Deep beneath the sunlit terraces of the Floating Mountain, the world turned to cool darkness, lit up only by the faint sapphire pulse of underground crystal veins.
Lin Xiao bounced down the wide spiral stone ramps in his forty-inch sapphire slime form, his body lighting up the passage with a soft, living-glow azure glow. with Su Ling’er and Xiao Hei, the descent carried them nearly eight hundred meters into the deep-rock heart of the mountain. There, the ancient roots of the peak met the earth-shaking anchors of the Earth-Core Leyline Heart.
Here, in a huge underground cave that had cooled ten thousand years ago after the mountain’s ancient height, lay an untouched sea of dense fiery dark rock and shimmering white green jade.
A rhythmic, underground thrum echoed through the chamber: thoom... Thoom... Thoom.
Standing in the center of the cave were Da Shi and his twelve black glass golem brethren. The twenty-foot automatons, purified and restored by Lin Xiao deep within the ancient earth-core vaults, were wonders of ancient stonework. Their huge bodies were sculpted from seamless black glass, their wide shoulders laced with ancient earth-runes that pulsed with a deep amber deep ring. Their sapphire optic cores glowed with steady, focused intelligence.
