Desk Seven differed from every other workstation in the writing hall. While the first six desks were carved from the dense, oily jawbones of ancient sea monsters, the seventh desk was forged from a single, solid metal bar of dark gray pig lead, four inches thick, supported by stout columnar legs of solid bronze. Upon its dull, unreflective surface rested a heavy tube-shaped chest built from pure rolled gold leaf. It was sealed at each joint with thick fillets of vulcanized pitch.
Around the outer edge of the lead desk, the white marble floor flags had suffered deep, etched degradation. A ring of chalky, vesicular stone spread three feet in every direction, where acid-burning vapors had condensed and stopped over thousands of years. That left the stone porous as dried bread-crust.
“Acid dissolving,” Qiao Ming murmured, stepping carefully over the pitted marble. His bare feet were sensitive to the texture of the stone. He could feel the crumbly, friable calcium sulfate under his soles. “The manuscript was sealed in gold because no organic leather or thick parchment could survive the leftover vapors of the Seventh Epoch.”
Yan Zhiqiu crouched beside the desk, holding her horn lantern near the pitch seals. “Gold does not tarnish, and lead does not dissolve in vitriolic liquors,” she observed, her scholarly training parsing the metalworking logic right away. “Whoever prepared this chronicle knew that even the air trapped inside the metal tube would turn acidic over hundreds of years.”
