By the time they set off, the sky had already darkened. With a life at stake, no one cared about rest. High beams blazed one after another across the buffer-zone grasslands, like flowing stars racing through the night. The fierce wind outside scraped across the glass, producing a low, howling moan — punctuated at intervals by wolf cries that seemed to come from nowhere at all.

With so many people this time, there was no fear of anyone getting separated. Ba Yunye led the rescue team as before, while the two herders each guided a group — one with the public security officers and medical personnel, the other with a squad of soldiers — and they fanned out to search.

Darkness stretched in every direction. The search was immensely difficult, with howling wind driving sand and grit that cut like blades. They pressed through the buffer zone, then made camp at a sheltered spot, planning to resume at first light.

The herder, who didn’t understand Mandarin, listened to a rough account of how Ye Xun had gone missing. He then turned his prayer beads with one hand and rotated a prayer wheel with the other. His expression was grave as he said: a person should always hold compassion in their heart — even when suffering themselves, they must not harm others. This world operates by the law of cause and effect. A mind harboring malice will not find release. And no one, he added, could ever truly describe what Qiang Tang was — it changed from one moment to the next.

Ba Yunye listened, her gaze drifting to the water just beginning to boil.

Long Ge had — perhaps as a tall tale, perhaps not — once said that in earlier years, he had led guests on a trek through the Badain Jaran Desert. The map clearly showed a lake just 3 kilometers away, yet no matter how they searched that time, they simply couldn’t find it. When they returned a second time, the lake appeared again, perfectly inexplicably, right where it hadn’t been before.

Her elder sister had mentioned something similar.

That time, they seemed to have just returned from Luobupo. When she was young, she hadn’t known what Luobupo was. As she grew older and her horizons widened, she came to understand what kind of forbidden place it was — how many pioneers had lost their lives within it. Her elder sister that time hadn’t gone deep into the restricted zone, yet she looked as though she had narrowly escaped death. After that, wherever they went next, Ba Yunye had no clear memory. She only remembered that they both seemed quite fulfilled.

Knowledge changes destiny, she thought. She herself carried little learning in her belly, yet she had stumbled through life to this day.

“Feeling sorry about the fuel?” Diao Zhuo’s voice brushed past her ear.

Ba Yunye came back to herself. She deliberately sized him up in an exaggerated, sweeping look, slipping back into her usual teasing manner. “Feeling sorry for myself. The duck was cooked and ready, and I barely got a taste before I had to run out here again.”

“The chopsticks were handed right to you. You didn’t dare dig in yourself — who else is there to blame?” Diao Zhuo gave her a sidelong glance.

“You’re being awfully modest,” she muttered.

Diao Zhuo cleared his throat, easing the awkwardness.

Ba Yunye changed the subject and relayed what Long Ge had found on his visit to Kanxia Town. “That’s basically the whole picture. He’s not a police officer, so he couldn’t pry those people’s mouths open — he can only speculate that Zou Xiaowen is no longer alive.”

“The body believed to be Zou Kaigui’s hasn’t been tested yet. Once the results come in and Ye Xun is in custody, some of the people who know will start talking.”

“Why do they have to see a body before they’ll talk?” she asked, puzzled.

Diao Zhuo said matter-of-factly, “Dead men tell no tales — a lot of things can be blamed on the dead.”

“Then we’ll wait and see.” Ba Yunye said it with her mouth, but in her heart she held little real hope. She simply felt pity for Zou Xiaowen — whether she had truly been trafficked or was already gone, she was a wretched soul. May she be born far from people like this in her next life.

The water in the pot came to a boil, cutting their conversation short. Ba Yunye turned off the fuel stove. The tent was fairly warm; she took the opportunity to also remove her wool hat. The garish, cheap scent of shampoo wafted out. She sighed and scratched her head helplessly.

The scent drifted over, and something stirred in Diao Zhuo’s mind.

The scent was cheap. What mattered was the person it clung to.

He looked at her — head lowered, fingers tearing open the plastic wrap of an instant noodle cup. Her bangs fell forward, partly obscuring her lashes. Her nose bridge was more prominent than on most women, which was exactly what gave her beauty that sharp, unyielding edge.

He thought of her sleeping in the passenger seat the day of the sandstorm. Or rather — perhaps he would find himself returning to that image many times in the future. She was truly still as a maiden at rest, and wild as a force of nature when roused.

Diao Zhuo was not a man who constantly weighed pros and cons. But now was not the right time to let feelings or desires take hold. Presumably, she felt the same. But if the day ever came when restraint was no longer necessary — he would have no need to restrain himself.

He lifted the tent flap and bent down, about to step out.

“You’re leaving so soon, honored guest? Won’t you sit a while longer?” Her face once again wore that impish grin.

“Your establishment has no wine. I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Then be on your guard — drink too much of someone else’s wine and you might lose more than your head.”

“Far more likely to happen here.” Diao Zhuo stepped out.

Ba Yunye couldn’t help but laugh.

At the first gray light of dawn, everyone was already up and ready to move.

An overnight light snowfall had turned everything white in every direction. As the sun rose, the snow began to melt, and snowmelt mingled with mud until the dirt tracks cut by the vehicles became utterly waterlogged. Once past the buffer-zone grasslands, the vegetation grew sparse — clusters of scrubby grass dotting the uneven ground in scattered clumps. In the hollows and humps between them, tawny-colored hares and marmots darted about, foraging.

As the vehicles approached the area near Ulan Ul Lake, Ba Yunye spotted a herd of Tibetan antelopes loping past at a leisurely pace. A moment later, the walkie-talkie crackled, and a voice called out: “We’ve found something!”

Ba Yunye looked in the direction they indicated. Far in the distance, at the base of a slope, a black speck was visible. River Horse trained his binoculars on it and shouted: “A black pickup truck!”

Ba Yunye floored the accelerator. More than a dozen other vehicles converged on that spot from all directions. Tires crunched through ice and mud. On the turns, some rear wheels spun helplessly, like wheels on a skateboard. Going downhill, mud flew in arcs, spattering everything in sight.

Closer. Closer still. Ba Yunye drove like a racing driver, the first to brake and leap from her vehicle — it was the very pickup truck Ye Xun had driven away!

The others arrived one after another, all climbing out of their vehicles. Medical personnel had already lifted a stretcher and oxygen tank, braced to provide emergency treatment.

The black pickup truck mired in the mud pit was terrifyingly still. The windows were fogged and opaque, making it impossible to tell what was happening inside. Looking more carefully, one could just make out the faint trembling of the vehicle’s frame — like a creature on the edge of death, still making its last, feeble struggle.

Ba Yunye leapt forward and reached out to try the door handle. Her hand had barely extended when another hand caught her wrist in midair and yanked her entire body backward. She stumbled and turned her head — Diao Zhuo had her wrist in a firm grip. “Careful,” he said.

River Horse, checking the truck bed, found the body bag carrying the corpse was still there, though after days of being transported through such terrain, the deterioration was likely far worse than before.

Diao Zhuo curled his fingers and rapped on the window.

The interior of the truck remained utterly silent.

Ba Yunye reached out again and prepared to try the door handle. Suddenly — thwack — a convulsing hand struck the window from inside. Five fingers clawed in a wild, frantic scraping motion, as if in tremendous agony, as if desperately trying to grasp at something.

Ba Yunye sucked in a sharp breath. It startled her from head to toe. She pulled at the door — it wouldn’t open. The hand inside continued to writhe and scratch. The sensation was like a full pound of numbing pepper water being poured over her scalp — so intense she nearly jumped out of her skin.

Diao Zhuo hammered on the window several times. The person inside still hadn’t unlocked the door.

“Break it.” He jerked his chin at the window. Da Qin and the others were already charging forward with glass-breaking hammers.

“Is it… Ye Xun?” Ba Yunye asked, still shaken.

“Better be him.” River Horse stared wide-eyed, his face pale with dread. “It couldn’t be Zou Kaigui…”

“Don’t you dare jinx this!” Ba Yunye punched River Horse in the shoulder.

“Settle down.” Diao Zhuo shot them a look.

The glass shattered. Everyone pried and swept away the fragments. In the driver’s seat, Ye Xun was flailing and thrashing wildly, clearly in extreme distress. His mouth was stretched wide open, gasping like a fish out of water — yet there were no visible injuries on him, no blood anywhere.

The door was unlocked from the inside. Everyone hauled Ye Xun out of the vehicle together. His abdomen was swollen out to an alarming size, as round and taut as a full-term pregnant woman. Suddenly, a stream after stream of clear, transparent liquid began flowing from his mouth. A medical worker pressed on his belly, and he disgorged even more liquid — from its color and odor, it appeared to be plain water.

“Why does this look like a drowning case?” Ba Yunye knitted her brow and stared at Ye Xun, completely baffled.

Everyone quickly turned him over into the prone position with something propped under his abdomen, and pressed rhythmically on his back. He expelled water, mouthful by unconscious mouthful — yet he remained unresponsive, still unable to catch his breath, and soon fainted dead away. The medical personnel performed CPR and chest compressions on him — after several rounds, he finally came around and continued to expel water under his own effort.

Everyone gathered around Ye Xun. Ba Yunye couldn’t get a look in, so she turned and walked back to the pickup truck for a closer inspection. The interior — every seat, every floor mat — was bone dry. She looked back at Ye Xun, still bringing up water, looking exactly as he had when he had tumbled into the ice hole. His condition when they dragged him out of the truck had been identical.

If they hadn’t arrived in time, Ye Xun would seemingly have drowned to death, sitting right there in the vehicle.

But how had he managed to swallow so much water inside his belly?

Ba Yunye raised her head and looked around. In every direction, snow was melting. Ulan Ul Lake was at least three or four kilometers away — it couldn’t possibly have reached this far.

There was no time to investigate further. Everyone worked together in a flurry of hands to put up a tent and carry Ye Xun inside. He was bitterly cold, unable to speak, doing nothing but shivering and coughing without stop, his eyes completely unfocused.

The herder guides sat smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and conferred in low voices. After a while, they seemed to arrive at a conclusion they both found convincing, and knelt in reverence. From the sounds of their exchange and their prayers, Ba Yunye gathered that they believed something supremely sacred was present in this place.

With professional medical personnel on hand, the rescue team had no need to crowd inside the tent. They drifted one by one toward the pickup truck. The body bag in the truck bed, along with the other items there, was soaking wet — as though it had been drenched in a downpour — which shocked everyone who saw it.

Judging by the depth of the accumulated snow in the surrounding area, what had fallen the night before should have been a light snowfall — not a downpour.

Diao Zhuo touched the liquid on the vehicle’s surface, then held it beneath his nose and sniffed. No unusual odor.

“This is deeply strange,” Ba Yunye murmured. She had completely forgotten her earlier vow to beat Ye Xun senseless. She only wanted to understand why he had ended up in what appeared to be a drowning state inside a sealed vehicle.

“Help — save me — water!! Water!!” A blood-curdling scream suddenly erupted from within the tent — a sound like a pig being slaughtered. Everyone rushed in at once. Ye Xun was thrashing in wide-eyed terror, and it took several people to hold him down.

He shrieked at the top of his lungs like a man who had lost all reason. Even with Diao Zhuo and Ba Yunye standing right in front of him, he seemed not to recognize them at all — just raving on in a frenzy.

Ba Yunye had less patience than the others. She stepped forward and delivered a sharp, resounding slap across his face. “Stop screaming! You nearly got us all killed, and none of us screamed!”

Those who weren’t part of the rescue team froze in shock, regretting they hadn’t stopped her sooner. Diao Zhuo and the others, however, showed absolutely no reaction to her action — if she hadn’t struck him, that would have been the surprise.

The slap seemed to bring Ye Xun back to himself. His unfocused eyes cleared considerably. After stammering incoherently for half a minute, he suddenly blinked and said, “Master Ba… Team Leader Diao, you… you’re here?!”

He then tried to stand up and run.

Ba Yunye stuck out her hand and knocked him flat again. “Good — you recognize me. Now you’re not going anywhere. Why are you in this state?”

Ye Xun pressed his lips together, glancing left and right. Standing around him were not only the rescue team but also many unfamiliar police officers, soldiers, and others. His eyes shifted. He suddenly went quiet, and after a long silence, finally said: “I got lost. I was following the GPS route and the positioning signal, but no matter which way I went, something was off. Yesterday evening, when I drove to this area, I felt something was wrong — the vehicle wouldn’t move. Then the sky suddenly went dark. It was cold — an unbearable, impossible kind of cold. I wanted to get out and set up camp to rest, but the door lock seemed to be broken and I couldn’t open it. I cranked the heat up to maximum, but it was still cold.”

“And then?” Ba Yunye prompted.