Entry hall 853 was a cathedral of black dark rock, its soaring barrel-vaulted nave supported by forty fluted vanes that rose from the underwater floor like the ribs of an ancient giant beast.
Here, forty leagues beneath the surface of the Drowned Sea, the water was dark, dense, and freezing, smelling of crushed shale, ancient thick tar, and the cold stone dust of the planet’s core. The boiling deluge from the upper breach had been left behind, choked by the high-pressure drain tubes of the upper weirs. What reached this hall was only a steady, rhythmic drip from the ceiling rosettes, each drop falling seventy arm-lengths to strike the dark floor with the clear, bell-like ping of cold bronze.
Qiao Ming walked across the underwater stone floor, the black salt water washing over the tops of his bare feet. The water here was only ankle-deep, held back by the huge giant stone flood-gates that blocked the southern cross-hall. His splayed, calloused toes gripped the wet dark rock flags with the ease of long habit. He felt the subtle grain of the stone, the thin skin of salt crust, and the cold shakes traveling up from the bedrock below.
“The gates are jammed,” Yan Zhiqiu said.
