The four of them went forward together.

Six characters to restart the journey. 一同, all together, is the note the novel wants struck before the mountain: they go up as a party.

A few steps and they were on the mountain.

不幾步 — not many paces. The mountain that looked menacing from a distance is reached almost at once, which is the novel declining to build suspense it does not need.

They raised their eyes and looked:

The cue. Four characters ending in a colon, and what follows is the set-piece — a long descriptive poem of a kind the novel keeps for places worth stopping at.

That was a fine mountain indeed; look closely and it was mottled with colour.

真好山 is deliberately plain, almost a shrug, and it is the standing opening formula for this kind of poem. 班班 doubles a character meaning patterned or streaked, and the doubling is what gives it the dappling.

On the summit the clouds drifted and swayed; before the cliffs the shadows of trees hung cold.

The poem starts at the top and works down, which is how these descriptions are built. 寒 closes the line and carries the rhyme, and the whole set-piece will hold that sound to the end.