The Alcove of the Water-Clock in Entry hall 101 was Qiao Ming’s winter camp.
It was a small, vaulted recess carved five arm-lengths deep into the western dark rock wall, ten feet above the high-water mark of the thirty-six-day tide. The floor was laid with dry flags of gray soapstone, warmed from below by a natural chimney pipe that conducted earth-heat from the lower water tanks. In the corner sat a low hearth built from blocks of hardened white chalk-stone, glowing with a soft, flameless orange heat as the rotten-egg minerals rusted slowly in the draft.
Qiao Ming sat cross-legged upon a dry mat of woven eelgrass, his bare feet tucked under his thighs. His toes were clean, scrubbed of salt-frost with fresh water, resting comfortably against the warm soapstone flags.
Before him sat an ancient kettle of beaten copper, its surface darkened by decades of charcoal smoke and green rust. Inside the kettle, three pints of clear, sweet water drops collected from the fingertips of the Seventy Teachers were coming to the boil. It murmured with a gentle, rhythmic hum that blended with the ticking of the water-clock on the wall.
Across the hearth, sitting upon a folding camp-stool of lacquered ebony that he had carried in his spatial pouch, was Ji Mingchuan.
