At the water station in Kiln C, Sang Wujie saw a guild laborer pull the water token bracelet marked C-73 from Jiao Liuniang's wrist, intending to burn her name from the death register that night. After carrying the last orphan's body from the furnace, he set down the corpse bag and pointed out that Kiln C had three hundred and twenty households, and tokens were replaced every ten days. Today was only the ninth. The laborer placed the bronze bracelet on the red-hot kiln door and forced him to take it. Five men pinned him against the red-hot iron, burning the old scar where his right shoulder had been severed. He memorized the details: six laborers, one water official, on duty tonight, surnamed Zhou, with a scar over his left eyebrow. Then he swung the hot iron rod, knocked down the bronze bracelet, kicked open the kiln door, hooked out Jiao Liuniang's water jar engraved with her household number, and made her drink. The old woman had said she would keep the water if he carried bodies from the furnace, but that wasn't his concern. Yet as the burn on his severed right shoulder seared the old scar left by the water stoppage fourteen years ago, a fine slit opened. From it seeped something that was neither blood nor pus, but a hair-thin copper wire that had soaked in the salt water Jiao Liuniang applied to his wound on that night fourteen years ago, for three whole months.
