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The Shan Hai Jing was most likely created by the wu - the shaman-priests of ancient China who entered trance states and travelled to places invisible to ordinary perception. The text is their field report. It maps a three-layered universe: the celestial realm above, the terrestrial realm in the middle and the underworld below. Kunlun is the axis connecting all three. The mountain gods are the gatekeepers. The ritual offerings are the access codes. If you read the Shan Hai Jing not as geography but as a manual for navigating the invisible world, its strange features suddenly make a very different kind of sense.