The shift from the marble cloisters into Entry hall 192 was marked by a sudden, harsh change in the floor beneath Qiao Ming’s bare feet.
Here, the smooth pale limestone flags gave way to the wide, dry evaporation pans of the Salt-Pan Cross-hall. For three hundred years, this vast, shallow depression—four hundred paces long and eighty paces wide—had served as a natural drying floor where leftover salt water from the high tides evaporated under the draft. That left a thick, crusty blanket of white spar-stone dust and coarse sea-salt crystals.
Walking across this floor was like walking across a field of packed winter frost.
The salt crust crackled softly under Qiao Ming’s calloused soles—crunch, scritch, crunch—each step leaving a grey, tightly packed footprint that stood out sharply against the blinding white crystal-clear surface.
Across this spotless white expanse, the trail of the two intruders was as glaring as ink spilled across a clean sheet of thick parchment.
Qiao Ming stood at the margin of the pan, his horn lantern held low to cast long, raking shadows across the salt crust.
The footprints told a story of mounting terror and bodily ruin.
The two students had entered the salt-pan from the northern archway, running side by side. But after thirty paces, their paths had split apart erratically. The student named Hu, fully blinded by the shattered quartz plates of his mask, had stumbled into the low limestone curb of Pan Four, barking his shins and tumbling face-forward into the salt. The…
