Frankly, my astonishment wasn't derived from the diaojiaolou itself, but from the sheer oddity of finding such a structure underground—who built it, and why go to the extraordinary lengths of constructing a stilt house beneath the earth when Xidu was sparsely populated with ample surface land available?

"Shine your light further out, see what the surroundings look like?" I loathed my own nearsightedness; in this dim, obscure place, I felt nearly blind, seeing only a hazy gray expanse. No matter how tightly I squinted, everything appeared ethereal. Prolonged squinting, naturally, brought on an ache and throbbing pain in my eyes.

"My heavens..." Tan Ping'er gasped softly, sweeping her flashlight from near to far.

"What is it? What do you see?" I asked urgently.

"My heavens..." Tan Ping'er mumbled to herself, seemingly oblivious to my question, the beam of light drifting slowly across the gloomy space.

"My heavens is me, what on earth is it?" I said, shaking Tan Ping'er's arm.

Tan Ping'er snapped back as if waking from a deep dream, turning to me. "Do you realize? The area below resembles the bottom of a gigantic cooking pot. On the steep slopes surrounding us are rows upon rows of these diaojiaolou, all constructed from grayish-white stone, layered and artfully staggered..."

"You mean the one we're currently in is only one of them?" I interrupted.

"Yes. This diaojiaolou must be the topmost one on this slope," Tan Ping'er replied. "This collection of stilt houses on the four steep slopes rivals the scale of a small market town..."

"A market town?" I promptly closed my eyes to visualize it, then asked Tan Ping'er, "Take another look—are there streets connecting these clusters of buildings?"

"Yes. And quite a few, it seems, though they aren't laid out regularly."

"Can you make out how many streets there are?"

"That... I can't see clearly. The flashlight beam is limited, and some streets are blocked by the clusters of buildings. Why? Do you think the streets here are the other forty-five streets?" Tan Ping'er was remarkably sharp, vaguely guessing the reason behind my question.

"Exactly! I suspect this place, not the ruins above ground, is the true Tusi Imperial City—the surface remnants are just a tiny fraction of it..."

"Ah? You mean we've spent these last few days wandering around outside and never truly entered the Tusi Imperial City?"

"That... I can't confirm yet. Think about it: what people generally refer to as the Tusi Imperial City only means the ruins visible above ground. No one ever suspected such a massive portion existed underground. Even Elder Chen, a local expert, only knew the area covering those fifteen hundred mu outside. Through generations of word-of-mouth, the concept of the 'Tusi Imperial City' has gradually shrunk to encompass only what is visible externally."

"But, if this is the true Tusi Imperial City, why would it be built underground, and on such a grand scale?" Tan Ping'er's question echoed the very puzzle that baffled me. Based on her description, and cross-referencing the environment inhabited by the Tujia people across the dynasties, one could deduce that the wealth, resources, and manpower of just one or two Tusi Kings would have been insufficient to complete such an immense undertaking. Had this town existed long before, or did construction begin with the first Tusi King of Tangya?

Seeing me deep in thought with my head bowed, Tan Ping'er refrained from interrupting, quietly waiting for my answer.

I took a deep breath, struggling to organize my thoughts. People's impression of the Tusi Imperial City was confined to the dilapidated ruins exposed to daylight on the surface, and everyone knew its scale as "Three Streets, Eighteen Alleys, Thirty-Six Courtyards"—which was only the scale under Tusi King Tan Cheng's reign. Yet, the history of Tangya spanned eighteen Tusi Kings; why are the others unrecorded and forgotten, with no legends surrounding them? When Elder Chen introduced the Tusi Imperial City, he focused heavily only on Tan Cheng and Madam Mo, mentioning the other seventeen Tusi Kings very little. To this day, we don't even know who the Tusi King immediately preceding Tan Cheng was, let alone his ancestors or great-grandparents.

Now, knowing of this vast complex of diaojiaolou underground, nearing the scale of a small city, I had a nagging feeling that the other seventeen Tusi Kings must not have been as obscure in history as they are now, apart from Tan Cheng.

According to Elder Chen, the successive Tusi Kings always bowed submissively to the imperial court, paying tribute annually, which included priceless treasures and jade artifacts. This indirectly reflected the prosperity of the Tusi region at the time. If every generation of Tusi Kings focused their efforts on collectively building such a town, or city, the financial capacity shouldn't have been an issue. As for manpower, while Xidu was sparsely populated, there were numerous skilled artisans, and the Tujia people were diligent and honest. Moreover, since the Tusi system lasted over four hundred and eighty years, completing such a massive project within that timeframe was not insurmountable.

With manpower and finances accounted for, logistics remained. Judging by the diaojiaolou before us, whether it was the corridors, pillars, or walls, everything was constructed from smooth, grayish-white stone. The overall framework resembled a stone house. For the productive capacity of that era, building an entire structure of this size solely out of stone would indeed present a considerable challenge.

I shone my flashlight onto the railings and pillars, touching them as I examined them closely. After scrutinizing them for quite some time, I was astonished to discover that there were absolutely no seams between the railings and the pillars—they appeared utterly monolithic. Furthermore, the straight striations between the stone slabs were clearly chiseled marks. My heart was struck with awe: could this entire diaojiaolou have been carved from a single, continuous sheet of stone?

When I voiced this speculation to Tan Ping'er, her expression confirmed that she, too, was profoundly shaken.

After a long pause, Tan Ping'er pointed at a stone pillar. "Yingying, does this stone look similar in material to those two pairs of stone men and stone horses?"

I startled, focusing the flashlight beam. I realized the stone used for the diaojiaolou wasn't just similar to the material of the stone figures; it was the exact same stone. This meant that the stone Madam Mo commissioned for the carving of those two pairs of stone figures wasn't transported from elsewhere; it was sourced locally. However, this "local" source wasn't the surface, but the underground. This neatly explained the origin of the raw material for the two stone pairs. Perhaps Madam Mo chose this stone precisely because of its pale, lustrous white quality, making it superior material for sculpture, which led her to select it for the statues, purely for aesthetic reasons, rather than the mysterious and speculative meanings attached to them by outsiders.

The power of preconceived notions began to assert itself again. Because I suspected these diaojiaolou clusters on the four slopes were the real Tusi Imperial City, I started to accept it as such. However, Chairman Mao once said that without investigation, there is no right to speak. To determine if this massive architectural complex was truly the Tusi Imperial City, mere speculation while standing here was insufficient; further in-depth investigation and research, seeking more corroborating evidence, were necessary.

With this thought, I told Tan Ping'er, "Let's go down and take a look."

I noticed Hua'er hadn't uttered a sound; there had been no disturbances for a long time, leading me to think that even if there were 'unclean things' around, they seemed to be treating us politely, which reassured me greatly.

We walked along the corridor for about a hundred paces before it made a ninety-degree turn and continued forward. As I walked, I watched the walls for any sign of a doorway. After the corridor made another ninety-degree turn, I finally spotted two closed stone slab doors set into the wall. The doors were adorned with delicate bas-relief carvings and featured two tarnished bronze rings. Seeing that the doors weren't locked, I pushed hard, but they didn't budge an inch; they must have been bolted from the inside.

"Yingying, there’s a flight of stone stairs here!" Tan Ping'er suddenly called out to me.

I walked over to her and saw that, indeed, opposite the main door, a section of the railing jutted out, and the corridor branched off into a two-meter-long spur. At the end of this spur was a stone staircase set at a ninety-degree angle to the spur, sloping steeply downwards. The handrails on either side of the stairs were carved with equally ancient, intricate patterns.

We descended the stairs, navigating several turns, and unexpectedly arrived at a street built following the slope. The street was about three meters wide, constructed like a long stone ladder, seemingly leading directly to the "cooking pot bottom" Tan Ping'er had mentioned.

"Yingying, look, there’s another paifang over there!" Tan Ping'er pointed towards the 'cooking pot bottom.'

I squinted into the flashlight beam for a long time but couldn't spot any stone paifang—I regretted my lack of reading and subsequent onset of myopia once more. "Let's go!"

Along both sides of the stone-stepped street were numerous diaojiaolou, built clinging to the slope, layered one upon the other; the cantilevered corridor of an upper diaojiaolou served as the roof for the one below it. Due to my poor vision and the limited reach of the flashlight, I could only make out general outlines!

Both Tan Ping'er and I were eager to see the stone paifang at the 'cooking pot bottom,' ignoring the surrounding stilt houses. We descended the stone-stepped street until our calves were nearly cramping, finally reaching the paifang. Looking up, I vaguely discerned four strange, large characters inscribed on a plaque in the upper-middle section of the structure...