The subterranean tunnel smelled of ancient permafrost and stagnant air.
Lin Mo walked down the spiraling stone staircase, his boots crunching against layers of blue glacial ice. Behind him, Old Master Mo held a high-intensity LED lantern in one hand, while Lin Xiaoxiao tapped rapidly on an encrypted audit tablet. Chu Lingxiao followed closely at the rear, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of her Nine-Phoenix Immortal Sword.
“Three hundred meters below the western ridge,” Old Master Mo observed, shining the beam along the shimmering ice walls. “The five ancestors carved these caverns out of living bedrock during the early Kangxi reign. For three centuries, they diverted every scrap of mountain tribute down here.”
“They built their secret treasury right under a glacier?” Lin Xiaoxiao asked, shivering slightly in her padded down jacket. “Wouldn’t the dampness ruin paper ledgers and dry herbs?”
“Not this ice,” Old Master Mo explained, tapping a frosted wall with his knuckle. “This is perpetual profound ice. It freezes the surrounding ambient Qi solid. Anything placed inside remains preserved exactly as it was the day it was sealed. It also blocks ninety-nine percent of spiritual perception scans from the surface.”
At the bottom of the spiral stairs, a pair of thirty-foot doors barred the entrance.
