The dawn brought no rooster’s crow, no shifting morning mist, and no warmth to the frozen salt.
Lin Tao was awake three hours before the gray sky clicked from dim to moderate brightness. He knelt on the salt-crusted shale beside their cold bivouac. It replaced the linen bandage across Tie Shan’s swollen left shoulder muscle. The skin over the joint was dark with deep under-skin bruising, stained amber by crushed willow bark and bitter pine-resin. But the humeral head remained firmly locked within the glenoid fossa.
“Joint holds firm,” Lin Tao said, testing the tension of the hemp binding. “No inflammation in the bursa.”
“Joint feels good,” Tie Shan grunted, flexing his thick right forearm. “Can swing the iron.”
“Only with your right arm,” Lin Tao reminded him calmly. “If you stress that left shoulder capsule before seven days pass, the joint cord tears permanently. We have no marrow-knitting elixirs out here.”
“Just using one arm,” Tie Shan replied, rolling his broad neck until the neck bones clicked in a muffled set. “I know the rule.”
Lin Tao packed their leather rolls, shouldered his land-mapper kit. Then they picked up a piece of jagged gray dark rock roughly the size of a pigeon’s egg.
