The smell of burning acid in Entry hall 112 was thick enough to taste.
As Qiao Ming stepped through the broken archway of the Mason’s Crypt, the clean, stone petrichor of the ancient vaults was fully overwhelmed by the sharp, choking stench of fuming strong etching acid and boiled sulfur. The vapor hung in the cool draft like a pale yellow mist, catching in his throat and making his eyes water behind his linen breathing mask. The stone around the portal was sweating: fine droplets of water drops were running down the hard speckled rock jambs, tinted a faint, sickly green by the acid fumes.
The water here had dropped to his shins, draining rapidly as the low tide began its fourteen-hour run toward the outer sea.
He didn’t need his lantern.
Twenty paces ahead, at the foot of Master Mason Lu’s stone base, a pale, rainbow-bright green light was flickering against the dark hard speckled rock walls.
It was the chemical soft glow of the Scholar’s acid-etcher.
The nook smelled like an iron foundry where an acid vat had burst. The white vapors coiled sluggishly through the air chimney pipes, condensing against the damp hard speckled rock into emerald droplets that ran down the carved drapery of the mason’s knees. Qiao Ming did not cough. He breathed shallowly through his nose, his lungs protected by the heavy linen breathing mask that smelled of sheep fat and beeswax.
