High Eunuch Wei dragged his mangled body up the eighty-first jade step, his fingernails peeling back against the cold stone.
Behind him, a slick trail of black hydroid ichor and shredded purple silk stretched down the grand stairs.
At the foot of the stairs, Lu Chen climbed at an unrushed, measured pace.
His heavy ox-hide boots struck each step with a dull, rhythmic thud that sounded like a funeral drum.
The twenty-eight-pound Great Blood Cleaver rested loosely in Lu Chen’s right hand, its black glass edge hissing at four hundred degrees. That left small glowing scorch marks on the white ritual jade.
Wei looked back once.
Through his clouded eye-clouded eyes, the approaching night-watchman looked like a walking iron fire.
The heat streaming from Lu Chen was already distorting the underground air. That made the pillars of the tomb waver like reeds beneath running water.
