Lu Chen felt the hum change in his teeth before he heard it.
Across the flooded necropolis, the low shaking sharpened into a waving wail.
Water conducted sound four times faster than air, and with nearly five times the physical thickness.
In these lightless underground depths, the pressure wave didn’t travel as a gentle draft. It struck like an iron mallet swung with two hands against Lu Chen’s temples.
Whuuuum.
The forty drowned maidens suspended above the eight-sided tomb hall parted their lips all at once.
Their pale, waterlogged jaws out-of-joint with wet, sickening pops, dropping past their chins to reveal cavernous, black gullets.
Stuck through their shriveled, blackened tongues were needles of polished copper, pinned in crosswise patterns.
