Chapter 2The Descent

There's a saying where I'm from—man-made structures are things that violate nature.

Spirits should have the sky as their blanket and the earth as their carpet. Only things living underground would hide in places untouched by the sun and moon to survive.

This is why many old houses in the countryside are fine as long as people live in them, no matter how many years pass. But once the owner leaves, they collapse within a year or two.

Because without human vitality ("Qi") supporting it from within, heaven and earth destroy this unnatural enclosed space to prevent underground things from thinking it's their territory and crawling out to cause trouble.

Later, many skyscrapers were built in cities, using elevators to go up and down. But for safety, they were also equipped with stairwells.

This created a problem.

People use elevators; stairwells are almost unused, becoming a space without human vitality.

But the stairwell relies on the skyscraper, and the skyscraper has human vitality, so it holds up.

So, stairwells in high-rise buildings are easily... unclean.

Someone mistakenly entered such a stairwell. Once trapped, there was no other way out but to go down.