Li Huowang raised the pestle in his hand, listlessly pounding it again and again into the medicine mortar, slowly grinding the streamstone with traces of mud inside into powder.
Though the cave was damp and cold, and he wore only a coarse linen shirt, his face showed utter indifference, as if none of this mattered at all.
He wasn't the only one in the cave. Other men and women, all with their hair tied up, all in the same coarse hemp ropes.
The only difference between them and Li Huowang was that their bodies all bore obvious outward defects—some with albinism, some with polio.
Every kind of congenital and acquired deformity could be found here; in the small cave that served as the storeroom, it was like a museum of freaks.
The work these people did was the same as Li Huowang's—just pounding things—but the materials varied: some ground minerals, some ground medicine. Yet it was clear that some were not focused on their tasks at all.
