The moment Ba Yunye’s ties were cut, she ran toward Diao Zhuo — and he had already gotten to his feet and was running toward her. The two of them stood face to face, covered in mud, lost for words. Finally, Ba Yunye cracked first and, at the same time, punched him hard. “Could you not give me some kind of sign when you’re playing dead?!”
Diao Zhuo laughed and pulled her into an embrace, letting her vent by cursing at him freely.
But after a while, the curses ran dry. She leaned against his chest, breathing lightly, letting the tears soak the front of his jacket.
“Why’d you stop cursing?”
“I’m hungry…” she said through a sob, and right on cue her stomach let out a long, low growl — after everything they’d been through with hallucinations and fighting, she had completely forgotten how many hours it had been since she last ate anything.
Long Ge, as the keeper of crucial evidence and witness to the crime, was immediately surrounded by armed police and public security officers. He didn’t even have time to thank Ba Yunye and Diao Zhuo, and could only go along with them. Ba Yunye, sharp-eyed as ever, suddenly remembered he existed. She pushed away from Diao Zhuo and elbowed through the crowd toward him — she had so many questions she wanted to ask.
Diao Zhuo smiled and shook his head. He was exhausted through and through, and now that things had suddenly unwound, his whole body felt as though every bone had been broken — aching all over. He rolled his neck to loosen it, and caught in his peripheral vision a movement not far away. His body snapped to alertness. He focused — and saw that Pang Hou, whose leg Long Ge had shot out, had taken advantage of the brief moment when the medics were lifting him onto a stretcher to pull out a gun he had concealed inside his clothing and open fire in all directions. He wounded one of the medics standing nearby; the stretcher tilted, and he tumbled to the ground. Eyes wild and contorted with rage, he aimed directly at Ba Yunye’s back.
“Watch out behind you!!” Diao Zhuo bellowed, and without a single thought he threw himself in that direction, arms spread wide, trying to block the flying bullet.
But no human being can outrun a bullet. He felt only a rush of heat under his palm as the bullet flew straight toward Ba Yunye’s back. He stared wide-eyed — and in that split second, someone came bursting from the side and threw himself between the bullet and Ba Yunye. The impact sent him pitching forward, and he fell to the ground.
Pang Hou was swiftly subdued by the armed police officers who rushed in, pinned firmly to the ground. He cried and screamed without restraint, his composure completely shattered, shouting repeatedly that he wanted to kill himself — yet what he had just done was clearly an act of revenge. As for ending his own life, that was nothing more than self-deception.
Ba Yunye turned around, fought through the crowd of medics pressing in, and craned her neck to look — it was A’Shui.
“A’Shui!!” She crouched down and shook him hard. “You — who are you actually?! Who are you?! You are not allowed to die!! Tell me! Tell me!”
“Please do not interfere with the emergency treatment of the injured!” a medic said firmly. The armed police officers moved Ba Yunye back. She could only stand at the edge of the crowd, straining to see inside, but couldn’t make anything out clearly.
Everything had happened far too quickly, too suddenly. Ba Yunye sank down to the ground in dejection, her mind in turmoil — until Diao Zhuo came to her side and pulled her up.
“A’Shui, he…” Ba Yunye said, with worry.
“He’s going to be fine,” Diao Zhuo said, certain and calm.
“The bullet hit him!”
“Master Ba…” It was A’Shui’s voice.
Ba Yunye spun around. To her astonishment, the medics were parting, revealing A’Shui lying on the ground. His mouth was a mess of blood, and his entire neck was stained red. Her heart skipped a beat — surely A’Shui hadn’t been beyond saving and was now making a final farewell? She swallowed hard and stumbled to her knees beside him. “A’Shui, I know you must have had your reasons, don’t say anything more. I understand, I forgive you. What happened before — we won’t speak of it again. You have to keep fighting, don’t you dare give up. You absolutely will not die — I won’t allow it! Get better, and we’ll… we’ll go driving together!”
“Master Ba…” A’Shui seemed to be in great pain. He opened his mouth; the spaces between his teeth were filling with blood. “You… can you really let bygones be bygones?”
“What do you mean ‘bygones be bygones’?” she asked, confused.
“He means the past — just forget it ever happened,” Diao Zhuo said quietly.
“Forget it! All of it!” Ba Yunye swore with a thump to her chest.
A’Shui reached out a trembling hand and grabbed hers. “You… do you know, actually, I…”
He’s always liked me? Ba Yunye’s heart lurched. She braced herself — fine, no matter what he said, she would accept it! Maybe… this was the last chance…
“I’m actually wearing a bulletproof vest,” A’Shui said.
The air turned profoundly awkward. Diao Zhuo cast a sideways glance at Ba Yunye. Ba Yunye stood with her mouth half open. A’Shui stared up at her with his wide, bell-like eyes.
“Then the blood in your mouth is…” Ba Yunye pointed at his mouth.
A’Shui wiped it with the back of his hand. “Oh. I hit my face on the ground when I fell.”
And then, from somewhere in the forest, Ba Yunye’s voice exploded like a thunderclap: “A’Shui, what the hell!! Go die already!!”
One tent after another dotted the deep, gloomy forest, lending it an air of warm human life. The scent of food drifted through the air, and the crisp clinking of bowls and chopsticks carried with it the comforting, homey feeling of everyday life.
Everyone except the injured Da Qin — the rescue team and the mountaineering association members — was being watched over by a few armed police officers and had set up camp for the night in a sheltered patch of forest, out of the wind. They would continue on their way at daybreak. The spot was particularly damp and cold because it faced away from the wind and received no sunlight, but at least the concentration of the unidentified toxic gas was low here, insufficient to cause hallucinations.
The other team members were taking turns cooking instant noodles and eight-treasure congee on small portable gas stoves. Ba Yunye kept glaring at A’Shui, which had him hanging his head very low.
“No wonder I couldn’t recognize you — not only are you wearing height-lifting insoles, you’re wearing a bulletproof vest too…” Ba Yunye taunted. “You need to tell us right now who you actually are. Public security, armed police — whatever it is, you at least owe us a proper explanation. Otherwise, none of us will let you off the hook. Even if you’re a police officer, that changes nothing.”
Tan Lin, Xiang’an, and Qi Zi hurriedly waved their hands. “No, no, no — count us out, this has nothing to do with us…”
“Given that I saved your man and saved you, keep that temper in check.” A’Shui pursed his lips. “And I told you early on that I graduated from the Chinese People’s Public Security University — it’s just that you didn’t believe me…”
Ba Yunye choked, vaguely recalling that he had indeed said something like that at some point. She cleared her throat to ease the awkwardness. “So you really are a police officer?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what on earth are you?!”
“I suppose I’m not exactly a ‘what’ either.” A’Shui said, then immediately seemed to regret it, and lowered his voice. “I’m… with a national security department.”
Everyone except Diao Zhuo drew a sharp breath. Diao Zhuo reached over and gave A’Shui a pat on the shoulder. “The fact that you’re willing to reveal your identity means your mission is complete. Why not tell her everything?”
A’Shui drew a long, slow breath, as though organizing his thoughts. He pressed his lips together, eyes drifting upward. “We’d already discovered that there was a network of ‘brokers’ operating domestically — people who specialized in trading classified information — but they were spread very thin and their sources were wildly varied. That’s when we realized the ones we’d caught were probably just foot soldiers. For example, the person who hired Zou Kaigui to go to Qiang Tang to find the ‘celestial lake’ ferry — he was only a ‘middleman,’ a go-between who would get hold of the information and sell it to foreign buyers.”
Ba Yunye asked with great interest, “Spies? When I was serving, I heard that a high-ranking official in the upper echelons who handled important affairs was caught, and later it was rumored that it was his son who used his father’s professional channels to sell classified military secrets to the Americans. Both father and son were sentenced for espionage.”
“The ‘broker’ network has a broader reach. It’s…” A’Shui started.
“Could you speak like a normal person?”
A’Shui laughed out loud. He thought for a moment. “The ‘brokers’ aren’t driven by any national agenda — they’re purely in it for the money. They put whatever useful information and secrets they have up for sale on the dark web, open to any buyer regardless of identity — which naturally includes spies from certain countries. This forms a black-market supply chain and is one of the main criminal targets that nations around the world are cracking down on. The threat it poses to national security is no less than that of a professional spy network.”
“Why did you come to our club? Did you suspect us of being ‘brokers’ too?” Ba Yunye asked.
“Nothing like that…” A’Shui quickly waved his hands, obviously wary of a beating. “In fact, based on our investigation, we gradually narrowed in on Song Fan and Zhang Chenguang as suspects who appeared to be selling certain domestic resources and maps on the dark web. We picked up on the problem with the geological survey team’s vehicle accident — the one your elder sister was on — even before the public security bureau did. We dug deeper and discovered that Long Ge’s wife had died in that same crash. You and Long Ge were both family members of victims, yet you’d ended up in the same circle — so I joined Long Ge’s club, and sure enough, I found the photographic clues left behind by Ba Xiye on you. Once I realized that, I definitely couldn’t leave.”
At this point, Diao Zhuo grew somber, and said quietly, “But Song Fan and Zhang Chenguang are both already…”
“Zhang Chenguang was taken into custody by us a long time ago.” A’Shui flashed a mischievous smile; his features seemed to scrunch together all at once, giving him a wonderfully ridiculous expression. “Before I joined the Soaring Eagle Club, I first infiltrated the circle as Zhang Chenguang’s supposed associate, pretending to sell them information about your movements and whereabouts. That’s why everywhere I went I shot lots of videos — not to be some kind of internet celebrity, but to feed them information, to tell them where you were. Did you know that it wasn’t just us keeping an eye on you? They were watching you too. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have kept harassing the orphanage where you grew up, repeatedly, over all those years. To gain their trust, I sold them the fact that you had the photographs. Of course, I also passed that same information on to my real colleagues. When you followed Zhang Chenguang to Yuzhu Peak, I called him and told him to leave immediately — but I knew he wasn’t going to go anywhere before he finished his business dealings.”
Ba Yunye shook her head in exasperation. “But the blizzard on Yuzhu Peak — that was something even you couldn’t have controlled!”
“Our people were also disguised as climbers. They had originally planned to move in and bring him in at the summit — and then the blizzard hit. So they arrested Zhang Chenguang early. Outwardly, we could only report him as missing, to dispel his associates’ suspicions.”
“So that means Zhang Chenguang… is still alive!!” Ba Yunye exclaimed, her excitement bursting through.
“Not only is he alive — He Zhengren is, in fact… also alive.” A’Shui raised his eyebrows. “The villager who claimed to have found the body, and the officers who worked the scene — they were all part of a performance we staged. However, he was stabbed and gravely wounded; he’s still under observation following emergency surgery. I haven’t yet received any word of him regaining consciousness. Whether or not he survives, we must publicly maintain that he is already dead — otherwise, even more people would come for him. After all, what he knows is a great deal. And as for all the information he’s sold over the years and the crimes he’s committed — that alone could well be a death sentence.”
The joy came so suddenly and so unexpectedly. Ba Yunye and Diao Zhuo looked at each other, eyes full of delight.