The maintenance shed offered zero comfort, but it hid them from the searchlights sweeping the rooftops.
Yang Yi kicked the door shut. He leaned against the cold stone, sliding down until his ass hit the floor. His chest heaved. The acrid taste of chemical ash coated his tongue.
Lin slumped opposite him. She cracked the wax seal on a jar of Healing Salve. The smell of mint and crushed aloe filled the cramped space.
"Turn around."
Yang Yi stripped off his ruined tunic. His back was a map of lacerations from the slag chute and burns from the boiler room.
Lin applied the paste. Her fingers were cold, a sharp contrast to the burning ointment. She worked in silence, tracing the scars.
"You have old wounds," she murmured. "Some of these didn't happen in the sewer."
"Different life. Same struggle."
Yang Yi hissed as the salve bit into a deep gash on his shoulder. The medicinal energy seeped in, aggressive and fast. It wasn't gentle healing; it was forced regeneration. The flesh knit together with a stinging heat.
"Done. My turn."
She handed him the jar. She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a nasty friction burn from the blade jump.
Yang Yi applied the salve. He wasn't gentle, but he was efficient.
"We have supplies for three days," Lin said, flexing her arm. "If we ration."
"We don't ration. We invest."
Yang Yi dumped his pockets onto the floor. The black jars of rejected alchemy clattered against the stone.
He picked up the Bone-Hardening Paste. The warning label was faded: Extreme toxicity. Permanent stiffness risk.
"What are you doing?" Lin watched him pry the lid off. The gray sludge inside smelled like wet concrete and venom.
"I don't have a shield. So I need to become one."
Yang Yi rolled up his trousers. He scooped a handful of the gray sludge.
"Yang, that's for construct armor. It calcifies living tissue. You'll turn your legs into stone pillars."
"Only if I stop moving."
He smeared the paste onto his shins.
Agony.
It felt like someone was hammering nails into his tibia. The paste soaked through the skin, seeking the bone, fusing with the periosteum. Yang Yi gritted his teeth, a low growl vibrating in his chest. His veins turned gray where the poison traveled.
He didn't stop. He coated his forearms next.
"The Rat essence gives me flexibility," he gasped, sweat beading on his forehead. "This gives me density. Striking power."
He stood up. He marched in place, lifting his knees high, forcing the joints to articulate before the paste set. Crunch. Grind. Pop.
His shins felt heavy, dead to the touch, but hard as iron. He tapped his forearm against the stone wall.
Clack.
Like hitting rock against rock.
"Madness," Lin whispered. But she watched him with a new kind of look. Not fear. Respect. "You're turning yourself into a weapon."
"The sect treats us like tools. Might as well be a sharp one."
He picked up the Explosive Blood Pills. Three left.
"These are our trump cards. Concussive grenades. Don't eat them unless you want your stomach to exit through your spine."
He divided the loot. He gave Lin two jars of healing salve and one explosive pill. He kept the rest and the remaining bone paste.
The Dragon Transformation Token on his hip pulsed. It was sated for now, having absorbed the residual energy from the Mercury Serpent's destruction. But the hunger was merely sleeping.
Yang Yi sat back down. He pulled out the Myriad Beast Assimilation Record.
"Sleep, Lin. Tomorrow we go back to the Dregs."
"To hide?"
"To rule."
Yang Yi turned the page to the Serpent section. "We can't raid the Inner Garden yet. We need an army to cause a distraction. And Block 9 is full of desperate people looking for a leader."
"They're looking for a meal, Yang."
"Same thing."
Yang Yi closed his eyes, but his mind stayed awake, cycling through the pain in his bones, tempering it, owning it. The wolf wanted to howl. The rat wanted to hide.
The dragon waited.
Dawn bled over the horizon, turning the smog above the Outer Sect a bruised purple.
Yang Yi kicked the shed door open. He stepped out onto the roof tiles. His legs felt stiff, heavy, but unstoppable. Every step was a pile driver.
They descended the drainpipe, slipping back into the shadows of the alleyways before the morning shift whistle blew.
Block 9 was waking up. The same misery, the same coughs, the same smell of despair.
They reached their hut. The door was still propped up by the rock.
Inside, it was empty. The squatters hadn't returned.
Yang Yi walked to the center of the room. He looked at the cracked floor.
"We need a sign."
He walked back outside.
A group of disciples huddled around a fire barrel nearby, cooking a rat. They looked up, eyeing Lin's clean robes and the pouches at Yang Yi's waist.
One of them stood up. A lanky man with a scar across his nose. He held a sharpened screwdriver.
"You made a mess yesterday, new guy. Iron Hand Zhang is looking for you. He's bringing the Centipedes."
Yang Yi didn't back down. He walked toward the fire.
"Let him come."
He stopped in front of the lanky man. He reached into his sash and pulled out the empty jar of the Bone-Hardening Paste.
He tossed it into the fire.
The remnants of the paste flared green. The fire barrel hissed, the metal warping and turning brittle under the sudden alchemical reaction.
"Tell Zhang I'm not hard to find."
Yang Yi looked around the circle of scavengers.
"I'm hiring. Ten contribution points a day. Or food."
The lanky man laughed, though his eyes darted to the warping metal of the barrel. "You? You're a dead man walking. Zhang runs this block."
"Zhang rents this block," Yang Yi corrected. "I'm looking to buy."
He turned and walked back to his hut.
"Lin, prepare the healing salve. We're going to have patients soon."
"Patients?"
"The ones who survive the interview."
Yang Yi sat in the doorway, his iron-hard forearms resting on his knees. He waited. The Centipedes were coming. And he needed to test his new bones.