The iron door of the Seventh Hearth sub-basement clanged shut with the hollow, booming finality of a tomb lid sealing in the dead.
Beyond that threshold, the manicured marble paths, fluttering prayer flags, and sandalwood-scented pavilions of the Azure Cloud Sect ceased to exist. Here, three thousand feet beneath the living crust of the Central Peak, there was only the ancient darkness of the deep earth, cut by the narrow beam of Lin Tao’s brass animal fat lantern.
Lin Tao adjusted the leather strap of his field pack. The air inside the upright upkeep shaft was thick, stifling, and suffocatingly humid. He carried the acrid stench of sulfur, ancient grease, and damp stone that had not tasted sunlight since the dawn of the current epoch.
Beside him, Tie Shan stepped onto the first rung of the iron spiral stair. The stair was a dizzying Precursor building marvel: a single, huge helical pillar of cold-drawn star-iron, three paces in width. He dropped into an upright shaft fifty paces across. From the central pillar, cantilevered iron treads projected outward into empty air, their diamond-patterned surfaces coated in a slippery patina of reddish-brown water drops.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Tie Shan’s iron-shod boots struck the metal rungs with rhythmic, unbending mass. The giant had his twelve-pound iron pry-bar slung across his ox-hide harness. The razor-sharp chisel point shone in the flickering animal fat glow. Even in this choking heat, Tie Shan’s breathing was slow, even, and deliberate. The discipline of a body-refiner whose lungs…
