The sound of the lead line-weight striking the dark rock floor of Entry hall 128 was a sound verdict.
When Qiao Ming released the tension on his horsehair line. He allowed the nine-pound weight to drop the final six inches from Master Lu’s stone stand to the dry flat stone slabs below, the resulting thud was not a dull, hollow impact. It was a pure, authoritative note of one hundred and forty-four hertz that shook through the foundation rock like the strike of an ancient gong.
The sound blast wave traveled through the dark rock flags, through the mortar joints, and up the four massive stone piers of the nook.
Instantly, the wild, jagged shakes that had plagued the room—the shrill sixty-four-hertz hum of the Scholar’s aura, the forty-eight-hertz tremor of the leaking acid. The high-pitched hiss of boiling stone—were absorbed and put out by the massive stone mass of the foundation.
It was a silence that had thickness and texture, like a blanket of heavy wool laid over a sleeping child. In the high vaults of Entry hall 128, the air-currents settled into their gentle, four-second cycles, carrying the clean scent of wet pale limestone and ancient cedar down from the upper high window row vents.
