2026-02-21 04:21:46
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Chapter 616
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the ward and the sound of breathing. Yin stood with the tray. Granny Lang watched with her arms folded. My master sat with his hands on his knees.The envoy looked at me with slight surprise still, clearly surprised I was back so soon. He probably expected me to take a few days—so did I, honestly, but my master and Granny Lang were just too knowledgeable.The two earth spirits waited behind the glass. They looked stiff and tired. The envoy stood near the door, jaw tight.“We’ll start,” I said.He gave a short nod.I slid the first pill through the slot. The escort spirit spoke in low sounds and placed it on the test spirit’s tongue. We waited. I counted breaths. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.At first nothing. Then the spirit’s eyes moved. He blinked twice, and his brow drew tight, as though waking from a bad dream. His hands opened and closed and he took a breath that didn’t scrape on the way in. His mouth trembled. His eyes filled.“I think giving
Chapter 615
Granny Lang arrived while I was swallowing. She didn’t knock. She never knocked. She came in with a basket, set it down, and began pulling out wrapped packets and a cloth bundle. “You look pale. Sit. Drink.”“I’m fine,” I said.“Drink,” she said again.I drank. It was hot and bitter and then a little sweet.She turned to Yin, clearly knowing the situation already. Or maybe she’d been lurking near the door and heard the conversation I had with my master. “What did you feed them?”Yin told her.Granny Lang listened, lips pressed together, then snorted. “Children. You cleaned the house and left the doors open.”I blinked. “We did.”“You made them smooth,” she said, tapping a knuckle against my forearm. “Smooth is good for a moment. Then wind comes in. You need a light film to hold the shape for a few days. Even mortals know how to grease a joint so it doesn’t seize when dust gets in.”“A seed ward that sticks to the channels. Essentially what my master said.”Granny Lang let out an offen
Chapter 614
Yin stood next to me with her kit open. “We need to write this down,” she said. “v0 worked yesterday, relapse today. Increased sensitivity to Chi and miasma both. One corrupted. Manual purge by you fixed it. The pill did not leave a residual ward.”I took a cup of water and drank in short sips while I wrote that down.“Try doing what you did for these people with the spirits?” Yin asked, low.“I tried. I pushed a thin thread through the glass and touched the outer flow around the first spirit’s core when we set them in place. It didn’t feel good. Their bodies are… less body and more Chi. If I do for them what I did for our people, I could tear the shape they hold. If I go hard, I might fix them. Or I might break them.”“Risky,” Yin said.“Yes,” I said. “I’d have to dive into their inner spaces, which I’m willing to, but it’s time consuming. Unless I go spirit by spirit, that can quickly become unviable. It’s for the best to make the pills work out.”Not to mention, the Divine Beasts w
Chapter 613
The envoy looked through the glass at his people and then back to me, slight concern in his eyes. “Your Highness, do you perhaps have anything else you can do to help them?”“I do.” I reached with my Chi towards the Spirits, ready to try and manually remove the taint. What I found made me frown, but before I could verbalize that to the envoy, the courtyard bell rang three short notes. Then someone pounded up the stairs. One of the other researchers skidded into the lab door.“Report,” Yin said.“Ten people, the ten Your Highness and you took to experiment, Miss Yin,” the researcher said, panting. “They’re—” He swallowed. “They’re not right. Sensitive to the air. Irritable. One’s gone bad. Sir—”“Which post?”“North ward infirmary. They asked for you.”I didn’t waste a breath. Yin grabbed her kit, and I grabbed onto her, using my Chi to move to the infirmary immediately. The air had the stale taste of old miasma someone had scrubbed hard but not fully cleared. The ten rested on cots, t
Chapter 612
The clean rooms in Yin’s laboratory sat behind layered wards, each pane carved with clean lines and short runes. I verified the seals, then checked the air vents once more. I didn’t want to be sloppy.Two earth spirits waited inside the first room. They stood like carved figures in a grotto, dust pooled around their feet. Their eyes clicked to me when I entered, then to Yin. The earth-court envoy stood outside the glass and watched with his arms folded, the weight of his presence making the ward hum.They were remarkably tame for being corrupted, but perhaps that was because of the multiple layers of seals they were experiencing.“Do you agree to the following?” Yin addressed the envoy, her voice clear. “We won’t mess with their cores or anything that’ll disrupt them. Make them swallow these pills, and then we watch. If anything feels wrong, you can knock.”The envoy nodded. He didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue either.I set the tray down and went over the steps again. “This is
Chapter 611
Too thin shell → dissolve too fast, refill hits too early, a small sharp feeling at the wrist.Too much refill → warm push that makes hands tingle, test subject wants to move too fast.Bad mark (shallow notch on second ring) → separation step hangs, paper assay shows a gray rim that does not clear.We made one of each on purpose. We ran paper tests. We also did live tongue touch with a flake the size of a seed so we could feel the onset without taking a full pill.Yin wrote FAILURE SIGNS in a box:“Fast dissolve = tingle = not safe for tired bodies.”“Over-refill = eager hands = bad for brittle meridians.”“Bad mark = hang at separation = gray rim; fix mark depth.”We then ran a correction pass: “Fast dissolve = tingle = not safe for tired bodies.” “Over-refill = eager hands = bad for brittle meridians.” “Bad mark = hang at separation = gray rim; fix mark depth.”I marked the discarded slivers with a cross and put them in a bag labeled “trash.”And then we had the final problem to sol
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