The road leading into the Middle Imperial Ring was paved with cracked white marble flags, overgrown with thorny brambles that had choked the ritual avenues since the outer firewall collapsed.
Lin Tao and Tie Shan advanced under the blood-colored canopy of the sky. The wind had died fully. That left behind an unnatural, high-pressure stillness that felt thick as river silt. Every footstep against the marble rang out like a hammer strike against a tomb slab. It echoed through the abandoned pavilions and overgrown gardens of the lower nobility.
Above them, the three green jade spires dominated the skyline like giant needles stitching the earth to the clouds.
Lin Tao halted at the edge of a raised terrace overlooking the central plaza of the Middle Ring. He unclasped a set of brass measuring tongs and a sighting compass from his belt satchel, steadying his elbows against a ruined stone railing to eliminate muscular tremor.
The central spire—Beacon Seven, according to the faded bronze plaques affixed to the terrace foundation—was not merely standing upon the bedrock. It was dropping.
Massive high-pressure balance weights of black dark rock, each the size of a three-story pagoda, were grinding downward into underground shafts along the outer edge. Thick chains of forged star-copper grooved into circular pulley wheels, weeping rivers of greenish stone grease as they lowered the central green jade pillar deeper into the crust.
