Beneath the Silent Dynamo, Entry hall 701 opened into a huge sunken quarry known as the Discharge Pit of the Third Sluice. The floor of this chamber was not paved with stone or metal. It was a waving field of black and deep purple glass-fused glass, formed by the nonstop discharge of molten soul-melted rock waste that had poured from the reactor core above over three hundred years.
The air here was freezing, hovering at four degrees below the surrounding heat of the surrounding rock. A thin crust of white hoarfrost covered the ridges of the melted rock waste beds, formed by the water drops of sky moisture against the super-cooled glass. The lantern light caught the glassy surface, fracturing into a million dark, rainbow-bright facets that glittered like bruised amethyst.
Qiao Ming walked carefully across the frozen glass field, his bare horn-hard feet testing the traction of every step. His prehensile toes gripped the rounded glass ripples, feeling the intense, dry chill of the substrate. The glass was harder than granite, brittle as flint, and scarred by deep cooling fractures that ran across the floor like sharp-angled spiderwebs.
Behind him, Yan Zhiqiu stepped with measured caution, her boots crunching softly against the hoarfrost. She held her horn lantern low, watching the play of light within the semi-clear depths of the melted rock waste. In places, the glass was clear enough to see three arm-lengths down. It showed frozen bubbles of unburnt spirit-vapor suspended in the dark purple matrix like…
