Ba Yunye was not the least bit polite about it — she grabbed his hand and bit down. Hard. Actually bit him.

A man’s hand: rough and firm. Even if you set your teeth into it, you could still feel a kind of thick, unyielding toughness pressing back against your little sharp teeth.

“Does it hurt? If it doesn’t, I’ll keep going.” Ba Yunye examined the ring of deep red bite marks along the edge of his palm.

“It hurts.” Hurts in a way that feels wonderful all over.

“Dare to do it again?”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

Ba Yunye flung his hand away.

Diao Zhuo handed her a lighter. “Light it for me.”

“Don’t you have hands of your own?”

“You bit them off.”

“Damn.”

Diao Zhuo tucked the cigarette between her lips, murmuring in the gentle tone of someone coaxing a child: “Light it for me. Good girl.”

Ba Yunye held the cigarette in her mouth, lit it, slowly blew out a mouthful of smoke, then held it to his lips, squinting at him. “Diao Zhuo, whatever you do, don’t fall for me.”

He bit the cigarette from her hand lightly. “What if I’m being serious?”

Ba Yunye was startled for a moment, then deliberately raised her hand in a gracious gesture of invitation. “In that case… by all means, please continue.”

Not a few minutes later, the walkie-talkie crackled to life, and Long Ge’s voice came through: “Hey, I think I can see smoke somewhere.”

All the vehicles came to a stop. Long Ge was the first out of his vehicle. He pointed due west and said, “Over there — I just saw a little smoke!”

Everyone looked in the direction he indicated, but all they saw was the bright blue sky. Not a trace of smoke.

“How come I didn’t see it?” Hippo shielded his eyes with his hand and stretched his neck to look.

“Are you sure it was that direction?” Diao Zhuo asked. “Due west isn’t the direction of the lakes on the map, and it’s not the shortest route out of the desert.”

Old Wang speculated: “Could the group have gotten lost?”

Ba Yunye stood beside Long Ge, peering through binoculars. “There really is a little smoke! Whatever was burning has probably almost burned out!”

Old Wang said excitedly: “It must be them! There are no residents out here — no one else would be building a fire!”

“Move!” Diao Zhuo made the call without hesitation.

“The mountains look close but are far to reach. Even if we can see the smoke, that doesn’t mean it’s nearby. Let’s all be patient.” Old Wang said. “The smoke is nearly gone — we absolutely must fix the bearing in our minds!”

Ba Yunye pointed her thumb toward Diao Zhuo and called out loudly: “He can keep track of it! His eyes are like a microscope — remarkable!”

“Though they sometimes can’t tell men from women.” Diao Zhuo took a pointed jab at her infamous stunt of deliberately following him into the restroom, pressed the accelerator, and said: “Hold on.”

The vehicles all turned and headed west, and at that very moment, Zhang Tian’en lay not two kilometers from where they had stopped, waiting in despair for any sign of hope. Had Long Ge not spotted the smoke, and had they continued straight ahead, they might have come across Zhang Tian’en’s tracks within half an hour at most.

But when you choose to take on danger, you must accept every natural variable and every unexpected obstacle that comes with it.

The fire continued to burn for a while, then went out again. Zhe Ming and Xiao’ai had nothing left to feed it. They tried to ignite the low-growing plants, but these proved even harder to burn than their backpacks — the smoke they produced was minimal, the stems thin and scattered, and a single gust of wind was enough to snuff out the flame.

“No one is coming to rescue us.” Zhe Ming dropped to the ground, buried his face in his arms in despair. “We’re done for.”

Xiao’ai thought of the camel mummy and shrank in on herself with terror. The high sand dunes loomed all around her; she could no longer tell east from west, north from south. The sand seemed to be pressing in from all sides, smothering her until she could not breathe.

She was already severely dehydrated. Even her usually delicate fingertips had turned dry and shriveled, like the dried cowpeas her grandmother in the countryside sent every year. Now the sun was blazing again, and she could feel her body shrinking bit by bit — flesh drawing tight against bone, every joint pulled taut.

Everyone dies, she supposed. She just hadn’t imagined she would die like this, in a place like this.

“Let’s still try to walk in the southeast direction…” She still wanted to survive. She had barely stood up before she fell — her stomach felt terrible, clenched and shrunken from dehydration. She wanted to vomit something, but could only dry-heave convulsively, without producing even a mouthful of saliva.

Zhe Ming crawled forward two steps, then lay there, too weak to move.

Xiao’ai lay down beside him and wept, without tears. Her eye sockets had sunken into deep hollows. Her chapped and cracked lips had festered long ago, and she no longer had the strength to brush away the sand clinging to them. Her heart was in agony — it felt as though countless small bubbles were lodged inside, sometimes racing, sometimes stopping altogether.

After lying there for a while, the surface temperature became unbearable. They had no choice but to get up and support each other, climbing upward, like two stray dogs, scaling the sand dunes on all fours. As they passed the spot where they had dug for water the day before, Zhe Ming was still overcome with lingering fear — he didn’t dare go near it, and had no energy to investigate what had injured his ear.

Xiao’ai instinctively cast a glance at the dug-out hollow and spotted something round and blue inside. Looking more carefully, she thought she saw the cap of a mineral water bottle on one side… no — there was a whole mineral water bottle buried in there. The night before, with the light too dim and Zhe Ming’s sudden injury demanding her attention, she hadn’t noticed it.

“Danger…” Zhe Ming, seeing Xiao’ai crawl toward the hollow, rasped out a warning.

Xiao’ai swept a hand through the sand — and yes, there was a flattened mineral water bottle. With no expectation whatsoever, she kept digging until she pulled the bottle out, and — it had water inside!!

“Water!! Zhe Ming! Water!!” she screamed in her raw, ragged voice.

Zhe Ming’s eyes lit up. He scrambled over in an instant — there truly was water in it, though only a tiny amount, perhaps fifty milliliters. Under normal circumstances it would barely be a mouthful. How it had come to be there was anyone’s guess — perhaps some tourist’s carelessly discarded rubbish, swept here by a sandstorm and eventually buried by subsequent layers of sand.

Zhe Ming seized the bottle. “Water…”

This was life-saving water! As long as it was a liquid, even if it were pesticide, he would drink it just the same! He was too thirsty! Too desperately thirsty!! This kind of burning, consuming thirst — if you have never reached such a state, you cannot possibly comprehend it!

“The two of us…” Xiao’ai had just begun to say they should each have a sip, when she watched Zhe Ming twist off the cap, tilt his head back, and drink it all in a single gulp. In an instant, every last drop was gone.

Such a tiny sip of water — like someone a million yuan in debt winning ten yuan in a lottery draw. It made absolutely no difference. Perhaps it was purely psychological, but Zhe Ming felt as though his life had been extended a little, his whole being somewhat lighter. As for Xiao’ai, past her initial shock, she sank into deep despair and desolation. Something inside her that had never been particularly firm crumbled entirely in that one instant, triggering wave after wave of dangerous palpitations. She stared fixedly at Zhe Ming — an expression of anguish shot through with grave, sober scrutiny. For the first time, or perhaps once again, she came to understand the darkness that human nature unleashes in extremity.

Zhe Ming quickly came to his senses. He looked utterly shocked at himself, and crawled over to kneel before her in remorse. “I’m sorry, Xiao’ai… I was just so thirsty… I didn’t even think… Let’s… let’s look again! There must be more!”

With that, he heedlessly crawled into the hollow and began digging.

Xiao’ai sat motionless, her gaze resting on Zhe Ming’s back. He dug furiously at the sand, hoping to unearth a second water bottle or some other container. Xiao’ai thought: if he truly found another one, would he give it to her?

Not necessarily.

She smiled, as though she had already made peace with the fact that she would die very soon — there are always a few fools in this world who must pay a devastating price for their own foolishness.

Zhe Ming exerted himself too hard and was soon gasping. Besides sand, there was nothing else in the hollow — not even whatever had inexplicably spewed that corrosive liquid the night before. Occasionally a sand burrow the width of a thumb appeared, only to immediately collapse and vanish.

He turned around in defeat and looked at Xiao’ai.

She had been holding on by sheer will to survive, and now, the combined effect of dehydration and emotional collapse had left her expression distinctly wrong.

“I’m sorry…” he said. Yet inside, he felt not the slightest remorse. Can anyone truly love another person enough to sacrifice their own life for them?

Xiao’ai squinted. Zhe Ming seemed to fracture into four figures before her eyes, each one holding a mineral water bottle and drinking greedily. She reached out her hand. “Water… give me…”

“I’ll look again… I’ll look again…” Zhe Ming was caught between two impulses: he didn’t quite believe such luck could repeat itself, yet he didn’t want to waste the energy.

More and more Zhe Ming figures appeared before Xiao’ai, filling the entire desert with mineral water bottles, until she reached out but could not grasp any of them. With a sudden cry, she lurched forward — and collapsed face down on the sand, unconscious, her body twitching faintly.

“Xiao’ai?” Zhe Ming crawled over, calling her name again and again. She would not wake. Her hands and feet kept convulsing — it was terrifying to see.

She… couldn’t be dying, could she?

Zhe Ming stared in stunned disbelief. It dawned on him: ever since they had both run out of water, the amount Zhang Tian’en had shared with them was already extremely limited. On top of that, they had both been showing signs of heatstroke from the start; conditions had been bad to begin with. Then, after losing all their water, they had pushed on and dug holes, burning through even more of their remaining strength. Xiao’ai might truly be beyond saving.

“I’m truly sorry, Xiao’ai…” Zhe Ming knelt before her, at a complete loss.

Xiao’ai convulsed for a short while, then went still, her breathing barely perceptible — as though she were about to exhale her last breath.

There’s no water to be found here. Sitting here waiting is the same as waiting to die. Better to keep heading southeast — maybe we’ll reach water. Zhe Ming thought. He bundled their remaining belongings in his outer jacket and set off again — but nothing about this was simple. He had barely taken a few steps when his heart gave out and he dropped to his knees, unable even to crawl.

He struggled onward, with Xiao’ai’s motionless form as his driving force. He told himself: if he didn’t want to die, he had to crawl over there, no matter what. One step forward, three minutes of gasping. Another step forward, three more minutes of gasping. He clung on grimly, every inch of progress a monumental effort. Perhaps every person others dismissively call “a reckless fool” has, in the struggle to survive, found reserves of willpower and courage — and yes, perhaps even ruthlessness — that others could not imagine.

The sound of an engine carried distantly. Zhe Ming, who had just barely crawled to the crest of the dune, raised his head, and in the distance saw three vehicles winding their way along the ridge of the dunes — so surreal it looked like something from a dream.

How is this possible? he thought. Is this a hallucination? A mirage?

“Someone’s there! Over there!” A woman’s voice rang out.

Zhe Ming squinted at the vehicles, rising and falling with the contour of the sand dunes, materializing and vanishing in turn — he could not tell what was real.

“Hey—!” A man’s voice called out. From the windows on both sides of the SUV, hands extended and waved with urgent persistence.

It doesn’t seem like a hallucination.

“Help… help me!!” Zhe Ming cried out with every last ounce of strength. “Save me!! Save me!! Give me… give me… water…”

“He’s alive! He’s still alive!”

“How is there only one? Where are the others?”

“Drive! Faster!”

“Hey!! Hold on!! Stay with us!!”

Zhe Ming heard several voices growing closer and closer — men and women both. The SUV’s rear wheels kicked up a plume of yellowish-brown dust, and the small flags mounted high on the roof rack caught his eye, vivid and bright.

He collapsed onto the sand. And though he got a mouthful of it, he knew that all of this was about to be over…