Their feet touched the lower terrace forty-eight deep-water lengths below the burl with the soft, solid slap of bare skin and cured leather meeting ancient wood.
The terrace was wider than the upper limb, spanning nearly eighty paces across. The surface of the stone-hard heartwood was smoothed by the passage of pre-flood waters, yet its natural grain formed a series of low, nested ridges that provided spotless purchase for Qiao Ming’s splayed, horn-hard toes. His bare feet gripped the cool timber, absorbing the rhythmic, underground pulse that shook through the core of the deep gap.
Around them, the emerald twilight was denser, richer, tinted with the golden glow of tiny resin-spores that drifted lazily in the air like dust motes in an abandoned library. Far above, the limb they had left was barely a dark pencil-line against the high, velvet gloom of the upper vault. The drop was complete, but the sensation of upright space remained huge, pressing upon the temples with the subtle weight of enclosed underground air.
Yan Zhiqiu stepped away from the upright mid-air stay, unhooking the rawhide sling that held the Broken Slate. She knelt upon the stone-hard grain, her courier coat flaring out around her boots, and laid the heavy tablet flat upon the stone bark. She blew a light breath across its face, scattering a fine film of green spore-flour that had settled during their descent.
