The stone hatch in the barracks floor had been forced from below.
Its iron lock-bolts, thick as a man’s wrist, lay snapped across the flat stone slabs like snapped icicles.
Lu Chen dropped through the opening without pause.
He dropped twelve feet into the underground heating chimney pipes that formed the maze-like underbelly of Weeping Pass.
Hundreds of years ago, when the Great Yong Dynasty was at the peak of its stone-built power, these vaulted granite ducts had funneled forced heat from underground coal kilns to warm the guard post above.
Now, the kilns were long dead.
The four-pace-wide chimney pipe was choked with choking soot, rotted animal skeletons, and creeping blue frozen ground.
The surrounding heat here was far colder than the barracks above.
