The next two days were a monotonous cycle of pain and exhaustion. He would wake before the first rays of Lumina's generative fire touched the sky, his body a single, unified chorus of aches, and join the grim procession to the Grinder.
He would dig, his movements slow and clumsy, until his muscles screamed and his hands bled. He would eat the greasy meat and stale bread, and then drag his battered body back to the clan estate to collapse into a dead, dreamless sleep.
He followed Xiong's advice. He made himself small. He kept his head down, his expression vacant. He became a ghost in the pit, just another piece of the suffering landscape. The guards, seeing him as a pathetic, broken thing, soon grew bored and left him alone, focusing their cruelty on more defiant laborers.
But while his body was being ground down, his mind was sharpening. He listened.
He listened to the bitter whispers of the Dregs laborers, piecing together the web of the town's black market, the Rat's Nest Guild. He learned the names of the smuggling routes into the mountains and the types of beast parts that fetched the highest prices. He learned which of the Governor's guards were the most corrupt, willing to look the other way for a few copper coins.
He listened to the gossip of the soldiers themselves as they lounged, thinking him too stupid or too tired to understand. He learned of the tensions between the Governor's private garrison and the official town watch. He learned that the Aethel-Iron mines in the mountains were proving less fruitful than the Governor had hoped, a source of immense frustration for him and his chief surveyor, Master Lin.
Every snippet of information was a golden thread. He hoarded them, weaving them together in the quiet of his mind as he mechanically moved earth from one pile to another. He was building a new map, not of meridians, but of power, desperation, and greed.
On the evening of the third day of labor, as the profound, chilling presence of Selene's Veil began to assert its dominance in the western sky, he was dragging himself through the clan estate when a servant, a young girl with wide, fearful eyes, scurried up to him.
"Second… Second Young Master," she stammered, bowing her head so low her forehead nearly touched her knees. "The First Mistress… she requests your presence."
The air in the Alchemist's Garden was clean, filled with the rich, complex aroma of a hundred different herbs. The silvery light of the rising Selene's Veil cast a soft, ethereal glow on the strange and vibrant flora, making the faintly glowing blue flowers seem like captured stars.
Madam Lan knelt beside a bed of Silvervein Grass, her expression serene, but her mind was a turbulent sea. The clan was dying. The treasury was empty. The tribute had been a humiliation. And her husband, the Patriarch, was a stone statue of pride, unable to see the cracks forming at his own feet.
Her only hope, the clan's only hope, was her son. Yang Wei. His breakthrough had been successful, but his foundation was still consolidating. He needed resources. Resources she no longer had.
Her gaze fell upon a small, discarded pile of rags near the garden's refuse bin. They were caked with dirt and stained with dried blood. She recognized them. The servant responsible for the Second House's trash was lazy and had left them here instead of taking them to the incinerator. They were the rags from her nephew's hands.
She thought of the boy. The cripple who had woken up. The fool who had volunteered for the Grinder. She had heard the whispers. That he was weak, pathetic, a constant source of shame for her sister-in-law.
But he had not broken. He had not run. For three days, he had endured.
A flicker of something—not pity, but a cool, pragmatic curiosity—entered her mind. The boy was a problem for the Second House, certainly. But an infected, dying nephew would quickly become a problem for the entire clan. A messy inconvenience. A septic infection could kill him, and a dead nephew was a far greater complication and source of shame than a crippled one. A single pot of mortal-grade salve was a small, efficient price to pay to prevent such a needless and untidy outcome.
She stood up, her decision made. It was a minor expenditure to solve a potential problem before it grew.
"Mei'er," she called out softly. A young servant girl appeared from the shadows. "Go to the Second House's wing. Find the Second Young Master. Tell him the First Mistress requests his presence."
The request was so unexpected for Yang Kai, that it took him a moment to process. Why would the clan's aloof alchemist want to see him?
The servant led him not to the main hall, but to a secluded courtyard behind the First House's wing. The air here was different. It was clean, filled with the rich, complex aroma of dozens of herbs. This was the Alchemist's Garden.
Neatly arranged planter boxes held a variety of strange and vibrant flora. Some glowed with a faint, internal light even in the twilight; others were a deep, velvety black. In the center of the garden was a small, open-air pavilion.
Madam Lan sat within, grinding herbs with a porcelain pestle in a marble mortar. The silvery light of the rising Selene's Veil cast a soft, ethereal glow on her, making her skin seem like luminous porcelain. She wore simple, jade-green inner robes, her sleeves tied back, revealing the flawless, pale skin of her slender forearms. Her inky-black hair, perfumed with a subtle herbal mist, was tied in a practical healer's knot with a single white orchid pin.
Her oval face carried soft cheekbones and a graceful, aristocratic nose. Her full lips were the color of dried rose petals, and her jade-green eyes—framed by long lashes and slightly heavy lids—were focused on her work with a placid, waiting intelligence.
The serene picture was marred by the small pile of bloody, dirt-caked rags at her feet. His rags.
"First Aunt," he said, his voice a hoarse croak as he bowed his head.
She didn't look up from her work, the rhythmic grinding the only sound in the garden. "Your mother tells me you are determined to continue this foolishness." Her voice was calm, a stark contrast to Madam Liu's fiery scorn. It was a simple statement of fact.
"The clan needed ten laborers," he replied, his standard, hollow answer.
"The clan needs its sons to have functioning hands," she countered without missing a beat. She set down the pestle and finally looked at him. Her jade-green eyes were clear and analytical, like a physician studying a disease. "Show me."
He hesitated, then slowly held out his hands. They were a mess. The blisters had torn, leaving raw, weeping patches of skin. They were caked with dirt and crisscrossed with angry red lines of infection.
She clicked her tongue, a soft sound of disapproval. "You are a fool. But you are still Yang Zhan's son." She gestured to a small stool beside her. "Sit. This will sting."
He sat, his heart pounding. He was acutely aware of their proximity, of the subtle, clean scent of herbs and woman that surrounded her. He tried to keep his breathing even.
Madam Lan—his First Aunt—took one of his hands in hers. Her touch was cool, professional, and utterly detached. Her fingers were long and slender, yet her grip was firm, her fingertips surprisingly strong. She examined his ruined palm with the critical eye of a craftsman studying a flawed piece of work.
He couldn't help but watch her. The way her brow furrowed in concentration. The stray wisps of black hair that had escaped her bun and curled against the pale, perfect skin of her nape, catching the silver light of Selene's Veil. Her body was a perfect sculpture of balance and maturity. Her waist was slim and tight, leading into wide, flowing hips that granted her an unmistakable hourglass shape beneath her robes. As she leaned forward, the silk of her robe pulled tight across the serene, magnificent swell of her breasts.
She picked up a small ceramic bowl filled with a pungent, dark green paste. "This is a common salve," she explained, her voice still a detached, clinical monotone. "Mortal Grade. It will fight the infection and speed the healing of the flesh. Nothing more."
She dipped her fingers into the salve and began to apply it to his hand.
The moment it touched his raw skin, a sharp, biting cold spread through his palm, so intense it was almost a burn. He hissed in a sharp breath, his whole body tensing.
"I told you it would sting," she said, her voice betraying no sympathy. Her touch remained steady and methodical as she worked the paste into every cut and blister.
He forced himself to remain still, focusing on the intricate details of his new reality to distract from the pain. This was a transaction. She wasn't helping him out of kindness. She was fulfilling a duty, preventing the Second House's son from becoming a septic, useless burden. This was clan politics in its most intimate form.
She finished the first hand and moved to the second, her movements economical and precise. He watched her work, mesmerized. She was so close. If he moved his head just slightly, he could bury his face in her hair. The thought was so powerful, so transgressive, that it made him feel light-headed.
"Why?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper. He needed to break the spell.
She paused, her fingers still resting on his palm. "Why what?"
"Why do you do this? The pills, the salves. For a clan that is… dying."
For the first time, a flicker of something other than detached professionalism entered her eyes. A deep, weary sadness, illuminated by the cold starlight.
"I do it for my son," she said softly. "Everything I do is so that Yang Wei might have a chance. A chance to become strong enough to lead this clan out of the darkness. Or at least, strong enough to survive its collapse."
She finished her work and released his hand. She wiped her fingers on a clean cloth, her composure once again immaculate.
"This salve will need to be reapplied for the next two days," she said, her tone back to being professional. "Come here each evening after your work. The servant at the gate will know to let you in."
It was a dismissal. But it was also an invitation. An opportunity.
He stood, bowing deeply. "Thank you, First Aunt."
As he turned to leave, her voice stopped him.
"Yang Kai."
He turned back.
"Your mother believes you are a fool," she said, her green eyes seeming to see right through him in the ethereal twilight. "Your father believes you are a victim."
She picked up her pestle and began grinding herbs again, her gaze returning to her work.
"What is it that you believe you are?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
He walked out of the garden, the question echoing in his mind. The stinging in his hands was a secondary sensation now, overwhelmed by the cold, calculating thrill that was spreading through his chest.
An invitation. A private audience for the next two evenings. With the clan's most valuable asset. The woman who controlled the flow of pills and elixirs. The mother of the clan's great hope.
He looked down at his bandaged hands. They were still weak. Still useless for a fight.
But perhaps, he thought, a flicker of his old world's predatory cunning surfacing, they could be useful for something else entirely.
[Cycle of the Azure Emperor, Year 3472, 7th Moon, 8th Day]