The passage from the engine vault to the Siphon Well was a straight, downward-sloping aqueduct lined with polished slabs of dense green snake-like stone.
With the main flywheel freed from the hardened kelp and the crankshaft bearings breathing clean castor-oil, the air in the lower channel had undergone a deep transformation. The choking stench of sulfur and void-thick tar was being swept downward by a huge, steady draft created by the intake drain tubes. Every breath Qiao Ming drew into his lungs carried the cool, bitter-salt fragrance of fresh river-water running over clean gravel—a scent that had not existed in the upper tiers since the beginning of the voyage.
Beneath his bare soles, the green snake-like flat stone slabs were washed by a shallow, swift-running stream of water barely two inches deep.
The liquid was crystal-clear.
Unlike the thick, sticky, violet-sheened slurry of the upper halls, this water parted cleanly around his ankles without clinging or staining. His toes could feel every carved mortar line between the stones, every tiny grain of white quartz sand swept along by the current. As he waded forward, the water carried a gentle, tingling life-force that pierced through the thick callouses of his soles, soothing the bruises and rope-burns left by his battle with the machinery.
