If Floor 20 was a trial of silence and spatial misdirection, Floor 30 was a total, ear-splitting riot of rushing water, blinding white foam, and mischievous beastfolk laughter.
Challengers stepped through the archway. Then, the heat plummeted, and the roar of underground torrents shook straight through their marrow.
Spanning thirty leagues of folded underground space, Floor 30 was a huge underground canyon of polished blue dark rock. Through the center of the deep gap carved the River of Nine Cascades—a roaring, tempestuous waterway of freezing ice-slow meltwater rushing at thirty knots over razor-sharp underwater rocks, boiling whirlpools, and sudden twenty-arm-length waterfalls. everyone could feel the freezing spray and dense, soaked Yin-water qi that put out mundane flames in a split second.
Moored along a wooden jetty at the entrance was a flotilla of five-man enchanted hardwood rafts, each equipped with heavy steering oars and braided hemp ropes.
Over the past three days, Floor 30 had earned a legendary reputation across twelve thousand tavern water-mirrors as the “Great Soaking Crucible.”
Proud fire-fighters who had spent decades mastering explosive flame palms found their sparks fizzling out like damp sulfur matches. Heavy infantry martial artists who stubbornly refused to remove their three-hundred-jin plate armor had stepped onto rafts, only to right away capsize, sink to the river bottom like bags of lead, and pop into the Recovery Pavilion beanbags looking like drowned rats. He shivered wildly as otter attendants wrapped them in warm wool blankets.
