In the afternoon the weather cleared, and sunlight bathed the land. The view composed of sky, white clouds, and snow-covered peaks in blue and white was breathtaking.
After lunch, everyone packed their things and prepared to set off on foot for Camp 1 — the first stage of the summit route was about to begin. From the base camp to Camp 1 was approximately 4 kilometers. The path first descended into the glacial meltwater river flats, then crossed the glacier, then climbed upward along the ridge. Along the ridge there was a section known as the “Death Slope,” where altitude sickness and gale-force winds strong enough to knock a person flat were the greatest tests for any mountaineer.
“After all the trouble of getting here, to lose your nerve now — to quit halfway? I know my own body. Stop using my age against me — I’m not seventy or eighty years old. Who says I can’t do this or that? Some people younger than me, even people in their thirties, aren’t necessarily in better shape than I am. Either I don’t come at all — but since I’ve come, I have to reach the highest point. There’s no question of waiting around at the base camp. That’s just ridiculous!”
Fu Yingtao seemed to have an almost obsessive fixation on reaching the summit. No matter how anyone tried to persuade or distract him, he insisted on making it to the top. He was a high-ranking leader within his company, but there was the matter of his age — approaching retirement, he should long since have stepped back. But his pride and ambition kept him from yielding his position to younger people.
After several days together, largely through what Jiang Ao’hang had let slip, everyone had come to understand that the struggle between the “old guard” and the “new forces” was a longstanding problem within the state-owned enterprise where Fu Yingtao worked. The general manager was newly appointed, but his subordinates were old-timers. To consolidate his footing and his authority, the new manager needed to bring in his own people — so he had promoted a large cohort of young cadres and transferred in a number of his former trusted associates. In terms of seniority, the new people couldn’t compare to the old-timers; but in terms of backing, the new people’s patron was the top man himself. The result was a standoff between two factions, with some of the old-timers “entrenched in their own power,” obstructing those newly placed in management positions at every turn, holding them down by sheer weight of rank. Fu Yingtao was the figurehead of the “old guard” and a thorn in the general manager’s side — he refused to relinquish power, refused to step down, and the general manager, constrained by the decades of connections and entrenched influence Fu Yingtao had built within the company, could not move against him for the time being.
For Fu Yingtao, more and more exceptional younger people were emerging, and when it came to choosing sides, those around him were increasingly a group of fellow “old-timers” — while more and more people preferred to align with those either younger than him or better-connected. He felt like a relic of a former court in a television drama, watched by countless pairs of eyes, all waiting and hoping he would step down sooner rather than later.
To summit a peak of more than six thousand meters in the Kunlun mountain range — whether in his own eyes, or in the eyes of his subordinates and peers — would be an extraordinary feat, and a testament to his soaring ambition. The sense of equilibrium that his professional life had unsettled could be restored through reaching the summit. Such an opportunity would perhaps come only this once in his remaining years; and so the summit was not merely an achievement — it was a medal.
Whether or not Fu Xingyue had counted on this very point in planning everything, no one could say.
The last point accessible by vehicle before the glacier was an unmonitored spot on its outer flank. Everyone gradually loaded up at the base camp. Diao Zhuo informed the climbing guides in advance, and Fu Xingyue was separated from Jiang Ao’hang and Fu Yingtao, arranged to ride in Ba Yunye’s vehicle. It was awkward enough, but Fu Xingyue had no choice but to comply — though she did seem hesitant. You could tell her passive nature was not a deliberate performance; she had always been this way, given to enduring whatever came to her. She seemed to be wrestling with this nature of hers — as though she wanted to change but couldn’t quite muster the courage.
A balloon inflated too tightly — you could never know at which point it would burst.
Ba Yunye went over and threw an arm around her shoulders in a show of goodwill. “It’s nothing — get in, no charge.”
From a distance, Diao Zhuo watched her casual, carefree manner — she had the air of a down-and-out banner aristocrat from the later Qing dynasty, taking the world lightly. He sighed inwardly, yet his gaze was full of warmth, because at heart he considered her reasonably dependable.
After the car set off, Fu Xingyue sat in the passenger seat and watched the scenery for a while. Perhaps feeling that a prolonged silence was growing awkward, as Ba Yunye nimbly executed a few turns to navigate around a muddy hollow, she said quietly: “You’re the most skilled female driver I’ve ever seen.”
“…Diao Zhuo says the same.” Ba Yunye wasn’t sure how to take that, and said it shamelessly without a trace of modesty.
“Oh…” Fu Xingyue was no sheltered innocent — upon hearing that reply, it seemed to carry some other implication, and she found herself uncertain how to respond.
Ba Yunye steered the conversation back on track: “It’s my line of work — how could I take clients if my driving were poor? Have you ever been on the roads into Tibet? A sheer drop of ten thousand feet below you on one side, some stretches without even a guardrail. When the rainy season comes, rockfalls out of nowhere, sudden landslides. In other places, warning signs are LED boards. Out there, a warning sign is a crumpled car shell propped by the roadside. How to put it — skill and luck are our lives.”
“Sounds good,” Fu Xingyue said lightly.
“I value my life quite a lot — I haven’t had nearly enough of it yet.” Ba Yunye said with deliberate meaning. “Things like money, love, freedom — they’re all nothing compared to your life. Of course, when I was in the army everything was follow orders. Now that I’ve been discharged, I do as I please.”
Fu Xingyue startled, turned to look at her. “You were in the army… no wonder…”
“Don’t.” Ba Yunye made a stopping gesture, cutting her off before she could finish. Eyes fixed on the uneven road ahead: “What happened this morning — I was impulsive too. But your father struck first, and what I learned in the military wasn’t for use against ordinary people — it was self-defense.”
“My dad, he…” Fu Xingyue started to speak, then stopped.
Ba Yunye waited, focused on driving, without pressing her.
“He’s a very proud man. He has never been contradicted in his life. At work, no one dares say a single ‘no’ to his face. He holds himself to a strict standard — I’ve never seen him complain about any personal failing or weakness in front of us or anyone else. It was the same at work: always showing his strongest side, never allowing himself to make mistakes or give anyone a weakness or a failure to latch onto. Naturally, from the time I was small, he never allowed me to fail at anything either. He’s rather strict. But I’m used to it.” she added.
Ba Yunye caught the deliberate emphasis Fu Xingyue placed on that last sentence, the way the volume slightly increased — as though underlining something. But an emphasis like that was really concealment. “Being that strict — did he hit you when you were small?”
“Did Master Ba get hit when she was small?” Fu Xingyue asked in return.
“I’d have loved to have parents who hit me. The problem is, that’s one thing I’ve never had.” Ba Yunye said it as serenely as ever.
“That may not be such a bad thing,” Fu Xingyue replied.
Ba Yunye was taken aback by that. It was the first time she had ever heard anyone say something like that — especially coming from Fu Xingyue, who seemed mild-mannered and gentle. Even knowing she was not a good person, she still felt a flicker of surprise.
“Having parents is wonderful — especially for an only child like you. Savings, a house — everything will be yours one day. You don’t even have to struggle for it yourself.” Ba Yunye smiled. “Your father’s difficult, sure, but just bear with it. Do you really think having no father and no mother in this world is a comfortable thing?”
“I don’t know,” she replied vaguely.
“Take me, for instance. I didn’t grow up in a normal family. I never knew where home was. I have no memory of any concept of ‘home’ — things like marriage and children, building a family, they’re as alien to me as another planet. Even if someone handed me a home right now, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I have no real sense of what it means to always have one fixed place to return to, no matter how far you roam.” Ba Yunye said. “You have it pretty well. Right now, at least, from where I’m standing.”
“You can’t judge anything from the surface alone. Every person has grievances they can’t speak of to others.” Fu Xingyue said quietly. “After I graduated from university, I wanted to stay and build a life somewhere away from home too. But… a besieged city — the people inside and outside each look at the other and think the other side has it better.”
“After I left the military and started driving, I was still a newcomer — my boss didn’t give me many clients at first. I was impatient with the slow money and got talked into going to work somewhere ‘keeping watch over a place.’ I thought it was somewhere like an underground casino. I found out later that on the surface it was a casino, but in reality…” Ba Yunye rubbed the tip of her nose, as if a memory had surfaced, her nerves still not entirely settled. “They were selling that.”
“Prostitution?”
“Powder.” Ba Yunye couldn’t help but laugh — at her own naivety then, and at the other woman’s sheltered inexperience — and let out a sigh. “The kind of business that gets you shot.”
“What happened then?”
Ba Yunye fell silent for a moment. The bloodshed and chaos of those days were not something outsiders would ever understand, and not something she readily spoke of — yet whenever she recalled it, that suffocating feeling remained vivid in her memory. “Couldn’t get out. They had a complete grip on me too. The only thing I could do was find a way to reach out to my boss for help, turned his face green with anger, and he pulled in a lot of favors to get me out.” She concealed the enormous sacrifice Long Ge had made to rescue her — that debt of gratitude she carried always, a bond forged at the cost of life itself.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed, she continued: “I don’t know whether that operation ever got shut down. I only know that if I hadn’t gotten out, I wouldn’t just have failed to earn any money — I might have lost my life entirely. One wrong step, and there may be no chance to make it right. I’ve had a few harrowing moments while driving too, but fortunately nothing terrible ever came of them. I grew wiser after that, and I came to one realization: even though it looks like you’re just getting through each day in one piece, the truth is that heaven has been yanking you back from the edge of death more times than you can count. Like yesterday with the lightning — if I hadn’t taken off my hat, Diao Zhuo wouldn’t have noticed the abnormal electric field around us so quickly. Even though your father didn’t switch his phone off, the lightning didn’t actually strike him in the end. That’s what I mean. Would you say so?”
“Heaven’s will is hard to defy…” Fu Xingyue said in a distant, pensive tone, apparently unmoved.
“I think the better approach is…” Ba Yunye paused deliberately, then said with gravity: “To stop while you still can.”
Fu Xingyue’s expression went white and rigid for just an instant, her shoulders drawing in tight.
Ba Yunye tried to find out more about the relationship between her and Fu Yingtao, but Fu Xingyue kept a strict guard on every word — she wouldn’t even reveal the fact that she wasn’t his biological daughter. She had never been much of a talker to begin with, and her thoughts ran deep. After several exchanges, nothing had been drawn out.
The car climbed the slope. The unmonitored point was within sight now. Several technical support workers stationed here were bundled in thick coats, going about their work with focused, unhurried concentration. Behind them, several makeshift tents flapped noisily in the wind.
At the end of the river flat stood a prayer flag tower, old and new prayer flags wound and fluttering around it, with small stone cairns scattered in the area surrounding it. The vehicles ahead were slowing. Ba Yunye stole a glance at Fu Xingyue — she wore an expression heavy with unspoken thoughts, her right thumb pressing repeatedly into the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, working the spot until it was rubbed raw and red.
Ba Yunye was not the kind of person who could keep words locked inside. Seeing that everyone would soon be getting out of their vehicles to begin the actual hike, she eased off the accelerator and slowed the car. “These past few days — I don’t know whether it was coincidence or not — but the few of us have seen and heard some things from Jiang Ao’hang’s side that were… out of the ordinary. I won’t say what exactly. But I suspect in your heart you know very well what I’m referring to.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is he hiding something from me? The way he and I interact is quite different from how you and Diao Zhuo interact. Are you perhaps mistaken about something?” Fu Xingyue answered rapidly, her words coming considerably faster than before.
“What do you hope I’m mistaken about?” Ba Yunye reached into her pocket, pulled out the Glibenclamide bottle, gave it a shake, and put it back. “Perhaps you were afraid that whoever picked it up wouldn’t know what was inside and would simply throw it away — so you deliberately left the label intact?”
Fu Xingyue glanced at it. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Ba Yunye grew urgent. “What you’re planning to do is very dangerous… You’re only two or three years older than me, but the things you’ve been through — especially the rotten ones — couldn’t possibly be as many as mine. So I want to advise you: now that some of what you’re doing has been seen by us, if you actually go through with it and the consequences are severe, you won’t get past the police!”
“You’re going too slow — they’ve all arrived already,” Fu Xingyue said, ignoring every word.
Ba Yunye pressed her brow down. “I’m telling you…”
“If you genuinely thought there was something wrong, you’d have gone to the police already, instead of pouring your heart out trying to talk to me.” Fu Xingyue said calmly. “The police work on evidence too.”
Ba Yunye felt a sinking dread. This woman had not taken a single word to heart. She was resolved, utterly set on seeing her plan through. What gave her such absolute confidence?
“Have you ever heard this saying — what others call a bottomless abyss, once you’ve leapt in, turns out to be a world without end.” Fu Xingyue smiled, her eyes cold as ice — unsettling to look at.
What on earth was that supposed to mean? Ba Yunye frowned.
Their destination had arrived. Ba Yunye had no choice but to stop the car. Fu Xingyue stepped out quickly without once looking back. Diao Zhuo strode over, and Ba Yunye spread her hands at him — the confrontation had failed. The woman had banked on the fact that they had no evidence, and had shown not a shred of apprehension.