At the sixth hour of the morning, when the underground air-pressure gauges showed the turning of the deep-sea spring tide, Yan Zhiqiu stepped onto the first step of the sound pulpit.
The Great Silt Plaza was filled with three million awakened mortals, gathered in disciplined, respectful ranks across the eighty nested marble tiers of the tiered arena. The forty-eight thousand hearths had burned down to beds of grey ash and glowing orange coals. It sent sweet, pale plumes of dried kelp and bitter pine-resin incense into the misty vaults seventy deep-water lengths overhead. The ten thousand floating lanterns still turned in their slow blood-flow orbit along the outer edge canal, casting a calm golden halo across the lowest stone seats.
In the center of the vast expanse, the black dark rock dais rose twelve arm-lengths above the floor.
The dais had been quarried six thousand years ago from a single massive stone mass of titan-dark rock, pulled out from the deepest earth-shaking roots of the land-wide mantle. The stone was dense, black as midnight oil, and entirely devoid of internal cleavage planes. Ancient master stonecutters had carved it into five nested circular steps, each step hollowed beneath to form a tuned sound deep ring chamber.
