The stench of the Lower Breeding Pens hit the back of the throat like warm vinegar and curdled milk.
Lu Chen carried a heavy twin-hooked oak transport yoke across his shoulders, walking two paces behind the masked inner student.
They dropped thirty feet down a spiral stairs cut into the black shale bedrock.
At the bottom of the shaft, the cave widened into a sunken limestone trench sixty paces long.
A natural heat rift ran beneath the floor, venting warm, humid vapor that condensed into oily droplets on the iron bars above.
Along both flanks of the trench stood forty iron cages bolted directly into the cave bedrock with lead-poured pins.
Inside each cage, a human body was strapped spread-eagled to an inclined slate slab.
Lu Chen’s eyes swept the row of cages with cold dead-house care.
