Night fell over the Iron Rift like cold, black velvet.
The throbbing ache in Lin Ke’s glassy spirit veins had settled into a steady, dull thrum, like the engine of a docked container ship cooling down in deep harbor. Every breath drew in the clean, dry air of the underground work-yard, scented with ozone, quartz dust. The sharp healing bitterness of Apothecary He’s herbal healing wraps bound across his chest. Beneath the coarse linen wraps, his blistered skin pulled taut against his ribs, tender to the touch but no longer weeping fluid.
Around him, Node 07’s cavernous machine room had emptied out. That left only the soft sixty-cycle hum of thirty-six crystal-clear racks.
An hour earlier, Apothecary He had made his final rounds. He carried a heavy clay bowl of steaming, pitch-black Centipede Bone Gall Broth. The old trauma doctor had shoved the scalding bowl into Lin Ke’s hands with an irritable grunt.
“Drink every drop, boy,” He had grumbled. He wiped herbal residue from his wrinkled fingers onto his apron. “Your heart channel looks like a heat-softened fire chimney pipe. If you don’t keep the tissue damp with cooling marrow for the next forty-eight hours, your glassy channels will micro-crack the first time you sneeze. And don’t give me that dead-eyed engineer stare. I’ve buried better men than you who thought they could ignore living inflammation.”
