Four deep-water lengths of black canal water pressed down on Lu Chen, cold enough to freeze bone.
Beneath the sunken vaults of Gu Ning’s outer foundations, hundreds of years of urban filth and river silt hung suspended in the motionless dark.
Lu Chen hovered three paces above the slime-crusted flat stone slabs of the drowned floor.
His heavy ox-bone cleaver hung in his right fist, its twelve pounds of notched iron pulling against the floating lift of his limbs.
Around his chest and shoulders, the freezing canal water didn’t numb his flesh.
Fifty-two degrees.
His molten bronze marrow radiated a nonstop, suppressed heat pressure, heating a paper-thin envelope of water against his skin.
Tiny micro-bubbles of boiling vapor hissed continuously from his pores. He rose through the murky depths like strings of silver pearls.
