The descent began behind the communal latrine trenches of Gallery Seven.
At the terminus of the residential hall. There, the natural limestone gave way to black dark rock bedrock, the floor dropped into an upright drainage opening. An ancient iron grate, rusted into brittle orange flakes, hung half-dislodged over the pit.
A sour, rotten-egg draft rose from the depths. It whispered through the broken iron bars with a faint, hollow hum.
Pei Jing didn’t carry an open torch. The flame would eat oxygen in stuffy shafts and mark his position like a bright light.
He wore a tight headband of black cloth, his hair bound back firmly. Around his neck hung a small leather pouch containing five dried mint leaves to chew if the sulfur vapors became choking. Slung across his back was his hard dark metal cleaver. In his left hand, he held a twenty-foot coil of braided hemp cord weighted with a two-pound iron line weight.
He slipped through the gap in the rusted grate.
His boots found the carved footholds chiseled into the sheer rock wall sixty years ago by mortal copper miners.
The rock was cold, wet with stone slime that felt like grease under his toes. He dropped fifty feet, one hand and one foot moving in timed together rhythm. At the hundred-foot mark, the air heat plummeted five degrees. The sulfur smell of the surface market pulled back, replaced by the ancient, dead stench of stale underground water and hardened dust.
