The Memorial Grotto of Entry hall 635 was a safe hall of total silence, suspended in the geographic center of the twelve root-systems.
Unlike the fancy stone crypts of royal emperors, built to defy decay through gold leaf and liquid silver moats, the tomb of Grand Master Surveyor Shun was an act of living communion with the earth. It was hollowed directly into the heartwood of a thousand-arm-length taproot that dropped vertically into the bottomless bedrock of the deep pit.
The chamber was twenty arm-lengths wide and thirty arm-lengths high, its dark timber walls naturally fluted like the inside of a sacred cedar flute. In the center of the grotto, resting upon an eight-sided stone base of raw white pale limestone, lay an open sarcophagus carved from a single block of clear, stone-hard amber four arm-lengths long.
Through the golden, see-through resin, the form of the First Land-mapper was clearly visible, preserved in flawless detail across ten thousand years.
Shun had not been embalmed with spices or wrapped in silk bandages. He lay in the natural stance of a tired traveler who had lain down to rest upon the moss. Dressed in a simple tunic of coarse hemp, his bare, calloused feet resting against the amber footboard, his hands folded peacefully across his chest. In his left hand, clasped against his heart, lay a straight measuring rule of stone-hard whalebone. In his right palm rested a simple eight-sided lead line-weight, its braided horsehair line coiled neatly beside his hip.
