The GPS track showed that someone had set out from Ritu County three months ago, passed Long Re Conservation Station on the 5th day, then deviated from the main route, passed Yanghu Lake on the 16th day, and reached the vicinity of Songjiling Snow Mountain on the 19th day — the early portion of the route was strikingly similar to Zou Kaigui’s.

“Found it,” Old Jin said, rolling his eyes and being extremely uncooperative. The conservation team members didn’t scold him, so he didn’t volunteer much. After half an hour of back-and-forth sparring, he haltingly revealed that the handheld GPS and the dry rations had been picked up that morning from a snowmobile, which was lying overturned by a freshwater lake roughly 40 kilometres from Songjiling Snow Mountain.

Just like Yanghu Lake, Songjiling was an important geographical node — one of the boundary markers between the Hoh Xil and Qiang Tang regions, at an elevation of 6,370 metres.

Everyone took turns examining the handheld GPS, turning it over and over, buzzing with discussion.

“Is it Zou Kaigui?”

“Very likely!”

“Let’s go take a look — even if it isn’t Zou Kaigui, it’s almost certainly someone else who went missing in Qiang Tang.”

Ye Xun said: “Maybe he also wanted to photograph the starry sky and fell into the water?”

Unfortunately Xiao Zi had already left by now, so although the remark was sarcastic, there was no one left to sting.

He Ma furrowed his brow, thought for a moment, then said in a low voice to Ba Yunye: “Zou Kaigui crossed through in March — the place was frozen solid back then. With the elevation this high, how could the lake possibly have thawed? And how would he have fallen in?”

Ba Yunye nodded.

After a brief rest, the convoy followed the GPS track toward Songjiling Snow Mountain. Before long, the full panorama of Songjiling came into view. Compared to famous ranges like Meili Snow Mountain, Namcha Barwa, or Kailash, Songjiling appeared quite unremarkable — from a distance, it was simply a rolling stretch of modest peaks draped in a white blanket. Near Songjiling there were several wide freshwater lakes, and all along the way, herds of Tibetan wild asses continued to raise their heads with curiosity to watch the vehicles pass.

A while later, several Tibetan antelopes appeared by a lake ahead. One of the male antelopes carried himself with supreme arrogance and elegance — his long black horns, like the dashing pheasant-feather crown of the Monkey King, arced gently toward the sky, and his black face was gravely solemn. A few females were leisurely scattered around him, their round, fluffy heads exuding a bright, otherworldly spirit — truly worthy of being called creatures of the high plateau.

So as not to startle them, the convoy made a detour. Ye Xun was tremendously excited at the sight of the Tibetan antelopes; he stopped to peer at them endlessly through his binoculars and asked He Ma to take photos for him.

After the earlier commotion, Ba Yunye was a little tired. She didn’t get out of the car. She pulled a lollipop from somewhere, stuck it in her mouth, propped her head against the car window.

Zha Ba Duo Jie said: “Every year the Tibetan antelopes migrate from here to Sun Lake and Zhuonai Lake in Hoh Xil to give birth. The poachers wait there to catch them. I’ve heard there’s even a newly discovered gathering ground called ‘Tian Cuo’… Alas! It’s all rather mysterious. In the early years, poachers were everywhere — you’d constantly come across rotting antelope carcasses along the road. Now the state regulates things very strictly, and many conservation stations have been set up along the migration routes. And yet there are still damned people coming in here to slaughter them and sell them.”

This was the so-called truth that “self-interest can drive devils, and can also turn people into devils.”

Old Jin snorted, muttering in Mandarin thick with his regional accent: “Tian Cuo my foot — who knows what blabbering fool made that up. Your grandfather didn’t even see a single ghost out there…”

Ba Yunye glanced at him, then glanced at Ye Xun — seeing no reaction from him, she looked away.

They drove on a little further. Baldy lazily pointed toward a direction: “Over there…”

The sun was setting in the west, and Kan Xia Town was bathed in a warm, amber-orange glow. The sea shimmered in the afternoon light, and the fishing boats that had returned were moored at the docks; the day’s catch had long since been snapped up. A few women, chatting in a hard-to-understand dialect, were digging oysters with knives while gossiping about their neighbors’ affairs. After the tide had receded, a wide expanse of mudflats was exposed between the sea and the sand. The fishermen’s children laughed and dug for hermit crabs with rakes, their laughter and shouts ringing on and on.

Long Ge had just stepped into the courtyard of a house in Qiuli Village when he was shown the door.

“How many years has it been since I divorced him? He owes you money — what does that have to do with me?” Zou Kaigui’s ex-wife, Lu Chunhua, had both hands on her hips; her frame was small and thin yet she projected an imposing air. Her son by her ex-husband was already twelve and stood taller than her; he held the hand of a five-year-old boy, born to her and her current husband.

Long Ge looked at the little boy’s face — snot smeared on his nose — and his expression became even gentler.

“Big sister, I’ve given up on the money…” Long Ge stood his ground without moving; his kind appearance put people at ease. “But he always brushes me off with the excuse of needing travel money to search for his daughter. I just can’t accept it. I was passing through here and wanted to ask — does he actually have a daughter or not?”

Lu Chunhua sighed and stopped trying to drive him away. “He does, but she’s gone.”

Long Ge put on an exaggerated expression of surprise. “How did she go? He got rid of her himself, yet he’s searching the whole world for her?”

“My girl was born with a birthing-clamp injury — the doctor said it left her with cerebral palsy.” When it came to this, Lu Chunhua still looked somewhat pained. “When the child was small, Old Zou would always say he wanted to throw her in the sea and drown her. I felt sorry for the child and refused. But he wouldn’t give up. Then, as soon as I divorced him, the very next day he said the child was gone — kidnapped by traffickers. I didn’t believe it; I went searching with relatives for several days and then reported it to the police. Old Zou kept insisting that when he and his younger brother went out to sea fishing, the girl was left with the grandmother to watch, but the grandmother was blind and didn’t keep a proper eye on her, and a trafficker snatched her away. The police couldn’t find any evidence, and now… who knows where the girl is.”

“Does he favour sons over daughters?”

“Not exactly — it’s mainly that the girl’s illness was expensive.” Lu Chunhua said. “And he loved to gamble; the family had no money left at all. I tried borrowing from my relatives, but after a while I couldn’t keep asking. I hear his life has been comfortable these past few years, yet he still gambles — once you touch gambling, you can’t let go…”

“I find it strange too,” Long Ge continued probing. “He was poorer when he fished, but now that he’s stopped fishing, things are going well for him?”

“They say he followed some big boss, taking wealthy people on tours to strange and exotic places.”

Long Ge thought: that business sounds somewhat like ours — though not all our clients are wealthy. He smiled. Strange and exotic places… he had no idea where.

The lake shimmered with a vast, serene blue — still and motionless, like the calm blue eyes of the Snow Queen, gazing with authority. Floating ice still drifted on the water, white and translucent. One chunk had snagged on a protruding object, as though signalling to those on the shore: look here.

Two team members steeled themselves against the bone-piercing cold and got into the water together, half their bodies submerged in the icy lake, working together to haul the snowmobile out. The pack on the rear rack was still there. Unfortunately, since the poachers had previously opened and rummaged through it, most of what had been inside had likely fallen into the lake. Diao Zhuo organised the team members to go back down into the water to search for more.

Ba Yunye and He Ma stood on the bank watching, like two groundhogs. He Ma shuddered and said: “Just looking makes me cold.”

“Cold, but when you have to get in, you get in.” Ba Yunye crossed her arms, looking as if this sort of thing were completely routine. “Before, whether it was snowing or baking hot, if you had to lie flat you lay flat, if you had to run you ran, if you had to get into the water you got in. When lives are at stake, you stop worrying about things like that.”

“Master Ba — a true heroine.” He Ma gave a thumbs-up.

Those on shore took out and examined what remained one by one. A diary sealed in a zip-lock bag caught everyone’s attention.

Ye Xun snatched the diary, burst into loud sobbing, and clutched it to his chest without letting go. Ba Yunye glanced at him and noticed he seemed to be crying very sorrowfully — yet the tears took a long time to actually squeeze out.

The other items were of little significance; the diary was the crucial find.

She extended her hand. “Mr. Ye, if you would — we need to read the diary to understand how he travelled and what his next steps might have been.”

Ye Xun held it tightly, looking unwilling to hand it over.

Ba Yunye smiled, in a tone of a rogue: “If Mr. Ye really can’t bear to part with it, I’ll just have to take it by force?”

Diao Zhuo stood in the water, soaked through from the waist down, crossed his arms in an “X” shape — meaning they’d come up empty-handed. To salvage items from a lake of unknown depth, one would need to rely on boats and a diving crew. Unfortunately, those resources didn’t exist here; the longer they stayed in the water, the greater the danger.

The team members who had been in the water could only come ashore and change out of their wet clothes in the tents.

Although Ye Xun fought hard to protect the diary, Ba Yunye easily twisted his arms behind his back and seized it. “Mr. Ye, my apologies — compared to whatever is recorded inside, what matters most to you is finding the person.”

“Give it back!”

“No.”

“Ba Yunye, I’m the one paying to hire you as a guide — you have to listen to me!”

“But you hired me to guide because you’re looking for Zou Kaigui.”

“How do you know you can find him with this diary?!”

“What are you two arguing about?” Diao Zhuo said, pulling on his outer jacket. He emerged in a black windbreaker, and his expression became even more serious.

Ba Yunye turned toward him. “Cold?”

“It’s alright.” (It was bone-chilling cold.)

“Think of it as a bath.” She raised an eyebrow.

Diao Zhuo said gravely: “Back to business.”

She told on Ye Xun: “Zou Kaigui’s diary — Mr. Ye won’t let us read it.”

“Reading someone’s diary is a violation of a citizen’s right to privacy!!” Ye Xun said sharply.

Ba Yunye rubbed her chin. “How many years do you get for violating a citizen’s right to privacy?”

There were no law students in the rescue team, and besides, nobody felt like being pedantic.

Diao Zhuo cleared his throat, gazing into the distance: “A conviction requires evidence. I have no idea whether you read it or not.”

Emboldened by this hint, Ba Yunye grew even more brazen: “Team Leader Diao takes a dip and suddenly sees the world more clearly. Did anyone here see me reading the diary?”

Everyone played deaf and dumb, leaving her free to tear open the sealed bag. Over Ye Xun’s shouting and yelling, she pulled out the palm-sized diary. “I’m just an illiterate person — right now I’m only reading silently. If you keep interrupting me, I’ll have to read it out loud.”

Ye Xun was so exasperated by her that he could only let out a heavy grunt.

Actually, he didn’t know what Zou Kaigui had written, but had a vague feeling that it couldn’t fall into outsiders’ hands.

Zou Kaigui’s diary contained 18 entries, recording his journey from Ritu County to Songjiling, along with his thoughts and inner feelings along the way. Ba Yunye was truly someone who had no love of reading — after flipping through a few pages the novelty wore off and she got bored. She shoved the diary into Diao Zhuo’s hands: “You read it!”

“You can actually put the brakes on mid-crime?”

“I’m giving you this opportunity, dear.” Ba Yunye raised an eyebrow.

Diao Zhuo opened it and immediately understood why Ba Yunye hadn’t wanted to read it — Zou Kaigui’s handwriting looked like a dog had crawled across the page, tiny and crooked, and deeply unpleasant to look at. He patiently sat on a camping stool and read through several entries. The phrases that popped up from time to time — “Ye Xun is a bastard,” “I’m sorry, Xiao Wen,” “turn back,” “scam” — made his brow slowly knit together.