The sewer under-road drain smelled of wet copper and rotten eggs.
Apothecary He knelt on a damp hemp blanket laid over the slimy floor stones. His silver needles were held between dirt-caked fingers. Around him lay twelve junior scribes, their breathing shallow and rattling, like dry leaves scraping inside a tin chimney.
“Look at this,” Apothecary He growled. He pointed a needle at the exposed inner forearm of a teenage clerk.
Beneath the boy’s semi-clear, paper-thin skin, the main lung spirit vein was not jade or crimson. It was a hard, lumpy cord of dull, rusted slate-gray. When He tapped the channel with the blunt end of his tweezers, it produced a dry, hollow click.
“Eighty percent of them have it,” the old apothecary spat. He wiped sweat from his gray sideburns. “They call it ‘Thunder-Scorch Rot.’ It isn’t a disease, Lin Ke. It’s metal poisoning. Those unshielded copper lightning ducts overhead are leaking spark-charged ozone and heavy-metal vapor twenty-four hours a day. These children are breathing boiled away lead and copper melted rock waste until their lungs turn to stone.”
Before Lin Ke could reply, the rotting wooden barricade at the under-road drain entrance scraped aside.
Two junior clerks staggered in, carrying a slight, trembling woman whose dark hair was matted with sweat. It was Scribe Qiao Lian, the senior scroll-keeper of the Records Sub-Vault. Her lips were a dark, bruised violet. Every ragged inhale sounded like two rusted files grinding together.
