Chapter 68: Main Text Chapter Sixty-Nine Soul-Hanging Ladder

Main Text Chapter Sixty-Nine Soul-Hanging Ladder

Soul-Hanging Ladder

Pangzi grabbed my arm and said to me, "Lao Hu, what if the rope breaks? You'd better be extra careful; we still have plenty of money left unspent, and now is not the time for heroic sacrifice. If the situation looks wrong, hurry back—don't show off."

I said to Pangzi, "That's about right; you on watch up there also need to be extra careful. If the rope suddenly snaps midway, you must never pull it back—just let it stay as is. Otherwise, if you yank the rope away, I won't be able to feel my way back."

After thinking, I still felt uneasy and warned Pangzi again: "Little Fatty, you must not move from this spot. Da Jin Ya and I will go down from here; if we step out of this damned stone staircase, I'll pull you out with the rope."

Pangzi said, "No problem, you two can relax. If there's any danger, just whistle—I can pull you both back with one arm."

As long as the rope connecting the three of us can span more than twenty-three steps, we should be able to break this looping ghost staircase. With escape imminent, we three could barely contain our excitement; Pangzi stayed put while Da Jin Ya and I held the rope and walked down.

Each time I descended a step, I glanced back at the candlelight marking Pangzi's position. When I reached the sixth stone step, I told Da Jin Ya to stay there, so he could remain within Pangzi's line of sight for mutual support. After all, Da Jin Ya usually lives in comfort, enjoying good food and drink, and has seldom faced such life‑or‑death trials. If he couldn't see his companions, he'd likely become overly anxious and act irrationally.

This was the sixth step down from Pangzi. Da Jin Ya lit a candle, checked the rope tied around his waist, then handed the remaining rope to me and waited at that sixth step.

I said to Da Jin Ya, "After I go down, I'll keep walking the steps to the bottom. If I can make it out of these twenty‑three stone steps, I'll tug the rope three times; you'll then inform Pangzi above, and after you meet up with him, you'll descend along the rope."

Da Jin Ya replied, "Master Hu, rest assured—I may be useless, but I won't be careless about this life‑or‑death matter. I'll stay here and await your good news."

Seeing his firm words, I nodded, coiled the rope in my hands, and continued down the stone steps, releasing a bit of rope with each step.

When I had descended twelve steps from Pangzi, I looked at the big bundle of rope in my hand. Though I knew it was enough, I instinctively calculated the distance: twenty‑three steps minus twelve leaves a little over half, so the rope is sufficient.

I silently counted the steps beneath my feet—once past twenty‑three I should be able to return to the Underworld Palace. But can I really make it back? Suddenly I felt unsure again.

Ahead lay endless darkness; the deeper I went, the faster my heart beat—fear that the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. Yet having come this far, I had no choice but to grit my teeth and press on.

Twenty‑one, twenty‑two, twenty‑three—the crescent‑shaped mark appeared again on the steps, yet the steps below had no end. It was truly uncanny; I steeled myself and kept going, determined to walk until the rope ran out.

The rope in my hand grew shorter, my scalp tingled, and I prepared to turn back, not wanting to go farther. Then I suddenly saw a glimmer of light below the steps. I hurried down; the closer I got, the more startled I became. Standing there was a person with a broad back turned to me, a candle burning at their feet—the light I had seen above was the faint glow of that candle.

That person was clearly Pangzi, who should have been above me, shifting his weight and constantly looking down. I saw it was indeed Pangzi; my heart sank at once—this plan had failed again. I walked over and slapped his back, saying, "All right, stop looking—I, Hu Hansan, am back."

Pangzi, completely unprepared, jumped despite his boldness and tumbled down the stairs. I lunged to grab his arm, but he was too heavy; I caught his sleeve only to tear off a strip of cloth, unable to hold him.

Fortunately, he was also agile—he rolled down only two stone steps before stopping, looked up, and saw me emerging from behind, equally startled. He shouted, "Lao Hu, how the hell did you come down from above? Raising a kid isn't called raising a kid—it's called scaring people! Oh my god, you scared the hell out of me—give me a warning next time!"

I told Pangzi, "Don't jump at every little thing—you're not a delicate maiden or child. You're thick‑skinned and tough; a scare won't kill you."

I sat on the steps, undid the rope around my waist, and said to Pangzi, "No luck—it seems our judgment was spot on. This stretch of steps is the chaotic fringe of the Netherworld Tomb; spatial law doesn't apply here. Hurry up and pull Lao Jin up, then we'll regroup."

Pangzi pulled the rope, hauling Da Jin Ya up, then recounted the whole ordeal to him. Da Jin Ya listened, shoulders slumped. I said to Pangzi and Da Jin Ya, "Though the saying goes "one burst of effort, then wane, then exhaustion," we haven't reached the point of despair yet. While we're still able to move despite hunger, let's quickly think of any other options—if we go a few more hours without food and can't move, we'll truly have to resign ourselves to death."

At the mention of hunger, Pangzi's stomach flared; he snatched a goose's neck from the ground and said, "It won't come to that. If we really run out of spells, we still have two roasted geese to eat. Since you and Lao Jin said we can't kill geese on these stairs, we can eat one now and save the other to slaughter once we reach the Underworld Palace."

I said to Pangzi, "We have no firewood—how are we supposed to eat it? Are you going to eat it raw?"

Pangzi wiped the drool from his mouth and replied, "What's wrong with eating it raw? Ancients ate raw meat; when you're starving, you don't care whether it's cooked or not."

I said, "Only primitive peoples eat raw meat, drinking blood and gnawing hides. You're still gritting your teeth; if we can't break free, you can eat it raw later. Actually, it's been less than six or seven hours since you ate that meal at the Fish Bone Temple."

Da Jin Ya, face grim, said to me, "Master Hu, are we really done for this time? We've tried every heaven‑and‑earth trick, yet we can't escape this ghost‑wall of twenty‑odd steps—it's just rotten luck."

I wanted to comfort Pangzi and Da Jin Ya with a few words, but they got stuck in my throat; I, too, am agitated and desperately need some reassurance. This damned twenty‑three‑step staircase is literally killing us.

"'Twenty‑three, twenty‑three.' That number feels familiar—I ran my hand over the crescent groove on the steps, as if, while struggling alone in a vast ocean, I had suddenly grabbed a floating plank."

Pangzi wanted to discuss how to eat the two geese, but I feared he'd break my concentration. Before he could speak, I gave him a silent gesture and kept racking my brain for relevant memories.

After it clicked, I slapped my thigh, startling Da Jin Ya and Pangzi, and told them both, "Fuck it—we've been played by this ghost staircase. It's neither a ghost wall nor the chaotic fringe of the Netherworld Tomb. This damn thing is a mechanism in a Western Zhou ancient tomb, a bizarre trap designed using Yi numerology."

Back when I first joined the army, I had been studying the fragmented scrolls of my family's secret manual together with the Zhou Yi, which says that from the Great Ultimate come the Two Polarities, from the Two Polarities the Four Phenomena, from the Four Phenomena the Eight Trigrams. Hence the saying that people are divided into east and west positions derives from the Two Polarities; east four, west four from the Four Phenomena; and the trigrams Qian, Kan, Gen, Zhen, Xun, Li, Kun, Dui from the Eight Trigrams—all are the natural principles of the Great Dao of heaven and earth.

At that time I merely used these to while away the dull hours in camp. Because the Sixteen‑Character Yin‑Yang Feng Shui Secret Art contains the character 'avoid' (dùn), its scrolls are all about tomb mechanisms and traps. China has long revered Yi numerology, so tomb layouts never stray from it. I once studied it in detail, and now recalling it, this twenty‑three‑step stone staircase ought to be called the 'Soul‑Hanging Ladder' in academic terms. Its design principle has been lost for a thousand years; many mathematicians and scientists have obsessed over it. Some think it's a numeric hypnosis trick—deliberately leaving a mark or numeric clue to confuse passersby—while mathematicians see it as a complex numeric model: inside, one appears to see a single stairway, but in fact it leads everywhere; the crescent mark is a trap, actually drifting gradually across the steps. Together with the steps and stone walls, they may have been coated with a light‑absorbing paint made from an ancient secret recipe, making direction even harder to discern. Once one notices these cues, faulty logical judgment ensues—one thinks they're going straight, yet unknowingly veers onto a side path, loops around, and ends up utterly disoriented. The slight step‑drop may have been designed to create an illusion of height difference.

Just like the Eight Formation Diagram of the Three Kingdoms era, a few stones could trap someone with no way to heaven or earth. Back then only eight characters remained, yet it was already this intricate and marvelous—how much more so in the Western Zhou period, when the world still held sixteen characters, making it utterly unfathomable.

This 'Soul‑Hanging Ladder', which looks impossibly complex to modern eyes, was already known in the Western Zhou era—the age when divination and number‑casting were all the rage. The ruling class monopolized these secrets, rivaling today's top‑level state secrets.

Not every Soul‑Hanging Ladder has twenty‑three steps, but the number can be used to extrapolate how many steps are needed to exit. It's astonishing that this Western Zhou Netherworld Tomb still harbors such a deadly trap—if tomb robbers don't understand this principle, entering this stone staircase will surely doom them. Still, this hits right where I itch; today let's see what Old Hu can do.