Lin Tao vaulted through the breached floor opening, landing lightly on the wet marble flat stone slabs of the White Tiger Courtyard.
The esplanade was engulfed in a swirling storm of blazing bright white steam. The surrounding heat had soared to sixty degrees. It condensed into thick droplets of water that streamed down the lacquered stone pillars and pooled across the carved relief medallions. Ten paces away, the four Azure Dragon guards were stumbling through the mist, hacking and coughing as scalding steam pierced their bronze visors.
“Intruders at the drain!” one of the guards shrieked, his voice muffled by the roaring steam plumes. “Sound the gate gong! Raise the blast drop-gate!”
Tie Shan climbed out of the shaft like a rising mountain. His fourteen-pound star-iron pry-bar was held across his chest.
“They’re reaching for the alarm gong,” Tie Shan said. He pointed through the mist toward a massive bronze bell suspended from an arched marble pavilion thirty paces away.
“Leave the gong,” Lin Tao snapped, his eyes cutting through the steam toward the massive gatehouse archway fifty paces to the east. “If they drop the blast drop-gate, the entire western district will be sealed under quarantine lockdown. We must kill the gate winch.”
