The underground silence of Entry hall 349 returned with the finality of setting cement.
Qiao Ming stood on the iron narrow high walkway three deep-water lengths above the floor, looking down at the southern pilaster through the amber haze of his animal fat check lantern. At the base of the forty-foot dark rock pier, where Zhu Heling’s hired blades had spent the preceding watch attempting to excavate an assault tunnel beneath the Great Iron Arch, eighty tons of magnetic iron slurry had cured into an impermeable conglomerate harder than the surrounding bedrock.
The four heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron star drills, abandoned by the fleeing tunnel diggers, were embedded in the solid grey stone up to their brass chucks. Their tightly packed-air hoses hung limp and cut, weeping thin streams of oily water onto the flat stone slabs. The clockwork assault had not merely been checked. It had provided the aggregate for the permanent load-bearing reinforcement of the gate.
He dropped the upright bronze ladder, his bare calloused feet testing each rung with unrushed familiarity. When his toes touched the cold stone floor, he walked to the injection pipe hub and examined the pressure relief petcocks.
He drew his Folded brass star-compass from his oilskin breast pocket and pressed the sound sensor against the cured mortar.
