The cold-iron vault beneath the Dragon-Tiger Pavilion was built to survive a mountain collapse.
Three-foot-thick plates of pig iron lined the walls, held together by iron rivets the size of tea bowls.
Lu Chen dropped the five-thousand-pound counterweighted locking beam into its floor socket with a dull, underground thud.
The vault fell into complete, pitch-black silence.
He struck a spark against a lump of sulfur wax, lighting a single iron oil lamp on the central stone base.
The air inside was cold, stale, and dense with the smell of old machine oil and pig grease.
Lu Chen stripped off his blood-crusted wolf-skin cloak and laid his twelve-pound cleaver across the stone base.
His body was running at its heat ceiling.
