Loud sounds tasted like cold copper melted rock waste.
Bright light felt like freezing hail pelting against the enamel of Lin Ke’s front teeth. And Meng Shan reached out with a heavy hand to steady Lin Ke’s shoulder as the straps were undone. Then, the tactile sensation of leather-gloved fingers pressing into his upper back muscle didn’t register as pressure. It blew up inside Lin Ke’s hearing cortex with the ear-splitting, clanging deep ring of a four-ton bronze temple bell struck by a battering ram.
GONG.
Lin Ke flinched wildly, his head snapping back against the wooden check table.
His teeth clattered together with a dry, baked-clay click. The taste of salt and bitter metal coated his tongue so heavily that he gagged, coughing up a spatter of dark, pine-scented thick spit onto the floorboards.
“Easy, boy!” Apothecary He shouted.
To Lin Ke’s ears, the old man’s shout was not noise.
It was a burst of blinding, lemon-yellow jagged lightning that tore across his left visual field, with the distinct smell of burning animal fat and rotting pond weeds. Every syllable was a spark discharge. Every pitch shift was a chemical puncture.
