The water in the wooden wash-basin had turned the color of stale pond water.
Lin Ke lay face down on a rough hemp cot inside the Seventh Ward’s tool storage room, his upper body bare. Apothecary He was picking rusted iron slivers from his sliced open back with silver tweezers. He dropped each bloody flake into a bowl of bitter spirits with a wet ping.
“You jumped through an air-powered exhaust chimney pipe,” He growled, his voice thick with furious disbelief. “A chimney lined with heavy-duty cutting baffles. You have forty-two puncture wounds, three cracked ribs. The pins in your collarbone have drifted half an inch into your chest muscle.”
“Is that all?” Lin Ke whispered into the canvas mattress.
“No, you idiot,” He snarled, slamming the tweezers onto the tray. “You took three breaths of Nine-Yin Searing Mist. Look at your arms.”
Lin Ke raised his hands into the lantern light.
Beneath the pale skin of his forearms, his glassy glass spirit veins were no longer clear. They were cloudy, milky-gray, and veined with tiny streaks of dull, metal lead.
The toxic specks had settled into his internal waveguides, binding to the smooth stone walls. Every time his Nascent Soul tried to circulate a thread of liquid Qi, the flow dragged against the jagged chemical deposits. It sent grinding, arthritic agony streaming into his fingers.
