In Entry hall 365, sixty furlongs south of the main channel gate, the stonework curved into a perfect circular round hall eighty paces across.
Here, surrounded by thirty-two fluted columns of grey-veined marble, sat the Circle of the Seven Sages.
They weren’t emperors. They wore no crowns of star-fallen iron, and their hands held no scepters of conquest. Carved from fine white Pentelic alabaster sixteen arm-lengths tall, they sat cross-legged upon low stone bases arranged in a gentle ring around an empty central reflecting pool. Each figure leaned forward slightly, resting a stone chin upon an open palm, or holding a stone-hard bamboo scroll across a stone knee, their sculpted faces caught in the intimate, passionate intensity of a philosophical debate frozen ten thousand years ago.
Yan Zhiqiu stopped at the entrance of the round hall, her bare feet pressing into the cold, damp banded limestone flags.
Her eyes traveled from the first sage to the seventh, her breath escaping in a trembling, disbelieving whisper.
“The Seven Sages of the Clear Stream...” she gasped, her fingers clutching the Broken Slate against her ribs.
Qiao Ming stood beside her, his knotted horsehair line hanging coiled over his shoulder, his eight-sided lead line-weight resting against his hip.
