The watching platform rose forty arm-lengths above the southern stone beam of the thousandth entry hall, carved directly from the living bedrock of red stone that formed the spine of the hall.
Qiao Ming stood at the edge of the low roof wall, his bare feet gripping the cold, unpolished stone. His oilskin coat whipped gently in the dry climbing heat that rose from the central round hall. Beside him stood Elder Wen, Mason Han, and Fisherwoman Cui, their faces pale in the amber glare of the lantern. The red stone beneath their feet was dense, flecked with white pink rock laths that felt gritty and firm against Qiao Ming’s calloused soles. Below them, stretching into the northern gloom, lay the huge avenue of black dark rock columns through which they had journeyed, and beyond that, the dark, flooded threshold of the nine hundred and ninety-ninth portal.
“Look down the grade,” Qiao Ming said, his voice quiet, steady, and unrushed. He extended his wooden ruler toward the northern horizon. “For two hundred miles behind us, the water is held in check by the slope. But water does not sleep, and water does not forget its weight.”
From this height, the true water-mapping reality of their position became visible. The shallow sheet of clear water covering the floor of the pillared hall was not an isolated pool. It was the upper knee pad of a huge, high-pressure ocean that filled the lower nine hundred and ninety-nine entry halls. In the distant…
