Qigong 512 of the Molar Menders Pincer

Lore: Originating among the roaming enamel-monks of the Salt Basin, this specialized instrument was devised to treat the severe dental rot and tooth fractures common among kiln-stokers and desert laborers. The order understood the teeth not as dead calcification, but as the true “bone-blossoms” nourished by the kidney meridian and anchored by the stomach channel. By combining measured dental traction with cool, water-phase inhalations, the practitioner circulates restorative qi through the jawbone, soothing infected roots, drawing out stagnant pus without surgical cutting, and seating porcelain or bone plugs without hammer blows.
Description: A five-inch dental extraction forceps crafted from hand-forged, matte white river-iron. The jaws are short, serrated on their inner curves, and tipped with smooth caps of polished freshwater mother-of-pearl to prevent crushing delicate enamel. The scissor arms are wrapped tightly in salt-bleached linen cord, terminating in two small teardrop rings fitted with pale green jade beads that rattle faintly with the practitioner’s breath.
Specific Slot: Held (One-Handed Focus / Tool Slot)
Detailed Stats:
- Item Tier: Tier 1
- Item Rarity: Common
- Item Level: Level 1
- Item Hit Points: 10 plus wearer’s maximum health points
- Armor Check (AC): 0
- Resilience: 6
- Weight: 0.4 pounds
- Suggested Valuation: 9 silver coins (standard valuation across World Bank medical and apothecary posts)
- Attunement: Requires simple somatic attunement (ten minutes of rhythmic teeth-clicking meditation, Chong Chi, performed while inhaling cool air over the mother-of-pearl tips until the jade pommel beads glow with a faint, mint-white luminescence)
Passive Magic:
- Enamel-Root Diagnosis: Touching the pearlescent jaws to a subject’s tooth or exposed jaw reveals the internal health of the tooth, diagnosing deep root rot, hidden abscesses, hairline fractures, or jawbone necrosis without requiring an exploratory incision or diagnostic roll.
- Analgesic Meridian Clamp: When the pincer’s jaws firmly clamp a tooth or the surrounding gum, a soothing coldness spreads along the subject’s stomach and large intestine meridians, numbing the quadrant to physical pain and preventing fainting or shock from dental extraction or repair.
- Tartar-Dissolving Resonance: Simply holding the tool while speaking or exhaling slowly near a subject’s open mouth gently loosens calcified plaque, calculus, and foul tobacco stains, making dental cleaning effortless and non-destructive.
Activable Magic:
- Extraction of Stagnant Rot:
  - Action Cost: 1 Action
  - Effect: The wielder clamps an incurably broken or abscessed tooth, draws a deep diaphragmatic breath, and exhales with a steady, cooling Chui breath. The tooth slips cleanly from the socket without tearing gum tissue or breaking root tips, completely neutralizing localized infection and preventing post-extraction bleeding. Usable twice per day, recharging after a long rest.
- Calcified Root Bonding:
  - Action Cost: 1 Action
  - Effect: The wielder places a carved bone peg, porcelain plug, or gold shell into an empty socket or fractured tooth cavity, clamping the jade-tipped arms together while releasing a focused exhalation. The foreign material permanently fuses to the surrounding natural enamel and jawbone within minutes, matching the bite strength of a healthy molar. Usable once per short rest.
- Nerve-Calming Vapor:
  - Action Cost: 1 Reaction / Interrupt
  - Effect: When an adjacent creature experiences acute facial trauma, agonizing toothache, or a broken jaw, the wielder rattles the jade pommels and exhales sharply across the mother-of-pearl tips. A refreshing mist of cold qi washes over the target’s lower face, halting agonizing pain and suppressing panic or disorientation for 10 minutes. Usable twice per day, recharging after a long rest.
Tags: Held Slot, Qigong, Tier 1, Common, Dentistry, Medicine, Bone Magic, Enamel, Healing, Mother-of-Pearl, Jade, Iron, Forensic, Tool Slot, Oral Care, Extraction, Analgesic, Dental Surgery, Orthodontics, Jawbone, Kiln-Stoker Gear, Calcification, Toothache, Salt Basin, Forceps, Enamel Craft

Apothecary Guilds, Basin Barber-Surgeons, and Commercial Trade of the Molar-Mender’s Pincer

Apothecary Guildhouses and Enamel-Monk Cloisters:
- Setting: Located in quiet stone compounds near municipal infirmaries or salt-cleansing baths. The air smells intensely of dried clove bud, crushed alum, steeped mint, and chalky bone meal. Clean shelves hold porcelain jars of mineral washes and rows of boiled linen dressings.
- Buying: Certified barber-surgeons, temple healers, and guild apprentices purchase the pincer directly through academic supply ledgers for the standard guild cost of 9 silver coins. The tool comes authenticated with a salt-blessed cord wrap and balanced resonance beads.
- Selling: Guildhouses buy back clean, undamaged forceps from licensed practitioners for the standard salvage rate of 9 copper coins, typically reissuing them to novice field healers. They refuse instruments with chipped mother-of-pearl jaw pads or hairline stress fractures along the pivot pin.
Frontier Kiln-Worker Outposts and Salt Flat Stations:
- Setting: Grimy, sweat-soaked trade shanties positioned near industrial brick kilns, glassworks, or vast salt-harvesting flats. The atmosphere is choked with heavy coal smoke, lime dust, and hot alkaline winds, with frequent crowds of laborers seeking relief from brittle, scorched teeth.
- Buying: Itinerant tooth-drawers, camp medics, and work gang foremen purchase these pincers from roving peddlers for 10 to 12 silver coins, paying extra for an instrument that extracts broken molars without causing hemorrhages or factory downtime.
- Selling: Frontier tool traders offer the standard flat salvage rate of 9 copper coins in company-scrip or barter goods. However, if a sudden epidemic of jaw-rot hits a mining shift, a desperate foreman will offer up to 1 silver coin and 3 copper coins in raw kiln coal or dried rations to secure a functioning extraction focus immediately.
Barber-Chirurgeon Parlors and Public Bathhouses:
- Setting: Busy urban establishments tiled in green slate, smelling of boiled lye soap, bay rum, and heated brass basins. Customers sit in high wooden chairs wrapped in linen aprons while chirurgeons trim hair, lance boils, and pull teeth between tea rounds.
- Buying: Established metropolitan chirurgeons buy the pincer from guild supply runners for 9 silver coins to maintain a high-end practice, using the painless extraction magic to draw wealthy merchants who dread standard iron pliers.
- Selling: Established parlors rarely purchase second-hand surgical gear from unknown travelers, offering only the base 9 copper coin rate for raw salvage. If the tool is exceptionally clean and fitted with flawless jade pommel beads, an elder surgeon might pay up to 50 copper coins as spare field stock.
Fringe Smuggler Dens and Undertaker Black Markets:
- Setting: Cramped backrooms beneath charnel docks, bone-grinding mills, or illicit body-broker cellars, lit by sputtering tallow dips. The air smells of sour earth, formaldehyde, and stale wine.
- Buying: Grave robbers, back-alley dentists, and unlicensed cosmetic body-modders acquire the pincers through contraband brokers for 11 to 13 silver coins, prizing the tool’s ability to harvest gold inlays, jade teeth, and intact porcelain bone pegs from corpses or living captives without crushing the surrounding jaw.
- Selling: Black market fences pay the standard salvage rate of 9 copper coins. If the fence supplies clandestine prosthetics to underworld enforcers needing durable bite-implants, they will pay up to 1 silver coin in untraceable river currency.

Tactical Roleplay and Environmental Applications of the Molar-Mender’s Pincer

Industrial Kiln Complexes, Glassworks, and Smelting Foundries:
- Defensive Roleplay: In a suffocating brick kiln where a sudden backdraft boiler explosion shatters heavy masonry and sends shrapnel into a worker’s jaw, agonizing pain threatens to send the victim into fatal shock. Stepping through the blistering smoke, the avatar draws a deep, cooling diaphragmatic breath and rattles the pincer’s jade pommels, releasing Nerve-Calming Vapor. The mint-white mist instantly numbs the lower face, arresting hyperventilation and stabilizing the wounded laborer so they can crawl clear of the collapsing furnace.
- Offensive Roleplay: Cornered in a soot-caked casting hall by an iron-masked enforcer demanding protection money, the avatar feigns compliance during close-quarters grappling. Slipping the mother-of-pearl jaws around a protruding decorative bolt or metal tooth-stud on the brute’s facial guard, the avatar engages Extraction of Stagnant Rot combined with Tartar-Dissolving Resonance. The cooling exhalation dissolves the corroded lime crust anchoring the fitting into the bone, wrenching the stud out with blinding speed, shocking the assailant’s trigeminal nerve and dropping them to the slag-strewn floor clutching a numb, spasming jaw.
Arid Salt Flats, Alkali Quarries, and Desert Caravanserais:
- Defensive Roleplay: During a severe three-day alkali dust storm, a caravan guard’s fractured molar develops an acute, throbbing abscess that spreads fever into the neck. While sheltered beneath a salt-crusted wagon tarp, the avatar uses Enamel-Root Diagnosis to trace the hairline fault down to the root tip. Clamping the jaws firmly, Analgesic Meridian Clamp freezes the quadrant without modern drugs. With a measured Chui breath, Extraction of Stagnant Rot draws the necrotic tooth cleanly out into the storm winds without a drop of blood, keeping the scent of fresh gore from drawing nocturnal dune scavengers.
- Offensive Roleplay: While interrogating a recalcitrant desert scout who swallowed a sealed copper cylinder containing stolen water-rights maps, the avatar clamps the mother-of-pearl tips lightly against the captive’s rear jawbone. Gently channeling cold, water-phase qi along the stomach meridian, the avatar induces a deep, unshakeable ache that vibrates through the teeth and cheekbone without inflicting permanent physical tissue damage. The scout confesses the location of the cache to avoid having their molars cleanly extracted one by one.
Metropolitan Chirurgeon Halls, Grand Ballrooms, and Imperial Courts:
- Defensive Roleplay: At an imperial banquet, an allied diplomat is struck across the mouth by a concealed poisoned glass dart fired from the shadows. The avatar catches the falling noble and applies the pincer to the shattered incisor. Using Calcified Root Bonding, the avatar wedges a polished porcelain bead from a teacup into the gap, releasing an exhalation that instantly fuses the ceramic into the jaw. The rapid calcification seals the exposed blood vessels and nerves within seconds, arresting the systemic absorption of the blood-toxin and stabilizing the dignitary before the assassins can strike again.
- Offensive Roleplay: Navigating a crowded social reception, the avatar must neutralize a disguised assassin who carries a lethal glass suicide capsule capped inside a false hollow molar. Blending into the throng as a harmless dental practitioner, the avatar closes distance, clamps the pincer onto the false crown with a fluid wrist twist, and invokes Extraction of Stagnant Rot. The false tooth and intact poison vial slip silently into the linen-wrapped jaws without cracking the glass, disarming the assassin in mid-stride and leaving them stunned and toothless amidst the oblivious aristocrats.

Perception of Activation:

Sight:
- User’s Perspective: The matte-white iron arms take on a cool, milk-pale sheen as the pale jade beads at the pommels kindle with a steady, mint-white luminescence. Ribbons of faint, vaporous light trace along the salt-bleached linen wrapping toward the pivot. When the mother-of-pearl jaw caps touch a subject’s tooth, the surrounding gum and bone become faintly translucent to your gaze, highlighting deep root nerves as thin gray threads and hidden abscesses as stagnant, muddy shadows.
- Observer’s Perspective: Observers see the practitioner’s knuckles whiten slightly as the jade beads on the handles flare with a soft, sea-green radiance. The mother-of-pearl tips emit a thin, frost-like vapor that spills over the subject’s lips like cold steam from an ice cellar.
- Positives: Clearly exposes root canals, hairline fractures, and trapped infection pockets beneath the gumline without exploratory cutting.
- Negatives: The luminous mist and glowing jade beads make clandestine field dentistry or subtle extraction impossible in darkened or strictly guarded quarters.
Hearing:
- User’s Perspective: Ambient noise recedes into a low, muffled rumble, replaced by a clear, glassy ringing tone—reminiscent of two thin porcelain bowls chiming together in cool water. When the pincer grips enamel, you hear the quiet, fibrous click of the tooth ligament releasing tension, followed by the soft, rhythmic hum of cooling qi cycling through the metal arms.
- Observer’s Perspective: Observers hear a distinct, musical rattle from the jade teardrops at the base, followed by a crisp, hollow clack as the jaws meet the tooth. The typical wet, tearing sounds of tooth extraction are entirely absent.
- Positives: Provides crisp acoustic feedback when the root separates cleanly from the alveolar bone, confirming a complete extraction.
- Negatives: The high-pitched glassy chime can alert nearby sentries or wild beasts with sharp hearing in quiet indoor spaces.
Touch:
- User’s Perspective: The linen-wrapped handles feel soothingly cool and bone-dry in your palm, absorbing all sweat and eliminating fine finger tremors. Through the river-iron frame, the tooth does not register as hard, immovable rock; it feels like a firm, pliable cork settled in soft wax, granting effortless leverage and total manual control.
- Observer’s Perspective: The subject’s jaw muscles visibly unclench, and their clenched fists loosen as the cold analgesic wave sweeps across their face, eliminating pain-induced trembling.
- Positives: Completely eliminates wrist strain and slippage, ensuring teeth never shatter under accidental excess pressure.
- Negatives: The prolonged cooling qi can leave the user’s fingertips slightly numb and sluggish for several minutes after setting the tool down.
Smell:
- User’s Perspective: Your nostrils are filled with a clean, bracing draft of crushed peppermint, dried clove blossom, sea salt, and cold river stones, overriding all foul smells of oral decay, gangrene, or necrotic tissue.
- Observer’s Perspective: Anyone standing within an arm’s reach detects a sudden, sharp breeze of alpine mint, medicinal alum, and brisk saline air drifting from the patient’s open mouth.
- Positives: Neutralizes the nauseating, gag-inducing odors of severe periodontal abscesses and rotting bone.
- Negatives: The unmistakable medicinal odor of mint and clove lingers in the room, immediately signaling recent surgical intervention to anyone entering the space.
Taste:
- User’s Perspective: A mild, chalky coolness settles on the back of your tongue, similar to drinking ice water strained through crushed sea shells and wild fennel seed.
- Observer’s Perspective: The patient experiences an instantaneous, freezing sensation over their tongue and palate, followed by the sweet, numbing taste of steeped wintergreen and salt broth that stops them from spitting or swallowing involuntarily.
- Positives: Suppresses the user’s saliva accumulation and dry mouth during high-focus, delicate extractions.
- Negatives: Leaves a persistent, mineral-chalk aftertaste that temporarily dulls the user’s ability to taste subtle poisons or identify herbal draughts by flavor.
Extra-Sensory Perceptions:
- Dentinal Meridian Resonance:
  - User’s Perspective: You perceive the subject’s teeth not as isolated pegs of calcium, but as thirty-two distinct gateway nodes tied to the stomach and kidney channels. You sense the exact energetic vitality of each root—healthy teeth feel like vibrant, grounded pillars, while dead or infected roots register as hollow, cold voids craving release.
  - Observer’s Perspective: A qi-sensitive bystander detects a sudden rebalancing of the room’s ambient humors, watching the patient’s flushed, feverish complexion rapidly pale to a calm, healthy tone.
  - Positives: Infallibly guides the forceps directly to the primary source of dental fever and systemic pain, preventing the mistaken extraction of adjacent healthy teeth.
  - Negatives: If the patient suffers from extensive systemic bone rot or necrotic jaw decay, a brief wave of dull, aching phantom pain pulses back into the user’s own jawline.
- Alveolar Bone Empathy:
  - User’s Perspective: When inserting a replacement bone peg, porcelain crown, or gold cap, you feel the microscopic porous matrix of the jawbone reaching outward like dry soil drinking rain. You intuitively know the precise second the foreign implant has achieved total cellular fusion with the living bone.
  - Observer’s Perspective: Observers notice the inserted peg or tooth seat flush against the gum line without a single seam, gap, or drop of post-operative blood.
  - Positives: Ensures inserted replacement teeth or prosthetic studs are anchored with permanent, bite-grade structural stability.
  - Negatives: Requires intense somatic concentration; breaking focus prematurely before fusion completes can result in a loose, misaligned tooth plug.

Recipe: Pincer of the Molar-Mender Qigong Focus

Materials Needed:
- One Tier 1 Magic Crystal (a small, pale water-phase resonance shard or frosted chalcedony splinter).
- Six ounces of refined white river-iron (low-carbon, bog-smelted, and free of sulfur inclusions).
- Two carved pads of thick freshwater mother-of-pearl (contoured to fit the inner curves of the forceps jaws).
- Two matched teardrop beads of pale green nephrite jade (drilled along their longitudinal axes).
- Four yards of unbleached linen cord (boiled in concentrated sea-salt brine and sun-dried).
- Half an ounce of natural shellac dissolved in grain alcohol (for seating the jaw liners).
- One dram of ground bone-ash and quicklime paste (for setting the pivot pin and bead pins).
Tools Required:
- One small charcoal bench forge and hand bellows.
- One smooth horn-anvil and miniature cross-peen forging hammer.
- One set of fine needle files and curved rifflers.
- One jewelers’ hand-drill with tempered iron bits.
- One copper wire-wrapping fid and cord-tensioning clamp.
- One leather polishing strop dressed with fine pumice slurry.
Skill Requirements:
- Bladesmithing & Fine Metallurgy: Skill Level 2 (for forging balanced scissor-arms, grinding interlocking jaw serrations, and peening a flush, non-wobbly pivot pin).
- Lapidary & Shell-Carving: Skill Level 1 (for shaping fragile mother-of-pearl caps and drilling nephrite jade beads without fracture).
- Qigong Breath Cultivation: Basic mastery of water-phase qi circulation, kidney-meridian nourishment, and the rhythmic Chui cooling exhalation.
Crafting Steps:
- Forge the White-Iron Forceps Arms: Heat the refined river-iron over clean hardwood charcoal to a dull cherry glow. Hammer out two matching scissor arms, each five inches long, tapering from short, curved extraction jaws down to slender handles terminating in teardrop ring loops. Quench the iron in cold river water infused with mountain mint to achieve a matte white surface finish.
- Fit the Core Resonance Chamber: Drill a narrow channel lengthwise through the pivot boss of the dominant scissor arm. Insert the Tier 1 water-phase magic crystal into the void, aligning its natural cleavage plane with the tool’s fulcrum. Pack the remaining space with bone-ash paste and peen the river-iron hinge rivet flush on both sides, ensuring smooth scissor movement without mechanical looseness.
- Shape and Mount the Mother-of-Pearl Jaws: File fine, shallow gripping serrations along the interior face of each curved iron jaw. Carve the two freshwater mother-of-pearl pads to cap the inner tips, creating a smooth, enamel-safe cushion. Heat the shellac over an oil flame, coat the seating channels, and clamp the pearl pads firmly against the jaws until the resin cools into a permanent, water-resistant bond.
- Mount the Jade Beads and Wrap the Grips: Thread the two drilled nephrite jade beads onto short iron pins seated within the teardrop handle loops, peening the pin ends lightly so the beads can spin and rattle freely. Beginning just below the pivot hinge, wrap the scissor arms tightly in the salt-bleached linen cord using a double-interlocking whip knot, tensioning each turn with the copper fid until the iron is completely insulated against palm sweat.
- Dress, True, and Hone: Use curved needle files to ensure the mother-of-pearl tips meet with flush, seamless contact when the handles are closed. Dress the bare iron surfaces and handle loops on the leather strop using pumice slurry until all sharp burrs are eliminated and the instrument glides cleanly in the hand.
- Somatic Attunement and Meridian Awakening: Seat yourself cross-legged in a quiet chamber, holding the finished pincer across both open palms. Inhale deeply through the nose, drawing vital breath down to the lower dantian, and perform ten continuous minutes of rhythmic teeth-clicking meditation (Chong Chi). Release slow, cooling Chui exhalations directly over the mother-of-pearl jaws. When the pale jade beads rattle with a faint hum and the jaw caps exude a soft, mint-white mist that leaves a cool sensation on the lips, the pincer is attuned and ready for oral chirurgery.

White-Pliers of Salt-Monk, Boiling Jaw of Furnace-Lord, and Golden Pig Who Could Not Chew His Millet

In the turn of the seasons before the bitter lake had become hard dry salt, there ruled upon the south terrace of Nine Chimneys a great smelting-master whose household name was Lord Ao-of-the-Red-Slag, but upon the tax-slates of the kiln-guilds he was inscribed as the Great Hammer Who Flattens the Earth. This lord possessed seventeen thousand copper pans for the boiling of river-brine, sixty stone furnaces that drank charcoal night and day without belching, and a great chest of iron containing dried deer-tails and salted duck gizzards without number.

Every evening at the rising of the red star, Lord Ao sat upon a stool of pig-iron and ate forty steamed buns made of white flour, stuffed with the fat meat of young pigs and dipped in honey that had been boiled with crushed cloves. Because he was very rich and feared no law, he spoke often to his furnace-slaves with a loud mouth, saying:

“The heavens give rain to the soft grass, but to me they give fire and iron! My bones are made of cast metal, my breath is the gas of burning coal, and my teeth are thirty-two square stones of mountain jade that can grind through the knee-pan of an ox!”

Now it is written in the cracked clay cylinders of the middle basin that the kidney-vessel is the mother of the tooth-root, and the stomach-pot is the earth wherein the bone-blossom takes its hold. Because Lord Ao ate the hot fat of swine without water, and drank wine boiled with yellow arsenic to make his blood fierce for the overseers’ whips, a great yellow demon of dry fire was born within the pit of his guts. This fire-serpent had no feet, but it climbed up through the red chimney of his throat while he slept upon his bed of wool.

On the third day after the feast of the Autumn Smelting, a great swelling rose upon the left side of Lord Ao’s face. It was not small like an insect’s bite, but large and purple like the egg of a water-tortoise, and it smelled of old brass and pond-scum. His back-tooth, which was the greatest molar upon the left jaw-plank, turned black like a cinder dropped into tallow. When the wind blew across the furnace yard, the cold air entered his open mouth, and the lord shrieked like a gelded mule, beating the stone floor with his iron rod until three floor-slates were broken into dust.

Lord Ao called together all the barber-surgeons and blood-letters from the seven river-wharves, speaking through his swollen lips like a toad choked on pebbles:

“Behold, an iron worm has climbed into my head and is biting the root of my wisdom! Whosoever shall drive this worm into the dirt so that I may chew the salted swine-tail again shall receive four measures of stamped yellow silver and a coat of red fox-skins; but if any dog with dirty nails causes my jaw-bone to break, or makes my red blood to run into my beard more than a cupful, I will throw him into the blast-kiln along with the green ore to be turned into pot-metal!”

Then came forward a great barber of the city whose hair was oiled with lard, whom the market called Doctor Iron-Grip, though his guild-board was carved with the sign of the Leech-and-Knife. He brought with him three apprentices carrying iron tongs such as are used by the blacksmiths to pull white-hot horseshoes from the fire, and a great heavy mallet of brass.

Doctor Iron-Grip bowed his fat neck and said: “Lord of the Fire, this black tooth has roots like an old oak upon a cliff. We must bind your hands to the stone pillar with three wet ropes of raw ox-hide. Then shall my strongest boy hold your forehead with both arms, while I seize the head of the tooth with the heavy tongs and strike the hinge with the brass mallet. In the space of three water-drops, the root shall fly out into the dust like a pebble from a sling.”

When they bound Lord Ao to the stone pillar, the red fire in his jaw became seven times more fierce. The apprentices held his ears, and Doctor Iron-Grip closed the black tongs upon the swollen tooth. But when he struck the iron with the brass mallet, the tooth did not fly out, for its root was crooked like a fish-hook deep inside the cheek-bone. The crown of the tooth split with a sound like a dry branch snapping in winter, leaving the rotten black marrow buried inside the flesh. Lord Ao screamed three screams that frightened the cranes from the river reeds; he broke the ox-hide ropes by the violence of his belly, and with his right fist he struck Doctor Iron-Grip upon the breast so that the barber’s ribs cracked like dry wicker, and he fell into the corner vomiting black bile.

The lictors dragged Doctor Iron-Grip to the mouth of the sixth kiln and threw his body into the red heat, while the other barbers fled through the mud-ditches like river-rats, leaving their copper bowls and iron blades behind them.

For three days and three nights, Lord Ao lay upon his floor. His jaw became as wide as a water-pail, burning with such fierce heat that his servants could not lay a wet towel upon his cheek without the cloth drying into crisp crust. No man dared approach his gate, for he held two hunting-spears in his fists and threw them at any shadow that passed before his door.

Now there walked along the edge of the salt-ditches an old ascetic of the white-iron order from the high mountain springs, whom the common tongue calls Brother Hu-of-the-Quiet-Gums, but in the writing of the temple rolls he is titled The Man Who Mends the Bone-Blossom with Cool Breath. He carried neither a bag of iron knives nor jars of stinging leeches; he wore only a short gown of boiled nettle-cloth, and in his sleeve he carried a pair of five-inch pliers fashioned from matte white river-iron. The jaws of this tool were wrapped with the pale shells of fresh-water oysters, and from the loops of the fingers hung two small beads of green stone that clicked softly against each other whenever he walked.

When Brother Hu heard the furnace-slaves weeping by the river-bank, he sat upon the curb of the water-well and washed his face with cold water.

“Why do you howl like jackals whose den is stopped with stones?” asked the monk.

A slave who had lost his ears answered: “Our lord is dying of a black coal in his head. When his breath stops, the clan-kinsmen will kill forty charcoal-slaves to be buried in his ditch, so that he will not lack for fuel in the yellow earth. Therefore we weep for our own necks, which will be cut before the sun touches the hills.”

Brother Hu adjusted his hemp belt and said: “Lead me to the iron house. The bone-flower that is rotten must not remain in the garden, but he who pulls it with anger will tear out the earth along with the weed.”

When the monk entered the hall of Nine Chimneys, the air smelled like a pig that has been roasted inside its own skin. Lord Ao lay upon his carpet with his eyes turned backward in his skull, foaming with bitter froth, his right hand still clutching a dagger of notched bronze.

When the lord saw the shadow of the monk upon the wall, he raised the dagger and gasped: “Have you come to steal my silver, or has the king sent you to laugh at my open cheek?”

Brother Hu did not look at the dagger, nor did he ask for four measures of yellow money. He sat upon his crossed shins before the sick lord, holding the white-iron pincer between his two flat palms, and spoke with a voice like water running beneath the winter ice:

“Lord of the Iron, drop your bronze knife into the meal-bin. The iron you have beaten for thirty years has entered into your flesh to mock your pride. Your mouth is a furnace that lacks water; your stomach is an oven without a draft. Open the two gates of your lips, and let the white wind of the high snows blow through the red chimney.”

Lord Ao had no more strength to strike; his hand fell upon the stones, and his mouth fell open, dark and swollen like the den of a marsh-badger.

Then Brother Hu closed his eyes and began the rhythmic teeth-clicking meditation, which the ancient text names Chong Chi, clicking his own jaws nine times: tok-tok-tok, tok-tok-tok. He drew the breath of heaven through his nostrils down into the lower reservoir of his kidneys, cooling the blood until his wrists became as pale as curdled sheep’s milk. He engaged the Tartar-Dissolving Resonance, humming through his nose like a wild bee inside a dry hollow gourd.

The ancient translation states: The yellow crust and the black dirt that clung to the thirty teeth of the smelting-lord began to soften like old river-mud under an autumn shower. A cold smell, which had no smoke, rose from the teeth like the breath of an ice-cave in the third month.

Then Brother Hu laid the mother-of-pearl jaw of the pincer upon the swollen gum where the black root was hidden, activating the Analgesic Meridian Clamp.

At once, the great furnace-lord ceased to roll upon the floor. His hands, which had been clenched like iron clamps, opened flat upon his knees. The boiling heat that had burned his ear-lobes and his neck turned into a sweet, cold dew, running down his throat like water squeezed from wild mountain mint. He did not feel the iron jaws touch the bone; he felt only as if a hand of white snow had been laid against his cheek to still the beating of his blood.

Brother Hu did not call for three strong men to hold the lord’s ears. He did not raise a mallet of brass. He leaned his face over the open mouth and drew his belly upward with a long, soft exhalation, releasing the cooling Chui breath—fu-u-u, chui-i-i—directly across the mother-of-pearl tips.

He engaged the Extraction of Stagnant Rot.

The writing upon the fourth sheepskin tells it thus: The two small jade beads upon the rings of the pincer began to spin upon their iron pins, singing with a fine tone like the bell of an altar-boat at dawn. A pale mint-light, which had the shape of a lotus flower, bloomed around the head of the pliers. The black root, which was twisted like the leg of a crab, did not break, nor did the red blood follow it from the socket; it rose from the jaw-bone as smoothly as a ripe melon-seed is squeezed between two wet fingers, leaving the socket clean, dry, and white like polished marble.

Lord Ao opened his eyes, which were now clear like well-water. He touched his cheek with his thumb; the great tortoise-egg was gone, the purple stink had vanished, and the side of his face was as cool as a flagstone washed by the night dew. He spat into the copper basin, but there was no red blood within his spittle—only a single bead of clear water that smelled of fresh clove and mountain pine.

The furnace-lord leaped to his feet and called to his steward: “Bring hither the four measures of stamped yellow silver! Bring the coat of red fox-skins, and three carts of dry charcoal from the mountain stores! For this barefoot monk has taken away the iron worm without striking a blow!”

Brother Hu laid the black, withered tooth upon the hearth-stone, where the hot embers were dying into gray ash. He dipped his white-iron pincer into a bowl of cold well-water, wiped the mother-of-pearl jaws with a strip of clean linen, and slid the tool back into the wide sleeve of his nettle-coat.

“Lord of the Slag,” said the monk, “keep your yellow silver in your iron chest, for I have no teeth to buy, nor have I need of charcoal to burn my own bread. Give the four measures of tin and the fox-skins to the earless slaves who cut wood in your pits, and let your furnaces rest for seven days while you eat only boiled millet and thin broth of green wild-cress. For if you return to the fat meat of swine and wine boiled with arsenic before the new moon has filled its horn, the fire-demon will climb down from the roof-tree into your other jaw, and there will be no monk in the salt-ditches to blow cold snow upon your bones.”

Then Brother Hu turned his back upon the great hall of Nine Chimneys and walked toward the western marshes, clicking his teeth softly in rhythm with his steps: tok-tok-tok, tok-tok-tok.

Lord Ao did not dare to break the word of the water-monk. For forty days he put away his iron whips, he quenched the fires of thirty boiling-pans, and he sat upon his stool eating cold water-rice with the wood-slaves, until his flesh became white and lean like the willow-shoots in the spring ditches. And though he lived to see eighty turnings of the plow, the black coal never entered his mouth again, for he kept upon his writing-table a little brick of river-salt to remind him that the strongest jaw of bone is only dirt held together by the quiet breath.

Moral of the story: The great hammer and the brass mallet may shatter the stone gate of a fortress, but they cannot cure the secret rot that eats the root of a man’s strength from within; for that which is hard and fierce will break itself against its own fury, while the patient breath of the cool spirit draws out the most stubborn poison without tearing the flesh or spilling a single drop of blood.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)