adminAfter five hours of trekking, we finally crossed Snake Head Mountain the next afternoon and arrived at the first small village at the foot of the mountain. We expressed our heartfelt thanks to the secretary who guided us and then parted ways at the village entrance. Lao Yang had been here before and led me to find the family where he stayed during his last visit.
This mountain village is built against steep mountainsides, interspersed with stone houses that have a history of over a hundred years, reflecting the Ming and Qing architectural styles. The village roads are entirely made of bluestone slabs, and the foundations of the houses at the top of the hill are at least a hundred meters higher than those at the bottom. A mountain stream flows through the ditches beside the road, and everywhere is covered with green moss. As I admired the scenery, I noticed that many of the walls of the houses were mixed with grave bricks from different eras, hinting at the ancient practice of digging graves for bricks.
We bought some dry food from the family where Lao Yang had stayed last time. After washing up with stream water at their home, we hung our clothes out to dry and sat by the stream in our shorts, discussing what to do next. It was impossible and unnecessary to catch up with the five people ahead; after all, we had successfully crossed the mountain. Now, we had to rely on the so-called marks that Lao Yang had made to find the place he visited three years ago.
I asked him what kind of marks he had made that gave him such confidence in finding it again. Lao Yang told me that the burial pit he had visited last time was located through a very peculiar geographical feature called “Jiazi Ditch.” Everyone in the area knew about that place, and once we passed that terrain, it wouldn’t be far from the location he mentioned. However, Jiazi Ditch was over forty kilometers away from this village, almost deep within the primeval forest.
Due to our painful experience of entering the mountains without a guide, we consulted the secretary to find a guide for the more challenging journey ahead. The secretary sent his child to help us find an old hunter. We wandered around the village with the little boy and finally arrived in front of a two-story tiled house. The child pointed at an old man with a white beard basking in the sun and said, “That’s him, Old Liu.”
Old Liu was an outsider who had fled conscription in his youth and settled here. He had become an old hunter in the area. At over eighty years old, he was still in good health. Almost all the research teams, archaeological teams, and tomb raiders venturing into the old forest initially sought his guidance. He enjoyed this work, as it paid quickly and gave him a high status. When we explained our intentions, he wasn’t surprised but shook his head and said, “No, you can’t go to Jiazi Ditch at this time.”
I was puzzled and asked him, “Why can’t we enter the mountains? It’s autumn, and the weather is perfect for hunting. If we can’t go now, when can we?”
He had his son serve me some tea and said, “At this time of year, the mountains are particularly eerie, and there are a lot of ghostly disturbances. I’m over eighty and wouldn’t lie to you; that place in Jiazi Ditch is actually a path for the ghostly soldiers. If you encounter them, you might get caught up in their affairs and have your soul taken—it’s very sinister.”
Having never been to that place, I didn’t know what the geographical environment was like and found it somewhat amusing. However, the older generation has their own worldview, and we didn’t want to force the issue. After futilely pleading for a way to persuade him, we had no choice but to ask about the route into the mountains.
The old man told us that if we enter the Qin Chuan area from this village and walk west for seven days, we will reach a mountain called Tianmen Mountain. On both sides, there are steep cliffs that cannot be climbed, but there is a peculiar crack in the mountain that allows only two people to pass side by side, which is what we commonly refer to as “a line of sky,” and what the old man referred to as “Jiazi Gorge.” It is said that during the late Northern and Southern Dynasties, some locals witnessed a Northern Wei army passing through a plank road into Qin Chuan. This army was peculiar; not a single person spoke during their march as they entered the mountain. When the army passed through this mountain crevice, there was suddenly a great earthquake, and the enormous crack abruptly closed, trapping the troops inside the mountain, from which they never emerged again.
During the Qing Dynasty, several geomancers came here to find a burial site for a wealthy man. After spending more than ten days in the mountains, they emerged almost unrecognizable and claimed that there was a Yellow Spring Waterfall inside Tianmen Mountain that connected to the underworld. They almost entered but could not find their way back.
At first, the locals didn’t believe it, but later many people claimed to have heard the sounds of galloping warhorses coming from the gorge. These stories spread and became more exaggerated. Some even connected the dots, saying that the ghostly soldiers of the underworld entered and exited the realm of the living through the Yellow Spring Waterfall, and that the Northern Wei army from the late Northern and Southern Dynasties had returned to the underworld as ghost soldiers.
The old man said that we could walk part of the way to Tianmen Mountain, but beyond that, it was the limit of what humans could reach. No one knew what lay in the forests beyond, and throughout history, anyone who entered, whether it was the Qing Dynasty’s Manchu army or the defeated troops of the Kuomintang, never returned. He was too old to accompany me, and no one else in the village had been there. If we really wanted to go, he could point us in the right direction. As long as we followed his instructions, we would definitely arrive in seven or eight days, but he would take no responsibility for what happened once we entered.
Grandfather’s notes mentioned that when searching for tombs, one should pay special attention to places with detailed folk legends, so I listened carefully to the old man’s words and felt a sense of assurance that the place we intended to go was indeed nearby.
After thanking the old man, we intended to leave, but he was probably not used to having guests and was very enthusiastic, insisting that we stay for a meal. We insisted on leaving, and he had no choice but to give us some pickled meat dishes. I initially thought it would be a hassle and didn’t want any, but when I saw there was braised meat inside, and recalling that I had only been eating dry rations for the past few days, my stomach betrayed me, and I accepted it.
After resting for a day, we set off again, this time with a clear goal. Following the direction of the compass, we gritted our teeth, crossed mountains and rivers, and plunged into the most mysterious and vast primitive jungle in the heart of China.
We said nothing along the way, and I didn’t want to record the hardships in writing. I only knew that after seven days, when Lao Yang shouted that he saw the peak of Tianmen Mountain emerging above the treetops, we stopped to regroup and realized we had become unrecognizable, like wild men.
Lao Yang looked around and told me, “This is it! Through this Jiazi Gorge, over there is a small canyon. The burial pit they discovered is inside that canyon.”
I climbed up a huge old fir tree and picked up a broken binocular that could only be used from one side. The shape of Tianmen Mountain was majestic and formidable, with strange pine trees on its peaks, creating a truly unique scenery. However, the mountain did not really appear to resemble a gate; I wondered how it got its name. From my perspective, the narrow slit in the middle looked like just a thin black line.
We climbed up a low ridge to get closer to Tianmen Mountain, moving forward along the slope while checking the terrain ahead. Near noon, we reached the foot of Tianmen Mountain, where a chaotic rocky ridge at the start of Jiazigo lay before us.
The Qinling Mountains are indeed a fascinating place, especially the areas that have not been developed for tourism, featuring many wondrous sights. Looking directly up at the cliffs of Tianmen Mountain, one would be struck by the extreme grandeur of the landscape. To describe it in simpler terms, it resembled a massive rock formation that had been sliced by a sharp sword, creating a narrow crack in the middle. The bottom of this crack is Jiazigo. Because the rock formations are so high, the view of the sky here is different from that of lower mountains; when you look up, you can only see a very thin beam of light. At the distant zenith of the sky, it truly looks as if the entire sky has been condensed into a single line. Unless experienced firsthand, one cannot fully appreciate its magnificence.
Inside Jiazigo, the base was a jumble of rocks, with clear springs occasionally cascading down from both sides. The stones were covered in green moss, making it quite difficult to traverse. However, it was not as narrow as it appeared from a distance, and the light was good. Since the initial slope was not very high, the view of the sky was not just a thin line but a “single thread of sky.”
Old Yang recalled that it would take at least an afternoon to pass through this Jiazigo, and the wind inside was quite strong, making the ground damp and fire-making very inconvenient. So we decided to stop not far from the entrance, light a campfire, and start having lunch. We added the pickled vegetables that the old man had given us to the leftover canned food and heated it over the fire, eating it like hot pot. The mountain people tend to cook with strong flavors, so the taste wasn’t great, but compared to our dry rations, it was infinitely better. After saving our food for the past few days, we could finally indulge ourselves now that we were close to our destination. Old Yang and I devoured the food, quickly finishing off the pickled meat.
I didn’t feel full and thought about the pickled mountain chicken stir-fried with bamboo shoots, so I decided to eat it all. However, when I reached back to grab the bag that held the food, I found it was missing.
I searched around but couldn’t find it, feeling puzzled. I asked Old Yang, and he was cursing, “Damn it, who spat the bones into my collar!”
I realized something was off; when I was eating earlier, I had almost swallowed all the bones. There was no way I would waste them by throwing them away.
Just as I was wondering about it, another bone fell from the cliff above. Looking up, I saw a dozen golden-haired monkeys that had somehow climbed onto the rock wall above us. One of them was holding the bag that contained my stir-fried mountain chicken, devouring the chicken inside. From the way it was eating, it seemed like it had never tasted anything so delicious, almost swallowing the bag along with the food.
Soon, it finished everything and climbed down, its eyes fixed on our backpack.
I thought to myself, this is not good; these monkeys might think that our bag is full of food and want to snatch it away, which would be troublesome. Just as I was thinking this, one of the monkeys let out a sharp scream, and in an instant, all the monkeys began to close in on us.
