The base of the Axis Mundi did not rise suddenly from the floor. It emerged from the star-black glass stone floor like the root-flare of a huge, stone-hard cedar that had grown through the core of the planet since the dawn of time.
Entry hall 868 was the load-bearing anchor of the entire land-wide mass. Here, in the center of the vast tiered arena, the star-black glass floor thickened into a raised dais four hundred and eighty arm-lengths square, raised twelve steps above the surrounding avenue. Each step was two arm-lengths high and four arm-lengths deep, carved from a single block of star-fallen star-core whose thickness was three times greater than solid lead. The stone was dark as space itself. But its surface was shot through with veins of crystal-hardened green rust copper that pulsed with a slow, emerald heartbeat timed together with the Sovereign’s lung.
Qiao Ming stepped onto the first tier of the dais, his bare soles making contact with the star-core stone.
An immediate, breathtaking shaking shot up through the bones of his legs. It wasn’t moving shock, nor the violent shudder of machinery. It was the huge, gravity tension of the entire continent above being held in perfect balance. He could feel the ninety leagues of granite, the forty leagues of ocean, the mountain ranges, the drowned cities, and the underground water beds. All of them resting upon this four-hundred-and-eighty-arm-length footprint like an inverted pyramid balanced upon the tip of an awl.
