Mountain of Imprisonment Key Items: Crank, Lever & Keys

The Mountain of Imprisonment is Phantom Blade Zero’s most item-gated region: a vertical climb where three mechanical pieces — a crank, a lever, and a key — decide whether you reach the summit shrine at all. This page is the location reference: where each sits, what blocks it, what it opens. For the full ascent route and region rewards, use our Mountain of Imprisonment walkthrough; for the lift-and-cage tale that uses most of them, the Hero’s Lament quest guide is the step-by-step. Locations below are confirmed against AllThingsHow’s key-item table, GameSpot’s Moji’s Relic guide, Maxroll’s region walkthrough, and 100% completion video runs.

The Four Key Items at a Glance

Missing Lift Crank: Kui Yanyan’s Prize

The Missing Lift Crank is the one key item that is fought for, not found. Its item card tells the story: the Mandate built the lift to move supplies to the shrine, Huangxing’s personal guards removed the crank to seal the mountain’s secrets, and in the struggle for possession it “ended up with a ruthless madwoman.” The in-game book Fragments of the Mandate names her: Kui Yanyan, the Deranged, a level-22 Maskwalker who ambushes travelers near Shrine Outer Gate in Chapter 6 (Treason and Confinement).

She is a brawler who punishes greedy punishes — moveset on our Kui Yanyan boss guide. The crank drops alongside 84,000 Remnant Dust and a Sha-Chi Amber Shard. Back at the lift house below Liu Yi’s cage, slot it into the empty metal switch box and call the house down. Mind the shaft: the house descends on its own when you walk away, leaving a drop that kills.

Detached Cage Lever: Commander’s Platform Ruin

The Detached Cage Lever sits in the collapsed building beside the archer tower at Commander’s Platform — the arena of Bi Feng, Giant Saber Commander, whose Juggernaut greatblade has its own weapon page. GameSpot’s precision matters, because the in-game clue is deliberately vague:

1. From the Commander’s Platform bell, climb the ladder to its east.
2. From the tower, look toward the nearby collapsed house — a glowing item marks the lever inside the ruin.
3. Drop down onto the building and collect it.

Two warnings. Clear Bi Feng and the surrounding main objectives first — per GameSpot, if the glow is missing you still owe the northwestern chapter objective; finish it and the lever spawns. And scout from the tower, not ground level: the glow only reads from elevation, saving you a blind fight through the ruin.

The lever works the hanging-cage mechanism in Hanging Cage Cavern — the one that lowers the last cage carrying Moji’s Bloodstained Sword for Hero’s Lament.

Shrine Gate Key: Earned, Not Looted

The Shrine Gate Key is the region’s only combat-gated key with nothing to pick up. From the Shrine Outer Gate bell, follow the upper road until the planks run out, drop through the cage corridor taking the left fork, and climb into the deck yard — there a Gold Mask and two Iron Masks wait. Beating them awards the key automatically. Its card: “The key to the mountain gate on the only path to the shrine. It was hidden within the caverns by Huangxing’s personal guards.”

Back above the lift, the red double gate with lion-head door rings opens with E; beyond it lies the bell route to Huangxing’s summit shrine. A deck ladder leads to a winch lowering a cage with Remnant Dust — but the jump back down from the top kills; bell-travel instead.

Rootless Dew: The Unmarked Quest Item

Rootless Dew is the region’s trap item: a plain pickup with no quest flag that the Cui quest later hard-requires. It sits on the rocks beyond the large red gazebo near the cliff edge, southwest of the Commander’s Platform bell — on your natural route between the bell and the lever ruin. Grab it on the first pass; backtracking this mountain’s verticality for one white glint is the mistake every 100% run warns against. Lu Sanqian needs it when you free him from the hanging cage beyond Kui Yanyan’s arena, and without it his storyline — and both of the quest’s rewards — stalls.

Key-Item Routing: One Efficient Pass

Completionist videos converge on one bell-anchored loop:

1. Commander’s Platform — beat Bi Feng, loot the lever, take Rootless Dew by the gazebo en route.
2. Shrine Outer Gate road — kill Kui Yanyan for the crank, then clear the key deck.
3. Hanging Cage Cavern — crank the lift up, work the lever, lower the cages.
4. Open the red gate and commit to the summit.

The pass also sweeps the region’s three Sha-Chi Amber Shards (all within ~140 m of Shrine Outer Gate) per AllThingsHow’s map. Ring every bell first — the drops and one-way slides make backtracking miserable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can any of these key items be missed? No — all four stay available once the region is unlocked. The only failure state is quest-side: Liu Yi must stay alive during Hero’s Lament, and Rootless Dew must be collected before Lu Sanqian’s hanging-cage rescue.

What does the lift crank open if I skip Kui Yanyan? Nothing. The lift is the region’s main roadblock — no crank, no summit approach from that side. She is effectively a mandatory kill.

Where is Moji’s Bloodstained Sword? Not a key item — a quest relic. It rides in the last hanging cage above Shrine Outer Gate, lowered with the Detached Cage Lever; the full chain is on the Hero’s Lament page.

Do keys from this region open anything elsewhere? Yes — the Backstreet Courtyard Key (about 78 m from the bell, from Chen Zhu) opens a courtyard gate in Pangzhen’s backstreets. See our all keys guide for the full index.

Sources: allthings.how Mountain of Imprisonment collectibles map and keys index (bell distances and item-card text, November 2026), GameSpot’s Hero’s Lament — Moji’s Relic guide (lever location and spawn condition), Maxroll’s region walkthrough, pbz.gg item data (Missing Lift Crank drop), and 100% completion video runs (routing order). All four locations verified in-game via the cited guides.