Chap­ter III opens with the nar­ra­tor cau­tious­ly descend­ing deep­er into an unfa­mil­iar world, his every step guid­ed more by curios­i­ty than con­fi­dence. The road beneath his feet glows with steady lamp­light, its smooth path rem­i­nis­cent of high-alti­tude moun­tain trails, curv­ing grace­ful­ly between jagged rock walls. As he walks, a breath­tak­ing sight emerges: an immense struc­ture root­ed at the end of the pass, sur­round­ed by an eerie yet cap­ti­vat­ing land­scape. Below stretch­es a broad val­ley teem­ing with life, but not the life he knows. Veg­e­ta­tion thrives in strange tones—golds, crim­sons, and dusky grays—that seem both arti­fi­cial and alive. Fields are arranged with delib­er­ate care, evi­dence that this soci­ety has long mas­tered not only agri­cul­ture but also aes­thet­ic order. A qui­et awe set­tles over him as he real­izes this world was not sim­ply stum­bled upon; it was shaped and designed with a pur­pose beyond sur­vival, per­haps even beyond com­pre­hen­sion.

Glanc­ing down the val­ley, he notices water fea­tures sculpt­ed with artis­tic precision—rivers bend­ing into mir­ror-smooth curves, lakes that appear hand-paint­ed under the illu­mi­na­tion. Some glis­ten like oil, while oth­ers shine with clar­i­ty unmatched by sur­face waters. These do not appear to exist by chance but by cal­cu­lat­ed design, reveal­ing a civ­i­liza­tion with com­mand over the ele­ments. His atten­tion shifts to the bor­der­ing veg­e­ta­tion: fern-like trees stretch impos­si­bly tall, while odd, over­sized mush­rooms clus­ter beneath them, their shapes grotesque yet sym­met­ri­cal. Palm-like stalks rise from the earth, flow­er­ing with blos­soms so vivid they seem lit from with­in. Every liv­ing thing in this land­scape feels curat­ed. There is beau­ty, but it’s a beau­ty stripped of ran­dom­ness, sug­gest­ing nature has been domes­ti­cat­ed with­out being destroyed. The sen­sa­tion of walk­ing through this envi­ron­ment feels like enter­ing a gallery of liv­ing art—a liv­ing muse­um of form and func­tion inter­twined.

Though the sun is absent, the space is bathed in con­stant day­light. It is not blind­ing, yet it leaves no shad­ow, sourced from an array of strate­gi­cal­ly placed lumi­nous devices that cast a warmth like Mediter­ranean noon with­out the bur­den of heat. In this bal­ance between vis­i­bil­i­ty and com­fort, he sees engi­neer­ing aligned with empa­thy. He mar­vels at how this arti­fi­cial sun main­tains not just clar­i­ty but seren­i­ty. The nar­ra­tor can­not help but feel small—not in size, but in imagination—compared to the inge­nu­ity that brought such a world into being. The con­cept of nature, as he once under­stood it, is upend­ed here. Nature is not wild. It is tamed and, per­haps, improved upon by minds unshack­led by the sur­face world’s lim­i­ta­tions. The result is a har­mo­ny that doesn’t fight for dom­i­nance, but flows like the rivers below.

Far­ther out, sil­hou­ettes move across the fields—figures who glide rather than walk, whose move­ments are too grace­ful to be casu­al. These beings, though dis­tant, appear com­plete­ly at ease in this strange ter­rain, sug­gest­ing it is not strange to them at all. A sense of com­mu­ni­ty puls­es through the still­ness, not through noise but through vis­i­bil­i­ty, through shared space and pres­ence. One fig­ure becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly mes­mer­iz­ing. It sails through the air in a ves­sel unlike any­thing the nar­ra­tor has seen. With wings poised like sails and move­ment that mim­ics both bird and bal­loon, the vehi­cle dis­ap­pears with ghost­ly ele­gance into the tree­tops. The impli­ca­tions are stag­ger­ing. Not only has this soci­ety dom­i­nat­ed ground trav­el, but it has also mas­tered air. And yet, not a sin­gle engine sound or trace of com­bus­tion follows—only silence and speed.

Over­head, the ceil­ing of the world stretch­es beyond his line of sight. There is no dome, no horizon—just an immense vault that appears to absorb light rather than reflect it. The nar­ra­tor sens­es the scale is not archi­tec­tur­al but geo­log­i­cal, as though he has stepped into the womb of the earth itself. The idea of being under­ground fades; the sen­sa­tion is one of float­ing with­in a vast, sus­pend­ed world. He tries to rec­on­cile what he sees with what he under­stands of the plan­et, of sci­ence, of human lim­i­ta­tion. But noth­ing match­es. This chap­ter clos­es with a ten­sion between amaze­ment and iso­la­tion. He is sur­round­ed by won­der but still untouched by it, not yet part of what he observes. In the face of such mas­tery over envi­ron­ment and space, he won­ders whether mankind from above ever tru­ly knew what it meant to evolve.