Chapter 15 · free to read
Nine chains, and a trough that had not been filled in a month. The Gate did not train the thing that held this road. It simply starved it and pointed it downhill.
It did not thank him. It went up the road it had been starved beside for forty years, through the arch, through the wall, and into the mountain — and it left a door.
Nine gates, Shen Ke's chart had said, and everything flows up. The beast had opened a hole straight through the plumbing, and they walked down it in an afternoon.
Every chart in Shen Ke's satchel had drawn this as a small empty circle. It was a mile across, it was the reason the mountain existed, and it had one thing hanging in the middle of it.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.