Around Lu Chen, the underground basin twisted into a screaming liquid centrifuge.
Within three breaths of the Patriarch’s speeding up circuit, thirty thousand gallons of stale canal water achieved spinning driving force.
Lu Chen’s boots lost their purchase on the slime-covered flat stone slabs.
The sheer centripetal drag of the current ripped his eleven-stone frame off the bottom. It swept him into the outer ring of the speeding up gyre.
There was no leverage in the water.
Every cubic chi of liquid exerted thick, sticky shear against his limbs. That forced his body into an uncontrollable, high-speed spin around the outer edge of the drowned vault.
Ancient river silt, cut aquatic weeds, and heavy chunks of broken stonework were swept up into the rotating column.
Underwater river boulders the size of ox heads tumbled through the dark like cannonballs, grinding against the circular dark rock walls with ear-splitting stone-on-stone groans.
