The instant the tenth toll of the bell exploded, the ground split open.
The ground vanished beneath Chen Wuya's feet, and he plunged downward. He twisted instinctively, Misaligned Force jolting in his palm as he struck the rock wall to borrow its momentum. Mo Feng fell right after him, but Chen Wuya seized his wrist. The two tumbled into a heap and slammed onto the hard ground.
The light overhead rapidly shrank until only a thin crack remained, then sealed shut completely.
Darkness pressed down.
"Bai Zhi?" Chen Wuya pushed himself into a sitting position, his throat dry.
"She's not here." Mo Feng felt his way to his feet. "When we fell, she was still above."
Chen Wuya said nothing. He knew this was not the time to look for anyone. Raising a hand to wipe his face, his fingertips touched something warm and wet—his nose was bleeding. That fall had jolted his meridians again. The Misaligned Force in his sea of consciousness had yet to settle, and now it was even more chaotic.
Mo Feng pulled a mechanism lamp from his robes and twisted it on with a click. Its circle of light swept across the surroundings, revealing stone walls covered in layer upon layer of runes. The markings gleamed a bluish gray, as if metal had been inlaid into the stone.
"These symbols..." Chen Wuya stared at the nearest stone slab. "They're the same as the ones on the elder's ankle before."
Mo Feng crouched down, running a finger along the edge of the runes. "Not a coincidence. This is an array, and a sealing one at that." He looked up. "We may have fallen into the core area at the bottom of the cauldron."
The moment he finished speaking, footsteps sounded from the corner.
An old man