The Great Burl of Entry hall 630 stood as a living ball-shaped city formed within the swollen knot of twelve convergent Dawn-Redwood roots, rising where stone-hard timber met deep gap air.
Where twelve underground root-arteries intersected at sixteen thousand deep-water lengths below the surface, the ancient tree-wrights of the First Dynasty had guided the growth of the cambium over four thousand years. Layer upon layer of dense, fragrant heartwood had piled up into a huge wooden globe over three hundred arm-lengths in width, suspended in the deep gap like a giant fruit clinging to the rock wall.
As Qiao Ming, Yan Zhiqiu, and Elder Xiu stepped through the fluted circular gateway, the harsh, upright drafts of the open deep pit fell away instantly. In their place came a wrapping, aromatic warmth. A gentle, tropical microclimate heated by underground steam channels that ran through hollowed veins deep within the wooden sphere. The air tasted of sweet cedar-resin, dried chamomile flowers, and warm river-silt, soothing the throat with every breath.
The inside of the burl was hollowed into seven nested tiers of curved cambium galleries, connected by spiraling ramps of stone-hard timber that wound along the sphere’s inner wall. Hundreds of oval doorways, draped with hangings of woven reed-cloth and living ferns, opened into family chambers hollowed into the burl’s outer shell. In the center of the sphere, suspended on thick vine-cables eighty paces above the lower floor, hung a great ball-shaped lantern of woven balsa wood containing millions of living-glow fire-beetles…
