When the fourth dawn of the siege broke through the high hadal angled slats, the retreating swarm sounded like dry leaves scraping across a frozen lake.
High in the northern vaults of Entry hall 380, the surviving void-locusts—perhaps eighty thousand out of the original two million that had darkened the ceilings—were breaking formation. Starved of volatile void-fire-oil, their copper wing-couplings grinding without lubrication, they drifted upward in disorganized, ragged spirals. They were heading toward the massive, soot-blackened intake angled slats of Zhu Heling’s flagship, retreating to the lower boiler-decks where the steam drain tubes could replenish their empty fuel reservoirs.
Below them, the battlefield was motionless.
The great avenue was entirely silent, buried beneath four arm-lengths of powdery white ash that smoothed the jagged contours of the ruined dredger into a soft, ghostly swell. Not a breath of wind stirred the dust. The only sound in all the vast underground halls was the deep, rhythmic, 114-Hertz hum of the White Jade Barrier, singing its ancient hymn of protection across forty entry halls.
Behind the inner bronze gates of Gate Thirty-One, the heavy iron drop-bars were slowly lifted.
Elder Wen stepped through the wicket door, carrying a three-foot brass sounding rod and an oil lamp filled with clean whale oil. Behind him walked twelve senior stonemasons and water mapper apprentices, their bare feet moving in total silence across the damp flat stone slabs.
