Stepping through the thirty-meter World-Tree portal was not like entering another underground cave. It felt like stepping off the edge of a cliff directly into the boundless void of outer space.
The companions stopped at the edge of an arched watching platform made of white starlight jade. Before them lay a huge ball-shaped chamber, over four miles in width, carved into the very center of the land-wide mantle. The far walls were fully invisible, swallowed by swirling ribbons of glowing violet and azure cosmic nebula.
The entire ball-shaped inside was lined with one hundred and forty-four thousand six-sided mirrors of pure, flawless starry sky crystal. Each mirror caught and multiplied the surrounding light. It reflected the inside in endless, looping dimensions until the cave appeared infinite. Drifting crystal shards and clusters of glowing stellar dust drifted through the void like tiny asteroids. That turned the underground void into an indoor galaxy.
These mirrors were not merely fancy. Dao Spirit’s first scans revealed that they were connected to thousands of tiny quartz light-pipes that reached all the way to the surface of the Desolate Forest, capturing high-sky starlight during the night and funneling it twenty miles down into the earth.
“Where... Where are the walls?” Tie Shan whispered, his massive bear claws digging into the edge of the jade platform as he leaned forward. “We’re twenty miles beneath the earth, yet I feel as though I’m standing atop the high sky of heaven.”
