Beyond the hidden hatch, the two cultivators discovered a narrow stairwell that spiraled downward into the darkness below. Its turns, hugging the wall, obscured any view of the space beneath. Qing Liao extended his senses instead, searching for any dangers that might lie in wait. He felt nothing, not even the flickering flames of power he'd come to recognize as marking out the presence of the stone lantern puppets. Instead, he felt the rush of power being funneled from above and below towards this place on all sides. It collected nearby, in a point below them but otherwise extremely close. The heart of the formation, of the vast killing dome, was near.

Echoes of the qi that powered that wall of death, invoking a very strange feeling when it came into contact with the edge of his vital qi, pulsed upward from the space beneath.

It was metallic, but not. The iron tang he associated with most forms of metal qi was absent, but neither did he sense bronze, silver, gold, or any other familiar source. At the same time, it was not an essence drawn from any formerly living creature, or any other simple material whose name he knew with an identifiable unique qi spectrum such as sulfur or soda. "I have never felt this before," he turned to Amami Yoko, this time recalling that it would be proper to include her rather than deliberating in silence. "Have you?"

"No," she shook her head sharply. "The waters contain many currents, but not this one."

"I have felt something similar," Sayaana dropped these words quietly into Liao's skull. "In scourged places in the great northern forests where the ground is blasted, but only tiny flickers. This is hundreds of times stronger."

"It is rare for any form of qi to be so hostile to life," Liao did not like the implication of what he felt. Qi supported life, fostering and strengthening it. To find a form that killed rather than nurtured was rare, and such things were rightly feared. Arsenic, a substance widely used by alchemists, had such properties, but even that was dependent upon quantity. Not even the plague, the thought raced across his mind in shock that saw him reel backward bodily, killed as absolutely as this formation did. It consumed and converted, producing abominations, but for all the alien awfulness of the demons, they still lived.

"Dead waters support nothing," agreement came from the ocean born warrior in the form of a curse. She advanced down the stairs with swords drawn, though nothing in her qi suggested true fear to Liao. Those waters were still, at least on the surface. Progress, of a sort. At least, he hoped that was true and not merely a temporary illusion.

He drew his daggers, his bow being of little use in such a confined space, and followed the water cultivator down.

There was no light in the stairwell, but they were both able to see without any difficulty. Amami Yoko moved sinuously in near total darkness, comfortable relying upon hearing and qi senses in a manner few in the Celestial Origin Sect would be, especially not below ground. Stellar qi made its way here, of course, but Liao still felt discomfort at being confined within subterranean spaces.

Few built deep into the lands below the earth with good intentions.

The Endless Mysteries Sect, in addition to building downward, also built in a strange and unfamiliar manner. After the better part of a decade spent repairing the Starwall, and a number of shorter stints since in response to various lesser infractions, Liao possessed some understanding of the mechanisms controlling the binding of stone and mortar despite a noted disinterest in masonry. The stones here had not been cut by traditional tools, but shaped instead using the sort of mighty blows cultivators might inflict with their weapons. The mortar, a pale while substance that felt cool to the touch and resisted his fingernails remarkably well, left a distinctive residue on the surrounding rock indicating the active use of alchemy in its formulation.

"I know this substance," Amami Yoko tapped the mortar with the back of her sword. "It seals water and lasts long. This place was made to endure."

Liao could only silently agree. The use of pure stone in the walls, rather than brick or concrete, spoke to that approach as well. Whoever made this place intended it to resist the actions of wind and tide for a very long time.

Despite that, the structure they entered proved to be almost completely empty. They exited the first stairwell into a complex of stone-lined hallways and perfectly square chambers. The overall layout formed a pentagon shape, with rooms to be found at each vertex and in the center, but the interiors were empty. The rooms contained nothing, not furniture, not lighting, not pottery, not even dust left behind after items were removed. As the passed through the chambers and eventually discovered another stairwell downward in the northernmost room, they encountered nothing beyond walls, floors, and ceilings. Not even the tools of the builders had been left behind.

A second floor of nearly identical nature followed the first. They were obligated to walk to the opposite side of the pentagonal arrangement to find the next stair downward, but once again the whole level was completely empty. A third level down followed this pattern, with the only difference being that they needed to return to the center to find the stairs.

As they descended the strange and unidentifiable qi grew ever stronger. Its presence prowled the halls, and they were obligated to shield themselves instinctively. This took no more effort than blocking the plague, but while Liao knew that using such protection to block toxic gas or other traps was a common tactic, needing to ward off qi alone was unknown in the tales.

"This place could have housed hundreds," Amami Yoko noted as they reached the fourth and seemingly final set of stairs. She sounded almost angry at the idea. "But it seems it was never touched, how wasteful."

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"You could not defend this place, if it was found," Liao considered aloud. "A demonic cultivator could collapse it easily from outside, and even giants could smash down into these spaces from above. It would have to remain secret, but few things can be hidden from the plague, certainly not hundreds of people." That number was, to his imagination, very high. It would demand sleeping in the halls and stepping over others in order to move about. He worried as to the story such estimates told regarding life in the Nine Peaks Range, but did not ask. Not now, not yet.

"That explains moving the lanterns," the warrior adapted to these revealed architectural realities quickly. "But why are there no goods? No traps? The source of the formation is here. We can both feel it. Did its masters perish activating it? Some scheme to kill the demons even as they were overrun?"

"No," Liao shook his head. "Demon-killing formations exist. They were devised during the long years of the demon war. They are inefficient, greatly so, and usually it is better to simply blast forth fire, but they can be made." The Celestial Origin Sect kept several small mobile versions of the same ready for rapid deployment in case of a breach in the Starwall. "This killing dome makes more sense as a way to hide, as we are doing now. But it being empty makes no sense. Even if only a single survivor sheltered here, we ought to find clothing and weapons." Liao's reasoning carried him down grim paths. "Unless a demonic cultivator besieged this place. Those drained away leave little behind, but I cannot see why one of the traitors would fail to smash the formation in passing."

"Maybe they think it's funny," Amami Yoko sneered viciously.

No easy counter existed for that comment. It did seem likely that this blighted region would amuse the tastes of at least some demonic cultivators.

Though such observations made the pair hesitate, it caused only a temporary delay. They could both feel, quite easily at this distance, that the center of the formation lay upon the next floor down. Liao did not like the premonitions racing through his mind, but he had no better plan beyond advancing. Breaking the formation would allow the demons to rush in, but that chaos would make it easy to slip the net westward over the bay. At least, he believed it must be.

Hopefully the heart of this place was no more than some long-abandoned weapon powered by an equally long-lived artifact. That would fit with all he had encountered in the Ruined Wastes prior to this point, but he was coming to suspect that the vastness of the world contained more surprises than he would learn to anticipate in a thousand years. It was, at least, heartening to know that this time he would not face whatever lay below alone. Unusual, and unlikely to last, but he took solace in the sense of camaraderie for now.

The final stairwell was twice as long as those they'd descended previously, a full ten meters downward wrapping into the depths. They were likely thirty meters below the surface now, a significant distance for anyone to excavate, even cultivators. "We are below the sea," Amami Yoko looked up as they passed some mysterious point she knew to detected instinctually. "Stone surrounds us on all sides."

"That's good," Liao felt more comfortable in the artificially crafted cavern as a result. If those brutally sharp swords in the water cultivator's hands sliced through the walls, the ocean would no longer come rushing in to smother them both. It was a small but significant relaxation of tensions.

The bottom of the stair opened into a small chamber, one marked by a single, massive door.

It was five meters high and nearly three meters across and formed of metal plates as thick as Liao's legs. Every last fragment of the surface was covered in carvings, a gigantic, seamless motif that stretched from edge to edge. Formed of lines, polygons, and dots its extraordinary complexity emerged under study as some form of mathematical diagram. The meaning, without any context, was impossible to discern, though it seemed likely to describe some grand principle of formation construction, possibly even a description of the secrets behind the power waiting beyond it.

"So much metal." Amami Yoko stood before the door slack-jawed in wonder. "This could forge a thousand swords."

The door was made from neither steel nor bronze, but instead some strange alloy that Liao's limited understanding of smithing did not suffice to identify. Its qi felt oddly mixed, a blend of different sources, but also strong. Perhaps it could not be melted down and shaped to make swords, a difficult act of craftsmanship, but he suspected spearpoints were quite possible. "It is a great deal," he admitted softly. "Many tons to be certain. I do not think I have ever seen a single piece of greater size." The Celestial Origin Sect had a number of large bronze bells, and several in the shaping pavilion had fashioned immense sculptures, usually of the Celestial Mother, primarily in metal, but this door outranked both crafts in raw immensity.

"This door, this one simple barrier, it contains more metal than the entirety of my homeland. No," the whispered amendment melded envy and sorrow. "Ten times as much. Yet," those deep-seated regrets emerged further now that the cracks were revealed. "It is merely decoration. There is no qi empowering it, no purpose wood would not serve. The waste," she grimaced hard, snapping bright white teeth together. "It sickens me."

Liao said nothing. He found the mighty door rather impressive, in truth, but it did seem strange to leave such a grand demonstration of the smith's craft inert. Surely such a creation of great size and majesty would serve as a powerful ritual focus or the core of a defensive formation. Left here, where none could even see it for millennia, made it a waste even as an object of art.

Such ruminations inspired a certain cynicism that swiftly found its voice. "It is a bit large to try and haul back," he did his best to counter the overawed shock in his companion through levity. "But perhaps we could retrieve a sample." There were several protruding dots near the center that could easily be detached. "That way we could at least study the metallurgy."

Hesitation vanished from the toned and tanned face. Without pause or deliberation, Amami Yoko surged forward. Spinning about and springing upward, she made a single sweep of her sword along the face of the door.

A metal bar, severed perfectly cleanly, fell to the floor with a loud clang.

Dropping into a crouch, she reached down and tossed the bar to Liao. He caught it easily, depositing it into a storage band even as this blow proved to have a second, far greater, consequence.

The immense door, exquisitely engineered and balanced, received sufficient force from the single sword strike to smoothly accelerate into slow motion. It opened, very slowly at first but then faster and faster, inward.

Pale green light spilled out from the chamber beyond and drew both cultivators to stare into the open gap.

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