Ledger of Atonement Walkthrough: Backstreet Courtyard Key Location

The Key Hidden Behind a Confession

The Backstreet Courtyard Key is one of the most-missed items in Phantom Blade Zero — most players never find it because it is not sitting in a chest. It is the reward for Ledger of Atonement (Tale #30 on the All Tales index), a short but memorable quest in the Mountain of Imprisonment about a Maskwalker who wrote down every person he ever killed. Finish his story and you walk away with three items: the key itself, a Sha-Chi Amber Fragment, and the Bloodstained Necklace that starts the follow-up tale Bai Xue.

How to Start: The Agonized Ironmask

Work through the Mountain of Imprisonment until you clear the Commander’s Platform area — you will know it by the Bi Feng, Giant Saber Commander boss fight on the cavern path. Once that fight is over, keep heading up the stairway from the arena instead of pressing on toward the bells.

Partway up the slope you will spot two figures that do not attack: a Maskwalker named Chen Zhu, the Agonized Ironmask, and a silent female puppet sitting behind him. Chen Zhu warns you to stay back — his pain is overwhelming — and then explains why. To remember each person he has killed, he kept a written ledger, and it has vanished somewhere in the caves below. Speak with him several times until he formally asks for your help; that conversation starts the Tale.

Where to Find the Ledger

The ledger lies deeper in the region, in the caves beneath the Shrine Outer Gate area:

1. From the Shrine Outer Gate Bell, drop down into the lower arena and fight Kui Yanyan, the Deranged. Full tactics for her frenzied club strings are in the Kui Yanyan boss guide.
2. Check the back of her arena for a Bloodstained Diary — an optional Fragments of the Mandate lore pickup, not the quest item.
3. Continue along the lower path until it forks. Take the left branch, deal with the wolves, then turn right toward the rock face.
4. Defeat the enemies guarding the entrance and push into the cave blocked by wooden crates.
5. Inside, take the stairway down on the right. At the bottom you will find the Ledger of Atonement on the ground.

Community location guides place the pickup roughly 110 meters from the Cavern Passage side of the region, so if you have looped back to the bell, you have gone too far.

Return to Chen Zhu: The Choice That Isn’t

Bring the ledger back to Chen Zhu and hand it over. The reading breaks him, and you get two dialogue options:

• “Never mind. Leave him be.” — Chen Zhu walks away with his guilt. The female puppet beside him hands you the Backstreet Courtyard Key.
• “This won’t absolve you of your sins.” — He answers with his blade, turning the encounter into a boss fight against the Ironmask Assassin (still listed as the Agonized Maskwalker in some walkthroughs). At this stage of the game it is a short, simple duel. Defeating him drops the Sha-Chi Amber Fragment and the Backstreet Courtyard Key.

Both outcomes complete the Tale and award the key, so pick according to your conscience — GameRant and Gfinity both recommend the fight on the grounds that a ledger does not balance a slaughter, while AllThings.How confirms the pacifist route pays identically. Whichever you choose, speak to the female puppet afterward: she gives you the Bloodstained Necklace and adds Bai Xue to your journal.

What the Backstreet Courtyard Key Opens

Carry the key forward to Pangzhen. From the Old Man Gen’s House bell in the backstreets, the locked courtyard gate sits about 99 meters away and roughly 8 meters higher — look for the lock matching the key’s description: “A small key left behind by the Maskwalker, Chen Zhu… opens the gate to a courtyard in Pangzhen’s backstreets.”

The courtyard is the setting for the Bai Xue follow-up tale, where you investigate the necklace and the body it belongs to near the backstreet well. Clearing that chain finishes the story Chen Zhu started — and it is the main reason this key matters beyond completionism. The broader missable chain is tracked on the missable side quests guide.

Rewards

• Backstreet Courtyard Key — opens the Pangzhen backstreet courtyard for Bai Xue.
• Sha-Chi Amber Fragment — tempering material (from the fight route, per GameRant; some sources list it as a general tale reward).
• Bloodstained Necklace — quest item that starts Bai Xue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Backstreet Courtyard Key missable? The Mountain of Imprisonment region stays open until the endgame, and the quest has no hard cutoff before the finale. The real risk is never finding Chen Zhu at all, since he sits off the critical path above Commander’s Platform. Consult the Mountain of Imprisonment walkthrough if you are lost.

What happens if I kill Chen Zhu? Nothing is lost. The fight route still grants the Sha-Chi Amber Fragment and the Backstreet Courtyard Key, and the female puppet still awakens afterward with the Bloodstained Necklace and the Bai Xue quest. The only difference is narrative.

Does Ledger of Atonement overlap other Mountain of Imprisonment quests? Yes — the ledger route runs through Kui Yanyan’s arena and the hanging-cage caverns, so it pairs naturally with Cui’s questline and the Hero’s Lament chain. Clear all three in one sweep of the region.

Source: community-verified launch coverage from KeenGamer (All 33 Tales and Side Quests), GameRant (Backstreet Courtyard Key Guide), GfinityEsports, Beebom, and AllThings.How (Ledger of Atonement and Backstreet Courtyard Key), October-November 2026.