The impact of nine pounds of river-lead against granite left a signed name that would outlive the mortal dynasties.
In the quiet nook of Entry hall 128, Qiao Ming knelt upon the dark rock flags, his lantern placed near the baseboard to throw long, raking shadows across the floor. The yellow flame lit up the circular mark where the eight-faceted lead bob had struck: a pale gray ring two inches in width. It was surrounded by a faint halo of crushed rock flour as fine as powdered bone.
He drew his magnifying lens of polished beryl from its leather pouch.
He leaned close, his nose barely an inch from the stone, inspecting the micro-fractures streaming from the impact center. Under the five-fold zoom of the beryl, the gray granite crystals of the stone base showed no outward cracking. The stone had not spalled. It hadn’t shattered into brittle flakes. The soft, malleable river-lead had twisted upon impact, absorbing eighty percent of its own striking force and spreading the shock evenly across the dense stone matrix of the stone stand.
“A good weight,” Qiao Ming murmured to the empty room. “Crude lead forgives the stone. Steel would have snapped the corner.”
