The light inside the tiered arena changed from the cool, aquatic emerald of the Ark to a harsh, blinding yellow that felt dry and poisonous to the eyes.
Suspended in the air above the Parian marble altar, the three-space-folding projection steadied into a huge hall perched high above a burning sky. Through the volume illusion, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu could see massive rows of stone pillars of grey granite, open to an arid, cloudless air where two suns burned in a sky the color of tarnished brass. Down below the balcony of the projected hall, a vast, very thirsty continent stretched to the horizon—a dead world of dust, cracked mud basins, and dry salt plains stripped of every tree and river.
“The surface world,” Yan Zhiqiu whispered, her face pale as she looked upon the sunlit wasteland. “The Great Aridity of the Third Era. The sacred rivers of the Yan-Luo Dynasty... They are entirely gone. Nothing remains but salt and bones.”
“The heavens have drained the earth,” Qiao Ming observed, his voice heavy with ancient mourning. “When men cultivate without restraint, they eat the water of the world to feed their golden cores. When the water dies, the world turns to powder.”
