The Forty-First Mountain

At the foot of Kunlun Mountain lies an old, level tunnel, dug in 1958 and marked “straight” on the blueprints.

Mu Cheng went there to survey it. The coordinates of the two entrances showed a straight-line distance of 4,213 meters. But walking through the tunnel, station by station, came to 5,009 meters.

A difference of 796.

He measured it again four times. On the fourth, he saw two words scratched into the tunnel wall with a nail: Don't count.

Later, he found the sealed report from 1958. The same numbers, the same tunnel, a list of seven people. The fourth name was Mu Cheng.

That year, he had not yet been born.

Only later did he learn that in the Classic of Mountains and Seas: Book of the Southern Mountains, the three mountain ranges contained forty-one mountains altogether, but the final count listed only forty. One mountain, and three hundred li, were missing.

The book itself admits that it once lost a mountain.

And that mountain is now right beneath his feet.