The smell of boiling aconite root and dried bitter pine-resin bark hung heavy in the sick room.
Apothecary He arranged his tools on a clean linen sheet. Sixteen polished silver acupuncture needles, two horn scrapers for rotting tissue, four jars of numbing grease distilled from swamp snakes, and three leather bite-straps.
Each tool was wiped with high-proof grain alcohol that stung the nostrils.
Lin Ke sat at the wooden table, laying out his deployment manifest on four sheets of stiff mulberry paper.
“Never rebuild an entire smelting complex in a single shift,” Lin Ke said. His pencil tapped each sheet in set. “If you alter the crucible foundation, redirect all steam water chutes, and overhaul the bellows at the exact same breath, you don’t get a working foundry. You get a smoking crater.”
Elder Wu DeZheng hovered behind him, his hands clasped nervously in his sleeves, his eyes darting between the razor-sharp knives and the neat rows of ink diagrams.
“Senior Brother Lin,” Wu quavered, “the ancient scriptures say breakthrough is a single, blinding moment of sky enlightenment! The fighter casts their soul into the heavens, meets the divine lightning, and is reborn!”
Lin Ke looked at the old administrator with deadpan patience.
