At the exact center of the Genesis Well, set directly between the roots of the twelve Xuanwu Baffle-Pillars, lay the Bedrock Keystone of the Primordial Ark.
It was a circular slab of ancient hard speckled rock, nine arm-lengths in width, flush with the dark rock flat stone slabs of the volcano bowl floor. Carved into its center was a box-shaped wood slot-socket exactly three spans long and one span wide. The ancient receiving slot forged by the First Sovereign to hold the supreme office tablet of the Imperial Water-Works.
For forty ages, that socket had remained empty, cold, and dead, choked with the black thick tar of Zhu Heling’s usurping regime.
Now, the thick tar had been scoured away by the cascading seed-waters of the Nine Golden Pipes. The polished hard speckled rock socket lay open, glistening with wet golden light, waiting for the return of its rightful key.
Yan Zhiqiu stepped forward across the golden gutters, carrying the Broken Slate in both hands before her chest.
The slate was no longer merely an ancient fragment of dark stone recovered from a family reliquary. Throughout their harrowing descent through the nine dead heavens, the slate had absorbed the blood, tears, memories, and unbending scholarly dedication of forty ages of the Yan-Luo line. It had absorbed the solar fire of the three avatars above. It had withstood the crushing pressure of eleven mountain-crushing pressure. And its broken edges now pulsed with a deep, steady amber soft glow that matched the heartbeat…
