The smell of dried willow bark and steeped mint was infinitely better than sulfur.
Lin Ke sat in a wide wicker armchair beside the open window of Apothecary He’s private sunroom, propping his left flank with two down pillows. A thick linen binder was strapped securely around his ribs. He held the two fractured bones in tight posture while He’s bitter bone-knitting paste did its slow, living work.
The afternoon sun poured across the pine floorboards, warm and quiet.
Every breath pulled faintly against the torn between-rib muscles beneath his armpit, a dull, throbbing reminder that physical meatspace knew nothing of quick rollbacks. If a lightning lance cracked a rib, the marrow had to knit cell by cell through calcium settling and herbal healing wraps.
Behind his left shoulder, hovering two feet off the floor in the quiet shade of the room, sat the six-foot crystal-clear cyan figure of Node 1.
The child daemon was fully silent.
Formed from the decoupled half of his split Nascent Soul, it was hovering in front of a tall cedar bookshelf. It flipped through the pages of three ancient country histories at a mental clock speed of one hundred times real-time, scanning forty leaves a second without making a sound or stirring the dust motes.
