The shift from the hard timber ridges to the Great Silt Basin of Entry hall 625 was marked by an abrupt and total silence.
Here, the amazing sound deep ring of the hollow pillar faded behind them, swallowed by a vast, sponge-like understory of hardened ferns and deep beds of grey-green stone silt that smothered every sound. The air was warm, heavy with the humid scent of sweet peat, damp moss, and the delicate, powdery perfume of underground spore-caps.
Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu walked slowly along a narrow, natural raised stone road formed by an exposed world-root fifteen paces wide. Their bare feet made no sound against the damp moss carpet, their soles sinking comfortably into the yielding turf. Around them, the forest was dense. Huge hanging vines, thick as ship cables, draped from the canopy in upright curtains of grey-green Spanish moss, creating an enclosed, claustrophobic hall of filtered emerald twilight.
Suddenly, Qiao Ming stopped.
He raised his right hand in the universal signal of the Imperial Sounders: fingers splayed, palm flat, frozen in mid-air.
Beside him, Yan Zhiqiu froze instantly. Her bare feet locked into the moss. Her weight was balanced evenly between her heels and balls. Her breathing dropped into the silent, barely noticeable rhythm of a scroll-keeper hiding from royal judges.
