The climb out of the drowned crypts of Entry hall 365 felt like a return to the world of the living.
As Qiao Ming’s bare feet climbed the grand ramp leading into Entry hall 368, the cold salt water that soaked his clothes began to steam under the intense potion-made heat of his chest-kettle. Water poured from the hem of his amber oilskin coat, cascading down his calves in clear rivulets that evaporated almost instantly as they touched the warm, dry flat stone slabs of the High Corridors of the Patriarchs. The sudden shift from freezing sub-aquatic pressure to the dry stone warmth of the upper terraces was like stepping from a lightless trench onto a sunny reef.
He had been running for fifty-four hours without sleep.
His body was a living map of body endurance: his left arm was caked with black, rusted blood from the torn vein. His ribs were bruised purple where the harness had bitten through his coarse linen tunic. And the soles of his bare feet were worn raw, the horn-like calluses scored by hundreds of tiny stone splinters and sharp shell fragments. Every breath he pulled into his chest tasted of boiling pine resin, copper, and salt. Yet beneath the overwhelming fatigue, his bone marrow felt light, filled with a clean, humming shaking that seemed to lift his weight off the stone floor.
