I.

Irley Yang sighed softly, "If the sound truly lay in the zither itself, why would it not play when locked inside its case? And if the melody resided solely in one's fingers, then surely you could hear music from your own digits alone." He shook his head. "Without knowing proper technique, possessing both instrument and hands still leaves one blind to its secrets."

Fatso sighed too, "Guess old Su Dongpo was quite the codebreaker himself. But here we are with zither and fingers in hand—still can't conjure a tune from these jade rings." He gestured at the inert objects, "Seems these ornaments won't be fetching their weight in gold anytime soon."

II.

"If this does align with the ancient lost hexagrams," I mused aloud, "my family's incomplete manuscript of the *Sixteen Character Yin-Yang Fengshui Secrets* could have explained the arrangement..." My voice trailed off into silence.

Fatso passed around beer and cold rations from his recent trip to the dining car. Irley Yang spoke through mouthfuls, "Old Hu, I've been thinking about how King Xian obtained that Jewel of Foul Dust. Two possibilities: either snatched during Qin's collapse in Central China... or hidden deep within Tibetan lands. The *Leep* texts suggest those early rituals also originated there."

III.

The alcohol had sharpened my mind rather than dulled it. "I'm leaning toward the latter," I said, gesturing at the jade rings again. King Xian's obsession with his lakeside vision was clear—those copper effigies in Tian Gong Temple mimicked foreign attire he'd never seen. The secret chamber's murals detailed that city where a giant eyeball was worshipped... yet how did this connect to Xinjiang's cursed pit?

IV.

"The key must lie somewhere in those murals," I muttered, "but we have no leads at all." My hands trembled slightly as I spoke of my past in Kunlun Mountain—memories I'd buried deep under years of numbness. The pain cut like ice picks through my chest when recalling that winter of 1970...

V.

I saw the blood trickling down Sister Luoning's face before we were rescued by patrol troops. Fever and hallucinations followed, but it was Luoning who worsened fastest. By day three she'd been transferred elsewhere—never to cross paths with us again.

VI.

On day six of our hospital stay, Comrade Xu from the Propaganda Team burst in. "You two are the first heroes of Kunlun!" he declared, brandishing his camera. I barely registered the accolades through my fevered haze. Our entire squad had been wiped out except for us two—sleep brought back their ghostly faces each night.

VII.

When Xu mentioned heading to Budunquan Station, something in me snapped awake. That was our company's staging area! "Let me go with you!" I pleaded. Through Xu's intervention, we secured spots on a supply truck bound for the mountain pass—where snow began falling as we ascended.

VIII.

Driving those Qinghai-Tibet highways is pure madness. The canvas tarp flapped like a doomed soul in the wind. Our breaths formed clouds of frost that froze to our clothes. Water bottles turned to ice sculptures by the time we reached Budunquan's heating station.

IX.

Comrade Xu, though wiry for his southern build, was full of revolutionary fire. "Let me get this shot!" he insisted after thawing out. I awkwardly posed with a Mao book raised like an offering before the camera flashed in my eyes. The heat of the propaganda machine felt colder than the mountain winds.

X.

Suddenly our company's battle-hardened platoon leader burst in, his uniform dusted white from the storm. He clapped us each twice on the chest—once for survival, once to silence our grief over the fallen. "Eat quickly!" he barked, then rushed out again with news of another emergency.

XI.

By now most of Budunquan's garrison had been redeployed into search parties. Through Chen Xing I learned two herders had discovered something... unnatural in the abandoned Phoenix Temple. Their yak vanished without a trace within minutes—reduced to desiccated meat by some green-scaled hand emerging from the eternal spring behind the temple.

XII.

The military was already scrambling. With our garrison depleted, they'd formed an impromptu squad of just eight: myself and Da Gezi, Xu the propagandist, a volunteer medic... plus one geologist still recovering from altitude sickness. We were to investigate this "ghost" ourselves.

XIII.

As we stepped into the blizzard, an elderly Lama emerged from his temple. He gasped when told of our destination—the Phoenix Temple was no ordinary ruin but a site of ancient curses, where King Gesar had sealed away demonic forces millennia ago in Qingyuan era.