Behind the stripped stone walls of the Hall of Ten Thousand Treasures, a wide bronze elevator shaft dropped three thousand feet straight down into the heart of Joyous-Gold Mountain.
As Pei Xuan rode the main freight platform down into the subterranean cavern alongside Ye Guhan, General Tie Zhan, Old Wei, Hong Ling, and Abacus Su, fifty Rank 5 Armored Spirit-Tanks rolled down the wide spiral mine ramp behind them, their headlights cutting through the underground gloom.
In the back of Old Wei’s prisoner cart sat a weeping Sect Master Jin Wancai, wearing his bright yellow Debtor Vest #888 over his white silk long-johns, with Gold-Shadow Seven standing right behind him tapping a dagger hilt against his shoulder every time he sniffled too loudly.
At the bottom of the three-thousand-foot shaft, the cavern opened up into a breathtaking sight.
Twelve gigantic underground tunnels branched out like spider legs through glittering walls of white and yellow crystal. Yet unlike a natural spirit-vein cavern that felt warm and full of life, the air down here felt freezing cold, heavy, and strangely suffocated—as if the earth itself were being choked by an iron hand around its throat.
In the exact center of the cavern floor stood a two-hundred-foot-tall, octagonal black spike made of cold, starry metal that did not belong to this mortal world:
