Li Huowang raised the medicine pestle in his hand and, bored out of his mind, smashed it into the medicine mortar again and again, slowly grinding the muddy green stone into powder.
Although the cavern was damp and cold, and he wore only a coarse cloth shirt, his face showed complete indifference, as if none of it mattered in the least to him.
He was not alone in the cave; there were other men and women, all with bound hair and dressed in the same coarse clothes and hemp ropes.
The only difference between them and Li Huowang was that they all bore obvious physical defects—some had albinism, others had polio. Every kind of congenital or acquired deformity could be found here; the cramped storeroom cave was like a museum of freaks.
These people's jobs were the same as Li Huowang's—pounding things—but the materials they pounded varied. Some ground metal and stone, others medicine. It was obvious, however, that a few were not content with their work.
