"Wu Zhong! Wu Zhong! We're going to die!"
Some time ago, Wu Zhong found himself trapped on a giant tree. The tree towered into the clouds. He clung desperately to a branch and saw many others hanging from the tree as well—apparently his friends. Everyone gripped the limbs with all their strength. They had been trapped for many days. When hungry they ate apples; when thirsty they could only wait for rain to catch a sip. But this couldn't go on. Now someone had grown exhausted and fallen, smashed to pulp on the ground.
"Ahhh! Someone fell! At this rate we'll all die."
"Hurry, think of something—if only we had a ladder."
"Xiao Wu, I remember your family has a big ladder. Go home and get it!"
Everyone stared at Wu Zhong in panicked expectation. He hesitated for a moment. "Right, my house does have a very tall ladder, but it's pretty far. Round trip would take at least three days and three nights. Can you all hold on that long?"
The people on the tree spoke with difficulty: "Even if we can't hold on, we still must try, Xiao Wu. Please, we're begging you!"
"Yes, go get it quickly. You have to bring the ladder back!"
"Our lives are in your hands!"
Feeling the weight of their trust, Wu Zhong nodded and set off across mountains and rivers, running home as fast as he could. After struggling to reach home, he frantically searched everywhere. But there wasn't an extra-long ladder in his house. He turned the toilet, kitchen, living room, and bedroom upside down, even rummaging under the sofa and inside the wardrobe.
Nothing! No ladder! Where was the ladder? He searched and searched for so long that the sky went pale at dawn. He collapsed to the floor and bawled, "It's over! We're doomed!"
Suddenly, he heard a neighbor shout from next door: "I have a ladder! I have a ladder!" Wu Zhong perked up—of course, borrow from the neighbor. He pounded on the neighbor's door wildly. "Buddy, do you really have a ladder? I really need it. Otherwise I'll fall to my death, and my buddies will too!"
Bang bang bang! The knocking had a rhythmic force that seemed like it could break the world. Everything around him blurred. Outside the stairwell he vaguely glimpsed another scene... a sheer curtain with sunlight slipping through... Then everything snapped back into solid focus.
The neighbor's door opened and a bull-headed man stepped out carrying a ladder. His voice was baby-soft: "Wu, what's got you in such a hurry?"
Wu Zhong stared at the bull-headed figure, stunned. Though called a bull-headed man, his face looked more dragonlike with horns; his body was robust as an ox with hooved limbs—strictly speaking, a bipedal creature with a dragon face and bull horns. Wu Zhong stammered, "Brother Niu, I... we're trapped on a giant tree... please lend me your ladder."
After taking the ladder, he was about to rush back up the tree when the bull-headed man stopped him. "The Jianmu is far from here. If you run back, it will take too long. Can everyone hold on?"
Wu Zhong sobbed, "Yes, it's too far. We won't make it. We'll fall to our deaths."
The bull-headed man patted his chest: "Don't panic. Shen Ji Meng anticipated such a calamity and prepared a Door of Anywhere."
"Shen Ji Meng? Door of Anywhere?" Wu Zhong asked incredulously.
The bull-headed man waved him over. "Come with me."
Following the bull-headed man's guidance, ladder on his shoulder, Wu Zhong twisted and turned through passages until the view opened up onto a vast mountaintop platform. A multitude of demons and monsters gathered there—some with human heads and snake bodies, some with three heads and six arms, some with beast faces and bird bodies... Massive beasts squatted among riven mountain ranges, great serpents churned monumental rivers, divine birds ripped through the clouds scattering radiant light. The terrain felt as if it existed within the starry firmament, enormous celestial bodies glittering around the sky.
Wu Zhong could even make out, on the horizon where heaven met earth, the vague silhouettes of colossal godlike star-figures standing beyond the sky, gazing down upon the world with eerie, majestic presences. All the gods and demons present fixed their eyes on Wu Zhong—calm, expectant, reverent. Wu Zhong felt overwhelmed by their attention. Why would heavens and demons honor him like this? The feeling was jarring and the whole world trembled.
"Didn't you say there was a Door of Anywhere? Where is it? I'm trapped up on a giant tree and about to fall. I need to get the ladder back!" he asked.
The gods and demons sensed the disturbance but dared not speak. Their gazes shifted toward a dragon-headed humanoid standing at the center of the plaza. Around him the heavens roared with wind and rain, lightning and thunder. "Are you Ji Meng?" Wu Zhong blurted, as if a flash of intuition hit him.
"I am the God of Mount Guang, ruler of the Rain Master State—Shen Ji Meng!" The dragon-headed man gripped a divine wooden staff and strode toward Wu Zhong.
Wu Zhong blinked and ignored him for a moment, turning to the bull-headed man: "Where's the door? Don't waste my time. I'm rushing back to put up the ladder!"
Seeing the world in turmoil, the bull-headed man grew urgent. "The wooden core in Ji Meng's hand is the divine core of the world-tree that reaches the heavens... Wu, you must use it to open the Celestial Gate."
"Once the Celestial Gate opens, you can go anywhere you want!" Ji Meng's hand offered the staff.
Wu Zhong didn't care about world-trees or celestial gates. He hissed, "So it's basically a Door of Anywhere, right? How do I open it?"
Ji Meng gave him the divine wooden staff. "This object reaches the heavens. Command it to grow you home, and it will pierce the sky and make a hole. Imagine that as a Celestial Gate."
Wu Zhong accepted the staff, half understanding. "It has to grow all the way to my house? I need to get back to the giant tree."
The world's turbulence intensified and Ji Meng grew impatient. "Go wherever you truly remember having been—somewhere your memory is vivid!"
Wu Zhong tilted his head. "Then... Lushan Five Elders Peak?"
Ji Meng and the bull-headed man both urged him on, "Fine, anywhere you say! It all works!"
Feeling dazed, Wu Zhong gripped the divine wooden staff. "Celestial Gate... open?"
With a thunderous roar the staff swelled—not by sprouting in place but by stabbing into the fabric of space-time, punching through a dimensional barrier. Suddenly a hole ripped open in the air before them. A violent force destroyed the extended branches; wood fragments scattered and vanished into nothingness. The divine wood illusion dissolved into bubbles.
But the hole remained. The rent in the dimensional wall could not be healed, forming a small but indestructible gate in midair, only about a meter across. Yet inside that aperture shone boundless light. Pressurized air burst forth, the storm ripping the heavens apart and blasting countless beings on the plaza away. Mountains fractured; the ground split into chasms. Winds scooped ashes and rubble into a rolling black sea of clouds.
From the fissure poured an orange-golden divine light that illuminated the clouds like molten metal. Sunlight grew fierce, the gale terrifying—everything around them shattered; the world felt like it was breaking. But many gods and demons that had been annihilated suddenly flickered back into being at a distance, their forms reconstituted, as if made anew.
"Real matter! Real matter!" they cried. Those who had been erased and reformed now integrated light and qi from the other side of the gate, their bodies growing denser and more detailed. Though the wind threatened to blow them away again, they kept reassembling and absorbing this new matter, growing stronger.
"Stabilized! It's stabilized—we've opened a Celestial Gate to the present world!" the gods and demons rejoiced.
"Ah? Mosi—what's happening? I need to get back to the giant tree to put up the ladder!" Wu Zhong shouted. His only thought was bringing the ladder back up or they'd fall to their deaths. As he thought this, the divine staff in his hand swelled again. This time it didn't punch a hole; it sprouted and grew like a wooden bridge, carrying Wu Zhong rapidly toward the distant tree. The long journey felt like a blink; he only felt himself hoisting the ladder, gripping the frenziedly growing branch as the scenery streamed by.
When he came to his senses, he was back at the towering primordial tree. The divine staff had indeed brought him straight back. He cheered, "Brothers! I brought the ladder back! We're saved!"
Nine people hung from the tree, each wearing a bronze divine mask. Their voices trembled in horror: "Xiao Wu, what did you do?"
"Dream and material worlds are connected. Someone is trying to strike reality." The nine clung with urgent voices, as if a catastrophe was imminent.
By then Wu Zhong had propped the ladder and carefully climbed down. Those words stunned him. Then a gigantic cognitive dissonance hit—dream? Reality?
"Right, I knew something felt off. I can't remember how I got here, why I was trapped in a tree, or why I had to go back home to get a ladder to come down. It's nonsensical—no logic. I must have been dreaming." Suddenly everything clicked for him; he realized he had been asleep.
That recognition blurred the world. Half of his eyes saw the bizarre mountainous, starry tree world; the other half saw his home's curtain with sunlight slipping through. In the blur, the bronze-masked people still hung on the tree, howling: "Xiao Wu! You must close the gate! Close it! Don't go! Don't go!"
Bang bang bang! A strong knocking came again in a steady rhythm. Someone was at the door, calling him to wake. Then a sensation of weightlessness struck—Wu Zhong didn't brace the ladder and both he and the ladder slipped, tipping and falling from the great tree!
Weightlessness! Weightlessness!
"Ouch!" A violent sobering rush overtook him as he felt his body. Wu Zhong jolted awake, falling out of bed and slamming his face into the floor. He clutched his head and staggered up, dazed, as if he'd had a dream he couldn't fully recall. One thought dominated his mind: sleep, sleep, sleep—getting up felt like death.
Bang bang bang! The knocking continued. "Wake up, Xiao Wu. Are you awake?"
He hurried to open the door. Outside stood the wake-up worker Xiao Zhang. He had booked a real person wake-up service for seven o'clock and the worker had arrived ahead of time. "Why are you sleeping so hard today? I've been knocking for over a minute. That's an extra fee—transfer me twenty."
Wu Zhong's head throbbed. He leaned in the doorway and yawned. "Sorry, sorry. I worked overtime last night—only slept three hours. I feel like dying."
"Fine, twenty's off. We're colleagues after all; we're close." Xiao Zhang pretended magnanimity but kept a stern look. "Do you know how hard it is for us wake-up workers? We start early and sleep late to provide this service, and people still linger in bed... If a customer has morning anger, they yell at me."
"You used to do this job too, you should know. If you don't want to spend money, don't order a real person wake-up. I can just call you and save a trip."
"But hurry up. If you stall two more minutes, it'll be forty."
Wu Zhong scratched his messy hair. "Sigh... I have an urgent thing today. I worry a phone call won't wake me."
He pursed his lips and, unwilling to risk delay, transferred twenty. Xiao Zhang turned and dashed off into the stairwell to wake other clients, but not before saying, "By the way, happy birthday. Today is your birthday."
Those words jolted Wu Zhong awake. He realized, eyes widening, that today was August seventeenth—his birthday. "Ah... thanks..."
He watched Xiao Zhang disappear, scratched his head, and shut the door. "Birthday, huh? I've been muddling through life and forgot about it." He went to the bathroom to splash his face to wake up. Looking in the mirror at his unkempt self, he actually shaved a bit and combed his hair—unusual for him. Usually he just brushed his teeth and wiped his face with water and left.
His main job was an auto mechanic, often pulling overtime repairing cars, and he moonlighted as a wake-up worker, so his schedule was chaotic. He had worked late into the night and had to get up early because his grandfather, who was hospitalized, had a checkup and needed family present. If Wu Zhong didn't take time off, he had to finish that errand before heading to work.
Everyone knows that once someone falls asleep they won't wake up on their own without external stimulus, so wake-up services remain a thing. With phones nowadays you rarely need a person to come in person, but Wu Zhong always tended to choose a cheap phone-call service that barely worked. To ensure he'd be there before the doctor started at eight, he paid ten for a real-person wake-up to make sure he'd get out of bed. Such guaranteed wake-ups are brutal.
The longer the wake-up takes, the more you pay; the billing escalates geometrically with delay, which terrified him into getting up. "Damn, the hospital is so far; I need to hurry." Wu Zhong completed washing, dressing, and a last-minute bathroom trip in five minutes and grabbed a trash bag as he left—another monotonous day. Birthday or not, he didn't care; at twenty-one he'd graduated from college and come to the city to work. For three years he had not bothered with birthdays. Tonight he'd treat himself to a bowl of spicy hotpot.