Ba Yunye even tugged lightly at Diao Zhuo’s sleeve — she genuinely suspected the mountaineering club members, but there was no direct evidence yet about who had fired the third shot.
Liu Ming scratched the back of his head with an innocent expression. “I picked it up…”
“One of the criminals drop it?” Xiang’an asked, straightforwardly.
“It’s not their gun,” Diao Zhuo said calmly. “I never handled one, but I know what their weapons looked like, and I remember.”
Cold sweat began beading on Ba Yunye’s forehead. So the domestically made gun had not been among the criminals’ weapons — which meant it could only have belonged to… Liu Ming’s group. If this gun was spent, how many more loaded ones did they have?
Diao Zhuo spoke levelly: “As you’ve all seen, everyone is injured — some badly, some less so — and the people I brought have no real weapons to speak of. Whether you’re enemies or allies, that needs to be made clear right now. If it isn’t, the road ahead will be more than just injuries for us. I’ll say it again: however many people I brought with me, that’s how many go back — only more, not fewer.”
Liu Ming pressed his lips together and hesitated at length. The people he had come with also sat with their heads down, but carried no particular atmosphere of menace; they were, in fact, surprisingly calm. Either they were genuinely clear-conscienced, or they were a group more dangerous to deal with than Red Beard.
Ba Yunye sat still on the outside, while inwardly she had already begun calculating how to subdue Liu Ming first and fastest. Both arms had their muscles coiled tight; both legs were ready to strike at any moment.
Those few seconds stretched like several hours. At last, Liu Ming let out a long breath and said to Pang Hou: “Ha — Old Sergeant Long was right when he told me that Diao Zhuo wasn’t easy to fool.”
Hearing him refer to Long Ge as “Old Sergeant,” Ba Yunye’s eyes lit up; she sat straight, barely containing a surge of anticipation.
Liu Ming reached into his pocket and produced his identity card. “Let me introduce myself properly, everyone. My name is Ge Mingliang. I grew up in Yunnan and now live in Sichuan. I’m a police officer. This time, I was entrusted by the Yunnan police to join the search for Renlong Duoji — and at the same time to carry out a second task, which I’m now willing to tell you about: if we actually find him, I’m to appeal to him, as a fellow veteran and friend, to turn himself in.”
“You’re a police officer?!” Several members of the rescue team could barely contain their joy.
Ba Yunye immediately put several questions to him about Long Ge and matters relating to their time in the military; he answered all of them fluently, without any sign of having memorized a script. Ba Yunye put her head in her hands, groaning: “Damn it — you’re not also here to keep an eye on me, are you? I cut my white hair for nothing!”
Ge Mingliang laughed and waved the idea off. “Master Ba hasn’t broken any law. What does that have to do with me? As far as I’m concerned, I never saw you.”
“Those shots I fired?”
“No one was killed, and we were being held hostage — that’s self-defense. Forget it. I’ll say they were mine. Give the gun back, though…”
“Here you go. Why didn’t you tell us from the start?” Having both come out of the military and being connected through Long Ge, Ba Yunye felt an extra thread of warmth toward Ge Mingliang.
Ge Mingliang spread his hands. “I was afraid that once you knew my identity, you’d deliberately shake me off — you especially, Master Ba. Your name precedes you. If you’d known from the start that I was a police officer, you’d probably have fallen out with me on the spot. As it happens, I’m the same as all of you: I believe Old Sergeant couldn’t have done what they’re saying. I had my own motives — I wanted to find him and learn the full truth before making any judgment. Whatever happened, I don’t want to see him in danger. Since encountering those criminals, I’ve only grown more certain: Old Sergeant must have been set up, and then, fighting to survive, he probably got hold of something incriminating. But right now, with no way to contact anyone outside, I can’t pass on what we’ve seen to my colleagues — the first order of business is still to find Old Sergeant.”
Ba Yunye pointed at Pang Hou and Old Sun and the others. “What about them — are they all police officers?”
Ge Mingliang shook his head and clapped Pang Hou on the shoulder. “This gentleman is my colleague and close friend. When Old Sergeant asked me to look into some things, he helped me out more than once. Back when Old Sergeant wanted to investigate someone named Zou Kaigui, it was Little Hou who helped me find the retired officer Old He, who had originally handled the case of Zou Xiaowen’s disappearance. I had planned to come alone this time; he wouldn’t hear of it and took leave to come along. The others… are genuine mountaineering club volunteers from around here. But when I joined their group, I showed them my credentials — they’re all aware of who I am.”
The remaining members gave awkward nods of acknowledgment.
“I see. Every one of you is truly made of something. When we’re back, everyone leave me your contact — I’ll give you all a ride on my own trip along the Yunnan-Tibet Highway, free of charge!” Ba Yunye said generously, then turned to Pang Hou: “So that means you also brought a gun?”
Pang Hou confirmed it wordlessly, busy wrapping his injured leg.
The tension in the air dispersed at once, and the mood lifted immediately.
“Wonderful — we have two police officers with us.”
“More importantly, we have a functioning weapon with ammunition.”
“Why do I suddenly feel like I’ve swallowed a whole peace-of-mind pill? Even my shoulder’s stopped hurting!”
“Watch out — that might be because the bullet’s left you half-paralyzed.”
“Get out of here!”
Only Diao Zhuo showed no sign of relief. Even after examining Ge Mingliang’s identity card and police badge, he remained full of suspicion toward the several “mountaineering club volunteers.” These people seemed to have reluctantly revealed only a first layer of identity — so what lay beneath the second?
Should he press them on it?
A string of shouted curses drifting from somewhere broke through his thoughts — a tangle of Chinese and English, jarring against the forest’s stillness.
“They’ve caught up!” Ge Mingliang rose to his feet. “Why does it sound like even more of them than before? Maybe even more than there were?”
“They have reinforcements?!” Da Qin said sharply, then couldn’t help rising to his feet, wincing sharply in pain.
Ba Yunye’s head throbbed with the sudden addition of one more problem. “They must have reinforcements. How else did they escape the rabbits?”
Tan Lin said: “Mobilizing this many people to find one Long Ge — he must be sitting on something critically important.”
Xiang’an said: “Is it evidence of them killing that He Whoever?”
Ba Yunye said: “They look like a bunch of desperate fugitives. Killing one or two people probably means nothing to them. There must be something else going on.”
Even after revealing their identities, Pang Hou and the mountaineering club members remained quieter than ever; they didn’t contribute a single word to the heated discussion, didn’t even raise their heads. Whether that had anything to do with Diao Zhuo’s steady gaze on them was difficult to say.
“Enough talk — we have to move.” Ge Mingliang said.
Everyone got to their feet, but they hadn’t gone far before a problem became apparent. With two injured members in the group, the overall pace was slow; the criminals could catch up before long.
“Why don’t you… leave us behind. Find a place to hide, and you go on ahead,” Da Qin suggested.
“They’re not after you — they’re after me. They’re completely convinced that following me will lead them to Long Ge,” Ba Yunye said, looking around at everyone. “Why don’t I stay here and wait for them, while you go in another direction — either find a way back, or try to find more of Long Ge’s markers.”
Diao Zhuo had not taken in a single word of this. “Head north,” he said.
Ge Mingliang looked puzzled. “Why?”
Diao Zhuo gestured with his chin toward the way ahead. “Walk first, talk later.”
“Wait!” Xiang’an said helplessly: “At the very least tell us which direction is north!”
Before Diao Zhuo could answer, the whole group turned their eyes skyward in unison: the daytime haze had long since cleared, and the sky was full of stars, with the Big Dipper standing out in sharp definition. Xiang’an clapped his own forehead. “Aiya, the rabbits must have gnawed my brains out.”
“When we’re back, I’ll treat everyone to as many spicy rabbit heads as you can eat,” Ba Yunye said with a laugh.
“Can you manage?” Diao Zhuo asked Da Qin.
“I’ll walk.” Da Qin gritted his teeth to say he was fine.
“What about you?” He asked Pang Hou.
“Easy.” Pang Hou pressed a thumbs-up to his own chest.
Leaning on one another, the group walked for a stretch; the criminals’ voices faded gradually into inaudibility, but until they were fully out of reach, no one dared to stop. Along the way they passed the strange wreckage of airplane parts, now thickly covered in blue-green moss; judging by the size and the depth to which pieces had buried themselves in the ground, they appeared to have fallen from altitude, and the years they had lain there were immeasurable.
Ge Mingliang stopped to rest beside an airplane wheel and turned to ask Diao Zhuo: “How were you able to tell we should head in this direction?”
“I’ve been going over the markers he left along the way — although there are small detours in direction here and there, the overall bearing has pointed north. Those local detours were probably to shake off pursuers; the main heading seems oriented toward somewhere he knows well. To the west and southwest lies Myanmar. If you follow the course of the Dulong River, heading north…”
Ba Yunye started. “Tibet!”
“He must have prepared himself for the possibility that even if no one else found him, he would walk to Tibet alone.”
“That really is the most dangerous hike into Tibet imaginable…” Ba Yunye said quietly. “All I can hope for is that his old skills haven’t dulled.”
Just then, Xiang’an stepped on something with a wet squelch and nearly lost his footing. “Everyone watch where you’re putting your feet — don’t just look at the Big Dipper.”
“Step in dog mess?” Tan Lin walked past him and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
“Stepped on a mushroom. Slippery.” Xiang’an made a face of distaste.
“Didn’t you grow?” Qi Zi asked.
Xiang’an stared at him blankly. Qi Zi sighed. “Generation gap — you probably never played Super Mario. That’s an eighties memory for the likes of us…”
Ba Yunye was just about to say that even though she wasn’t born in the eighties, she too had played Super Mario, when the corner of her eye caught the mushroom Xiang’an had stepped on and she blinked. “Hey, everyone hold on.”
“What is it?” Qi Zi asked.
“Dig,” she said, pointing at the mushroom smashed into several pieces, speaking in two bare words.
“Is there food?” Xiang’an was eager; he drew his entrenching tool and went straight to work.
Diao Zhuo came close and quietly asked Ba Yunye, “What’s underneath?”
She leaned in close and murmured in his ear: “Japanese soldiers.”
Diao Zhuo raised an eyebrow, gave her a questioning look; she shook her head and gestured for him to wait and see.
Before long, there came a cry from Xiang’an: “Under here — there’s a, a, a person!”
Ge Mingliang and Da Qin had already seen a Japanese soldier’s remains with their own eyes and didn’t look as shocked as the others, who, though they had heard Ba Yunye’s account, had not seen them directly, and crowded in for a look: in the pit dimly emerged bones, accompanied by the same scraps of fabric and bits of decoration they’d seen before.
“Is the mushroom I stepped on the grave mushroom you were talking about?” Xiang’an lifted his foot and scraped it back and forth against a nearby tree root to clean off whatever was on his sole.
Ba Yunye nodded. “I used to be skeptical too, but now that we’ve twice found remains directly beneath a grave mushroom, it seems the thing really does have something hidden beneath it every time!”
A misuse of the idiom — but the point was clear.
Someone screwed up their courage and pulled the grave mushroom out whole, and found beneath it in the earth a dead snake, coiled around something, dead for some time.
“Every time something’s dug up here, it’s never just one corpse. This grave mushroom truly lives up to its name,” Ba Yunye said, and kicked the grave mushroom away to send it tumbling.
“So there really were a lot of Japanese soldiers who died here…” Xiang’an felt the hairs on his neck rise and shuddered. “How did they die? And how did mushrooms grow here…”
“They must have run into the guerrillas,” Ge Mingliang said — a resolute atheist, and now that he had revealed himself, considerably more talkative. “At that time, guerrilla forces were scattered throughout the countryside and mountain areas. On one hand they had to stay ahead of the Nationalist encirclement and suppression campaigns, and on the other they had to resist the Japanese — they must have had to take refuge in places like this deep in the mountains. Don’t let your imaginations run away with you. Come on, let’s keep going.”
Everyone agreed this was a sensible explanation and stopped troubling themselves over the remains in the earth. Little did they know, this was only the beginning.