The Kunlun, on the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau: rock, ice, and the white jade of Hotan in the streams.

• Immense ranges torn into needles and arêtes, up to height 256, above the clouds.
• Kunlun rock, a dark mica-flecked schist banded with pale calcite, 56 blocks deep.
• Blue ice glacier flows on the slopes and tongues of ice in the snow.
• Raw white jade: small veins in the rock and pebbles at the bottom of streams and lakes.
• Snow lotus more common here; goats; strays at night.

Great mysteries are said to hide in these mountains. Coming later.