Lu Chen dropped the final flight of giant stone marble stairs, each step cut three feet deep into the living bedrock of Mount Li.
His iron-soled boots struck the ancient flat stone slabs with a dull, ringing clunk that shook through forty paces of underground stone.
Behind him, the narrow tunnel leading from the royal scripture vault sealed shut under the weight of three balance weight boulders, cutting off all retreat.
Ahead, the cave opened into a deep pit so vast that the underground darkness swallowed the limits of ordinary vision.
Lu Chen paused on the landing, his left hand resting on the notched iron spine of the twenty-eight-pound Great Blood Severing Cleaver.
The blade rested across his right shoulder, its dark black glass-gold edge streaming a steady, quiet warmth of four hundred degrees.
Two hundred feet above his head, the ceiling of the central burial chamber arched into an artificial sky.
Thousands of glowing sea pearls, raw quartz crystal spheres, and glowing animal fat stones were embedded in the black dark rock vault.
