The chamber of Entry hall 407 opened before them as a huge cave of inverted, ghostly green light.
The hall was vast, spanning seventy arm-lengths from east to west and forty-two arm-lengths from the black floor flags to the crown of its groin-vaulted ceiling. In the last entry halls, darkness had hung like heavy velvet beyond the reach of their small animal fat lantern. Here, light rose from below, washing the soaring stone stonework in a steady, emerald tide of light.
Set into the polished floor were thirty-six shallow circular basins, each three paces across and lined with mirror-smooth black glass. Within these basins rested four inches of clear, hyper-saline salt water. Suspended within the water, drifting in slow, lazy spirals, were millions of tiny deep-sea jellies and glowing salt water-fleas. Tiny organisms that emitted a cold, steady, emerald-green light that washed upward across the stone flags like liquid moonlight.
Because the light rose from the floor, every shadow in the chamber climbed toward the ceiling. The recesses beneath the stone beams were brightly lit up. Meanwhile, the tops of the roof ledges remained shrouded in darkness, reversing the visual logic of the sunlit world.
Qiao Ming stopped at the entrance doorstep, his bare feet planted flat upon the cold black glass border. He put out the wick of his animal fat lamp with a wet pinch of his thumb and forefinger, saving the precious grease. In the soft green glow, his weathered features took on the sharp, angular cast…
