The dawn mist over the eastern plateau of the Floating Mountain didn’t scatter before the wind. It parted before the rhythmic, deep-bellied song of the earth.
For seven days and seven nights, the eastern cliffs resounded with a loud mix of creation. Da Shi and the twelve black glass golems moved across the rocky plateau like living mountains. Their twenty-foot bodies of was dark rock and starlight glowing with earth-shaking deep ring. Sinking their massive stone palms directly into the granite mantle, they drew upon the earth leylines to raise soaring lecture pavilions, terraced stone tiered halls, and arched rows of stone pillars without carving a single sharp, dangerous corner.
Beside the quarry, Old Man Tie Shan operated three portable titan smelters. The divine bear smith roared with laughter as his star-iron right arm hammered out thousands of linked brass hinges, iron-hard hardwood study desks, and sky bronze lamps that burned on surrounding spiritual qi.
From the skies above, Xiao Long directed mountain spring aqueducts carved from white jade, channeling pure stone water into every student bunkhouse, while river otters in leather work belts installed high-pressure water taps and stone bathing pools.
Across the central courtyard rose the Grand Library of Ten Thousand Scrolls. For the first time in land-wide history, the secret training manuals of seventy-two traditional sects, the old family herbology charts of the fox clans, the stone-built blueprints of the titan smiths. The oral lore of the wandering wolf packs were transcribed onto clean white mulberry parchment…
