glass spirit veins into melted rock waste.”
