The iron entrance of Shaft Nine had been sealed twenty years before Pei Jing was born.
It stood three miles north of Cloudford Town, hidden inside a narrow ravine where stunted mountain pines clung to fractured dark rock cliffs. The timbers framing the adit were six-inch baulks of dark red cedar, charred black on their outer faces to prevent rot, barred by three iron cross-straps bolted into the bedrock with leaded spreading pins. A rusted wooden plaque hung from the central timber, its painted characters faded by decades of fiery rain: Shaft Nine - Unsafe for Fire Damp and Unstable Floor.
Pei Jing didn’t use an iron pry bar.
He set his shoulder against the central cross-strap, lined up his chest cage. Then he drove a pulse of Gang Qi through his collar bone. The sound shear snapped the brittle, sixty-year-old iron bolts with dry, percussive cracks. He pulled the rotting timbers outward, creating an opening three feet wide, and slipped into the darkness.
He didn’t carry a lantern.
A flame in a stuffy mine shaft was a lethal hazard. It burned up oxygen, piled up carbon monoxide, and ignited lingering methane pockets. Instead, Pei Jing trusted his night vision. His pupils widened to their maximum width, capturing the faint green eerie glow of copper-loving lichens that crusted the damp tunnel walls.
