At twelve thousand deep-water lengths, the liquid aether ceased to behave as a nonstop fluid.
It had entered the domain of the Dissolved Daos. The spirit crucible where the deepest physical and spiritual laws of the universe were held in raw, exact mid-air. It waited for the First Master builder’s signal to precipitate into reality.
Here, space was fractured into millions of shimmering, razor-thin sharp-angled planes that intersected at impossible, non-Euclidean angles. A straight line, if followed for ten paces, bifurcated into three distinct probabilities. A circle no longer possessed a constant ratio between its outer rim and its width. And the speed of light fluctuated from a lazy crawl to instant ubiquity with every pulse of the central spindle.
Floating within the ultramarine fluid were visible exact equations. Billions of glowing ideograms carved from liquid gold and stone-hard red stone, drifting like schools of semi-clear fish through the crystal-clear sea. These were the ancient matrices of Gravity, Thermodynamics, Karma, and Time, waiting to be woven into the fabric of the thirteenth cosmos.
Each equation hummed with its own pure hum. The equation of Heat radiated a gentle, scarlet warmth that tasted of cinnamon. The equation of Mass drifted like heavy, violet lead-dust. While the equation of Harmony turned in slow, nested circles of silver light that soothed the aching joints in Qiao Ming’s shoulders.
