The central spatial core of the Thousand-Floor Pagoda felt like standing inside the hollow ribs of an ancient giant beast.
From the outside, the pagoda rose three hundred arm-lengths above the northern plateau in polished dark rock tiers, its dark roof edges catching the high mountain light. But stepping through the runed copper threshold was an act of stepping into folded infinity. The vaulted ceiling stretched upward into a swirling vortex of deep violet starlight, where thirty-six thousand spatial squeezing crystals pulsed in ringing rhythm, tethered by thick braided cables of void-attuned meteor iron. Each crystal acted as a ringing lens. It anchored an independent pocket realm within the tower’s load-bearing space-folding spine.
Da Shi stood at the center of the vast spatial void, his ten-foot-tall body of polished black glass gleaming under the crystal-clear glow. Behind him, twelve fellow stone golems—ancient guardians cleansed of corruption by Lin Xiao’s high-pressure purifying waterjets in the deep vaults—knelt in a wide, timed together circle. Their massive palms, each the width of a heavy dining banquet table, were pressed flat against the raw, unformed earth qi welling up from the floating mountain’s deep mantle.
A low, underground hum shook through the floorboards. It wasn’t the jarring shaking of an earthquake, but the deep, sweet-sounding deep ring of stone singing to stone.
