Entry hall 403 opened before them not as a flat gallery, but as a massive circular hall whose floor was depressed three steps below the level of the transit avenue.
In the center of the hall, seated upon a massive square stone stand of unpolished hard black rock, rose the huge likeness of the First Epoch Scribe. The statue stood twenty-eight arm-lengths from its broad base to the crown of its scholar’s cap, carved entirely from a single monolith of dark grey hard speckled rock. It was depicted sitting cross-legged in the classical stance of quiet focus, but its head was bowed forward, its stone eyes directed downward toward a broad stone tablet resting flat across its knees.
The tablet held in the giant’s hands was matching in form, thickness, and border profiling to the Broken Slate that Yan Zhiqiu carried. But it was complete—an unbroken monolith four arm-lengths wide, resting upon stone thighs the size of fallen temple columns.
Qiao Ming stopped at the upper edge of the circular steps, his bare feet gripping the cold hard speckled rock coping.
He didn’t approach the statue right away. Instead, he reached into his basket, withdrew his ox-bone reel of sixty-fathom braided horsehair line, and untied the six-faceted lead weight. He knelt, checking the animal fat cup at its base, then set the weight down upon the floor flag.
