The universe didn’t tolerate an unhandled exception for long.
Tie Shan’s heavy leather boots vanished through the rippling stone. Then, the map point gap tightened with the violent speed of an iron bear trap snapping shut.
The violet soft glow died instantly, replaced by a blinding flash of pure, bright purple Cherenkov heat wave that lit up the dust-choked tomb in harsh, monochromatic bright glare.
Lin Tao threw his entire body backward, ripping his right hand away from the rock face.
He was a fraction of a split second too late.
The boundary snapped solid. The fifty-ton granite monolith slammed back into rigid physical reality. Then, the closing edge of the crash mesh clipped the outer sleeve of Lin Tao’s left forearm.
There was no sound of tearing cloth. The Precursor engine didn’t slice the fabric. It simply deleted the physical map points occupied by the sleeve and the outer layer of skin, resetting them to the default state of solid rock.
A wave of terrifying, total cold swept through Lin Tao’s arm.
It wasn’t the cold of winter ice. It was the total zero of unrendered void space. The flesh along the outer edge of his left forearm bone turned instantly chalk-white, the tiny blood vessels freezing solid in a split second, leaving a three-inch stripe of frostbitten, painless tissue that smoked with faint white vapor in the dark.
At the same instant, the fifty-ton slab re-engaged with the bedrock wall.
BOOM!
A bone-shaking blast wave ripped through the tunnel as fifty tons of granite settled into total physical contact with the native rock. The explosive release of striking force blew Lin Tao backward through the air. He tumbled wildly across the drainage ditch, crashing into the shattered timber props on the floor of the abandoned bypass tunnel.
He lay in the mud, coughing wildly, his lungs burning with cold, fresh air.
Beside him, two massive, soot-stained hands reached down and hauled him upright.
Tie Shan lifted Lin Tao onto a dry slab of slate, his scarred face grim with fierce concern. The giant didn’t speak. He right away unstoppered his dented canteen and poured a stream of cool mountain water into Lin Tao’s very thirsty, bleeding mouth.
Lin Tao swallowed greedily, the water washing away the taste of limestone dust and copper blood.
All around them in the wide, forgotten bypass cave, eighty miners were kneeling in the dirt.
None of them were standing. None of them were weeping anymore.
Old Man Geng was kneeling at Lin Tao’s feet. His forehead was pressed firmly against the muddy stone. His hands shook as he touched the hem of Lin Tao’s torn tunic. Behind him, seventy-nine hardened laborers—men who had spent their lives enduring the whips and cudgels of the overseers without bowing their heads—were prostrating themselves in total, respectful silence.
To them, what had just occurred was not an exploit of decaying crash shape.
It was an impossible to understand, terrifying miracle. A boy of seventeen, unsafe to die in an airless grave, had touched a fifty-ton mountain with an iron needle and commanded the solid rock to part like water, delivering eighty souls from the jaws of the underworld.
“Immortal...” Old Geng whispered, his voice trembling with religious terror. “You’re an Immortal of the Void... You walk through mountains like morning mist...”
“Stand up, Old Geng,” Lin Tao said raspy, leaning heavily against Tie Shan’s shoulder. His voice was hoarse, his throat raw from the sulfur and the heat recoil. “I’m no immortal. I’m a miner who knows where the seams are weak.”
Lin Tao looked down at his left arm. The chalk-white frostbite along his forearm was beginning to thaw. It sent sharp needles of painful fire through his nerves as warm blood rushed back into the damaged tiny blood vessel beds.
He reached into his tunic, retrieved the small baked-clay jar of bear-animal fat salve from his green jade ring. Then he smeared the thick, greasy ointment generously over the frostbitten flesh, binding it tightly with strips of clean hemp cloth.
“Can you walk, Old Geng?” Lin Tao asked, securing the bandage with his teeth.
“I can walk,” the old smith said, scrambling to his feet, his eyes wide with fanatical devotion. “Where the Immortal leads, we follow. Even into the halls of the Yama Kings.”
Lin Tao looked down the long, arching expanse of the bypass cave.
A steady, cool draft was blowing from the north. It carried the clear scent of burning charcoal, refined red stone, and damp mountain moss. This was an ancient Precursor drainage canal, abandoned three hundred years ago. Just then, the Upper Sect redirected the mountain aqueducts.
“We’re not going to the underworld,” Lin Tao said, his eyes narrowing in the darkness. “We’re going to collect Overseer Hu’s debt.”
Lin Tao stood up from the slate slab, his boots sinking into the dry silt of the ancient canal floor.
Beside him, the eighty miners slowly rose to their feet, their soot-streaked faces transformed. The terror and despair that had suffocated them in the collapsed drift were gone, replaced by a strange, ferocious clarity. They had stepped through solid stone. They had tasted their own deaths and returned alive. In the harsh logic of the quarry, men who have survived an impossible collapse no longer fear the whips of mortal overseers.
Tie Shan stepped up beside Lin Tao, holding out his dented canteen once more. Lin Tao shook his head, pressing his hand against his braced left collarbone to steady the throbbing ache.
“The air is moving south to north,” Lin Tao said. He pointed along the sweeping dark rock arches of the canal. “This channel was cut before the Azure Cloud Sect built their upper foundations. It runs directly beneath the storehouses of the Disciplinary Bureau.”
Old Man Geng’s eyes widened in recognition. “The old storm water gate! Thirty years ago, when I was an apprentice smith, the old overseers sealed the upper grates with iron bars to prevent runaway slaves from crawling up into the gardens. The iron must be rusted through by now!”
“Then we’ll not need to dig,” Lin Tao replied quietly, his cold eyes scanning the dark tunnel ahead. “We’ll simply walk into his courtyard and present our tally.”