At the sharp-angled center of the Grand Central Round hall, surrounded by three thousand numbed warriors and the smoking wreckage of a crippled mechanoid, Qiao Ming knelt for the final time.
His bare knees rested upon the floating reed-parchment, cushioned by the two-inch layer of high-pressure salt water-vapor that hummed beneath the sheet. The paper was glowing with an intense, sky azure bright glare, every line of stone ink pulsing with the rhythmic, living heartbeat of the mountain’s deepest waters.
Directly beneath his hands lay the central rosette of the map—the twelve-petaled lotus representing the Keystone of the Seven Seas and the master drainage pipe hub of the Thousand Entry halls.
The rosette was an exquisite example of pre-flood lapidary building. Each of the twelve petals was carved from a different stone chosen for its specific sound flow pushback: white green jade, green snake-like, black dark rock, red jasper, banded agate, and semi-clear rock crystal. Embedded within each stone was a hairline vein of pure native copper that ended in a central socket no larger than the eye of a needle. It was the master spreading node—the sharp-angled point where the twelve water-mapping spirit veins of the mountain came together before plunging into the deep-sea core.
