A short while later, Diao Zhuo closed the diary, looked at Ba Yunye, and said: “You — come with me.”

Ba Yunye followed him with her hands in her pockets, in a carelessly casual manner. She watched as he walked to a spot a short distance away and turned around, then returned the diary to her. “Keep this on you at all times. It cannot fall into Ye Xun’s hands.”

She tossed the diary up and down in her hands, playing with it. “You trust me that much?”

Diao Zhuo reached out to catch it, then with his other hand tugged her windbreaker zipper downward. She neither dodged nor flinched but stood perfectly upright; he genuinely wondered if he could strip off all her clothes and she’d still look just as unfazed. He glanced at her face and found her looking up at him sideways, a faint smile at the corner of her lips. He kept his expression straight, found the inner pocket of her jacket, and tucked the diary inside, then zipped it back up.

“I trust that you won’t let Ye Xun do that.” He patted her shoulder. The next second, she suddenly grabbed his wrist; shifting her body and applying force to one side, he sensed what she was going to do and blocked with his left hand — she hadn’t managed to throw him over her shoulder.

“Fairly quick reactions — so you’re trained too.” She hadn’t used her full strength, and now she didn’t press further. If he hadn’t blocked just then, she’d already have him pinned beneath her.

The two released each other. Diao Zhuo rolled his wrist. This woman had an unusual mental circuit and was highly aggressive — he’d need to keep a 360-degree, round-the-clock watch.

The two walked back side by side. Halfway there, Ba Yunye suddenly stopped. “Diao Zhuo — remember: you just took off my clothes. Next time, I’m making you take off your own trousers.”

Diao Zhuo lit a cigarette, ignoring the flag she had planted. “You think my trousers are that easy to get off?”

Ba Yunye pointed at him. “I’m damn well going to make you take them off yourself.”

“We’ll see.” Diao Zhuo snapped his lighter shut and walked on ahead.

Back at the lake, several members of the rescue team were crouched on the ground, examining the remaining items and discussing where Zou Kaigui might have gone.

Ye Xun sat alone on a camping stool. He saw the two of them return and seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth. Whatever happened, the rescue team had now made a breakthrough — this was not the moment to quarrel with them. And besides, he’d lose anyway.

Diao Zhuo was also silent, examining the other items from the pack alongside the team members: a bottle of chilli sauce with only the dregs remaining, a satellite phone, a pair of hiking boots, a few pairs of socks and insoles, and a small open black square bag.

Old Jin explained that when they had come across the snowmobile, they had made off with all the petrol, the compressed biscuits, and the unopened pickled mustard, ham sausages, and other food inside the pack. At the time, the pack had also contained a solar charger, a petrol stove, repair tools, a spring knife, and other everyday items; they had felt these were of no use, so they had thrown them along with the snowmobile into the lake.

Diao Zhuo clearly remembered the first thing Old Jin had said: “We unzipped it and rummaged for a long time…” — which meant that when the snowmobile had been abandoned, the pack had not yet been opened. Zou Kaigui hadn’t had a chance to take anything out of it: food, warmth, protection — all left behind. He hadn’t even taken the most critical items — the GPS or the satellite phone that could connect him to the outside world.

Leaving all of this behind — even a primary school student would know it meant certain death. Zou Kaigui must have left in an extraordinary hurry, or rather, even he himself had been caught off guard by his own departure.

“Is this…” He Ma picked up the small black square bag. “A camera protective case?”

“Correct.” Ba Yunye glanced at it. “And a mirrorless camera at that.”

“No camera.” Baldy stated flatly.

A conservation team member didn’t quite believe them and asked sternly: “Are you sure you didn’t take it?!”

“We didn’t take it!”

“I’ve killed people before — you think I’d be afraid to admit to a camera?!”

The two seemed to turn on each other; Old Jin shoved Baldy. “Was it you who sneaked off with it?!”

Baldy flared up. “What the hell do you want that camera for! If you hadn’t tricked me into looking for that damn ‘Tian Cuo,’ I’d never have walked this death road with you!”

“Stop it!” a conservation team member intervened, and only then did the two stop shouting.

Tan Lin couldn’t hear clearly. “… What is Tian Cuo?”

Zha Ba Duo Jie waved it off. “Made up. No such place.”

Ba Yunye blinked and gave Old Jin and Baldy a thumbs-up. “Terrible at hunting, but you’re certainly skilled at going for each other’s throats.”

“What did you just say, you foul woman?!”

Ba Yunye repeated herself slowly: “I said — you’re dogs.”

Old Jin and Baldy exploded with rage and tried to charge at her, but they were truly unable to move, so they could only curse her relentlessly.

“Team Leader Diao — they’re insulting me.” Ba Yunye tattled.

Diao Zhuo looked toward Old Jin and Baldy — they were indeed very noisy — so he darkened his expression, eyes flashing a dangerous light. “Shut your mouths.”

The two poachers were the type to read the wind — they took one look at his build and his expression, decided he was not someone to tangle with, and resigned themselves to the rebuff.

Master Ba, with someone to back her up, was insufferably smug.

Diao Zhuo could do nothing about her, so he simply ignored her clowning and continued: “In other words, Zou Kaigui quite possibly had the mirrorless camera on him when he left?”

Everyone wore expressions of total bewilderment at this behaviour.

Diao Zhuo examined the remaining items one by one, sinking back into thought. The others all started speculating at once:

“Could he have run into another group of poachers?”

“At most, poachers would just take food and petrol — but his food and petrol were all there, taken by Old Jin and the others.”

“What if he ran into a wolf pack or a just-awakened bear? Or, like us, was unlucky enough to encounter a wild yak that had gone mad?”

“You’d only leave everything behind and bolt like that if you were running for your life in a blind panic!”

“Can’t outrun an animal.”

“If he fled and never came back to retrieve the vehicle and pack, that means he couldn’t come back.”

“Somewhere nearby you should be able to find… uh… skeletal remains?”

Ye Xun, hearing this, was unusually delighted, and volunteered eagerly: “I’ll lead a search party! From this point as the centre, a five-kilometre radius — let’s do a sweep first!”

“Alright. Three vehicles stay here; the other four go and search the area.” Diao Zhuo stood up. “Master Ba, lead the group.”

“Sure.” Ba Yunye agreed without hesitation; she also leaned toward the theory that Zou Kaigui had encountered a dangerous animal, and had a feeling this trip would turn up his remains. Before getting into the car, she instinctively glanced at Diao Zhuo, and he happened to look over at the same moment — he patted his chest, then deliberately looked toward Ye Xun’s vehicle, drew an arc with his right hand, pointed it downward at the ground, and then seemed to ask whether she understood.

She gave a thumbs-up and got into the car coolly, closing the door.

The four vehicles split into two groups and drove off in different directions.

Diao Zhuo still felt there were too many suspicious points. He swept the area through binoculars and noticed there were quite a few tyre tracks nearby, but for some reason they seemed disorganised — there were even friction marks from sudden braking. A moment later, he turned to look at Old Jin and Baldy, who were slumped despondently in the car.

The two were startled — without rifles in hand, they were utterly gutless; they assumed that with everyone else gone, Diao Zhuo was settling scores, and began tripping over themselves to apologise: “Big brother, we’re sorry, we’re sorry… we didn’t mean to insult your woman just now… we’re the scum, we’re dogs — is that enough? Please don’t…”

But as it turned out, Diao Zhuo didn’t pick up that thread at all. Instead he asked: “When you found the snowmobile, did you notice anything else?”

Old Jin said: “A tent… I saw a tent floating in the water, at a distance. We weren’t going to bother hauling it in, so we left it.”

“Zou Kaigui had already set up a tent…” Diao Zhuo repeated. That meant he had reached the lakeside toward evening and was preparing to make camp for the night, when something unexpected happened. Could it really have been… a predator?

At this point, Baldy said: “Oh, and there were two sheep — dead ones. We thought about skinning them, but one look and they were already unusable, so we didn’t bother.”

Da Qin asked: “What kind of sheep?”

A conservation team member relaxed slightly. “The ‘sheep’ he’s referring to — that’s Tibetan antelopes.”

“Where are they?”

“Still over there.” Baldy pointed. A short distance away, two pointed horns were poking out of the lake water.

The remaining group immediately went over and dragged the Tibetan antelope carcasses out of the water, only to find there was more than one — two females and one male, three in total, all in an advanced state of decomposition.

This strange situation caught Zha Ba Duo Jie’s attention. Several people, ignoring the waves of putrid smell the carcasses gave off, crouched down to examine them.

“There are still ropes on the legs…”

“Bloated to this size… they’ve been dead a long time.”

“Legs broken. No bite marks.”

“This female was still pregnant — tsk, such a pity.”

Da Qin was puzzled: “Poaching?”

One conservation team member shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. If poachers had caught Tibetan antelopes, why would they not take them away? Even these men here wanted to skin the dead ones. Look at this knot…” He pointed at the ropes around the legs — the end of each rope still had a noose loop, as though something had once been tied to it. “This is a fixed knot, so it wasn’t a trap either. It looks more like what you’d see in films — a weight tied on to keep them sunk at the bottom and stop them from floating up.”

Another conservation team member said: “No bullet holes found, no shotgun pellets on the bodies — they weren’t killed by firearms. What can be said for certain is that, even though this is a no-man’s land, whoever did this still didn’t want anyone to discover these three antelopes. We just don’t know what state of mind they were in…”

Diao Zhuo was wondering whether this had any connection to Zou Kaigui’s disappearance.

Da Qin asked curiously: “Can you tell how long ago they died?”

“Hard to say.” Zha Ba Duo Jie replied. “The average temperature here is very low — it’s like a giant refrigerator. For most of the year it’s below freezing; even animals that die without being eaten by carnivores decompose extremely slowly. There are even cases of animals that died going into winter whose carcasses were still intact when the ice thawed the following year. The fact that these antelopes are this decomposed suggests it’s because daytime temperatures have been a bit higher recently, causing them to float to the surface again — thawing by day, freezing by night, the back and forth does the job and they rot.”

“Their bones are broken.” Another team member examining the carcasses had a new finding. “This one… leg bones, ribs — all broken. The leg bones are completely shattered!”

Zha Ba Duo Jie quickly crouched down to look, shaking his head and sighing as he examined.

Old Jin suddenly let out a cold laugh. “Run over by a vehicle.”

Zha Ba Duo Jie asked sharply: “Is this a method you’ve used yourselves?!”

Old Jin grinned unpleasantly. “That method damages the hide. And besides — how fast can antelope run? Our wrecked vehicle couldn’t keep up.”

Baldy chimed in: “The reason we came to the lake at all was by following the tyre tracks. When we arrived, there were loads of tracks everywhere, all over the place. We figured there must be something worth coming to this spot for, with so many vehicles passing through — but when we got here, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Diao Zhuo turned this over in his mind, slowly pacing along the lakeside with his head down, searching for something. After walking a considerable distance, he suddenly turned around and waved to everyone, also making a “take a photo” gesture. Da Qin picked up his camera and hurried over.

Diao Zhuo pointed at several footprints pressed into the dry mud. “Photograph these.”

Da Qin photographed and filmed while marvelling aloud: “What are these holes? They look like they were made by a woman’s high heels. Wearing high heels out here? That’s really…”

There were three sets of footprints in total. Two sets were fairly large — around size 40-plus — indicating males. The owner of the high-heel prints was clearly female. The footprints showed drag-scraping marks, and mixed into the mud were a few tufts of animal hair. Diao Zhuo stood beside them and studied them for a long time, then said to Zha Ba Duo Jie and Da Qin: “Three sets of footprints: one belongs to Zou Kaigui, and the other two belong to an unidentified man and woman who were making an unauthorised vehicle crossing. The military checkpoint guards weren’t the last people to see Zou Kaigui — these illegal crossers were.”

Da Qin was overjoyed, pointing at the prints: “Which set is Zou Kaigui’s?”

“This one.” Diao Zhuo indicated it. “Before Zou Kaigui entered Qiang Tang he had a full-body photo taken at Shiquanhe. The shoes on his feet were the same model as the spare hiking boots we found, just a different colour. In his diary he mentions alternating between two pairs of shoes throughout the crossing. Based on the wear pattern on the soles, I judged his walking habits and gait — he drags his heels on the outer rear when he walks, so that part of the sole is worn more heavily. From the direction of the wear, his natural stance is left foot slightly turned outward and right foot roughly straight. Also, when his feet make contact with the ground, he bears more weight on the outer edge first, then the ball of the foot. I’m confident that in a no-man’s land you would not find another hiker wearing the exact same model of shoe with the exact same gait as Zou Kaigui.”

Da Qin said: “This man and woman must be connected to Zou Kaigui’s disappearance!”

Diao Zhuo nodded. “Not only that — Zou Kaigui’s disappearance is also connected to the Tibetan antelopes.”

Zha Ba Duo Jie was startled. “How do you mean?”