Before climbing to the main village in the hollow burl, Elder Xiu led them to a quiet, sheltered nook beside the central hot spring known as the Slack-Pool.
Here, in a circular chamber carved from the buttressed root of an ancient ginkgo tree, a natural pool of crystal-clear sap-salt water bubbled up from a crack in the white pale limestone bedrock. The water was forty degrees, warm enough to send lazy plumes of white steam curling toward the carved wooden ceiling. But fully free of the choking sulfur fumes that plagued the fiery vents of the upper rifts. The air tasted clean, sweet, with the invigorating aroma of roasted cedar nuts and boiled water-chestnuts.
In the center of the nook stood a low, round table hewn from a single cross-section of stone-hard bitter pine-resin wood. Arranged upon the table were four shallow bowls carved from dark hardwood, filled with the simple, sacred harvest of the deep forest.
Elder Xiu gestured with his webbed hands, inviting Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu to sit upon the woven moss mats arranged around the board. He sat cross-legged opposite them, resting his hornbeam staff across his knees, his smooth, eyeless face calm in the warm firelight of a small resin fire bowl. The fire bowl burned dried amber lumps that gave off a clean, spruce-scented light, casting soft amber reflections across the dark timber walls.
