News of Zhang Chenguang arrived neither too early nor too late — exactly one month to the day from when he had gone missing.

At that moment, Ba Yunye was up on the observation platform at Sejila Mountain in Tibet, taking photographs for several clients, with the backdrop of Namcha Barwa. As she reflected on it, there was something almost poignant about it — in all her years working this road, she had passed through this spot many times and never once caught a clear view of Namcha Barwa. The peak was perpetually wreathed in cloud and mist, like a young woman veiled in bridal gauze, and so she completely understood why this beautiful snow mountain had earned the name “the Shy Woman Peak.”

The clients lingered on the observation platform. She returned to the vehicle first to wait, and the moment she took out her phone, a news notification came through: another group of mountaineering enthusiasts had stumbled upon a backpack identical to the one Zhang Chenguang had carried up the mountain — but the inside was completely empty, not even a scrap of chocolate to restore one’s strength. The mountaineering club badge from the city where he lived was pinned to the pack, and it was effectively confirmed to be his.

The internet erupted. Netizens began speculating about all manner of possibilities. Some said he had fallen into a snow cavern and spent his time waiting for rescuers, gradually consuming all his provisions, until finally he was overwhelmed by despair. Others claimed Zhang Chenguang had gone up there to end his life, which was why he’d brought nothing with him. Someone else, claiming to be a fellow townsperson, revealed that he was actually a compulsive gambler drowning in debt, and that perhaps the disappearance was all a ruse to vanish and escape his creditors.

Further down in the comments, a netizen rallied others to crowdfund a new search team and send climbers back up the mountain — but the response was meager, and some people accused that person of profiting from someone else’s misfortune.

Ba Yunye gave a quiet, derisive hum.

Her phone buzzed incessantly. It was Long Ge calling.

“Long Ge.” She answered, suppressing her thoughts, her expression blank.

“Can you be here in three days?”

“Mm.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

The understanding between them needed no more words than this. Ba Yunye raised an eyebrow. “Business?”

Long Ge gave a hearty laugh. “Greater Qiang Tang — are you in?”

The “Greater Qiang Tang” he referred to was specifically the core zone of Qiang Tang — a place forbidden to human activity, and one of the most dangerous uninhabited regions in China.

She didn’t fully believe him, but asked anyway: “You’re not joking.”

The Qiang Tang nature reserve had been closed to unauthorized crossings for years, yet organizations and individuals continued entering the protected area for all manner of reasons. Every year, a considerable number of overland vehicles and travelers went missing or met with accidents in the uninhabited zone — some without a trace left to find. They not only damaged the fragile ecosystem of the nature reserve and threatened the safety of protected wildlife, but also consumed enormous search and rescue resources from authorities and society at large. And yet, despite all this, people continued to venture in, one after another, choosing the most arduous overland routes on foot. The reason was simple: a successful crossing earned an immense sense of personal achievement — enough to dine out on for a lifetime, to be celebrated and admired by legions of fellow enthusiasts.

“Rest assured, it’s a rescue team.”

“Rescues are urgent — a rescue team can afford to wait for me?” Ba Yunye crossed her legs, a look of mild disbelief on her face.

Long Ge replied, “The person they’re looking for is named Zou Kaigui — you may have heard of him. He’s been missing for more than seventy days already, so two or three days won’t make a difference. Before this, two separate groups went in looking for him. This is the third.”

“All right, I’m in.” Hearing that the rescue team had obtained the necessary approvals, Ba Yunye’s own curiosity stirred, and she agreed without hesitation. “Since it’s a rescue team… is this paid or unpaid work?”

“That’s all the civic spirit you have?”

“Long Ge—” She began wheedling.

“What’s yours won’t be short a single cent. Come to the usual place in Lhasa and we’ll talk through the details.” Long Ge was just about to hang up when something occurred to him, and he added, “There seems to be some official visitor coming these next few days. Be alert. If the Lhasa–Nyingchi Expressway gets closed off, you’ll be stuck for the better part of a day at minimum.”

“Understood. I’ll keep an eye out once I reach Nyingchi.”

Suddenly a commotion broke out on the observation platform, accompanied by the sharp screams of several women. Ba Yunye leaned out to look. It was a disorderly scuffle over there — most likely, as usual, tourists fighting over prime photo spots. The college students she had brought came jogging back to her, all talking over one another as they described the lead-up to the altercation, saying that a slight, thin man had landed a single punch that knocked a large man flat on the ground and sent him reaching for an oxygen mask.

Ba Yunye’s face wore a grin, but her eyes held no particular mirth. She started the engine and said with dry humor, “Good practice for them. If they can’t hold their own, they’ll get nowhere near Yamdrok Lake. Tourists fighting over photo spots is Tibet’s other ‘beautiful scenery,’ right alongside the landscapes.”

“Really…?” The female college student in the front passenger seat took the joke at face value, looking startled. “So will we even get our turn?”

A trace of genuine warmth crept into Ba Yunye’s smile, tinged with a faintly roguish swagger. “Relax. In a fight, Master Ba doesn’t lose.”

The car filled with laughter.

The best scenery around Nyingchi was not within the city itself, so when Ba Yunye settled the car full of clients into a Nyingchi city hotel for the night, she told them they would need to be up at five the next morning to set out for Lhasa before the expressway was closed.

Several of the clients, reluctant to stay cooped up, went out for a stroll in the evening. Ba Yunye stayed behind in the hotel, mapping out routes into Qiang Tang. Over the past couple of days, she had looked up whatever information she could find about Zou Kaigui: a man who had been traveling the country by bicycle, searching for the daughter who had been trafficked away from him ten years ago, with still no result.

Netizens had written that Zou Kaigui had given up his job, had no income, and that his cycling expenses and equipment were funded by various grassroots charities and kind strangers he encountered along the way. His journey to find his daughter was said to be not only a testament to individual perseverance but a reflection of society’s compassion, and so on.

A few months earlier, Zou Kaigui had posted on WeChat Moments saying he intended to trek on foot through Qiang Tang to raise his own profile, so that more people would know his story and help him find his daughter. He had gone through with it, arriving in Lhasa and posting a photograph of himself boarding a bus at the long-distance bus terminal, bound for Shiquanhe. In the photo, he held up a picture of his daughter; behind him, mounted on an overland vehicle, a faded red flag fluttered in the wind, bearing five characters: “Many thanks to kind souls.”

This was the last photograph Zou Kaigui posted to his Moments. Feedback from the two previous rescue teams who had entered Qiang Tang to search for him indicated that the last person to see Zou Kaigui was a military officer at a checkpoint, after which he had vanished without a trace, fate unknown.

Ba Yunye read through everything, then sketched a rough outline of Zou Kaigui’s planned trekking route through Qiang Tang in her mind. Qiang Tang’s terrain sloped from west to east, and the prevailing winds blew from the west. He had taken the east–west route, setting out from Songxi Village in Rutog County in the Ali region. Word was that he had brought sixty days’ worth of provisions, which meant that even if he had held on for the full sixty days, he had now been without food inside there for at least ten. The probability of survival was extremely low.

Trekking in extreme environments was not something where you could simply decide to ration your supplies and then do so. Never mind whether the rations were sufficient — who could say you weren’t the local wildlife’s next delivery?

Long Ge’s information had been precisely accurate: the following morning, the Lhasa–Nyingchi Expressway closed. But Ba Yunye and her red Wrangler were already speeding along the wide open road toward Lhasa. As they approached the outskirts, she could see the milk-blue waters of the Lhasa River threading between the yellow earth and brown mountains, like a turquoise bead strung on a saffron-colored robe — at once profound and ethereal.

Arriving at the Deji Guesthouse marked the formal end of this Sichuan–Tibet Highway trip. The college students had visited the Potala Palace and were reluctant to leave; Long Ge had a sharp sense for business, and when he saw that their flights weren’t until the following evening, he offered to take anyone who could bring in three new followers for the Eagle Club’s public account on a free trip to Yamdrok Lake the next morning as his treat.

Ba Yunye slept for a full, disorienting stretch, and when she woke she had no idea what hour it was. Opening her door, she found the sky ablaze with the colors of sunset. Long Ge and Ma He were crouched in the courtyard, taking stock of some Motuo stone pots they had recently acquired.

Hearing movement, Long Ge raised his eyes. She emerged with the drowsy look of someone only half awake, wearing a slightly form-fitting thin sweater for once — an uncharacteristically soft look for her. She settled down uninhibitedly in front of them both, her hair — not quite long, not quite short — falling loose around her shoulders. Even like this, bare-faced and casual, the clarity of her features and her eyes, which carried a hint of something foreign, set her apart from people in general.

The moment Ma He saw her, he burst out, “Master Ba, this new guy, he’s got it — your type.”

“I don’t get involved with clients.”

Ma He pressed on regardless. “He’s not really a client — more like a partner, since he’s not looking for you for sightseeing purposes.”

Ba Yunye remained thoroughly uninterested. “If you’re interested, you go for it.”

“I don’t like men!”

“You’ve never tried. How do you know you don’t like it?”

Ma He let his guard down and blurted, “One look at him and you’ll know. I’d bet on it — even you could be turned by him.”

Ba Yunye stretched both arms out along the backs of the chairs to either side, crossed her legs, and looked down at Ma He from above with the bearing of a domineering CEO — deliberate, measured, nearly one word at a time: “I… would be turned… by a man?”

Ma He gave himself a sharp slap on the forehead. He had almost forgotten that Ba Yunye was a woman.

Long Ge couldn’t hold back a laugh. “As the saying goes, yin and yang complement each other. Both you and Diao Zhuo are yang through and through — what exactly are you supposed to complement each other into? My only prayer is that when those two disagree on the road and things come to blows, nobody ends up dead. Captain Diao’s build — heh — Master Ba, in a fight, you might not win.”

“If he doesn’t provoke me, why would I raise a hand?” Ba Yunye lounged with one cheek propped lazily on her palm and sniffed the air. “What smells so good?”

“Ginseng stone-pot chicken.” Long Ge stood up and brushed the dust from his trousers. “Come on, eat and talk.”

On the morning of departure, Ba Yunye arrived early at the agreed spot in front of the Agricultural Bank University gate, as was her habit, and leaned against her freshly washed vehicle, chewing dried mango slices while she waited. She wore a snapback cap and sunglasses, a small ponytail tucked up inside the neck gaiter looped around her throat. Between her easy, unhurried movements and her tall frame, she looked, at close range and from far away alike, like a man, drawing more than one glance from passing students.

Before long, a convoy arrived in orderly formation — a black Grand Commander in the lead, followed by several Compass models, cutting an imposing sight, and further back, a Land Cruiser Prado and a black pickup. The rear seats and trunks of every vehicle were crammed with empty fuel containers. They would need to fill all of them upon arrival to ensure a minimum of 600 liters of fuel per vehicle for the crossing of the uninhabited zone.

This was Ba Yunye’s first time taking on a rescue guide assignment. Before they set out, Long Ge had reminded her that this group was neither sightseeing nor thrill-seeking, and told her to follow Captain Diao Zhuo’s lead entirely — to guide them along Zou Kaigui’s trekking route, with the option of scouting ahead in other directions if the situation called for it.

Ma He waved a greeting from a distance. Once everyone had climbed out of their vehicles, Ba Yunye picked out Diao Zhuo at a single glance.

She had to admit, he did stand out in a crowd. Beneath the black brim of his cap, a pair of keen eyes swept the surroundings like an eagle circling a snow-capped summit — penetrating and commanding. The faint blue veins raised along the backs of his hands and the dense blocks of muscle standing out along his arms left no part of him that did not convey raw strength. He looked solid through and through.

Damn it, this really is exactly the type I like — Ba Yunye thought to herself.

“How’s that?” Ma He asked in a low voice beside her, playing matchmaker as usual.

Ba Yunye, whose interests over these past several years had at times been purely physical and at other times gone a little deeper, said: “Pretty good. Worth pursuing.”

Diao Zhuo didn’t catch their whispered exchange. He extended his hand toward her in greeting, and felt something slightly off as he did. Compared to the imposing title of “Master Ba,” her hand was far too soft — not a man’s hand at all. The impression was fleeting, and he didn’t dwell on it.

A tall, lean man said, “I’m Da Qin, from Xi’an.”

A man in black-framed glasses raised a hand in a slight wave: “Tan Lin, from Huizhou.”

A heavyset, dark-complexioned man said: “I’m Qi Zi. Northeast.”

A fresh-faced young man with a bright, clean appearance grinned a hello: “Hey, Master Ba, I’m Xiang’an, studying in Jiangsu — graduating in June.”

The team members introduced themselves one after another, then immediately started peppering her with questions:

“How old are you, man? Where are you from?”

“That’s a pretty impressive nickname — what’s your real name?”

“Your ride is seriously cool, you’ve modified a lot of it, right? The girls must love it.”

“Is this what you do for work? Just drive all day?”

With eleven team members all talking at once, Ba Yunye had no chance of remembering any of them in the immediate term, so she just nodded along. Through their questions, she noticed something amusing: not one of them had apparently realized she was a woman. Partly because she was bundled up beneath a cap, sunglasses, neck gaiter, and fleece jacket, and partly because she was, well — flat-chested.

Well now. If that was truly the case, this could be a lot of fun.

Ye Xun emerged last, supported by Xiao Zi, staggering slightly as he climbed out of the vehicle, his face a greenish-purple, as though in considerable distress.

Xiao Zi introduced him: “Mr. Ye Xun, organizer of the rescue mission and one of Zou Kaigui’s primary sponsors.”

Ba Yunye gave a nod in acknowledgment.

“Mr. Ye’s altitude sickness is quite severe. He hasn’t been able to get out of bed for two days, and he’s afraid of becoming dependent on supplemental oxygen so he won’t use it. We’re about to head to Ali, which sits at an even higher elevation than Lhasa — it’s anyone’s guess whether Mr. Ye can manage.” Xiao Zi said with concern, adding that she herself had only had a mild headache on the first day, after which she’d had no symptoms at all, and considered herself fortunate.

Ba Yunye curved the corner of her mouth and exchanged a glance with Ma He — one that said everything without a word needing to be spoken. This kind of “psychosomatic altitude sickness” was rarely anything serious on its own. Best to observe for now, and if necessary, they had their own standard method of “treatment.”

Ma He glanced at his watch and settled into the front passenger seat. “Let’s head out!”

The first destination of the search and rescue journey was the very point from which Zou Kaigui had begun his trek through Qiang Tang — Shiquanhe.