The river wardens had lasted forty seconds.
Deprived of their leylines by Shen Yue’s grounding magic charms and with their clockwork bone-struts snapped by Meng Shan’s shield, the constructs had collapsed into inert piles of dry lime.
Using the bronze transit tokens stripped from the wardens’ collars—combined with the spoofed upkeep tokens pinned to their tunics—Lin Ke’s party had bypassed three nested security checkpoints, slipping through the massive iron gates of the First Nether Court.
The Grand Administrative Hall was built from huge blocks of giant stone black granite, cold enough to freeze water drops on their clothes.
At the center of the hall, resting upon a raised platform of white jade, sat the foundation of underworld high council: the Life and Death Ledger (Sheng Si Bu).
It wasn’t a paper book.
It was a desk-sized, massive stone slab of glowing pale-green sky jade, seven feet wide and four feet thick, suspended three inches above a bronze stone stand by humming magnetic floating rings.
Right now, the monument was screaming.
