The screech of the diamond-tipped iron drill echoed through the vaults of Entry hall 007 like the screaming of an iron bird.
Entry hall 007 was known to Qiao Ming as the Stone porch of Mists. For hundreds of years, it had been a place of quiet, sacred mist. There, the water drops from the high northern high window row fell in an endless, gentle dew across ninety-six fluted pilasters of white Carrara marble. At the far end of the roofed porch, set deep into a huge niche sixty arm-lengths high, stood the sealed bronze portal of the Crypt of the First Patriarch. An ancient, flawless doorway of cast deep-sea bronze covered in tiny intaglio glyphs that recorded the thirty-six drowned star-patterns.
Now, the calm mist of the roofed porch was choked with acrid smoke and the screech of heavy-duty siege-gear.
A mechanized demolition unit from the Pyre-Furnace Court had dragged a portable void-drilling rig down from the wreckage of the Pyre-Crest. The machine—a monstrous contraption of iron gearing, whistling copper steam-pipes, and a six-foot revolving auger tipped with heavy-duty diamond teeth—was braced against the ancient bronze doors by three heavy iron support posts spiked directly into the marble flags.
