Dawn crept in with a faint, pale light. Dewdrops that had gathered on leaf tips through the night sparkled even more brilliantly in the sunlight. A morning breeze drifted through, and bead after bead of water rolled off and struck the grass below, bursting open into tiny, translucent blooms.
Time was pressing, and everyone rose and washed up at the agreed hour. Noticing that the flap of Diao Zhuo’s tent was still drooping but the zipper had been opened, Da Qin walked over and was about to lift the flap — only to be stopped by Qi Zi, who leaned in close and murmured a warning: “Master Ba’s still inside. What do you think you’re doing?”
Da Qin scratched his head sheepishly, just as Ba Yunye’s voice drifted out from inside the tent —
“First thing in the morning… I don’t want any…”
Da Qin and Qi Zi exchanged a glance and ducked their heads to stifle laughter. Curiosity got the better of them, and they both crouched down to eavesdrop. Tan Lin and Xiang’an caught sight of them and came scurrying over, all four of them squatting there like four mushrooms. Liu Ming noticed, thought something was happening, and was just about to head over when Pang Hou pulled him back, and he wisely held off.
In terms of discipline, the mountaineering association members seemed stricter than Da Qin’s group — they wore an air of seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and each quietly dismantled their tents and packed their gear.
Over here, Ba Yunye’s voice floated out again — “Good lord, it’s so huge… Never mind, I don’t want it after all. I hate getting my whole face and mouth covered in that sticky mess, and it’s impossible to clean up properly out here.”
Diao Zhuo: “In that case, we’ll save it for when we’re back.”
Da Qin and the others nudged each other’s shoulders, all wearing matching grins. The grins didn’t last long, though, before the sound of a blade being drawn rang out, followed by Diao Zhuo’s voice: “Lighten the load — everyone takes a share, boost your vitamins.”
The penny dropped, and they scattered as fast as they could. Sure enough, moments later Ba Yunye emerged cradling an enormous mango — apparently a variety from Hainan. Diao Zhuo, not caring about the weight, had bought a few along the way and stuffed them in his pack to bring along.
Diao Zhuo sliced it into several pieces, and Da Qin and the others took their portions and slurped away contentedly, not uttering a single word about the eavesdropping and the thoughts that had gone along with it. When it came time to offer some to Liu Ming’s group, there was a slight hesitation — whether out of habitual courtesy or some other concern was unclear — and one by one they all declined, with one person even turning away entirely. Diao Zhuo was an easygoing type, not overly insistent about hospitality. If people didn’t want any, he simply didn’t offer again.
The sweet fragrance of mango temporarily eased the tension that had been gripping everyone for the past day or two.
“What variety is this, anyway — at least a kilogram each. Incredibly dense.”
“Diao Zhuo definitely bought those for Master Ba. Don’t take the best pieces!”
“I propose that Master Ba join all future rescue operations so we can enjoy the side benefits.”
Ba Yunye waved them off. “All yours.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the mountaineering association members, who — like her — were empty-handed. Perhaps it was because the light was better now, but something fleeting passed through her mind that she couldn’t quite catch hold of.
She was wondering — was this feeling an instinctive wariness, or something else entirely…
“Hey! Why aren’t you eating any mango? It’s delicious!” she called out deliberately, raising her voice.
“Thank you, thank you…” They responded politely, their refusal unmistakable — a strange, unanimous wall that seemed impossible to break through. The last time Ba Yunye had felt such rigid, disciplined uniformity, she had been in the military.
“Let’s move.” On the other side, Diao Zhuo had already packed up and was organizing everyone to set out once more.
“Is it reliable to let them walk behind us?” Ba Yunye raised her suspicions with Diao Zhuo once again.
Diao Zhuo gave a slight shake of his head. “If they were going to make a move, they’d have done it by now. Besides, what you’re questioning is their identity, not their motive. If they’re plainclothes officers, there’s even less to worry about.”
“And if they’re not plainclothes?”
“If they’re not, then they’re here because of Long Ge. And they won’t make a move before Long Ge is found.”
That analysis was enough to clear things up in Ba Yunye’s mind entirely.
A forest in sunlight was far more refreshing than the pitch-black night. Everyone followed the direction Long Ge had marked and walked on. Without a guide, every step required caution — caution against snakes, caution against showers of leeches. The mountains had their own microclimate, and as they pushed further along the route, conditions began to shift. Though the weather forecast had said Nujiang Prefecture would be sunny turning partly cloudy, the sunshine didn’t last long before a light rain began to patter down. Raindrops struck the dense canopy of leaves, and only a few filtered through to fall below. The air grew humid again, and everything around them — absolutely everything — was damp, the surroundings saturated with the musty, decaying scent of wet fallen leaves.
The dread that this primeval forest inspired in the local people certainly did not come from snakes and leeches alone. Sure enough, after less than half a day’s walking, something began to feel off to person after person.
“Long Ge’s marker…” Ba Yunye ran her fingers along the notch carved into a tree trunk and glanced at the string of beads on the ground — seven of them. Not wanting to cause a panic, she kept her wits about her and carved an additional mark beneath his.
“Hey! I just called out to you — why didn’t you answer?” Da Qin asked Xiang’an. “Do you have any water? Give me a bottle.”
Xiang’an produced a bottle and gave his walkie-talkie a shake. “Sorry, I was walking too fast, probably didn’t hear you.”
“We didn’t hear it either,” the others said. After checking, everyone found that the walkie-talkies had stopped working.
Right on the heels of that, the phone signal, already hovering at two bars, steadily weakened and finally dropped to no service. This kind of primeval forest was essentially a no-man’s-land, and having all been to Qiang Tang before, nobody found it strange. But after a while longer, when even the GPS stopped working, everyone began to sense that this forest was not ordinary — after all, the handheld GPS units they were carrying had managed accurate positioning even in Qiang Tang.
Unease began to spread.
“Not only can’t we mark our position, the route we recorded earlier has gone completely haywire!” Xiang’an said, growing tense. “The map won’t display, and when I refresh it… what on earth! It’s showing a map of Hangzhou! Our trail looks like it was scribbled by a ghost!”
“Mine too…” Da Qin jabbed at his GPS in frustration. “Never mind coordinates — even the electronic compass is all over the place.”
Ba Yunye frowned and pulled out her compass. She found that the needle was swinging left and right without stopping, like a toy that had been dropped by a careless child — pointing neither north nor south. She opened the compass app on her phone; the needle hung motionless, and the latitude, longitude, and elevation all showed “0.” Then she heard someone nearby say, “Huh? Why does it say December 22nd, 2012?” She looked toward the voice and saw Qi Zi pointing at his phone with a puzzled expression — his electronic calendar had somehow gone wrong.
“December 22nd, 2012 — the apocalyptic date prophesied by the Aztec creation myth and the Mayan calendar. Your calendar has gone haywire in a remarkably dramatic way.” Xiang’an said in astonishment, then pulled out his own phone and froze, his lips trembling slightly. “I… my phone also says December 22nd, 2012.”
“You’re kidding.”
“How can it be such a coincidence?”
Everyone opened their phone calendars, and to their astonishment, every single one displayed the date December 22nd, 2012.
Ba Yunye’s imagination ran wild. “Do you think it’s possible that time and space have truly been reset — that it actually is December 22nd, 2012 right now? After we find Long Ge and head back, we’ll discover there’s no one left in the world, and we’re the only ones who were in the mountains and escaped total annihilation?”
Xiang’an pressed his palm to his forehead and said with a look of utter helplessness: “This place is the idyllic utopia from Tao Yuanming’s writing — a parallel dimension entirely separate from the world we live in. When we finally find our way back, there’s no way to control which era we’ll emerge into — whether it’s BCE or CE, or which dynasty entirely. I’m not afraid of going back to 2012. What I’m afraid of is that after we wander around and eventually find our way out, it might already be the year 3012, or 1012, or even 2012 BCE…”
“In that case, I want to go to the Three Kingdoms era.” Tan Lin’s face actually lit up with longing. “It would be the perfect time for a man to make his name and build his legacy! There’d be no need for Zhuge Liang — I’d be the one sitting behind the open-city fortification, holding a feather fan and playing the qin, the mastermind behind everything!”
Da Qin gave him a sidelong look. “I’d say you’re not the open-city stratagem. You’re more like the straw boat borrowing arrows.”
“Being Cao Cao wouldn’t be so bad either,” Tan Lin said, still with that look of yearning. “An unrivaled hero of an age.”
Da Qin waved his hand and laughed. “What I meant is — you’d be the straw boat.”
Tan Lin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Get lost! Are you cursing me to get riddled with arrows?!”
Ba Yunye, not ready to give up, turned to Liu Ming: “Brother Liu Ming! What about your group?”
Although Liu Ming and the others had their faces concealed beneath hats and masks, their stiff movements suggested that what their phone calendars were showing was probably the same as everyone else’s. The strangest thing of all was that Pang Hou was wearing an outdoor sports watch, and it showed the date as December 22nd, 2012, with the altitude reading as 8,848 meters — the summit of Mount Everest.
“The magnetic field here might be disrupted,” Diao Zhuo sensed something was off, but in order to keep morale from collapsing, he kept his tone reassuring. “In certain areas, due to geological structure or mineral composition, the magnetic poles can reverse or become completely erratic, interfering with compasses and electronic devices. All of our compasses, phones, and walkie-talkies have started malfunctioning, which suggests the magnetic field here is unusually complex. That’s presumably why the villagers are afraid to enter, and why people frequently lose their way — they can’t determine direction at all.”
Everyone’s fantasies of time-travelling to another era were dashed, and they sighed in unison. Ba Yunye walked over to Pang Hou with a grin. “Quick, take a photo as a memento. When you get back, you can tell people you summited Everest.”
Liu Ming’s group tensed slightly at her sudden approach. A’Shui even pretended to be tying a shoelace to avoid a direct encounter with her.
Pang Hou hastily removed his watch and held it out toward her. “Do you want to take one too?”
“Absolutely not — what if one of my wealthy clients sees it and thinks I offer Everest summit tours? I couldn’t handle that.” Ba Yunye quickly declined, oblivious to the person crouched on the ground pretending to tie a shoelace, and turned to walk back to Diao Zhuo’s side.
Diao Zhuo was far less rattled by the malfunctioning electronics than the others. Due to the nature of his work, he often conducted field surveys outdoors, and operating without a compass or GPS was not beyond him. But the fact that every single person’s electronic equipment had failed in the exact same way felt distinctly wrong. Just then, his peripheral vision caught the person crouched down tying a shoelace, and a sudden, vague sense of familiarity came over him.
He looked up toward Liu Ming’s group and studied them one by one, eventually determining that the one tying a shoelace was A’Shui. Aside from Liu Ming, the other mountaineering association members had very low distinguishability and an almost nonexistent presence. Ba Yunye was convinced they were plainclothes officers, but as far as Diao Zhuo was concerned, whether they were plainclothes or not was beside the point — the important thing was that they were helping to search. But if one of them gave him an inexplicable sense of recognition, and that person was deliberately trying not to be identified…
Diao Zhuo began to study A’Shui carefully, as though a realization were slowly forming. He was just about to speak when Ba Yunye said, “Someone’s coming…”
Through the interlocking trunks of the trees, several dark silhouettes could be seen darting in and out of view. They appeared to have spotted the group as well, and were rushing toward them.
“Is it the volunteers who came into the mountain with us?” Da Qin craned his neck to look.
“Could it be the police?” Liu Ming asked.
Xiang’an hunched his shoulders. “Everyone stay alert. What if it’s the same kind of people as last night?”
The moment he said it, every heart in the group lurched.