The depths of the Gallery actually led out of the Gallery, to the outer wall of the Art Building.
But Kuai Hongji did not take that route. Instead, he plunged into a region darker than darkness.
There, the darkness suppressed even the light of the Old Kerosene Lamp to an area no larger than an outstretched hand. Pitch-black gloom and a spectral chill seemed to be its eternal palette. Anyone who entered would become endlessly lost.
But Kuai Hongji would not.
He seemed to feel out something in the darkness, then passed through some sort of barrier as though passing through a vast mass of cotton.
When his foot landed, enormous bluestone bricks lay beneath it. Around him was an enclosed, cylindrical space that felt oppressive and suffocating-a stairwell whose stairs formed a Fibonacci Sequence.
This was the Stairwell beneath the Clock Tower.
Kuai Hongji had taken a "shortcut" here.
He lowered his head slightly. Fog drifted through the dark abyss beneath the Fibonacci Sequence spiral, its bottom nowhere in sight.
He began slowly descending the steps.
On and on he walked...
The steps seemed, seemed endless.
So Kuai Hongji stopped and leaped off them.
At that instant, the twisted Fibonacci Sequence steps seemed to come alive, unfolding into a twisting ribbon. Its ends joined, almost forming a Möbius strip.
"You really are shutting yourself away..." Kuai Hongji shook his head helplessly, picked out a spot, and plunged into it.
The next moment, the Möbius strip became a Fibonacci Sequence spiral again, while Kuai Hongji passed through the Stairwell's spiral into a deeper Layer of the Deep Well.
There was no wind at all within the Deep Well, yet its water roared as though filled with invisible winds and waves.
Gray Fog still seeped from the cracks in the