To understand the full, staggering majesty of what had been accomplished in the depths of the Genesis Well, one had to step back from the single knots, the bronze gears, and the stone mortises, and look upon the deep pit as a whole.
Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu dropped once more to the floor of the volcano bowl, stepping off the bottom spine-beam platform and drifting down through twenty-eight thousand eight hundred deep-water lengths of crystal-clear seed-water.
When they had first reached this wellhead nineteen seasons ago, it had been a nightmare of choking horror. A pitch-black, frozen cesspool of putrefying void-tar, choked with the stone-hard grease of seventy-four thousand murdered worlds, haunted by the vengeful, nihilistic ghost of Zhu Heling, and dominated by the thrashing, murderous bulk of a three-thousand-arm-length clockwork monster.
Now, as their bare feet touched the dark rock flat stone slabs beside the glowing hard speckled rock keystone, they looked around in breathless, respectful awe.
The Genesis Well was no longer a deep pit.
It was a cathedral of living light.
From the dark rock floor to the vaulted ceiling seventy leagues above, the entire upright deep gap was filled with an amazing, three-space-folding web of linked silver, emerald, and amber cordage: The Star-pattern of Ten Thousand Cordons.
