Lu Chen emerged from the upright chimney pipe of the collapsed underground keep, his boots landing with a heavy, metal thud upon the central dark rock parade ground.
Beneath the flat stone slabs, the heat blast wave of his breakthrough continued to propagate through the deep mountain foundations.
For three decades, the Weeping Pass had been held in the spirit grip of the Thousand-Year Frost-Fiend.
Sheets of black frozen ground, four feet thick and hard as cold-iron, had coated the thousand-foot castle walls, arrow slits, and castle walls like an eternal burial shroud.
Now, that ancient ice began to die.
A deep, underground rumble echoed along the thirty-mile ridgeline of the Great Wall.
Cracks the width of wagon wheels raced up the dark rock low roof walls.
CRACK—THUUUUM.
