The scent of medicinal herbs lingered in the pill room all day without dispersing.
Yang Wushuang sat alone behind the low table, holding the intact Soul Recovery Pill in his palm and examining it over and over for a long time.
The light outside the window shifted from the bright afternoon to the dusky evening, then sank from the dusky evening into dim twilight. Yet he never put the pill down, his gaze moving back and forth over the subtle patterns and changes in color on its surface.
The Breaking Clan's pill room stood on the eastern side of their residence. It was a separate small house built from gray bricks, somewhat more spacious than the surrounding buildings. Its windows were large and faced the rear mountain, allowing the occasional chirping of distant birds and the sound of wind through the forest to drift in.
A faint scent of medicinal herbs permeated the pill room year-round, mixed with the lingering odor of charcoal fires and fired pottery.
Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with ceramic jars and porcelain bottles of all sizes. Each one bore a label indicating the name and age of the medicinal ingredient inside.
Several handwritten prescription booklets lay open halfway across the low table. Beside them rested a smoothly polished copper medicine grinder, with traces of uncleaned powder still left in its groove.
Yang Wushuang was fifty-nine this year and would turn sixty when spring came next year.
He was lean, with slightly hunched shoulders and back, a habit formed from years of lowering his head to grind medicine and watch the furnace fire.
His hands, accustomed to dealing with medicinal ingredients year-round, were long and steady. A thin layer of calluses covered his knuckles, while pale marks worn by the handle of the grinder showed