Bai Zhu lifted the manhole cover but did not climb down immediately.
He placed the Mechanical Spider on the edge of the manhole and watched as it used all six legs to silently crawl down the rusty ladder into the darkness.
Milluki's voice came clearly through the earpiece.
"The bottom of the shaft is safe. No ambush."
Only then did Bai Zhu climb in. With light movements, he pulled the manhole cover back into place, letting the repeatedly folded plastic sheet catch in the gap again. This ensured it could be pushed open from inside when they retreated.
The maintenance passage was filled with the stale smell of dust.
The shoeprints appeared intermittently. Only where the drop was greater or the passage turned did the distinctive drag mark from the left foot become clearly visible.
"The footprints match what we collected earlier." Milluki sounded somewhat excited. "But we still can't be one hundred percent certain they belong to the deliveryman."
Bai Zhu said nothing. He merely used the communicator's built-in low-light mode to illuminate the path ahead.
Before long, he reached a fork.
The passage on the left was covered in thick moss, while along the edges of the right passage, the moss showed signs of having been scraped away by shoe soles.
He chose the right passage and once again sent the Mechanical Spider ahead to scout.
The Spider nimbly passed through a section of half-collapsed piping, but the image it transmitted made Milluki, back at the hotel, stop comparing the blueprints.
"Hold on."
On the screen, large and small openings suddenly appeared on both sides of the old pipes.
Some holes were only large enough for a fist, while others were wide enough for an adult to bend down and crawl through. The soil around the openings varied