After a 1h50 flight from Beijing and two hours on the road from Hefei, the mountains of Tianzhushan appear, rounded, calm, like ancient shoulders resting in the mist. I walk on ground born from deep time: 240 million years ago, two massive pieces of the Earth collided here, pushing rocks down to 100 kilometers below. They rose again, transformed, eclogite, coesite, and sometimes, microscopic diamonds. Too small to be mined, but precious enough to tell the story of the Earth. In a small hamlet, a Hui family invites me in. The father, with a thin beard and quiet smile, hands me warm flatbread. “We are Hui,” he says. “Chinese and Muslim. We speak the same language, but our faith is different.” His wife sets down a bowl of hand-pulled noodles. “It’s beef. Halal.” Lower on the mountain slopes lies the Neolithic site of Xuejiagang, traces of an ancient village: pottery shards, stone tools, burial jars left in the earth like open questions. Farther up, a Tang-dynasty inscription clings to a sheer cliff face, worn but legible after twelve hundred years. The trail rises again. Past waterfalls. Past silence. Toward the Sanzu Temple, and beyond, into the mountain’s secret memory.