Entry hall 211 was a sight and stone-built maze designed during the Second Epoch to deceive the eye and unbalance the mind.
The chamber stretched seventy paces from east to west, covered by a low, coffered vault of black snake-like stone. The floor was paved with thousands of linked box-shaped slabs of pale white pale limestone and polished dark slate, arranged in a fine, detailed herringbone pattern that created a dizzying sight illusion. To anyone walking across the threshold, the central raised stone road appeared to be a narrow, fractured ridge running precariously between two yawning deep-sea crevasses.
In reality, the saw crevasses were solid bedrock painted with light-absorbing graphite pitch. Meanwhile, the inviting, smooth-paved false channel running along the northern wall was a clockwork trap.
Qiao Ming stood at the western stone railing, sixty arm-lengths above the floor on the high gallery. His bare calloused feet gripped the cold granite railing, steady and quiet in the gloom.
In his right hand, he held his ash stave. In his left, he held a small earthen jar of sheep fat and three brass oil-lamps with adjustable shutters. He had spent the last twenty minutes positioning these lamps along the high stone friezes, angling their narrow beams of amber light downward at an angle of thirty-three degrees.
