The wooden legs of the rickety table ground against the hard-packed dirt floor as Han Ping cleared away the shattered medicine pots, replacing them with clean linen cloths and two unblemished ceramic basins.
Ye Chen stood in the center of the drafty room, rolling his sleeves up past his forearms, the heavy iron bracers Elder Mu had forged clicking softly against his wrists.
"Boss Ye, are you certain we do not need to fetch an alchemy tripod from the market stalls along Miller Creek Road?" Han Ping asked, lowering a heavy wooden cask of mountain well water beside the hearth. "Refining sovereign-tier ingredients over open dirt without a cauldron usually cracks the pill shell before the medicinal core can form."
"A bronze cauldron is merely an iron cage designed for apprentices who cannot
