Lin Mo, whose five spiritual roots are all defective, wore a coarse cloth tunic faded nearly white from washing. He was so thin he looked as if a gust of wind could knock him over. The cuffs were frayed, and flecks of mountain mud clung to his trouser hems. Unlike the other youths around him, dressed in fine clothes and flushed with excitement, his face was deathly pale from years of malnutrition. Only his eyes stood out, as black as a deep pool and just as unfathomable. There was none of the liveliness of youth in them, only the grim resolve of someone with nothing left to lose.
His left hand stayed clenched around a coarse cloth bundle held against his chest. Inside were the dregs of the medicine his mother had left unfinished, along with a bronze mirror no bigger than his palm.
It was the only keepsake his father, Lin Zheng, had left him.
