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So a secret exploration was ordered

Luckily a tunnel had been discovered al from above When they finished, a well had been built over the entrance and capped with an iron plate, the entire area fenced and declared off limits

His flashlight revealed a towering, arched passage, perhaps ten h The floor was paved with veined stone Archways appeared at regular intervals, holding the roof aloft A cable lay against one wall, placed there by the first exploration team

Follow it, had been his instruction

If what he’d been told was right, no one had followed this path in more than thirty years Before that, two millennia had passed between visits

He walked for what he estiht revealed a stone gate, but two doors blocked the way He approached

The glistening stone portal stood three ht Each door was carved frole slab of marble, the surfaces littered with syht door was cocked open, which allowed a passage through the center

He hesitated and shone his light left and right Slits in the passage walls, high, near the roofline, indicated where crossbows had once been placed to fire on any interloper The premier had told him that the reports of booby traps in soh 2,200 years of aging had rendered them useless The doors themselves had been barred from the outside, and he spotted a heavy timber that had once rested inside the bronze clamps

Every schoolchild was taught of Qin Shi He was the e political system on earth A conqueror, unifier, centralizer, standardizer, builder—the first in a long line of 210 on Throne

And this was his tomb

He negotiated the opening between the doors and stepped into more blackness on the other side He’d been told to look to his right His light found the cable on the floor, which had also passed through the open doors, ending at a metal box

He bent down and exarasped a lever, prepared himself, and rotated it doard

CASSIOPEIA LED THE WAY AS THEY TURNED ANOTHER CORNER and negotiated a third set of right angles She realized that there would be another twist co them back on a line toward the tomb mound She estimated they’d traveledclose to whatever lay at the end

She couldn’t help butHer own stonemasons, hired to reconstruct the castle that she’d been laboring to build for nearly a decade, had early on explained the difficulties To build today exactly as they had in the 14th century, using 700-year-old tools andBut the builders of this tunnel had not been nearly as fortunate Their tools and technology didn’t even approxied to acco successher own restoration

“We are near the end,” she heard Pau Wen say

Surprisingly, the air was stale but not fetid Apparently, ventilation had likewise been part of the builders’ plan

She knew that being enclosed underground was not Malone’s idea of fun But flying through the air, looping around in a plane or helicopter, was not her favorite, either Nothing about their situation was good They were relying on a man as utterly untrustworthy, but they had little choice She had to ad the toined such an opportunity would present itself She felt better with the gun nestled at her waist and Cotton at her back, but remained apprehensive about what lay just beyond the beaht

They passed two ht-angled ahead, just as she kneould

She stopped and turned

Malone was a couple ofthe bearound

He did the same

Then she noticed so

“Cotton”

She ht, and he turned

Pau Wen was gone

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Malone muttered

“Hethe way”

She found her gun, as did Malone

“Lead the way,” he said