Book 3: Chapter 20: Recruitment Drives

Yin Hu sat on a chair that creaked every time he breathed. A basic thing with four legs, a back, a plank to sit on, and the structural integrity of a promise made by a politician. The table before him held three orbs that caught the afternoon light filtering through the gaps between leaning buildings and reflected it back in colours that had no business existing in a place this miserable.

The slums smelled like ambition had died there and nobody bothered to bury it.

The Orb of Telling sat on the left. Smooth, pale blue, about the size of a large apple. The same one he had used with Jun and Shui back when they had still been within the Silver Mountain Gang territory. It read spiritual root elements and purity with the clinical detachment of a physician who'd seen too many patients and stopped caring about bedside manner three centuries ago.

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