The spiral stairs dropped through ninety feet of solid foundation granite. That left the wailing sirens and the smell of sky incense far behind.
Lin Tao led the way, his hooded lantern casting sharp shadows across the rough-hewn stone walls. The air grew rapidly colder and denser, laden with the heavy, chemical reek of heavy-duty solvent, liquid silver vapor, and stale canal water.
At the bottom of the stairs, a heavy star-iron inner wall door stood ajar.
Lin Tao pushed the door open. He stepped onto a narrow stone ledge overlooking the under-canals of heaven.
The scale of the underground canal network was breathtaking in its squalor.
Above them, the Celestial Capital was a radiant utopia of floating jade terraces and immortal gardens. Here, beneath the foundation shelf, was the stinking stomach tract that kept heaven alive.
A vast, vaulted cave of soot-blackened brick stretched for leagues in every direction.
Through the center of the cave cut a sixty-foot-wide canal of sluggish, rainbow-bright purple water. The packed chemical drain water from the thousand royal alchemy laboratories above. Thick mats of glowing green scum floated on the surface. It bubbled with foul-smelling gas as liquid silver runoff and spent stone flux were carried toward the Great Southern Waste Chute.
