Changbai Mountain is a place protected by spirits.
At the foot of Tianchi Mountain, there’s a sign that reads, “The spirits will bless those who have visited Changbai Mountain with lifelong peace and joy.”
Strictly speaking, Shan Chong couldn’t be considered a complete atheist, but he had never given much thought to this matter…
For years, he had been at Changbai Mountain. Back then, snowboarding didn’t have the so-called systematic teaching it has now. Everyone was self-taught, learning by watching videos or observing others, stumbling along. They might not even have started by learning to push on slopes; instead, they’d tumble and fall multiple times until they figured out how to change edges.
He couldn’t even remember if “changing edges” was called that back then.
Being able to ride, knowing how to ride, and then riding all terrains—
Many years passed unknowingly. By the time Shan Chong became “that Shan Chong” people talked about, he seemed to have become a part of Changbai Mountain.
Every blade of grass and tree on the mountain, every corner inside and outside the ski resort—he knew them all.
It was like drinking water or eating food, saying goodbye to family members before leaving home in the morning, telling them when he’d be back, going down the stairs, encountering the yawning stray cat in the neighborhood courtyard, looking up at the sun overhead…
Going to the trampoline, going to train.
Winter training camps, Changbai Mountain’s jump platform.
Some fixed daily routines had become so ordinary that when they occurred according to schedule, no one thought about cherishing the moment or reminiscing—
Until one day, when the unexpected arrived.
…
In Shan Chong’s memory, it was just an ordinary day.
It seemed to be a weekend. The ski resort wasn’t particularly crowded. As Shan Chong carried his board up to the jump platform, people greeted him along the way. He responded lazily.
“Brother Chong, I heard Dai Duo landed an FS cork 2160 line a few days ago.”
The so-called “line” was just adding a melon grab (front hand grabbing the back edge between the bindings) to the fs flat spin, meaning the entire move was an off-axis rotation with a stylish board grab. It was just that in the current domestic environment, it was the first time a rider could consistently perform a cork 2160 with style.
Faced with the inquiry, Shan Chong barely lifted his eyelids and said, “Mm.”
“Wang Xin said you did this move on the airbag long ago. Dai Duo learned it right under your nose—”
Shan Chong thought for a moment and calmly said, “No, I tried. Couldn’t land it.”
“Dai Duo himself said he learned it from you.”
“I couldn’t land it.”
This time, there was a hint of impatience in the man’s voice.
Having just returned from the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, his mood wasn’t particularly high. After rejoining the team, there was a somewhat cautious atmosphere. When people spoke to him, they carried unnecessary respect—
Even Wang Xin’s scolding voice seemed to have softened a bit.
He didn’t know why these people were trying to give him credit for this, but Dai Duo was indeed the first to land this move, and he had no intention of stealing that achievement…
Everyone knew that Shan Chong was a bit arrogant, but his arrogance wasn’t based on pretenses or giving credit to others.
The person who had approached him to talk, seeing his reluctance to engage, was either used to his attitude or knew his personality. They rubbed their nose and followed behind him as they climbed up.
Halfway up, they heard a commotion from the jump platform.
“Why didn’t you mention Shan Chong? Damn it, his axis rotation yesterday was as stiff as a mummy’s. I watched him all day—”
“You watched him all day yesterday and didn’t notice anything wrong, and today you’re making the same mistake?”
“Oh, I thought that posture was correct since you didn’t say anything when you saw him like that?”
“Dai Duo!”
“What are you shouting for—”
The shouting from the jump platform reached their ears. At this moment, probably only his new… disciple or junior, or whatever you’d call him, wouldn’t care about Shan Chong’s feelings.
Shan Chong climbed up, put down his board, and listlessly scanned the two rowdy individuals who had been there since early morning. He asked, “Did you both eat too much this morning? So much energy?”
The two who had been facing off with hands on their hips both turned their heads.
Dai Duo asked, “You tell me, are your hands stiff or not?”
Shan Chong’s face remained expressionless: “If all my moves were perfect, I would have been standing on the podium in PyeongChang, not here with you guys.”
Dai Duo was momentarily speechless.
Wang Xin, seeing him bring up the last Winter Olympics on his own, felt a bit nervous.
Dai Duo thought for a moment, still not convinced: “You were on the podium then, but where else can you go now? You can’t be anywhere but here with us. It’s not like you’re going to retire on the spot after winning an Olympic gold medal—”
Shan Chong snorted with laughter.
“What are you laughing at? Really.”
The man ignored him, bent down to strap into his bindings, and first symbolically jumped a few flat 1440s as a warm-up. These moves were routine for him, and he executed them steadily.
Then he gradually transitioned from flat spins to off-axis rotations, occasionally attempting the most difficult double corks. Today, Shan Chong was in good form, managing a double cork 1440, although he didn’t stick the landing and fell to his knees. Still, it was truly impressive.
Wang Xin, standing on the platform, told him to try an fs cork 2340.
“Release the board one edge earlier, extend your line a bit, on the last rotation, bring your front hand back, move your elbow a bit, let your shoulder lead your hips—”
Wang Xin twisted his old waist, “The basics are the same, whether you’re doing 2340 or 180, understand?”
Shan Chong understood.
If he could make his body respond exactly as his mind thought while in the air, he wouldn’t be Shan Chong but a snowboarding prodigy born from a snowboard after ten months of gestation.
After patiently listening to Wang Xin’s instructions, he said he’d give it a try.
He started with smaller rotations to get familiar with and solve the shoulder-locking problem. After two attempts, everyone said it felt different from yesterday, and there was a sense in the air that “today might be the day to land it.”
Just the other day, Dai Duo had landed 2160, and if Shan Chong could land a 2340 today, the snowboard big air team’s KPI for the year would be pretty much complete before the New Year.
With such high hopes, Shan Chong made his final adjustments to his bindings, straightened up, and set off.
It started well enough. He released the board one edge earlier, and as he rode the edge, he felt the speed was a bit fast but still controllable.
As he left the platform, the height startled him for a couple of seconds. It felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but reflexively, he bent his body in the air, grabbed the front edge of the board, and swung out for a few rotations—
He wasn’t sure if he made a mistake in the middle of the move, or if a series of small errors accumulated into a big problem, but the more he spun, the more out of control he felt.
At that moment, he didn’t feel a sinking feeling in his heart or anything else… his mind was just blank.
He couldn’t hear if anyone was shouting or anything else around him. He just felt that he might fall.
Jumping from the platform and falling on the ground was a common occurrence. Usually, landing on a hand or twisting an ankle wasn’t unheard of. At the worst time, he had fallen so hard that his helmet cracked, and he had to lie in bed for nearly a week.
But this time, as Shan Chong landed, his entire body went past the safety net and crashed sideways into a tree.
The impact was so sudden he didn’t even have time to feel the pain. He just heard a clear “crack.”
He wasn’t sure if the sound came from the tree or his bones. Immediately after, a wave of intense pain and numbness swept through his back. He fell into the thick snow beneath the tree, with snow from the branches falling onto his face and neck—
The position was probably not very dignified.
At least he hadn’t hit his head.
The icy cold crept into his neck. At that moment, he didn’t know whether to worry about the snow seeping into his collar or his waist. His whole body felt numb with pain.
From his waist, the cold and numb pain suddenly spread like the first note of a symphony, passionate and vigorous, sending signals to every pain receptor in his body…
He could barely feel the coldness of the snow falling into his clothes, melting into water, and spreading down his back.
His mind was buzzing.
He tried to prop himself up with one hand to get up, but the slightest movement brought such excruciating pain that he nearly passed out!
The man closed his eyes briefly. It was then that he realized the situation might be more serious than he had thought. This wasn’t going to be a case of cursing “It hurts!” while standing up, dusting himself off, and sitting on the sidelines to rest for a day…
He couldn’t see himself, but he felt like a poor hibernating animal curled up quietly under the tree. He lay there for a while, no more than five minutes, though it felt like a century to him. He tried to move his lower body—
It was okay, he could still move.
But even the slightest movement, a hair’s breadth of shifting, brought earth-shattering pain.
Chaotic footsteps sounded nearby.
He opened his eyes again and lifted his chin slightly. The first person he saw running over was Dai Duo, who had jumped straight down from the platform, landed, unstrapped his board, stuck it in the snow by the path, and rushed towards him—
“What happened? Shan Chong? Are you still conscious? Did you hit your head? Where does it hurt?”
He fired off a series of questions like firecrackers.
As he spoke, he took off his helmet and threw it aside, reaching out to support Shan Chong.
The young man’s hand had barely touched the man’s shoulder when he was stopped by a shout. His hand trembled and pulled back, and he crouched beside him.
Shan Chong’s voice was still steady, but if you listened carefully, you could tell he was speaking through gritted teeth: “Rescue… ambulance… I think I’ve injured something.”
As he finished speaking, he saw Dai Duo’s face turn as pale as if he’d seen a ghost.
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought he was already dead, and the young man had just arrived in time to see his corpse.
After speaking, Shan Chong closed his eyes cleanly and efficiently, losing consciousness from the pain.
…
Later, when Shan Chong regained consciousness, it was when they were lifting him into the ambulance. The pain woke him up.
The stretcher was soft, and these people probably didn’t know how much pain could make him pass out. They just picked him up and placed him on the stretcher. As his waist sank slightly, the pain that felt like torture hit him, and he woke up immediately.
He wanted to ask if these people had always harbored a grudge against him because no one should be tossing around a person with a spinal injury like a sack of potatoes.
Wang Xin and Dai Duo followed Shan Chong into the car. Noticing Shan Chong had opened his eyes, Wang Xin remarked, “You’re awake? Good.”
Shan Chong thought to himself, “What’s good about it? Being awake just means more suffering.” However, he lacked the energy to retort.
Dai Duo leaned in and asked, “Are you still in pain? I’ve informed your family; they’re on their way.”
Shan Chong had initially closed his eyes and turned away, but upon hearing this, he reopened them. Looking at Dai Duo, his lips quivered before he finally managed to say, “Can’t you… ever do anything right?”
Dai Duo was left bewildered by the rebuke.
At the hospital, Shan Chong underwent routine external injury examinations and was put on an IV drip. Being an active athlete, many medications were off-limits, including painkillers. He had no choice but to grit his teeth and endure the pain.
After the CT scan, Shan Chong asked Wang Xin to help remove his jacket. His quick-dry undershirt was soaked with sweat from the pain. Fortunately, the hospital’s heating was adequate; otherwise, the cold wind might have given him a chill.
“Does it hurt?” Wang Xin asked.
“Why don’t you try it and see?” Shan Chong retorted.
As Wang Xin wiped Shan Chong’s sweat, Shan Chong’s phone began ringing incessantly in his pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, he instructed Wang Xin to answer it, warning him not to say anything unnecessary.
Wang Xin handed the payment slip to Dai Duo and, under Shan Chong’s watchful eye, answered a series of questions:
“Hello?”
“He just fell.”
“He’s fine.”
“It was just a fall; he hit a tree.”
“There’s no life-threatening danger. For the rest, wait until you arrive and ask the doctor directly when the results are out.”
After briefly answering these questions, Wang Xin hastily ended the call. As a coach, he usually acted like a father figure to his team members, but in the eyes of their actual parents, he was more like a kindergarten caretaker.
“This is bad,” Wang Xin said. “Your mother is going to hold someone responsible.”
Shan Chong looked at his coach, whose face was alternating between red and white, clearly worried about both Shan Chong’s condition and the potential backlash. After a moment’s thought, Shan Chong, not in the mood to comfort Wang Xin, asked him to hand the phone back.
The call was answered immediately. Shan Chong said “Hello,” and upon hearing his voice, the person on the other end broke down.
“Where did you fall? Does it hurt?”
“I told you to be careful. Why don’t you ever listen?”
“You should have just rested after returning from Pyeongchang. Why couldn’t you take a break? The New Year is approaching; wouldn’t it be better to rest at home for a few days?”
“Your great-aunt said you shouldn’t have gone to Pyeongchang at all. That place doesn’t suit you. I thought she was talking nonsense, but now I think she was right. You shouldn’t have gone!”
“Shan Chong? Say something. Are you in pain or not?”
Of course, it hurt everywhere.
The barrage of questions from the other end of the line included superstitious statements, but Shan Chong couldn’t refute them one by one. He only managed to tell one lie: “I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt.”
In truth, this call wasn’t necessary. However, Shan Chong couldn’t help but recall the day he returned from training to learn from a neighbor that Shan Shan had been rushed to the emergency room. He remembered how he felt then.
At that time, he had called his sister’s phone, knowing the neighbor wasn’t lying and that she wouldn’t be able to answer. But at that moment, he called anyway. During the chaotic situation at the hospital when no one could answer Shan Shan’s phone, he felt he would never forget the taste of fear that enveloped him on the way to the hospital, surrounded by the unknown.
This scenario had already played out once in his family. They didn’t need a second time.
Later, the examination results came out. The doctor’s explanation was too technical for Shan Chong to fully understand, but he gathered that he had a spinal fracture, with a depressed fragment pressing on a nerve membrane. Fortunately, the membrane wasn’t punctured—he had narrowly escaped potential lifelong paralysis.
However, he didn’t have time to feel relieved. The doctor said immediate surgery was necessary. Wang Xin, not being a family member, couldn’t sign the consent forms. Shan Chong had to endure several more hours, of waiting for his family to arrive.
When he saw that Shan Shan had come along, Shan Chong was at a loss for words. Even the attending physician was taken aback, looking from his sister to him. Undoubtedly, everyone present shared the same thought: this family couldn’t afford to have another person in a wheelchair.
Lying on the hospital bed, Shan Chong forced himself to lift his foot slightly, and for the first time in his life, he couldn’t bring himself to meet his parents’ eyes. He told the doctor, “When can we do the surgery? I don’t feel right.”
Hearing Shan Chong’s calm tone despite his discomfort, the doctor came over, lifted the blanket covering him, and explained that they feared the displaced bone might irritate the cauda equina, potentially leading to issues with bladder and bowel control.
Shan Chong was wheeled into the operating room shortly after. The doctor had asked if he wanted to wait a couple of days, explaining that operating after the swelling subsided would improve post-operative recovery, pain management, and overall results.
He insisted on not waiting and was promptly taken to surgery.
By the time he entered the operating room, Shan Chong wasn’t fully conscious due to pain and exhaustion. He remembered seeing everyone standing outside the operating room—his parents, his sister, Dai Duo, and Wang Xin—a large group gathered there.
His mother hadn’t cried. She stood there like a lifeless doll, unlike her frantic state on the phone. At the hospital, she became less talkative. She looked at him briefly, then went to speak with the doctor, following instructions mechanically—signing forms, paying fees, signing more forms.
Throughout this, Shan Shan was on the verge of tears, while his mother didn’t shed a single tear, appearing remarkably composed and calm. Shan Chong thought his mother had truly improved, becoming more experienced after the first incident.
But just before he was wheeled into the operating room—in the last second before the door separating life and death closed—he turned his head.
The others might have thought he didn’t see, but he did.
He saw his mother, who had been standing tall and straight, suddenly sway and collapse into his father’s arms just as the door was about to close.
Shan Shan, just a young girl, turned pale and red-eyed, instinctively trying to move her wheelchair forward to catch her mother, nearly falling out herself. Fortunately, Dai Duo grabbed her arm from behind.
His father was sighing.
Wang Xin stood silently to the side, his hair disheveled, arms crossed.
This was the last scene Shan Chong saw. He never imagined that after his fall, he would be the one feeling guilty and wanting to apologize.
Later, as he reflected, he deeply regretted many things—
If he had left a second earlier or later, he might not have fallen;
If he had been more careful, he might not have fallen;
If he had practiced the small circles a few more times to familiarize himself with the movement, he might not have fallen…
Perhaps if the FSCORK2340 had worked that day, he wouldn’t have steel pins in his body now. He could have stood properly and spent the Spring Festival with his family…
Then the new year would have begun.
He would have focused on preparing for the points race and the Beijing Winter Olympics.
In an instant, everything changed.
If there were deities on Changbai Mountain, they must have dozed off for a second that day, closing their eyes.
They forgot about that one person—
He never felt that his mistakes on the Pyeongchang competition stage affected his love and pursuit of snowboarding big air;
He could get up even if he fell;
He was training hard;
He was focused on preparation;
He wanted to go to Beijing…
He would go to Beijing.
One day, waking from a dream, he realized that reality was the biggest nightmare.
His life was suddenly paused by someone unknown, frozen in place. From that moment on, even he didn’t know where to go.