Night had wrapped the Floating Mountain in velvet shades of sapphire and indigo. But around the five terraced stone pools of the Eternal Cedar Bathhouse, the air was warmer than a spring afternoon.
Billows of white, stone-rich steam rose steadily from the five stepped basins, tumbling over the smooth dark rock rims like slow-motion waterfalls of cloud. The heavy pine-scented fragrance of lightning-struck storm-cedar, aged and sweetened over hundreds of years, permeated every corner of the open-air pavilion. It was a grounding scent. He smelled of ancient mountain ridges, deep underground granite, and rain-soaked bark. Every beam of the timber structure had been planed to satin perfection by Lin Xiao’s own non-Newtonian pressure-blades, releasing natural aromatic cedar oils that deepened with every degree of rising heat.
Yet the bathers settled deeper into the warm waters. Then, a new fragrance began to weave its way through the rising mist.
Near the main copper intake chimney pipes on the upper stone terrace, two young beastfolk attendants—adolescent bear youths with thick iron-gray fur and bright, eager eyes—lowered large, hand-woven bamboo steeping baskets directly into the backup spreading weir. Each basket was packed to the brim with freshly harvested alpine flora gathered from the mountain’s northern valleys at twilight. Wild mountain mint with broad, frost-kissed leaves, crushed sprigs of winter-green, and bruised silver needles from high-sky dwarf pines.
