The air on Floor 20 was cool, damp, and smelled of crushed mint leaves and fresh bamboo resin.
Above, an artificial canopy of emerald-green sky arched overhead, lit up by a soft, diffused sky soft glow that filtered through billions of rustling bamboo leaves. Spanning fifteen square leagues of folded space, the Emerald Bamboo Grove was a sea of towering, semi-clear jade-green stalks eighty arm-lengths in height. The stalks grew so densely packed that in many places, only two men could walk abreast between the smooth, culm-ringed trunks.
Yet the true terror of Floor 20 was not its thickness. It was its silence.
The high-sky mountain winds sighed through the canopy. Each time, the stalks shook with bizarre, sound ringing tones. Whispers, distant footfalls, the rattling of armor, and even simulated shouts of comrades calling for help echoed through the groves. That turned the entire floor into a dizzying hall of hearing illusions.
Worse still, the maze was alive. Every fifteen minutes, guided by the underground wind formations Da Shi and the black glass golems had anchored into the bedrock, the root clusters shifted with a deep, grinding creak, silently sealing halls and opening misleading dead-ends.
Over the past four days, more than two hundred confident adventuring parties had entered Floor 20.
