The archway of Entry hall 726 opened onto an extraordinary stone-built space: The Grand Rope-Walk of the First Mapmakers. Unlike the vaulted chambers and circular tiered halls they had crossed, this entry hall was a huge, straight gallery five hundred arm-lengths long and eight arm-lengths wide, cut through solid grey hard speckled granite like an arrow shot through the mountain.
Running along the entire length of the gallery floor were two parallel rails of polished cast bronze, upon which sat movable twisting sleds and tension carriages. Overhead, suspended from bronze brackets every twenty paces, were hundreds of wooden bobbin-racks and guide-combs carved from stone-hard boxwood, their surfaces polished to a satin sheen by miles of running cordage.
Qiao Ming walked down the centerline of the rope-walk, his bare calloused feet delighting in the clean, dry granite floor. The gallery was fully free of dampness, ventilated by a gentle, warm draft that carried the rich, comforting fragrance of rendered sheep fat, boiled pine resin, and dried horsehair. It was the honest, timeless smell of maritime rope-making.
Behind him, Yan Zhiqiu walked with her lantern held high, her eyes surveying the massive machinery. “A five-hundred-arm-length rope-walk!” she exclaimed, her voice rolling down the long, receding tunnel in endless echoes. “In the maritime ports of the Great Gulf, the royal shipyards had rope-walks of two hundred arm-lengths. They considered them the marvel of the mortal world. But this gallery allows twelve hundred paces of nonstop, splice-free cord to be laid under uniform tension!”
