The dead-end gallery was sixty paces deep, cut into the underground black limestone three hundred paces beneath the surface of the valley.
Here, surrounded by walls of porous, saltpeter-crusted rock, the world was fully still.
Fifty years ago, mortal copper miners had abandoned this drift after striking an underground fault line that vented sulfur dampness into their workings. The timbers supporting the roof had turned black as charcoal, draped in thick sheets of white cave-mold that swayed whenever a man exhaled. Along the floor, the rusted iron rails of the ore tramway ran into a mound of collapsed shale. It formed an iron barrier that trapped anyone standing inside.
The orange flame of the pine torch in Scarface Wei’s left fist flickered sluggishly, sputtering on cheap sulfur pitch, throwing jagged, wavering shadows across the limestone pillars and the barren rock face.
Hook-Hand Liu took a half-step forward to Pei Jing’s left, raising his eight-inch iron gaff hook until the venom-coated barb was level with Pei Jing’s collar bone. The toxic toad secretion glistening on the dark metal gave off a faint, scorched reek that cut through the ancient cellar dampness.
Thin Ghost Cao stood six paces to the right, his brass repeating crossbow locked at waist level. The ten steel-tipped quarrel bolts were lined up in the feed magazine, their three-sided points lined up with Pei Jing’s main thigh blood vessels.
