The shattered granite altar of the Hundred Blossom Grand Hall was still slick with the black blood of the Fourth and Fifth Elders.
Lu Chen stood amidst the settling dust, his boots planted firmly upon the cracked foundation stone.
His collarbone vented two steady ribbons of seventy-degree steam. He curled into the cold mountain air that poured through the ruined roof beams.
Beneath his soles, the mountain was not silent.
A deep, underground shaking pulsed through the soles of his oiled leather boots at about eight cycles per second.
It wasn’t the grinding of earth-shaking plates or the rush of an underground river.
It was a wet, rhythmic contraction.
A giant living heart was beating two hundred paces directly beneath the hall.
