Everyone harbored their own thoughts as they walked on in silence.
Qi Shan led them to a dead end.
A voice that was impossible to distinguish as male or female came from the darkness.
"What business do you have here?"
Qi Shan said, "Heaven's Mandate is fickle."
As soon as his voice fell, the ground beneath their feet gave a faint tremor. The brick wall before them opened to both sides, revealing a pitch-black entrance whose end was unknown. At that moment, a hand so unnaturally pale it looked bloodless extended from within and offered Qi Shan a torch.
Qi Shan said flatly, "Thank you."
Shen Tang lowered her eyes, restraining the flash of astonishment that had swiftly vanished.
If she had not been mistaken, that hand seemed to have seven fingers. Given the customs of the time, children born with physical deformities were regarded as ill omens and rarely survived to adulthood. Qi Shan ignited the torch with Literary Heart, entered first, and Shen Tang followed.
They walked for a long while before she finally spoke.
"Digging a secret passage this long and this deep—how long did you have to ventilate it beforehand?" She had discovered upon entering that the air here was abundant and fresh, without the slightest trace of decay or even a strange odor. At first, she had worried that entering recklessly might lead to some sort of confined-space accident. "The bricks on both sides are of excellent quality. With all that construction work going on aboveground, how did it not affect the underground?"
With materials this good, should they learn from them?
Shen Tang knocked on the wall, lost in thought.
From the moment she had stepped inside until now, the stairs had wound continuously downward. She had already descended more than two thousand steps,