With the Star-Gold Wok securely packed into Lin Xiao’s void dantian and the precious First Epoch seed urns cataloged inside Su Ling’er’s spatial rings, the expedition prepared for the final stage of their underground descent.
The magma foundries and the ancient writing hall, amazing as they were, were merely the outer working sectors of the pre-historic underground metropolis. Dao Spirit’s ground-shaking tracking data had detected that the true source of the azure starlight pillar and the world-size tremors lay far deeper, at the total foundation of the land-wide plate.
Da Shi took the lead, his twenty-foot black glass frame stepping with measured weight along the southern terminus of the foundry cave. Behind him marched his eleven titan brothers. Their sapphire eyes cast steady beams of light across the damp dark rock floor.
They approached a massive upright shaft that plunged directly into the depths of the earth.
Unlike natural fiery sinkholes with jagged, crumbling walls, this shaft was a building marvel of the First Epoch. The circular tunnel was forty yards wide, its inside walls lined with linked rings of stone-hard dark rock carved with spiraling gravity-stabilizing runes. The party stepped onto the spiraling ramp that wound down the shaft walls. Then, they felt no dizzying dizziness or crushing air pressure. The ancient formation stopped the weight of the miles of rock overhead. It maintained a steady, comfortable draft of fresh air.
