The southern bridge pillar of the Great Mid-air led directly into a massive atrium where the ancient world-forest opened into a preserved botanical nursery of the First Epoch.
Here in Entry hall 572, the air was warm, sweet, and filled with a brilliant, honey-gold light that made their eyes adjust after hours of emerald gloom. Rising from terraces of stone-hard humus were groves of huge mega-ferns, each plant thirty to sixty feet in height, their arching fronds as wide as war-galleys.
The ferns were fully stone-hard into semi-clear, jade-green chalcedony and stone-hard amber. But every delicate structure of their living morphology was preserved with tiny perfection. Along the underside of each huge frond hung thousands of ball-shaped spore-cases, each the size of a melon, formed of pure, clear crystal-clear quartz dust.
Within these crystal-clear spheres, a golden liquid was trapped—sealed away ten thousand years ago before the first drop of sky salt water fell from the clouds.
Yan Zhiqiu stood beneath the arching fronds, looking up in silent wonder. The golden light filtering through the jade leaves bathed her face in warm, amber radiance, banishing the pallor of the deep tunnels. She reached out a hesitant hand to touch the fluted stem of the nearest fern. The fossil stone was smooth, cool as polished agate, yet thrumming with a faint, internal soft glow that warmed her fingertips.
