By the eighth hour of the sprint, the world had narrowed to the four-inch width of the silver line and the rhythmic slap of bare skin against wet stone.
Qiao Ming ran through the sunken cross-halls of Entry hall 330, his breath whistling through cracked lips in short, measured gasps. The cold salt water that seeped through the floor joints had washed away the earlier soot. But his feet were now marked by tiny, crescent-shaped cuts where sharp shards of shattered red stone had sliced into the thick calluses of his heels. He felt no sharp pain. His feet had grown numb to everything except the deepest feedback of thickness, grade, and friction. Each time his bare heel met the stone, the tactile sense traveled through his shin bone directly into his pelvis, measuring the floor’s bending like a living plumb-bob.
Across his chest, the greased bridle-leather harness had rubbed the skin of his collarbones raw. It soaked the coarse linen of his tunic in dark sweat.
Worse than the friction was the thirst. The boiling pine resin in the chest-kettle radiated an unrelenting sixty-degree heat against his ribs. It filled his lungs with thick, sweet amber fumes that dried his palate until his tongue felt like a strip of salted sharkskin. His eyes burned from the vapors, the salt-spray from the lower gutters mixing with sweat that dripped continuously from his chin.
