Have you ever stepped on a stair that trips you in a strange way?
Not a hard trip. You plant your foot firmly, yet the ground sinks slightly beneath you, soft as the palm of someone's hand gently holding you up. You glance back, and the step is flat and ordinary, nothing out of place. You mutter about uneven pavement and move on.
But let me tell you this— that faint give wasn't always meant to make you stumble.
My name is Chen Yuanshan. I am a mountain porter.
This mountain is Deer Horn Peak, hidden deep in the old forests of southwestern Hunan. It is no famous scenic spot. The stone path winds from the valley floor to the summit, spanning three thousand two hundred and seventy-eight steps. I counted them ten years ago, and the number has never changed.
These stairs were first built in the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, patched repeatedly with concrete over the years. Old weathered stones mix with rough new cement, like an old man's worn teeth capped with false ones. From afar, they look identical, but only under your feet can you tell which are solid, and which are hollow.
I have walked this mountain path for twenty years. Four trips, every single day.
My first run starts at five in the morning, carrying bottled water, instant noodles, and sausages to the supply station halfway up the mountain. The second trip departs at ten a.m., hauling soda, beer, and watermelons— the hardest load by far. A single melon weighs over ten pounds, two nearly thirty. The winding path jolts relentlessly, and the melons roll in the bamboo baskets. You must steady the sway with your waist, hour after hour.
The third trip at two p.m. delivers tourist packages. These days, visitors grow lazier by the year, having us carry even their trivial purchases uphill. The final descent comes at six in the evening, hauling trash down the mountain. Heavy black garbage bags hang from both ends of my carrying pole, filled with empty bottles, plastic bags, sweat-stained tissues, and occasionally, shoes discarded by careless travelers.
One trip earns three hundred and twenty yuan. Four trips total one thousand two hundred and eighty. Excluding rainy days when the mountain closes, I earn roughly ten thousand yuan each month. It is decent work for our remote town, yet it grinds my knees to the bone. At forty-two years old, my joints creak like crushed gravel. Every morning, I do not simply wake— I lift my stiff legs out of the covers, rubbing them warm before I dare stand.
My daughter attends junior high in the county town. My wife works as a cleaner there, renting a cramped thirty-square-meter room for eight hundred yuan monthly. I live in a simple shed at the mountain's foot, returning home only twice a month to deliver money and share one quiet dinner with my daughter before leaving at dawn.
My soles are thicker than my face, my carrying pole closer than my wife. This is the quiet fate of people like me.
None of this matters, though.
What I wish to tell you, is the secret of these stairs.
I know every single step on this mountain.
It is no exaggeration. When you take over ten thousand steps along the same winding road, every single day, for twenty years— how could you not know every stone beneath your feet?
The first few hundred steps hold no oddity. The 137th step has a chipped left corner, cracked open by a brutal winter freeze in 2008, when temperatures plummeted far below zero, turning stone as brittle as glass. A thin horizontal crack cuts straight through the 412th step, widening in summer heat and sealing shut in winter cold, as if the stone itself breathes.
The 703rd step is dangerously slippery on rainy days, shaded by an ancient pine tree that chokes the stone with thick, glossy moss. The 891st step tilts low on the left and high on the right, naturally pulling travelers toward the cliff edge. I tucked a small stone beneath its left side years ago, hidden from sight, silently correcting every careless footstep.
Higher up, the 1126th step stretches wide enough for two people to stand side by side, a natural resting spot where tourists pause to catch their breath and take photos. The 1583rd step marks a sharp bend leading into a narrow stone gorge, where the towering cliffs trap cool wind even in the hottest summer months.
From the 2047th step onward lies the notorious Brave Man's Slope. The stairs angle sharply upward, steepening from thirty degrees to nearly fifty. One hundred and thirty-seven unbroken steps stretch upward without a single flat resting spot. Eight out of ten tourists curse loudly by the time they reach this climb.
The 3278th step is the final stone at the summit.
This is where my master took his last breath.
My master was named Ma Desheng. He was sixty-three when I first followed him up the mountain, while I was only twenty-two. A lifelong mountain porter, he began carrying loads at seventeen, enduring over forty years of this harsh labor.
On my first climb, my knees buckled halfway up the trail. He slammed his carrying pole onto the stone path and spoke plainly:
"If you cannot walk further, sit and rest. The mountain never hurries. It waits for you."
I thought his words wise back then. Only later did I learn it was an old saying passed down among veteran porters. The mountain does not rush travelers, and travelers must not rush the mountain. You walk your path, and the mountain endures in silence. No debts, no demands.
My master taught me the roads, and he taught me to listen to the stairs.
I followed him for nearly three years. One afternoon, we reached a wide ledge overlooking rolling sea clouds beyond the opposite mountain peak. I stood lost in the view when my master suddenly asked what felt different about the step beneath my feet.
I stared down and shook my head. It looked ordinary— pale gray stone, worn smooth by decades of footsteps, unremarkable in every way.
"Stamp your foot," he said softly.
I obeyed. My sole landed, and the stone sank gently downward, soft as a padded cushion. Shocked, I stamped again. The stone dipped minutely, then rebounded. The movement was faint, no thicker than a grain of rice, yet impossible to miss.
I asked if the stone had come loose.
"It is not loose stone," he replied, kneeling to brush his palm lightly across the step's surface. "This is step 847. Old Zhou rests beneath it."
Old Zhou had been a porter even older than my master. Twenty years prior, a violent summer storm flooded the mountain trails. He carried two crates of beverages uphill, rushing to meet urgent orders from the newly opened supply station, desperate to earn extra money for his family.
The rain turned the stone steps deadly slick. He slipped on step 847, tumbling seventy meters down the cliff with his carrying pole and heavy cargo. By the time rescuers reached him, he was dying. His final mumbled words were quiet:
"Do not… waste the drinks."
The path was rebuilt afterward, layered with concrete and crushed rock. No one knew who mixed shattered glass from Old Zhou's broken beverage crates into the wet cement. Once it hardened, tiny shards glinted faintly in sunlight, scattered beneath the stone surface.
From that day on, step 847 turned soft.
"When you step here and feel it sink," my master explained, "it is not loose stone. It is Old Zhou, still holding you up. He fears others will fall as he did."
I knelt beside step 847 for a long time. The stone felt cold and ordinary beneath my hand, yet nothing would ever feel the same again. It was as if I had suddenly learned to understand a silent, forgotten language.
After that day, every step I took on the mountain held new weight.
Some stairs feel firm and crisp beneath your feet, solid as concrete. Others thud with a dull, muffled heaviness. A rare few— only a handful scattered across the mountain— carry faint warmth, as if someone had sat there moments before, their body heat lingering in the cold stone.
Over five years, I learned to recognize every haunted step.
Four trips each day, three thousand two hundred and seventy-eight steps per climb. I ignored the scenery, the sky, the noisy tourists. I studied only the stairs, memorizing every stone's color, texture, cracks, and worn hollows. I read them with my feet.
Slowly, I began to understand.
On the cliffside, step 1632 bears a dark palm-sized stain, permanent even through the driest droughts. After years of quiet asking, I learned its story. Over thirty years ago, a young traveling girl leaped from this cliff, broken by unseen sorrows. She wandered the remote mountain alone for days, sitting on this very step and crying through an entire sleepless night.
Rangers found her body at the cliff's base at dawn. Her tears seeped deep into the stone, staining it forever. Every time I step here, my soles ache without reason.
On the shaded northern slope rests step 2710. When every other stone freezes solid in bitter winter frost, this single step stays gently warm. One freezing night, eight degrees below zero, I removed my shoes and pressed my bare foot against it. No bitter cold greeted me— only soft, lingering warmth.
Decades prior, a six-year-old child went missing on this mountain. He was found frozen to death, curled small and fragile upon this step. His mother visited every week for years, even in the harshest winters, sitting silently on the cold stone. Sometimes she laid a small cotton coat over its surface. She sat here until old age stole her strength, until she could no longer climb the mountain.
The stone remembered a mother's quiet grief and endless warmth.
Further along lies step 3915. The moment your foot lands, a faint scent fills your nose— not rot or filth, but dried sweat, rust, and the faint, unmistakable warmth of human life.
This was the spot where two generations of porters passed down their legacy. Old Zhao handed his carrying pole to his son Xiao Zhao right here, before clutching his chest and collapsing from a sudden heart attack. Xiao Zhao followed in his father's footsteps, pausing every time he reached this step, whispering softly:
"Father, I have passed this path again."
No one knows if the stone holds the sweat of Old Zhao's final moments, or the decades of quiet longing his son left pressed into its surface. All that matters is the scent lingers, unbroken.
Thirty-seven such haunted steps line this mountain path.
I did not search for these stories out of boredom. The stairs found me first.
The second year after my master passed away, I climbed alone to step 847 at dawn. The stone sank far deeper than usual— once only a faint flutter, now a heavy, tangible give. Believing the stone had finally weakened, I knelt to inspect it, yet it remained perfectly intact.
I stepped down once more.
This time, I felt more than a sinking weight. A gentle, steady force pushed upward, soft and firm, like a hand cupping my sole, steadying my climb.
Every hair on my body stood on end. The mountain was empty, still dark before sunrise, no soul but me in sight. I swallowed hard and whispered to the stone:
"Old Zhou, it is me."
The moment the words left my mouth, the sinking weight vanished. The stone hardened once more, plain and unremarkable beside its neighbors.
From that day forward, I understood the truth hidden in these mountains.
There are no vengeful ghosts trapped in the stone. Only remnants. When a person departs, the last fragment of their warmth, sorrow, fear, or quiet kindness lingers pressed into the earth beneath their final steps. The stone remembers.
I call them the soft steps.
Tourists never notice. They walk quickly, lifting their feet the moment they land, blind to faint, fleeting oddities. Porters carry heavy burdens, every step slow, heavy, and deliberate. We feel everything.
Yet a handful of travelers sense them, too.
An elderly woman once paused on step 2710, lingering with her foot resting gently on the warm stone before kneeling to trace its surface. She said nothing, simply rose and walked away, glancing back one final time. Her gaze was not for the stone itself.
A small child, no older than four or five, froze on step 1632, clinging tightly to his mother's leg and whispering:
"Someone is crying here."
His mother heard nothing, scolding his wild imagination and dragging him away. I watched in silence from behind, never speaking a word.
For years, I have kept these secrets from tourists. Before my master's final days, he left one final warning:
"Chen Yuanshan, bury these stories deep within you. Never speak them aloud."
I promised I would.
I understand now he did not demand silence out of fear of rumors. He wished for these quiet spirits to rest undisturbed, to spare strangers unnecessary terror. He feared their fright. I do not fear them. Just like my master, I have long woven this mountain into my own flesh.
These stairs are not merely stone. They are the mountain's bones.
My master Ma Desheng took me as his apprentice at sixty-three. He once refused to teach anyone, claiming this brutal life was a curse to pass down. Yet when factory layoffs left me desperate, my wife newly pregnant with no work to be found in the county, I begged three times before he relented.
Thin and weathered, barely over one hundred pounds, he carried heavy loads with steadier steps than men half his age. He held one quiet habit: stopping mid-climb to tap certain steps with the end of his carrying pole, murmuring soft words beneath his breath.
At first, I thought he chanted meaningless prayers. Drawing close, I heard his quiet greetings:
"Old Zhang, the weather is fine today."
"Sister Liu, your son has passed his exams. I am happy for you."
He spoke to the stairs.
I once thought the endless labor had addled his mind. With time, I realized every step he greeted was one of the thirty-seven soft stairs I would later discover. He knew their names, their stories, the quiet souls resting beneath each stone.
My master passed away on Mid-Autumn Festival, the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month.
I remember that day clearly. The supply station owner gifted me two mooncakes, sweet with lotus seed paste and egg yolk. I planned to bring them home for my daughter, yet she refused their sweetness, so I tucked them into my pocket and carried them uphill.
My master was unusually lively that morning, climbing ahead with quick, steady steps despite his years. I called for him to slow down, to spare his aging knees.
He turned and smiled, two front teeth missing. That gentle, light smile still lingers in my mind— unburdened by a lifetime of hardship, calm as someone walking toward a long-awaited reunion.
We reached the summit and set down our loads. My master stood upon step 3278, gazing out over the endless sea clouds. The rising sun dyed the mist soft orange in the early festival light. He stared for a long moment, then handed his carrying pole to me.
"Chen Yuanshan, your memory is sharper than mine," he said. "These stairs… you will speak for them now."
I nodded and promised I would.
He patted my shoulder firmly, a weighted press that also lifted gently upward. Without another word, he turned and began his slow descent.
I watched from the summit. He walked one careful step at a time, his shoulders still curved from decades of carrying burdens, even without his pole. He paused briefly on step 3265, glancing back at me one last time, before continuing downward.
When he reached step 3278 once more, he sat down.
I moved to rush toward him, certain he needed rest. He waved his hand sharply, a quiet warning.
Do not come closer.
He leaned against the cliff wall, closed his eyes, and never opened them again.
Doctors ruled his death a sudden heart attack, quick and painless. But I knew the truth. He had clung to life for one final month, enduring his failing body to ensure I could stand alone, to hand this mountain and its silent guardians into my care.
He chose Mid-Autumn Festival for his final departure— the night the moon hangs fullest and brightest, lighting the mountain path for wandering souls.
From that day on, every time I step upon the final summit step 3278, a faint gentle weight lingers beneath my feet. No longer a sinking pull, but a soft upward lift, lightening my steps.
It is not a trip.
It is my master, whispering quietly:
"Walk on. There is still time."
Three thousand two hundred and seventy-eight steps, each worn clean and smooth, polished by endless footsteps. Beneath every stone lie buried stories, layer upon layer of forgotten names.
Porters, tourists, townsfolk, strangers. Those who died of old age, sickness, falls, bitter cold. Those who chose to end their suffering, and those who clung to life until their final breath.
Their physical forms are long gone, their names erased from memory. Yet their final warmth, their last breath, their quiet sorrows and small joys remain sealed within these stones. Like a book left open to a marked page, folded and preserved forever. That folded corner— that is them.
How heavy is this mountain path?
Each stone weighs dozens of pounds, three thousand two hundred and seventy-eight in total. What weight lies hidden beneath them all?
I have never shared this truth with anyone. One harsh winter, the mountain closed for snow, trapping me overnight in a small halfway cabin. Restless in the midnight quiet, I stepped outside with a flashlight. Bright silver moonlight washed over the stairs, turning the long winding path pale white, stretching from summit to valley like a road carved from bone.
I walked the full path alone. Every step held a different feeling: soft, hard, warm, cold.
Standing beneath the moon, tears fell quietly down my cheeks.
Not from fear. Not from sorrow.
I felt thousands of lingering souls beneath my feet, propping me up with the last fragments of their lives, carrying me upward with every climb. With every step I take, I walk upon their quiet shoulders.
I whispered to the empty mountain night:
"I understand now."
And from deep beneath the stone stairs, a soft reply drifted upward.
A quiet sigh. And a gentle, relieved smile.
When my daughter turned twelve, I brought her to climb this mountain during summer vacation. She grew exhausted halfway, begging to turn back, so I carried her on my back for a stretch. Resting against my shoulders, she asked a quiet question:
"Father, why do you walk this mountain every single day?"
I thought for a long time before answering.
"Because I know every stone here."
She laughed, confused.
"All stones look the same. How can you tell them apart?"
"They are not the same," I told her. "Every step has a name."
She thought I was joking. I did not explain further. She is still too young. When she grows older, if she wishes to listen, I will tell her every name, every story. But first, she must learn to hear them— not with her ears, but with the soles of her feet.
Tourists sometimes ask why certain steps feel empty and strange beneath their feet.
I tell them plainly:
"The spirits of these stairs are greeting you."
They laugh it off, dismissing my words as old superstition or idle humor. I never argue, never explain. Those who laugh continue their climb, blind and unfeeling, leaving no trace upon the stone. Occasionally, a traveler falls silent at my words, meeting my gaze with quiet understanding.
They felt it too.
I never speak of it.
You must step upon them yourself, to truly know.
The sun has risen now. Time for my first trip.
Today's load: four crates of water, two cases of instant noodles, a sack of power banks and selfie sticks. Tourist trinkets grow stranger with every passing year. My carrying pole creaks upon my shoulders, a slow old string instrument humming in the mountain wind.
I take my first step.
The stairs hold me steady. Step one. Two. Three.
I pause briefly on step 847. A faint soft sink beneath my sole.
"Old Zhou, the weather is fine today."
I climb onward.
Step 1632: a dull ache in my soles.
Step 2710: gentle, lingering warmth.
Step 3915: the faint ghost of old sweat and memory.
Step 3278— the final step: my feet lighten, as if a hand taps my shoulder, guiding me forward.
I set down my load at the summit. Wind whips fiercely across Deer Horn Peak, fluttering my thin coat. Sea clouds roll endlessly across the valley, the rising sun wrapping my face in gentle warmth.
I glance down at step 3278 beneath my feet. Plain gray stone, worn smooth by time, chipped at the edges. Indistinct from every other step on the mountain.
Yet it is the heaviest step of all.
"Master, I have finished today's climb."
The stone does not answer. But I know he heard me. A faint cool breath drifts up from the stone cracks, brushing softly against my ankles.
Time to descend.
Turning, I spot a tourist crouching near step 847, taking photos. He plants his foot firmly upon the soft stone, adjusting his camera. He pauses, frowning down at his sole, lifting his foot to inspect the smooth step beneath him.
I know exactly what he felt.
He notices my gaze, smiling awkwardly.
"Old porter… this step feels strangely soft, doesn't it?"
I meet his eyes and reply calmly.
"Your shoe soles are too thin today."
He nods in sudden understanding, turning to continue his climb.
I lift my empty carrying pole and begin my descent. As we pass, he steps upon step 847 once more.
Beneath his foot, the stone holds him up gently.
This time, he does not stop to question it.
He walks on. Just like everyone else.
Everyone always walks on.