The smell of boiling vinegar and crushed dried toad skin filled the apothecary’s nook.
Lin Ke sat with his shirt peeled down to his waist, his spine bare against the wicker backrest. Apothecary He was pressing cold brass coins against his upper-back bones. He tested nerve conductance with sharp, rhythmic clicks of a small spring-loaded punch.
Every click sent a dull shaking through Lin Ke’s glassy glass spirit veins.
“Your marrow is too dry,” Apothecary He muttered through clamped teeth, not looking up. “Whatever ungodly technique you’re churning in that stubborn skull of yours, it’s eating your fat reserves like a fire burning dry shavings. Your ribs look like the hull of a shipwreck.”
Lin Ke watched the grey dust motes floating in the lantern light.
The old doctor was right.
In the earlier simulated tests of the Ghost-Splitter manual, the newly cut astral soul had right away tried a deep clone of the entire training base.
To create an autonomous astral body with full independent power, the ancient technique had sucked ninety pounds of living matter and five thousand liters of refined spiritual fluid out of the mortal frame in three minutes.
