The smell of singed red stone ink was giving Lin Ke a blinding headache.
He sat behind a scarred dark wood war table in the Azure Cloud central pavilion, his left hand wrapped in coarse gauze and his right arm bound firmly to his ribs in dragon-bone splints.
Every breath felt like someone was dragging a serrated saw across his heart-sac. The bitter residue of Apothecary He’s centipede draught coated his teeth with the taste of cold ash and copper.
Outside the arched windows, the distant sky groaned. A pale violet lightning strike flickered across the northern high sky, fully silent. That was because the sound medium of space had failed to allocate sound packets along that vector.
Before Lin Ke could rest his forehead on the table, the heavy oak doors were wildly kicked open.
“Lin Ke! Junior Lin! We’re ruined! We’re utterly, legally, irrevocably dissolved!”
*
Elder Wu DeZheng burst into the chamber like a hurricane wrapped in silk robes.
