With the foundation caisson locked to the dark rock floor and the tension of ten thousand deep-water lengths successfully sustained, the final spiritual reconnection of the Primordial Ark could no longer be delayed.
A ship was more than a hull of bronze, a spine of timber, and a web of cordage. Without a crew to steer her course and maintain her pumps, even the greatest vessel ever built was merely an elaborate drift-log waiting to be ground to dust against an outer reef.
The true crew of the Primordial Ark had never abandoned their posts.
Ten thousand seasons ago, ten thousand masters of the First Heaven—high-pressure engineers, canal-inspectors, dredge-captains, stone-carvers, star compass-makers, and scholars of the Imperial Water-Works—had entered the high galleries of Vestibules Nine Hundred and Eighty-One through Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine. They had surrendered their mortal physical frames. They allowed their living flesh to petrify into sacred granite and white green jade, wrapping their uncorrupted dao-wills within the stone so that the memory of human great realm might survive the drowning of the heavens.
For three full epochs, their stone-hard bodies had remained frozen in silent vigil, listening through eighty leagues of dark water to the grinding teeth of Zhu Heling’s Void-Giant beast.
