The natural incline of Entry hall 105 rose forty arm-lengths over a span of two hundred paces, forming a grand ramp that led into the middle galleries of the safe hall.
The ramp was paved with broad, unpolished slabs of pale limestone marble, quarried during the foundation era from the deep crystal-clear beds of the underwater deep pit. Over ten thousand years of retreating tides and seasonal mist, a tiny veneer of blue-green lithophilic algae had colonized the stone. When dry, the algae formed a powdery, velvet crust. But when dampened by the morning sea-fog, the tiny cells swelled with moisture, transforming the hard stone into a surface as slick as greased ice.
Qiao Ming stood near the crest of the incline, his bare feet planted wide upon the wet pale limestone. His toes were splayed, their thick, horn-hard calluses digging into the subtle crystal-clear texture of the stone with easy familiarity. A man who had spent fifteen years reading the slope of underwater reefs did not slip on wet algae. His weight was balanced upon the balls of his feet, his knees loose and flexing with the invisible shakes traveling up through the ramp.
Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu sat upon a low stone bollard, binding strips of rough sharkskin around the soles of her scarred leather boots with wet hemp twine. The coarse, gritty skin denticles of the sharkskin gave her boots traction where iron cleats were worse than useless.
