The shift from the inclined floor to the sheer upright trunk of the world-pillar occurred over a shift threshold of less than three paces.
Where the dovetailed cedar planks met the massive, furrowed bark of the world-tree, the wood did not join with iron brackets or wood slot joints. The planks had been bent by ancient steam-wrights. It curved upward in a smooth, nonstop quarter-circle that brought the road directly onto the upright face of the giant trunk. As Qiao Ming stepped onto this curve, the lateral pull of the tree’s gravity core took complete possession of his body.
What had been an upright wall seventy paces wide was now, to his physical senses, a level highway stretching upward into the green-lit canopy. Looking back over his right shoulder, the inclined floor they had just crossed appeared as a steep, sheer cliff edge dropping away into empty air. The sensation was extraordinary. Down was no longer the direction toward the center of the underground deep gap, but the direction toward the heartwood core of the tree beneath his feet.
Qiao Ming paused, allowing his nervous system to settle into the new orientation. His bare, calloused feet spread wide across the deep, lengthwise furrows of the stone-hard bark. The bark was three feet thick, ridged with cork-like stringy valleys and hard, glassy ribs of stone-hard quartz dust. His prehensile toes curled into the fissures, the horn-hard skin of his pads locking into the tiny tooth of the wood with easy living…
