The Colossi Galleries of Entry hall 629 were not a chamber in the ordinary sense. They were an upright row of stone pillars formed by eight huge trunks of Dawn-Redwood that rose from the bottomless floor of the deep gap and vanished into the misty vault three hundred yards above.
Each trunk was thirty paces in width, stone-hard into dense, iron-hard lignite whose bark furrows were as deep as mountain ravines. These massive pillars were the load-bearing ribs that prevented the hanging sepulchers above from collapsing under the crushing weight of the hanging sea. If the roots decayed or choked, the entire southern cross-hall of the deep pit would shear from the canyon walls, plunging eighty entry halls into the underground depths.
Yet the ancient giant statues were suffering. Over the past three hundred years, a virulent leech-like growth known as red-spore slime had crept down from the damp drainage rifts of the upper terraces. The slime formed thick, rubbery mats of scarlet gelatin that sealed the bark’s breathing lenticels, choking the living cambium beneath and causing the stone-hard wood to cry sour, acidic sap that weakened the lignite matrix.
Elder Xiu led Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu onto a narrow suspended walkway of woven vines that encircled the fifth pillar, eighty deep-water lengths above the deep gap floor. everyone could feel the sharp, vinegar-like stench of fermenting spore-slime, mixed with the cool stone breeze of the upright draft. Below them, through drifting veils of white fog, the dark deep…
