The four-sided tang of the True-Sight Verdigris Needle clicked into the green jade socket with a crisp, high-pressure finality. The sound was small in the vast expanse of Entry hall 750. But the steel touched the liquid silver bath beneath the jade receiver. Then, a deep shudder passed through the foundations of the Sovereign Bastion.
From the central stone stand, a brilliant wave of cold cyan soft glow surged outward along the gold and gold-silver metal spirit vein lines inlaid in the green-stone floor. The light raced through the nested rings of the tiered arena, lighting up every carved graduation, every sighting desk. Every bronze stone railing in a dazzling, jewel-like azure radiance that banished the darkness of ten thousand seasons.
High above, the forty-arm-length glowing-bronze star-ring sphere began to move. The huge rings rotated upon their royal jade pivot with easy, zero-drag majesty. The outer spirit vein ring turned with a slow, regal rhythm of one revolution every two minutes. The inner ecliptic ring swung through an oblique arc of twenty-three degrees. And the sky equator ring spun with a musical hum that rang through the dolerite dome at five hundred and eighty-seven hertz.
Qiao Ming took up the running end of the three-thousand-foot star-thread line. He knelt beside the main tension rope winch at the base of the control altar, securing the glowing-bronze thimble into the driving arbor with a royal locking wedge. He laid the gunmetal-grey cord along the guide channels that spiraled up the four support…
