39 Clues 08 - The Emperor's Code by Sumodh Krisna

Author:Sumodh Krisna [Krisna, Sumodh]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2011-05-04T18:15:32+00:00

CHAPTER 14

After the first three hundred stairs, Dan was breathing hard. By five hundred, he was ready to cough up his lungs and leave them on the flank of

Mount Song.

A few times, orange-robed monks and kung fu students puffed past, running up the endless steps.

No wonder the Shaolin fighters were

unbeatable. If they trained here, they could probably bench-press the temple, and maybe the whole mountain with it.

He lost count somewhere around seven hundred fifty, and the Bodhidharma statue was still nowhere to be seen. Perspiration dripped from every

pore of his body.

I'm turning my precious wushu outfit into sweat rags!

Dan glanced at his watch --he'd been climbing for nearly an hour. Where was the Beard Buddha -- on the moon?

Another group of monks jogged past, this time on the way down. There was a distinct chill in the air now. Surely he was near the top.

The stairs twisted abruptly to the right, and there towered his childhood nightmare, twenty feet tall.

An

involuntary yelp escaped him. He looked around in embarrassment. No training monks, no wandering tourists. He was alone.

He examined the huge base and then let his eyes wander up the folds of Bodhidharma's robes. There were no markings or symbols -- not even a

crack in the stone where a secret message might be hidden.

Was I wrong about the Beard Buddha?

As he circled Bodhidharma's bulk, his eyes fell on a small shrine constructed behind the statue. He stepped inside. Chinese writing was

everywhere, but a lone sign in English read: DHARMA HOLE . An arrow pointed to an opening in the stone.

A cave!

Oh, how he didn't want to go inside. In the course of the Clue hunt, he'd been in enough tunnels, shafts, pits, and catacombs to last a lifetime. And in

some of them, it had very nearly come to that.

But he hadn't climbed that stairway to heaven for nothing. He got down on all fours and crawled inside. It was dark and tight, the rock cold and

damp from the misty air.

About fifteen feet in, the cave faded to utter blackness. The shut-in feeling was unendurable --

ancient stone pressing on all sides, zero vision. It

was as if he'd been swallowed by Mount Song. He began to hyperventilate. Asthma? No, the gasping breaths were bringing air into his lungs, but they

were accelerating, and he was powerless to control them.

What was happening to him? Was he sick?

I'm having a claustrophobia attack!

He shut his eyes and tried to pump all thought out of his mind. He was nor wedged into an unimaginably tight seam inside millions of tons of solid

rock. He was just--chilling.

It was only about thirty seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. At last, he was breathing normally and ready to press on.

His probing hand struck a loose rock, and he felt a vibration in his palm. A second later, his knee rattled over the same spot. Odd. He reversed a

few inches and tapped at the stone. It made a peculiar sound, not hollow, exactly, but --different.

If only I had a flashlight!

All at once, he realized that he did have a light.

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