Leaving the main round hall behind, Lin Tao and Tie Shan dropped through an upright service shaft into Sub-Chamber 04, carved into the dense dark rock bedrock forty-two meters beneath the liquid silver pool.
The air here was fully dry, smelling sharply of cold-drawn star-iron and ancient cooling salt water.
In the center of the underground vault, lit up by the pale blue light of glowing floor channels, stood the old family heritage of the quarry masters: the Iron-Bone Clan Totem. It was a massive stone pillar of solid, raw star-iron, six paces tall and two paces thick, weighing over twenty-one metric tons. Its surface was dark gray, rough, and pitted, bearing the rhythmic chisel marks and hand-hammered lineage runes of thirty ages of mortal stonemasons who had broken the rock of Mount Taiyi before the first sky dynasty was founded.
Four massive rotting tether clamps, forged from cold star-fallen bronze and bound with heavy iron chains wrapped in yellow magic charm ribbons, held the twenty-ton monolith anchored to the bedrock.
Lin Tao approached the base of the totem, his test left eye analyzing the locking gearwork.
In physical security stonework, Lin Tao analyzed. He measured the shear pins with his brass measuring tongs, the royal court didn’t merely confiscate this totem. They bound it with active rotting crushing weight fields to prevent the living descendants on the surface from resonating with their old family marrow-tempering techniques. The clamps are held in place by four root privilege locks linked to…
