The gravity well of the Obsidian Throne did not pull downward toward the core of the planet. It curved inward in nested, spiraling vectors that drew every particle of matter toward the Sovereign’s left heel.
Qiao Ming walked along the upper tier of the green jade terrace in Entry hall 871. His bare soles gripped the pale green jade with deliberate, measured friction. The stone was smooth, cut with such tiny care that the seams between the six-sided blocks were invisible to the eye, detectable only through the sensitive nerve-endings of his hardened calluses. With every ten paces, the downward force shifted by seven degrees, tilting his balance point toward the throne. To an inexperienced climber, this gravity bending would have induced violent nausea and dizziness, tumbling the body sideways across the jade floor. But Qiao Ming had spent three decades balancing on rolling boat sides and canted water gate-sills. His spine adjusted instinctively, his hips counter-weighting the pull with easy maritime balance.
The thirty-six tiers of the terrace dropped toward the lake in nested rings, each tier carved from a distinct stone layer. Pale green jade at the top, transitioning through dark green snake-like, blue-grey hypersthene, and finally the jet-star-core black glass that bordered the quicksilver moat. Every block bore the recessed seal of the ancient quarry-masters, certifying that the stone had been cut under three mountain-crushing pressure of deep water pressure and cured in deep-sea salt water so that it would never spall or fracture under earth-shaking load.
