Entry hall 235 was a deep pit of stale black mud.
Located ninety-four deep-water lengths beneath the central nave, the chamber served as the end-post settled mud sump for Sluice-Gate Nine. For sixty paces in every direction, the floor dropped away into a massive, eight-sided basin carved from dense olivine dark rock. In normal seasons, the clear overflow from the upper water-courses tumbled through this sump in thin, aerated curtains, leaving only a dusting of fine quartz dust sand across the drainage grates. But the moon-tide line-up tide had broken through the outside barriers, driving thirty upright feet of dense, unbending magnetic iron silt into the chamber.
Qiao Ming stood on the narrow check narrow high walkway five deep-water lengths above the mud, his bare feet gripping the cold, damp bronze rungs. The air rising from the basin was thick with the rotten-egg stench of anaerobic rot, deep-sea methane. The sharp, metal tang of crushed iron ore.
He unhooked his bronze check lantern from his harness and swung it out over the deep pit. The yellow flame revealed a lonely expanse of glistening black sludge, punctuated by the jagged ribs of shattered void-timbers, twisted glowing-bronze cables. The hardened back shell of a deep-sea-scorpion whose spines projected three feet above the mire.
