He didn’t know how to describe the interconnected vines before him: “All the work of the Mountain Ghosts?”
Meng Jinsong shook his head: “That I don’t know. It has never been recorded in the Mountain Ghosts’ chronicles.”
“Then… do the Mountain Ghosts maintain and take care of it regularly?”
Meng Jinsong continued to shake his head.
No one comes to maintain it. In the Mountain Ghosts’ perception, the location of the Mountain Gallbladder is almost a “forbidden zone,” similar to “unexplored mountains.” Moreover, the mountain terrain is treacherous, the forests deep, the paths dangerous. Just reaching this cliff was already extremely difficult. Even mountain dwellers who had lived in Xiangxi for a long time rarely came to explore, let alone provide “maintenance and care.”
Perhaps thousands of years ago, the first ancestral grandmother, after hiding the Mountain Gallbladder, also arranged this exquisite barrier that deceived all living beings with astonishing skill?
Meng Jinsong walked a few steps forward, almost touching the cliff edge, and beckoned to Shen Gun: “Come here and look.”
The altitude of this mountain was at least eight hundred, if not a thousand meters. Even in fair weather, there was inevitably some wind. That position truly made one tremble with fear and dizziness. Even someone like Shen Gun, who had experienced many major challenges, couldn’t help but feel terrified.
He shuffled over.
Meng Jinsong pointed downward: “Look carefully. It might be a bit dark. Try from different angles, and you should be able to see the mountain peak.”
Mountain peak? There’s a mountain peak inside the cave?
Shen Gun almost forgot his fear, rubbing his eyes several times as if rubbing could increase clarity. He frequently shifted his position, and when he finally saw clearly, he blurted out: “Peak forest?”
Meng Jinsong nodded, raising his hand to indicate a position: “If you’ve been to Wulingyuan, you should have seen the most famous attraction there, the sandstone peak forest. This is similar. Below was originally a low-lying mountain basin with a small peak forest, but later, I don’t know how many tens of thousands of years ago, the ground collapsed with a boom…”
His palm fell sharply downward: “The entire peak forest went down, sank.”
After a pause, he sighed: “It’s a pity, because this peak forest had unique shapes. From certain angles, it looked like a beautiful woman’s head on a slender neck.”
Shen Gun didn’t quite understand. He was still immersed in the shock of “sank”: this tiankeng was deeper than the Xiaozhai Tiankeng. Going down from the cliff, a thousand meters would not be enough.
Meng Jinsong pointed again at that huge green cover: “The magnetic field here is problematic; drones can’t be released. Otherwise, we could do an aerial photograph to give you an intuitive concept: it is said that this green vine cover is not chaotic but has been guided into a certain shape. Some places are dense, some sparse. If you stand at the bottom looking up, it’s like seeing a giant eye floating in the sky.”
This scene was too magical. Shen Gun felt a chill all over his body.
Meng Jinsong’s tone remained unhurried: “The vines forming the pupil part of this eye are quite interesting, different from elsewhere. They seem naturally photophobic. When the sun comes out, they curl up and retreat to their surroundings, as if opening their eyes, creating a gap to send sunlight down. You know, it’s light-deficient down there. And at night, they extend and stretch out again, covering the pupil. Isn’t it like a person opening their eyes during the day and closing them at night? And when this eye closes, due to the day-night temperature difference, dew mixes with the sap from old vines and drips down, very viscously. We have a vivid metaphor for it, called ‘pupil oil drip.'”
Shen Gun didn’t know how to respond. After stammering for a while, he swallowed his words.
He imagined the scene of vines curling and retreating to the surroundings during the day: that ray of sunlight let in seemed like a profound gaze from heaven.
“The sunlight shining in at that angle can only cover one peak, and that peak happens to be the one hiding the Mountain Gallbladder. So, only the flowers on that peak can bloom. On other peaks, due to the year-round lack of light, forget about flowers—even green plants are withered. We have a verse, ‘Beautiful woman’s head, hundred flowers shy,’ describing exactly this scene.”
Meng Jinsong seemed to be talking to himself: “This place is too remote, almost no one can find it. Even if found, they can’t go down. The ropes brought by herb gatherers are usually only a few dozen meters long. Besides, there are packs of flying foxes down there.”
“About eighty years ago, one of the Mountain Ghost leaders, Granny Duan Wenxi, climbed down. It is said that the rotting branches and leaves at the bottom were one to two meters thick. And because the sunlight, humidity, depth, and temperature were completely different from the surface, the environment below formed its own self-contained and unique ecosystem. Granny Duan’s diary mentioned encountering white rats weighing over twenty jin down there…”
This, Shen Gun did know: species inside tiankengs, due to the enclosed environment, face simple yet intense survival competition. They strive to evolve to adapt to the environment. Take the common brown bamboo in the south, for example. Generally only about two meters tall, but in tiankengs, to compete for that bit of sunlight that penetrates down, they can only grow desperately, often reaching seven to eight meters high, because if you don’t grow desperately, you only have one path: death.
Living isn’t easy, not just for humans, but for plants too.
Meng Jinsong stopped there. He moved closer to Shen Gun and lowered his voice: “Cutting open the mountain to extract the Mountain Gallbladder is done here, Mr. Shen. This isn’t setting up a stage for a performance for people to see. Every step is life-threatening. I’ve shown you the place. If you dare to go down, then go down. I will offer kind advice, but I will not stop you.”