Echo Pavilion

Shen Hui took Lu Huan out of the village and followed the main road for a while.

When the little girl grew sleepy, they found a sheltered hillside and made do with resting there for the night.

Early the next morning, they took out wild fruit and dry rations, ate, and continued on their journey.

Another two days passed, and signs of human habitation grew increasingly scarce.

The main road became narrower and narrower until it gradually dwindled into a wild path overgrown with weeds.

The scenery by the road changed from low rolling hills to an unbroken range of mountains. The peaks were steep, the forests lush, and clouds and mist coiled around the mountainsides, never dispersing all day long.

By the afternoon of the third day, the two crossed a ridge, and the view before them suddenly opened up.

Amid the encircling mountains ahead lay a long, narrow valley.

Two stone cliffs stood facing each other at the valley entrance, as though carved by blade and axe.

Their faces were densely covered in holes of every size. The large ones were as wide as jars, the small ones no bigger than fists, some deep, some shallow, with no telling where they led.

Mountain winds swept through the valley and poured into those openings, producing wave after wave of mournful whistling.

At times it was low as a bull's bellow, at times shrill as a crane's cry, at times lingering as a long flute.

Like weeping and pleading, rising and falling one after another, it was as if a jade zither had been set between heaven and earth, and the wind was the hand plucking its strings.

"This place is really strange."

Lu Huan stood at the mouth of the valley, craning her head up at those holes as