Chapter 305: Formation Zone Two
The travel to Zone Two took two days.
The highland plateau that Zone One occupied gave way, an hour northeast, to a transition zone where the compressed highland stone met something older. Kai noticed the change underfoot before the carrier function registered it — the rock color shifted. Brown-gray layered stone became darker, coarser in texture. Less layered and more solid — not built up from settled material over time, but grown into itself. A stone that had formed under intense underground pressure rather than accumulated from above.
He knew the word for it from his father's survey book. One entry from an old road survey: basement rock — the world's oldest stone, too hard for tools, too deep for farming. Mark it and move on.
He was not moving on.
Zone Two sat in a shallow depression where three ridges met.
