One hundred and twenty seconds remained before the end of Act One.
In the quiet of Entry hall 349, Qiao Ming knelt in total stillness upon the central striker-plate. The air was cold, pure, and still, smelling of wet limestone and deep-sea sulfur. The yellow flame of his horn lantern burned steady as a bright light upon the dry bench, casting his long, weathered shadow against the giant stone dark rock door post of the Great Iron Arch.
Through the six-foot stone wall, the roar of Zhu Heling’s spiritual build-up was reaching an unbearable pitch. A high, screaming whine of warped space and boiling salt water that made the mica check port groan under huge sky shear.
Qiao Ming brought his Folded brass star-compass to his lap for the final fine-tuning.
The instrument’s tracking data was locked: countdown one hundred and twenty seconds. Master sound hum tuned to four hundred and thirty-two hertz. Earth grounding shunts primed to divert four hundred kiloamperes of spark discharge. Land-mapper’s vitals calm, with a resting pulse of fifty-eight beats per minute.
He closed the star compass, slid it into his oilskin breast pocket, and buttoned the flap. The time for measurement was complete. The time for execution had arrived.
