更上一层楼 is formed by the literal concatenation of five characters: 更 (meaning "further"), 上 (meaning "ascend"), 一 (meaning "one"), 层 (meaning "story" or "layer"), and 楼 (meaning "building" or "tower"), which together directly describe the action of climbing one more floor in a building, originating from a line in a Tang Dynasty poem by Wang Zhihuan.