The smell of dried sheep blood and healing red stone was choking.
Inside the Seventh Ward’s writing hall, the heat had reached ninety-five degrees, fueled by charcoal fire bowls kept burning to dry fresh ink on yellow parchment.
On the floor between two drafting tables, an eighteen-year-old student lay curled on his side, his right hand twitching wildly in a repetitive, claw-like tremor. A stained bamboo brush was still pinched between his blue-tipped fingers.
*
“Spiritual depletion of the wrist sinews,” Apothecary He said. He knelt beside the boy and driving a thick brass acupuncture needle into his forearm without ceremony. “That’s nine today. The small channels in their forearms are fully desiccated. They can’t hold a brush.”
Shen Yue didn’t stop drafting.
Her slender fingers moved across a strip of gold-leaf paper with terrifying speed, her twin soul threads humming at peak throughput. Two brushes danced at the same time in her hands. She laid down fine, detailed linked spirals of defensive ward-script.
A line of fine sweat tracked down her nose, dripping onto the parchment blotter.
