When Qiao Ming stepped out from the burl into the open deep gap, the third hour of the low watch had arrived.
His bare feet touched the stone-hard bark-highway, right away absorbing the cold, steady shaking running through the ancient wood. The sleep within the burl, though brief, had allowed his spirit veins to re-anchor themselves. The dressing on his left shoulder was dry and firm, holding the shoulder muscle securely so that he could move his arm without reopening the puncture.
The vast upright deep gap stretched out before him, an awe-inspiring gulf of space that defied the claustrophobic instincts of ordinary underground travel. Here, four miles wide and extending downward into infinite green-tinged shadow, the world was built not of stone stonework, but of massive stone-hard flora.
Entry hall 551 was not a room enclosed by walls. It was a level stratum within the Hanging Sepulchers. Huge tree limbs—each one thirty to fifty paces in width—crisscrossed the deep gap at regular upright intervals. He formed a titanic load-bearing lattice that spanned from the northern granite cliffs to the southern dark rock sheer. Between these limbs hung vast mid-air nets of stone-hard vines, their stringy cables thick as ship anchor-chains, crusted with clumps of glowing moss and ancient hardened sponge-kelp.
