The fissure below the crag opened into an ancient vent. Pei Jing used his domain to check his fall and followed the dry magma channels down. They ran into a sloping fault that took him west for more than two hours. By then he was about three thousand paces below the plain. It had cooled so long ago that the air smelled of dry iron and sulfur. The passage opened into an oval cave twenty paces wide. He could hear no sound from the city through the rock.
He set five wards around the place where he meant to sit. One took the sound of his movements, and the others held stray heat, lightning, and qi close to the floor. He drew his pulse down with Turtle Breathing and lit a small lamp.
The eight-hundred-pound Precursor Tablet rested on two blocks before him. The flame showed the pits left by its fall through the sky. He put his fingers to the lines on the bronze and read until his breathing had settled again.
The old writers had set down how to balance the two forces at the heart of a Golden Core. Its weight pulled inward. Its heat pushed out. If either gained too much on the other, the core would tear the body that held it. Nine points of force, set at the right places, could hold the whole thing steady.
