The smell hit Lin Ke the moment he kicked open the iron hatch to the drainage tunnels. Burned copper and rotten pond water.
It was the signed name stench of Corrosive Soul-Melting Acid, a forbidden potion-made compound used by the Orthodox Inquisition to dissolve formation channels and liquify bone marrow.
Five hundred feet below the surface, the narrow dark rock tunnel was choked with an unnatural, oily black mist that clung to the damp walls like damp soot.
*
Behind him, Meng Shan squeezed through the hatch, carrying his six-foot warhammer across his chest.
Even in the darkness, the massive earth-fighter moved with terrifying quiet, his heavy boots making no more sound than falling snow.
“Grounding flow rate dropped by forty-two percent,” Lin Ke whispered. He kept his back against the wet rock wall. His left hand, still bound in stiff bandages, throbbed with every heartbeat. But his right hand held his sharpened iron metal pen. “They’re boring into the main return bus. If that cable corrodes through while fifty testers are completing their breakthroughs above, the ground return will float. Forty thousand current units will back-surge through the dais and fry every soul on the ridge.”
“How many?” Meng Shan rumbled, his voice shaking through the stone.
