Fu Yingtao had been mired in nightmares for a long time before jolting awake, only to find that half of his nightmares were real. Ice-cold fluid flowed into his body through a transparent tube. He was utterly drained of strength, could only stare blankly at the ceiling and the white bedding. The smell of antiseptic filled his nostrils — an unmistakably hospital smell. No one sat at his bedside. No one came to ask after him.
He had not summited. Every ounce of effort, every hour, every yuan he had spent on this trip had come to nothing. Was he truly getting old? Was it time to step back from the front line?
He had no idea how much time passed before a nurse noticed he was awake and hurried out. Shortly afterward, two middle-aged men walked in with briefcases tucked under their arms and serious expressions on their faces. They showed him their identification and introduced themselves as police officers.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two officers got to the point —
“When you adopted Fu Xingyue, were you aware that she had certain physical deficiencies?”
“Why did you, at the time, prevent Fu Xingyue from pursuing a relationship and marriage with her then-boyfriend Han Mu? How did she react, and did she ever bring the matter up again afterward — with you or with anyone else?”
“What was the relationship between Jiang Ao’hang and your late wife? Were there any conflicts between them? Did you ever discuss the family’s properties or other assets in detail with Jiang Ao’hang?”
From the nature of their questions, Fu Yingtao sensed that something was off. He struggled to sit up, resting weakly against the pillow. “What are all these questions supposed to mean? Have those two come back? I’m lying in a hospital — why haven’t they come to look after me?”
“We’re not in a position to answer those questions at this time. Please cooperate with us and answer ours first.”
Fu Yingtao stared at the two officers for a long moment, then told them that his cousin had never mentioned any physical deficiencies in Fu Xingyue — otherwise he would not have adopted a child with a deficiency. “I adopted her to have someone to care for me in my old age, not to spend my life looking after her out of the goodness of my heart. Even a minor deficiency would have been unacceptable. When she was little I had her examined — she was fine. Our family has no hereditary conditions, so I don’t understand why you’re asking me this.”
The police had already obtained evidence of Jiang Ao’hang traveling to Fu Xingyue’s hometown to question her birth parents. It appeared that her birth parents had deliberately concealed her minor condition from Fu Yingtao — and Jiang Ao’hang had stumbled upon it by chance and turned it to his advantage.
“And Han Mu?” the officer asked. “Tell us what you know about the situation — why did you refuse to accept him as your son-in-law back then? Was it a matter of character, or something else?”
Fu Yingtao was thoroughly baffled by the question. “I don’t know this person well.”
“Are you aware that he has never married, and that he has maintained regular contact with both your daughter and son-in-law?”
“What?!” Fu Yingtao’s shock was visible and immediate, replaced quickly by indignation. “What does he think he’s doing?! Refusing to give up?! Is he trying to sabotage my daughter and son-in-law’s marriage?! I’ll tell you — he was always trying to lure my daughter away to his city, standing in the way of her filial duties to me. My daughter was so besotted with him at the time that she nearly forgot what she owed me, her father who raised her at great cost. Is this what happened — my daughter fell ill on the mountain, and he came running here and got into a fight with my son-in-law? Officers, you need to look into this carefully. He was the one who seduced — no! — coerced my daughter into this relationship. Xingyue would never have gone to him willingly. Arrest him at once!”
“So you were strongly opposed to the two of them being together at the time?”
“Of course I was opposed,” Fu Yingtao said. “If my daughter married him, she would have to go and live in the city where he works. And where would that leave me? I raised a daughter through blood, sweat, and tears, and in the end she was to go and devote herself to someone else’s family? What has he ever given my daughter? Money? Time? Nothing but honeyed words.”
The two officers exchanged a glance and gave a small nod, as if to say — both parties now had motive.
“Have my daughter and son-in-law come here. I want some straight answers.” Despite his frailty, Fu Yingtao’s tone was imperious.
“That… you’ll need to contact them yourself.”
“What kind of attitude is that? Bring me your supervising officer! Do you know I have connections with people in your provincial bureau?!”
The two officers rose to their feet, maintained their professional courtesy as they said their goodbyes, and left. When they regrouped with the officers dispatched to question others in different locations, they exchanged observations, reaching the shared conclusion that Jiang Ao’hang and Han Mu were both major suspects.
“Han Mu was Fu Xingyue’s first love and the only man she’d had a romantic entanglement with. He has a medical background and understands pharmacology. Even though he wasn’t in Golmud or anywhere near the couple, the conditions exist for him to have provided remote guidance for the crime.” one officer said.
The other officer said: “Fu Yingtao has a strong aversion to Han Mu, and according to him, he never mentioned Han Mu in front of Jiang Ao’hang. Only a few of Fu Xingyue’s close university friends even knew he existed. In our investigation of Jiang Ao’hang’s social circle, all of his pre-marriage romantic partners were male, which means fraud in marriage can’t be ruled out. When we went through the contacts on his phone, we found that someone named ‘Ruirui’ was in very close contact with him — and that ‘Ruirui’ is Han Mu.”
“So what role do you think Fu Xingyue actually plays in all this? We need to sort that out before we can get anywhere with her.”
The question gave the other officers pause. After a moment, the officer who had initially taken the report said, “The crux is still Han Mu… but from the moment we took notice of him, we haven’t been able to reach him at all.”
“He ran?”
“Either way, he’s a key figure. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask our colleagues in the other city to help track him down.”
Back in the hospital ward, Fu Yingtao kept calling Fu Xingyue and Jiang Ao’hang — both phones went unanswered. Thoroughly baffled, he grabbed at the nurses, refusing to let go, demanding that they find the police and ask where the two were — otherwise he would pull out his IV drip and go looking himself. The normally quiet hospital ward erupted in noise from his shouting and bellowing. Eventually, from the murmurs and scoffs of the gathered onlookers, he learned —
Fu Xingyue and Jiang Ao’hang were suspects in a criminal case, and one of their joint targets had been him.
This news plunged Fu Yingtao into a prolonged silence. The duty nurse and the ward doctor dispersed the gathered patients and family members, urging them not to spread unverified information before the case was resolved.
Fu Yingtao thought back to the baffling questions the police had just asked him, and to what he had learned about Han Mu’s recent circumstances. Then he thought further back — to the months following the point when he had finally persuaded (or rather, pressured) his daughter to break up with Han Mu. During that period, someone had sent a letter to the general manager reporting that he had abused his authority and had issues with his personal conduct. After a great deal of effort to clear his name, he had eventually traced the source of the report — it came from the city where Han Mu lived. He could not prove it had been Han Mu’s doing, but the probability felt high.
Han Mu staying in contact with Fu Xingyue made a certain kind of sense — he had torn the two of them apart, of course there would be lingering attachment. But Han Mu maintaining contact with Jiang Ao’hang — that was something he found truly inexplicable.
A nurse came in to replace his IV. Fu Yingtao suddenly grabbed the hem of her coat and fixed her with a hollow stare, his manner bordering on unhinged. “Am I really so hated? I raised her — I did. She could barely repay what she owed me, and she wanted to harm me instead? How can people’s hearts be this dark? How can they be?!”
“Sir, please focus on getting better.” The nurse simply assumed he had received a devastating shock and was struggling to come to terms with it. She didn’t hold it against him, offering a few gentle words of comfort.
“Do you have a VIP ward here?” Fu Yingtao was relentless. “If you want me to get better, then arrange one for me. The conditions here are inadequate — I can’t possibly recover in this environment. And tell those officers to assign police protection for my personal safety!”
“Sir, I…” The nurse had no idea how to handle him and stood there momentarily at a loss.
Seated in a small offal restaurant at a table, Ba Yunye drank down half a bowl of lamb offal soup. Compared to the barely-soaked braised beef instant noodles from the day before, this was true comfort. She was not the type to brood endlessly over a vexing matter — after a night’s sleep, she seemed to have almost set aside Ma He’s defection. Even though she had tried calling him twice first thing in the morning, his phone remained switched off.
Long Ge had deliberately withheld Ma He’s cut from his upcoming client runs and was holding back the year-end bonus he’d been promised as well. He told her to watch how things developed, get through the few remaining runs before the Spring Festival, and sort everything out after the holiday.
Ba Yunye propped her chin in both hands and gazed at Diao Zhuo sitting across from her. When you like someone, everything they do seems effortlessly attractive — the way they walk, the way they eat, even the way they breathe. He had shaved that morning, looking fresh and sharp. His black casual blazer hung over the back of the chair; the navy-blue shirt underneath was pulled taut across his solid frame, accentuating the muscle lines of his arms and chest. She was practically salivating at the sight of him. Under the table, she stretched her foot across and pressed it against his calf, rubbing up and down.
Diao Zhuo’s gaze never lifted from the news on his phone screen, yet his left hand drifted down beneath the table to catch hold of her ankle, his thumb tracing an affectionate circle against her calf. The small private exchange between them held a warmth invisible to everyone else in the room.
Ba Yunye felt a little ticklish, and kept a deliberately straight face. “I’ll drop you off at that place later to do your… what was it again…”
Diao Zhuo looked up. “The Local Chronicles Compilation Committee.”
“Right, the Local Chronicles Compilation Committee… I’ll pop over to the supermarket, grab a few snacks and things — bring them in the car for tomorrow.” The bowls in the northwest were enormous; Ba Yunye had barely made a dent, so she simply put down her chopsticks. “Are you sure you don’t need any kind of official letter or introduction to look at the records? Or at least… bring some fruit as a courtesy?”
He reached over and tapped the tip of her nose. “Is that really the image you have of government offices?”
She scrunched her neck down and put on her most obedient face. “We ordinary folk don’t dare bother the government over nothing.”
“In geological exploration work, we sometimes need to visit local chronicle offices to look up old county or prefectural records. It’s a straightforward office — no letters needed, no need for gifts. Other government departments generally don’t go out of their way to hassle ordinary people, unless—” he gestured with his chin toward her car parked at the entrance, “—you’ve committed traffic violations. In that case, you pay the fine and be done with it.”
Ba Yunye laughed and asked, “Last night I did a quick search and found absolutely nothing about river course changes or glacier monitoring stations in this area. Can you actually find that kind of thing in the local chronicles?”
He looked at her steadily. “Last night you were still in the mood to search?”
“I had things on my mind and couldn’t sleep.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I was afraid you might be dreaming about me and didn’t want to interrupt.” She grinned. “But will the chronicles really have year-by-year records? With so many decades to go through, how do you even approach it?”
Diao Zhuo answered, “Rivers and lakes don’t change course, disappear, or appear out of nowhere without a cause. If it was due to an earthquake, the magnitude would have had to be considerable. If it was a natural disaster, the scale of destruction would have been significant enough to be documented. As far back as the Ming and Qing dynasties, localities already had their own chronicles, compiling information on all aspects of the region by year. In the modern era, they’re revised every twenty years. What we’re looking for this time falls in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, which means we’ll need to search through the first post-Liberation edition of the Golmud City Chronicles. As for the glacier monitoring station, I’m not sure whether it will be recorded — that’ll come down to luck.”
Ba Yunye pressed her palms together. “Best of luck to you.”