Ba Yunye ducked into the large tent. A fierce gust of plateau wind immediately rushed in through the gap in the parted door flap, scattering the cards that Da Qiang, Dongbai, and the others had just dealt across the tent floor, forcing them to reshuffle. She took the snacks River Horse had bought over to the group and offered them around. They bantered and joked as they dealt the cards again, their noise and chatter conveniently masking the low voices that followed.

“Da Qiang, take a look at this medicine…” Ba Yunye slipped the medicine bottle to Da Qiang.

Da Qiang threw down a pair of Kings, twisted off the cap, and took a look. He understood at once — just as he was about to explain, he saw her make a hushing gesture, and lowered his voice: “Glibenclamide… who’s taking this? I wouldn’t recommend this drug — it’s quite old, has some side effects, metabolizes slowly, accumulates in the body, and may cause hypoglycemia. You might not feel any reaction during the day, but low blood sugar in the middle of the night is a serious problem. This is especially true for people with reduced or compromised liver and kidney function — they absolutely shouldn’t use this. Nowadays there are many much safer medications for blood sugar control, like Glimepride and Glipizide — they regulate blood sugar without causing hypoglycemia.”

Diao Zhuo heard the story of how the medicine bottle had been found from River Horse. He quietly glanced at the young couple speaking intimately together, then at Fu Yingtao with half his face hidden behind a newspaper, and furrowed his brow slightly, as though he found it rather hard to believe.

“We should take this to the police,” Ba Yunye said quietly to him.

“Don’t fall into a trap,” he said, unmoved.

Ba Yunye didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“If the person trying to harm someone has this level of intelligence…” Diao Zhuo cast a glance at the medicine bottle in Ba Yunye’s hand as though it were a crumpled piece of waste paper, utterly worthless. “Then we don’t need to go to the trouble of persuading Old Fu to give up the summit, and we need not worry for one moment about his safety in the future.”

“But if this drug were given to Old Fu just a few hours before the summit attempt, it would cause hypoglycemia. Severe hypoglycemia can be fatal. And since they’re making the summit push, physical exertion will be enormous — anyone experiencing hypoglycemia, altitude sickness, or even a sudden cardiac or cerebrovascular event would seem completely normal. If Old Fu were to die during the summit ascent because of this, it would look like an accident.”

Diao Zhuo took the medicine bottle, opened it, and raised the corner of his lips. He tilted his chin toward the other mountaineers’ backpacks. “Take a look at what the climbing guides and the others have prepared to carry with them, and then look at the completely intact label on the medicine bottle.”

River Horse glanced around, then suddenly looked up at Diao Zhuo and gave him a thumbs up.

Ba Yunye surveyed the scene. After a moment, she let out a breath and said with self-deprecating humor: “I was too hasty in my thinking.”

Every person who had come to climb the mountain had prepared ample supplies of chocolate, glucose, and other things capable of rapidly replenishing the body’s sugar needs. If someone were to experience severe hypoglycemia during the summit push, any one of them could save his life. Even if he took blood sugar–lowering medication before heading up, there was no guarantee he would die from untreated hypoglycemia during the ascent — the method lacked any certainty of success. It was, in short, redundant. And besides — what person who intended to harm someone wouldn’t strip the label off the bottle completely? Even the most ordinary fool wouldn’t do something that careless.

“If neither of them has diabetes, why go to the trouble of bringing this along?” River Horse asked. “Even if it wasn’t meant to harm anyone, accidentally swallowing it by mistake would still be quite a problem. Jiang does genuinely want his father-in-law out of the picture — maybe he brought this along at first, then realized it was useless and simply discarded it?”

“Assuming someone does want to harm Fu Yingtao — why is it that our immediate instinct is to think of Jiang Ao’hang?” Diao Zhuo countered.

“A preconceived assumption?” Ba Yunye pointed at River Horse. “He overheard what Jiang said on the phone, and I saw the message from that ‘Ruirui’ — we both know that Jiang puts on a show of compliance while actually resenting his father-in-law deeply and coveting his assets.”

“Right — because Jiang exposed himself first, so he’s standing in plain sight. He’s the ‘mantis.’ But the mantis could never do something this foolish…” Diao Zhuo gave the medicine bottle a gentle shake; the few pills inside knocked against the walls of the container with a crisp sound. “The one who left this behind is the ‘oriole.'”

“Could it be Fu…” Ba Yunye caught herself — she realized her voice had gone slightly too loud. She glanced at Fu Xingyue; Da Qiang and the others were playing cards and chatting noisily, and the family hadn’t noticed this side of the tent. She quickly lowered her voice. “Is it her?”

“If it’s her, then the reality is absolutely terrifying!” River Horse shoved both hands into his hair on either side of his head and scratched frantically. “She knows her husband wants to harm her father — not only does she do nothing about it, she pretends to be completely oblivious. When Master Ba deliberately hinted that she should check her husband’s phone, she remained oblivious too. I’d say at that point she had already figured out that we knew about her husband’s scheme, and she deliberately left this behind to test us — to make us think Jiang intended to use this method to harm someone. And here I went and specially bought a big bag of glucose tablets, afraid there wouldn’t be enough to go around…”

Ba Yunye looked at the glucose tablets River Horse had brought back, and her resentment toward him for hiding things from her suddenly eased considerably — if he genuinely intended to save someone, he couldn’t be all that bad.

Bought. A new idea flashed through her mind.

“You can’t buy this kind of drug at Xidatan!” she said suddenly. “Whoever left the medicine bottle behind — they didn’t go out and buy it on a whim. They most likely bought it in Golmud, or perhaps had it prepared and brought it from home.”

“Holy hell, the truth just got even more terrifying!” River Horse covered his face. “This is using someone else to do the killing! You women… ah! The cruelty of a woman’s heart!”

“Stop throwing dirt on my name.” Ba Yunye shot him a sideways glare. “What — we act in good faith trying to prevent something terrible from happening, and we end up being used as a bullet? Damn it, I’m done — from this moment on I’m going to play blind. Whatever I see or hear, I’m playing dead. It’s not like I came to Yuzhu Peak to uphold justice anyway — I came to…”

She stopped mid-sentence. River Horse stared at her.

“To be with my man~” Ba Yunye reached out and touched Diao Zhuo’s chin. Stubble — quite prickly.

Diao Zhuo’s expression was grave. Had this bottle of Glibenclamide never appeared, he would have remained merely in the suspicion phase regarding Fu Xingyue. Now he could be certain: the self-satisfied Jiang Ao’hang was nothing more than a shield she used to deflect attention, and behind that shield was her sharpened spear — and it was that spear that was aimed at Fu Yingtao’s most fatal vulnerability.

“When you were eavesdropping on his phone call, who was in the public restroom first — you or him?” Diao Zhuo asked.

“Me,” River Horse said. “My stomach was hurting. I was going to use the hotel restroom, but there was someone inside, so I had to go to the public toilet downstairs. I was mid-way through when he came in.”

“I recall you saying at the time that he greeted Fu Xingyue when he left,” Diao Zhuo said. “I had a question about that — his wife was right near the public restroom. Why would he say all those things about resenting his father-in-law without a care in the world?”

River Horse waved his hand. “She wasn’t nearby — she was upstairs. The window of their room looked directly down at the public restroom.”

“I see.” Diao Zhuo nodded thoughtfully.

“Are you saying that it wasn’t a coincidence that River Horse overheard his phone call?” Ba Yunye asked.

“What if it also wasn’t a coincidence that you picked up Jiang Ao’hang’s phone?”

“Surely she couldn’t have deliberately thrown her husband’s phone there for me to find?” Ba Yunye looked incredulous. “She never looks at his phone — and there’s no way she would have been holding his phone at that moment!”

Diao Zhuo shook his head. “Why did you assume the phone that fell on the ground was Jiang’s?”

“Because…”

“Because you found a message on it from someone called ‘Ruirui’ about staging a mountaineering accident, and you instinctively assumed the phone must be Jiang’s. But in fact, the two of them use identical phones — even Jiang himself has accidentally picked up the wrong one before.”

River Horse, standing nearby, went completely silent, staring blankly at Diao Zhuo as though struck dumb.

Ba Yunye thought back: when she asked if anyone had lost a phone, Jiang Ao’hang hadn’t even registered whether or not he had lost his — yet Fu Xingyue had known with certainty that the phone was her husband’s, and had rushed forward ahead of everyone else to take it.

“Both Old Fu and Jiang stumbled and fell in quick succession, so everyone’s attention was on the two of them. Even if Jiang had actually dropped his phone, you might not have been the first one to notice it.” Diao Zhuo said. “A calculated reversal — make the person who finds the ‘Ruirui’ message firmly believe that if anything happens to Old Fu on the mountain, Jiang is responsible.”

“So what you’re saying is — the phone Master Ba saw at the time wasn’t Jiang’s, but rather…” River Horse indicated Fu Xingyue’s direction with his eyes.

Ba Yunye thought for a moment, then said: “She first saw Jiang’s phone fall, then turned the situation to her advantage — swapping her own phone for his so whoever came along afterward would find it. Then during the handover to Jiang, she switched them back once more. But in that case, how do we explain the message from ‘Ruirui’?”

Diao Zhuo said: “A scheme like this is difficult for one person to execute alone. The person Jiang called and ‘Ruirui’ — at least one of them is her accomplice.”

River Horse waved his hand. “When someone harbors murderous intent, at most they bring in one person they trust absolutely. Jiang couldn’t possibly have two conspirators. I think — the person he called and ‘Ruirui’ are the same person, acting under that woman’s direction, with the timing of the phone calls and messages all arranged in advance.”

“Hell…” Ba Yunye muttered under her breath. “With this level of scheming… even if we went to the police right now, they’d find no direct evidence!”

“So far she hasn’t made a real move, because at this stage of her plan, the primary objective is to pour all the dirty water onto her husband. As for the Vitamin E incident — that was a pure accident. She hadn’t accounted for a physician being among their traveling companions.” Diao Zhuo showed no fear. “Even the wisest person slips up in a thousand calculations. If she hadn’t made the unnecessary mistake of leaving the medicine bottle at the hotel, I wouldn’t have gone back and connected all those small earlier incidents into a coherent analysis.”

River Horse clapped him on the shoulder. “Turns out Diao Zhuo is the one with hidden depths beneath a rough exterior!”

“So if you’re hiding anything from me, there’s no guarantee I won’t see through it eventually.” He suddenly smiled and looked at River Horse — a perfectly timed conversational reversal that caught even Ba Yunye off guard.

“I may spend every day with Master Ba, but I have no designs on your Master Ba whatsoever — we’re purely brothers, don’t worry about it.” River Horse remained remarkably unruffled, laughed it off with an easy reply, and neatly deflected the deeper meaning behind Diao Zhuo’s words back at him.

“What does she do next?!” Ba Yunye changed the subject.

“She has already planted the idea firmly in our minds that if anything happens to Old Fu, Jiang is the one responsible — whatever she does, her husband is the scapegoat.” Diao Zhuo said helplessly.

“Looking at it now, Jiang is a complete fool!” Ba Yunye said with a cold snort.

Diao Zhuo took hold of Ba Yunye’s right hand and examined her injury. “However you choose to approach it — persuasion or a straight-out warning — convince Old Fu not to join the summit push. If you have the chance, speak directly to her, and advise her not to cross into criminal territory. She’s still young; there’s no reason to cut off her own future.”

River Horse nodded vigorously. “The police are not people a few petty tricks can fool.”

Ba Yunye shot back. “What, have you been arrested before? You know them so well?”

“Aren’t you afraid of the police?” River Horse gave her a look. “Forgotten how many fines the traffic police have hit you with?”

Ba Yunye pretended not to hear, looked sidelong at Diao Zhuo, and said: “You analyzed everything so logically just now — why don’t you go talk to her yourself? And if she refuses to admit anything — give her a shake!”

“I’m not skilled at dealing with women,” Diao Zhuo said with perfectly straight-faced seriousness.

She propped her chin in her hand, blinked at him. “But women all like dealing with you — look at how many friend requests Meng Xiao’ai has sent you…”

“You make a fair point. I shouldn’t keep declining them.” Diao Zhuo made a show of reaching for his phone.

“Go ahead and try.” Ba Yunye gave a sly grin, showing her white teeth.

Diao Zhuo continued to tease her. “Master Ba — if I brought her on a tour in your vehicle, what kind of discount would I get?”

She put on a coy falsetto and replied sweetly: “Why, dear, that would be a discount on your legs! So we here would really recommend that dear sir think very carefully before proceeding.”

Diao Zhuo snorted, rubbing both knees as though sincerely seeking advice. “Left leg or right leg?”

Ba Yunye pointed at him and announced fiercely: “Both broken!”

“You wouldn’t.”

“It’s better than you taking another girl to play with.” She said this quite shamelessly.