We examine the portal. Ducard determines that “Shang Di” means “God Above” or something similar. Belief in this type of god was succeeded by Taoism and then Buddhism. Goodwin sees that there are writings on the spines that surround the portal. Ducard remembers that the believers of Shang Di had evildoers struck down and then had all their crimes written on their spines. We find references to Gao Fang here as well, which means that he was alive in 1000 BC.
Goodwin notices that the ring with the spines on it moves slightly when leaning against it. Gabriel and Maiura push to try and get it open. As they are doing this, the others notice huge, slimy tentacles coming out of the water to try and grab us. Maiura narrowly escapes one of the tentacles and Slate jumps through the portal. After a few moments they are able to crank the portal open entirely and the others slip away. Slate disables another of its tentacles with a shot from his pistol and the others slip through the portal.
The group walks down a set of green stone stairs and comes to a small chamber. Here there is a metal “guard” holding a sword and a gigantic gemstone on a pedestal and a stairwell behind it. Goodwin quickly creates a smoke cloud around the sentinel to try and blind it. Gabriel grapples with it to try and keep it from attacking. Slate and Maiura run to grab the ruby and escape down the back stairs. Gabriel strikes the sentinel with his lead pipe and destroys it.
Goodwin helps Gabriel extricate the sentinel’s huge sword from his metal hand. The others look around the area and see tapestries depicting a man in a specific cloak conferring with emperors and demons. The demon seems to be bowing his head to him. The inscription underneath the tapestries reads “Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid. Copper for craftsman, cunning at his trade. Good, said the sorcerer, sitting in his hall, but iron, cold iron, is the master of them all.” We find nothing further, but Goodwin and Ducard take some of the tapestries.
We escape through the back stairs to the next floor and find a locked door. Finding no key, we go up one more flight. There is a locked wooden door here, which Gabriel kicks open. There are people milling about here who stare at us. We rush through and get out into a garage area. We see a truck in here and also guys in black jumpsuits. They start firing on us with automatic weapons and we fight back. After a few moments they are down but we have taken a good amount of damage.
The group decides to load up the truck with the weapons we have gotten and hotwire it to make a getaway. We drive back to the Dragon of the Black Pool. Egg Foo Chow is cleaning up the kitchen. The sun is just starting to rise so we spent the entire night in the sewer. He greets us and asks if we recovered the Eye. We show him.
We decide that we should leave rather than stay in Chinatown. He shows us a telegram from Professor Bai Li. He asks us to find the second Ruby Eye. It is in the possession of Lao Che in Shanghai.