Beneath the central citadel of Fort Ironpass lay an underground maze built long before the founding of the Great Yan Empire.
While modern military planners used only the upper cellars for salt pork and dried beans, the third sub-level had been sealed for hundreds of years behind massive giant stone granite lintels, sunk in pitch-black silence and dry, stone-laden dust.
Pei Jing dropped the forty-eight stone steps alone. He carried a small copper lantern fueled with refined bear fat and a short crowbar of hardened hard dark metal steel.
His reason for exploring this forgotten tier was supply. The northern palisades needed load-bearing stone to anchor the chevron breastworks. The guard post mason had mentioned ancient dressing vaults beneath the foundations.
Passing through a low granite archway carved with weathered spiral glyphs, Pei Jing entered a vaulted chamber forty paces square. The walls were not mortared brick. They were solid megalithic blocks of dark rock, fitted together with tolerances so tight that an iron needle couldn’t penetrate the joints.
In the center of the chamber, half-buried under fallen ceiling mortar, stood four stone bins sealed with lead plugs.
Pei Jing approached the nearest bin. He set his lantern upon the stone rim, pushed in his hard dark metal crowbar beneath the rusted through lead seal, and applied seventy pounds of downward leverage.
