My girlfriend is a Miao demon.

"Should we...should we go up?"

Nature's ingenious craftsmanship could create the sacred path of Yuntai Mountain and the heavenly ladder of Dawu Mountain, but how could it have created such regular and uniform steps?

There should absolutely be no man-made buildings inside the mountainside of Shounan Mountain. In a metropolis like Wangshan, within a radius of two hundred miles, there are at most some large-scale agricultural enterprises that operate vegetable greenhouses. In Shounan Mountain, there isn't even a shepherd's hut. So who would be building structures deep inside this mountain?

"Don't be nervous, don't be nervous. It's better to have someone than no one!" Xiang Nanfeng tried to reassure himself and Luyao. "Maybe it's not a civilian building, maybe it's the military!"

The reason seemed reasonable, but it was actually astonishing. Could it be that a young couple could accidentally stumble upon some top-secret nuclear facility? Was it a missile silo hidden in the valley of Shounan Mountain? Xiang Nanfeng himself found it laughable, but under the circumstances at the time, absolutely no one could laugh.

"Is anyone there? Is anyone there?"

Xiang Nanfeng mustered his courage and shouted a couple of times. Gui Luyao followed suit, and the two of them shouted three or four times, their voices growing louder and louder, but there was no response from above the steps. The man-made response failed to elicit a reply, yet the natural echoes returned from all directions.

Their own voices echoed through the empty mountains, and Xiang Nanfeng knew that it was the most ironic response from the distant cliffs.

"Come on, let's go upstairs and go inside!"

To Xiang Nanfeng's surprise, Gui Luyao, who had been timid and fearful just moments before, suddenly became surprisingly brave. She turned on her headlamp, and then, without consulting Xiang Nanfeng, suddenly lifted her leg and started climbing the steps, linking arms with him.

Her movements were so fast that Xiang Nanfeng didn't even have time to react before she pulled him off balance. He had no choice but to hurry up a few steps and thus ascend the steps.

One—two—three—four—five—six—seven.

It turned out that there were actually seven steps. But just as they reached the top of the highest step, a dark green image suddenly flashed before Xiang Nanfeng's eyes from behind the thick fog illuminated by the lights.

In the center of the scene, there appeared to be a dozen or so men flanking each other. These men had very small heads, making their faces and expressions impossible to discern. However, their clothing was strikingly strange; it wasn't traditional Chinese long-sleeved robes or mandarin jackets, but rather ancient European garments resembling the simian of ancient Greece or the toga of ancient Rome. Looking at the background—brick walls, intersecting vaulted ceilings, semi-circular arches…

That was clearly a towering ancient Roman-style temple.

What is this?

Xiang Nanfeng swallowed hard. Mustering his courage, he extended his right hand and, through the thick fog, tentatively touched the head of a small figure in the image:

It's so cold! As cold as ice.

Xiang Nanfeng instinctively withdrew his hand. His hand was covered with a layer of slippery liquid clinging to the little man's head; he sniffed it and found it to be quite fishy and foul.

He then realized that the stench had been lingering in the air and seeping into his lungs ever since they descended to the surface and were enveloped in thick fog, but he had been too tense at the time and had lost his sense of smell for a moment.

"It's copper, it's bronze," Xiang Nanfeng muttered softly. "It's a bronze plate, high relief."

"What is it?"

Gui Luyao also came closer, but she didn't reach out to touch it or smell it. She simply moved closer to observe, then bent down, raised her head, and looked around.

The two headlamps, like two dying embers, barely illuminated the object blocking their path within half a meter. It was a door, a double door.

The gate was incredibly tall; how tall, no one knew, because the upper half was shrouded in thick fog, and its end was completely invisible. They could only see the lower half, which was about their own height.

This is an extremely exquisite bronze door, with its two doors together measuring over two meters wide. On the surface of the doors, several painted windows are symmetrically distributed, with raised triangular decorative lines separating the windows.

These openwork paintings are all exquisite high-relief sculptures. The outer layer of the reliefs depicts three-dimensional figures. Although the details of the figures' faces have become blurred due to oxidation, their clothing and postures remain intact, vivid, gorgeous, and lifelike. The inner layer of the reliefs is more diverse. Some, like the one Xiang Nanfeng first saw, depict tall buildings like temples. Others are even larger than buildings, set against a backdrop of mountains and natural environments. Still others extend into the interior of buildings, depicting the interior environments of large structures.

Xiang Nanfeng had audited courses on Western art history. Although he couldn't understand the specific stories depicted in each of these paintings, he could immediately recognize that they represented religious themes.

This obviously couldn't be a military building, but what it was and what it did were all a mystery to Xiang Nanfeng, who had no time to think about such things in this remote mountain area, amidst the unpredictable fog.

In this situation, the first instinct is fear and retreat, especially when they scan the eerie bronze door from top to bottom and discover that there is actually a crack in the door, and when they realize that the bronze door is only slightly ajar.

"Go, go, get out of here quickly."

Xiang Nanfeng's voice was very soft, so soft that he couldn't tell if he was speaking in a low voice or in his heart. The two dared not reach out again, nor did they dare to turn around. They carefully walked backward, step by step, down the steps.

"What should we do, Nanfeng?" Gui Luyao asked timidly.

"Did...did you just hear that?"

"What did you hear?"

"Echo. When we shout 'Is anyone there?' do you hear an echo? That echo doesn't come from one direction, but from all directions. It's like the 360-degree stereo sound in a movie theater."

"so?"

"So I think we're definitely in a closed space surrounded by mountains, and we're probably right in the center of this closed space. So I think we should turn around and walk straight, hey, or whichever direction we go, as long as we walk in one direction, we'll definitely reach the foot of a cliff on one of the surrounding mountains. Then we just need to walk around the cliff, and there's bound to be a place we can get up to."

To be fair, Xiang Nanfeng was quite calm. He had already realized this problem. In fact, if Gui Luyao hadn't rashly climbed the ladder, he might not have been so determined to take this drastic measure.

He longed to enter that building and endure the night until dawn when the fog cleared. But when he actually reached the door and saw how strange the house was, his fear and doubt became an insurmountable mountain. And how could Gui Luyao feel the same way? She repeatedly said "okay," not even daring to turn her head, maintaining her previous posture, holding Xiang Nanfeng's arm and backing away for dozens of steps before the two turned around and walked quickly in the opposite direction.

There's a saying: "Looking at a mountain makes a horse run itself to death." But what if you can't even see the mountain?

This time, having gained a basic understanding of the flatness and openness of the muddy ground beneath their feet, and confident that they could reach the cliff face from any direction at the same distance, they moved much faster than before. The two remained silent, all their energy focused on exploring and walking.

After an unknown amount of time and distance, Xiang Nanfeng began to feel uneasy.

Sound travels at 340 meters per second in air. The shortest time interval between a sound wave and an echo that the human ear can distinguish is 0.1 seconds. Since an echo requires sound waves to travel to a cliff face and then reflect back, the shortest distance at which the human ear can hear an echo is 17 meters. This is basic physics knowledge that even a middle school student can calculate. So, what's the longest distance?

How far can an echo travel?

Sound waves decay as they travel. The lowest volume that two people can detect is 0 decibels. If the volume cannot be infinitely loud, then the echo that reaches the origin must be higher than 0 decibels to be detectable by the human ear.

In such an environment, no one can determine the radius of this open area by shouting, listening, and mental calculation alone. However, people's general senses are not too far off. The few knocks at the door below the steps of that strange building were enough to prove that it was at most two or three hundred meters away from the surrounding cliffs. But now, Xiang Nanfeng felt that they had run at least two two or three hundred meters away. Why hadn't they reached the cliffs yet?

Xiang Nanfeng's heart pounded. He dared not say it aloud, for fear that Luyao would be even more frightened. But the more he kept it to himself, the faster he walked, the more nervous he became.

What's going on? What's going on?!

"Snapped!"

Just as Xiang Nanfeng was in a panic, a crisp sound suddenly came from under his feet.

"We're here! We're here!"

Luyao shouted excitedly. Her trekking pole was striking a hard stone slab.

Is it a cliff? Have we reached the foot of the mountain?

Xiang Nanfeng also used his trekking pole to tap it, and sure enough, it made a crisp "snap" sound.

He excitedly bent down, for the lamplight in the thick fog was still insufficient to illuminate the shape of the stone slab, and he was impatient to see the boundary of this eerie land, hoping only to escape. He crouched down, and Gui Luyao crouched down as well. But the moment their vision cleared and the stone slab was illuminated, they both turned to look at each other. In the pale beam of light, Luyao's pale face and lips clearly showed a look of utter despair:

"Oh my god, what's going on! We...we've come full circle again!"

Xiang Nanfeng tightly gripped Gui Luyao's right hand, which was wrapped around his arm. He had been trying to remain calm and composed for a long time. Then he patted Luyao's hand and said, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid. Let me see if we've really circled back."

As he spoke, he started to climb the steps. Luyao pulled and tugged at him, trying to stop him, but it was no use. He had to bite the bullet and see for himself. There was no reason to go back. They were clearly walking straight with their backs to that strange building. Even if they were slightly off-center, they shouldn't have gone back and forth.

Luyao didn't want him to come up, much less accompany him, but she couldn't stay behind, so she had no choice but to "hang" behind him like a burden. The moment the headlamp illuminated the object, sure enough, those dark green bronze paintings appeared before them again:

In the center of the picture is a strong man wearing a Peporos, struggling to climb a hillside while pushing a round boulder.

My God, this man is Sisyphus! This is the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus pushing the boulder!

Sisyphus, the son of King Aeolia, angered Zeus by kidnapping Thanatos, the god of death sent by Zeus to escort him, resulting in the deaths of all people. His soul was taken by Thanatos, and he was punished by Hades, the god of the underworld, who sentenced him to push a giant boulder up a mountain for eternity. Every time the boulder reached the top of the mountain, it would inevitably slide back down, so Sisyphus had to start pushing the boulder again, thus falling into an endless cycle of futile labor.

What is this? Is this a parable? Is this open space, this strange building, a parable to the intruders?

"Ghost...ghost wall! Nanfeng, it's a ghost wall! I heard my grandma tell me about this when I was little!"

"No, no! What ghost wall? There's no such thing as a ghost wall!" Xiang Nanfeng panicked. His extreme fear turned into unbearable anger. He didn't believe in ghost walls, nor did he believe in any ghost stories. He pulled Gui Luyao and started walking down the steps:

"There's no such thing as being trapped in a maze! The movement of all living organisms eventually comes down to circular motion."

"If you blindfold a pigeon and let it fly in the sky, it will definitely circle around and come back. If you blindfold yourself and walk in the square, don't worry, you will also circle around and eventually come back. It may look like your left and right hands are the same size, and your left and right legs are the same length, but that's only what the naked eye sees."

"Don't worry, no person or organism is perfectly symmetrical. The length of the bones on the left and right sides are different, and the degree of muscle development is different. As long as there is no reference point and the movement trajectory cannot be corrected according to the reference point, as long as the space is large enough, the movement of any person or animal will be circular."

"There's no such thing as being trapped in a maze! No, there isn't!"

The south wind was particularly loud, its sound echoing across the surrounding cliffs, creating the same reverberation as before. Gui Luyao was too frightened to speak, only timidly muttering to herself, "Then... what should we do..."

After shouting, Xiang Nanfeng seemed to have found the courage to face his fear, and his intelligence quickly returned to normal.

"So what if you can't walk in a straight line without a reference point? That's nothing! We have a compass!"

"That's right, use a compass. As long as you follow the direction of the compass, you'll definitely be able to walk in a straight line and reach the foot of the mountain!"

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:33

"And then what? Did you follow a compass to find your way out?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:33

"No, we used a compass later, but we ended up back at that half-open bronze door."

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:34

"What? We followed the compass but still ended up back where we started? Could it be that compass?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:35

"No, I bought the compass last year and haven't used it once. Before we went into the mountains, Luyao said she had never seen a compass before when we were eating at Grandpa Hexiao's snack shop, so I took it out and let her play with it for a while. When I gave it back to me, I checked it, and it points very sensitively. The compass is working fine."

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:35

"So, there's a strong, moving magnetic field in that foggy open area?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:38

"Maybe it's not just a strong magnetic field. When I got back to that bronze door, I decided to call the police. I took out my phone and found that it had no signal, but the time displayed was 0:00 on December 25, 2011. But I clearly remembered that I checked the time when we came down to this open area, and it was also 0:00 then."

Time stopped, even the time on our phones stopped. Both Luyao's and my phones showed midnight. But we walked around twice in between, so I think it must have taken at least three hours.

Mao Xigu Master 2012.01.01 00:39

"Oh my god, this is terrible! So what happened next? How did Gui Luyao disappear? Where did you all go?"

Nomads Go on a Party 2012.01.01 00:39

"Heh. I had no choice but to push open that door."