The plan was set. There was little left to do but wait patiently for nightfall.
After thinking it over and finding nothing he had missed, Xia Lun wheeled himself beneath the wall clock. He closed his eyes and began to meditate.
Inhale. Exhale...
Air tinged with coal ash passed through his nose, down his windpipe, and into his lungs. It lingered there a moment before he slowly breathed it out.
As he breathed, his awareness of his body grew clearer. With his Master Level Swordsmanship Specialization, Xia Lun gradually familiarized himself with this battered, disabled body, one breath at a time.
"Tick, tock. Tick, tock..."
The wall clock kept its steady rhythm. Xia Lun's tense body and mind slowly relaxed. In a daze, he felt time speed up. The ticks came closer and closer together until there was no interval between them at all.
The Special Memory felt real, but it was still a dream. As Xia Lun entered meditation, the sky outside darkened rapidly, and someone took down the patched clothes hanging in the small courtyard.
To Xia Lun, only thirty-odd minutes seemed to have passed before the sunlight vanished from behind his eyelids. The sun had sunk below the horizon and the moon had climbed halfway up the sky. Only the nearby Steelworks continued tirelessly belching thick smoke.
The room was pitch-black. Xia Lun slowly exhaled and opened his eyes.
The headache brought on by his alcohol addiction struck again, but by now the pain had subsided to a bearable level.
After meditating on swordsmanship, he found it easier to breathe. His nerves, badly damaged by alcohol, and his atrophied muscles had also recovered a little.
If this body's Constitution had been only 8 before, it was now at least 9.
Xia Lun glanced at the clock above