After his leave ended, Diao Zhuo rejoined his project team and traveled to the Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, picking up where they had left off on a geological survey of the West Kunlun manganese deposit — a project now entering its third year. The West Kunlun manganese belt comprises three medium-to-large manganese ore deposits — Aortokanese, Muhu, and Markansu — and as far back as the early 1980s, Professor Rao Qinghui, following his very first expedition leading a survey team through the region, had declared that the West Kunlun manganese deposits had the potential to transform China’s long-standing shortage of high-grade manganese ore resources. Diao Jun had been Rao Qinghui’s most prized student, and the early manganese ore report had been drafted in his hand.
The drilling work went on day after day, the rhythm seemingly unbroken and cyclical — yet with each passing cycle came new discoveries. Sure enough, over the following months, the Xi’an Geological Survey Center’s years-long exploration efforts yielded a major breakthrough: deep drilling at the Muhu mining area revealed an additional 700-plus tonnes of manganese ore.
Like most of the survey engineers on the project team, Diao Zhuo was kept busy every day — the same work as before, the same routines. Except that something about the man himself was off.
The main symptom, in essence, was this — he missed Ba Yunye.
Her social media was extremely active. Every stage of her upcoming itineraries was laid out in clear detail — which destination, which dates she’d be leading a group there. Before departure, if she was still a seat short, she could post the same trip five times in a single day: things like “Ali Grand Northern Route — 1 spot remaining, two vehicles departing together, let me take you deep into Tibet” or “Sky Mirror, departing the 18th with 2 spots left, sign up now — me and the internet-famous Chaka Salt Lake are both waiting for you.” It had exasperated him so much that he’d once muted her feed.
But he always unblocked her again within a few days.
He kept thinking back to every day the rescue team had spent inside Qiang Tang searching for Zou Kaigui’s remains — even every song that had come up on shuffle. Especially that one, South of the Southern Mountains. When the chorus swelled, a violent sandstorm was raging beyond the window, and Ba Yunye lay sleeping with such peaceful, unhurried stillness.
Today, the inspection delegation from the Geological Survey Bureau had finished their meeting and filed out of the conference room one by one. Diao Zhuo pushed open the window. Outside, the grey-brown mountains rose in massive, weathered forms — like the eyes of a very old man, worn smooth by time, gazing steadily at all that passed before them.
Wind came through the window. The briefing documents on the conference table about the manganese project’s progress scattered across the floor. He lit a cigarette. The taste of tobacco drifted up into his nostrils and settled faintly bitter on his tongue.
National Day was a few days away. From Ba Yunye’s posted itineraries, he could see that other people’s holidays were her busiest working season. This time around, her group was taking the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway — a journey of over twenty days, three vehicles fully booked well in advance. Clients who couldn’t take that much time off could fly out early from the airport in Ali or the one in Kashgar.
The poet Bei Dao once wrote that the range of a person’s wanderings is the measure of their world.
By that reckoning, Ba Yunye’s world was far larger and far more crowded than most people’s. His own work offered nothing like her freedom — the length of the ore belt dictated the reach of his steps, nothing more and nothing less. She was like a hawk — sky vast, clouds wide, free to soar wherever she chose. He was a root — part of him breaking through the soil above ground, part of him burrowing deep into the earth below.
He was nearly done with his cigarette, and turned to look for an ashtray. He found his colleagues had returned to the conference room to clear up the meeting materials after seeing the inspectors off. The few who couldn’t resist the snacks had already helped themselves to the fruit laid out for guests, each gnawing on a big apple, chattering away.
“I’m telling you, the progress lately has been exceptional — no wonder the higher-ups came down personally to take a look. I had a feeling from the moment we started drilling in the Quaternary cover zone — and sure enough, two concealed manganese ore bodies discovered…”
“With any luck, we might squeeze a good ten or so days of leave out of this. I could finally get home and hold my big, chubby son.”
“They’re going to grant leave at a critical moment like this? You know how it always goes — before the results are fully confirmed, the whole thing is kept under wraps. You think they’d actually let a big mouth like you go home?”
“As the saying goes, ‘one generation plants the trees, the next enjoys the shade.’ Professor Rao’s papers already pointed out that the middle section of the Markansu manganese belt contained manganese layers. If those experts had still been with us, the discovery of the new manganese-bearing horizon in the Permian sequence would have come even sooner.”
“Wasn’t their survey data mostly about gemstone deposits? I heard there was also information about gold deposits in the other materials.”
“Give me a break — I heard it was uranium.”
“Nonsense — and to think you all call yourselves professionals.”
“So what exactly were those experts searching for back then? Surely they weren’t after something as mundane as gold?”
“None of you would know — you’d have to ask Professor He Zhengren, or just ask Diao Zhuo directly.”
Diao Zhuo stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t know.”
Their discussion went on. He didn’t join in again.
Before long, word came through that they had been granted leave.
“My father worked hard to find this internship for us both. We’re supposed to go together — so why are you backing out?” Xiao’ai and Zheming had never once had a real argument since getting together, but this time, Xiao’ai was genuinely angry. The company in question was a top player in its industry. Normally, a spot there — without having to sit an exam — was only available to graduate students. Her father had called in a favor, and the odds of both of them, as undergraduates still in school, being kept on after the internship were actually quite good.
She knew Zheming’s family wasn’t well-off, and that his parents would never have been able to open a door like this for him. She’d told him the good news expecting excitement — instead, she got a face full of reluctance.
“I’m not saying I won’t go — I just want to go a little later.” Zheming smiled apologetically and pulled Xiao’ai into a hug. “Remember how we went to Tiger Leaping Gorge with Tian’en during summer break? I realized that traveling independently is so much better than going with a tour group! You stop wherever you feel like stopping, take as many photos as you want, and it’s actually thrilling! A tour group just lets you stand behind a railing and stare at the rock in the water called Tiger, but we walked the whole way in — we even got through the most treacherous part, the Middle Gorge!”
Xiao’ai thought of those terrifying mountain paths at Tiger Leaping Gorge, and a shudder ran through her. “So what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Tian’en wants to trek through a great desert.” Zheming’s eyes shone with the light of great ambition. “I want to take on one big challenge before I enter the working world. I’m afraid once I’m locked into the nine-to-five grind, I’ll never get the chance. So I told him — I’m in.”
“The Sahara?” Xiao’ai asked, wide-eyed with dread.
Zheming burst out laughing and flicked a playful finger against the tip of her nose. “Silly girl, the Sahara is in Africa — why would we go all the way out there? China has plenty of deserts of its own.”
“Oh…” Xiao’ai relaxed at that. She’d been on group tours to Europe and Brazil with her parents before, and had visited quite a few places around China too. She’d always felt that home was far safer than abroad, so hearing that her boyfriend only wanted to trek through a domestic desert, she let go of her objections.
“Tian’en is really something else,” Zheming said, full of admiration.
Xiao’ai nodded in agreement. “He doesn’t talk much normally — but it turns out he’s incredibly dependable. He knows so much. Every now and then he’d say, ‘you can eat this,’ or ‘this can be used for such-and-such.’ Like a proper guide — you’d never guess it was his first time at Tiger Leaping Gorge.”
Zheming pretended to be put out. “You’re praising another man in front of me like this — aren’t you worried I’ll get jealous?”
“Oh, stop it!” Xiao’ai gave him a shove, and the two dissolved into playful bickering.
Mani stone piles dotted the land in every direction. Howling winds set the rainbow-colored prayer flags snapping in all directions. At the far edge of the Payang Grassland, a towering mountain rose in solitary, immovable grandeur — its summit of bare grey rock crowned as if by a cloak of ice and snow.
“Up ahead is the sacred mountain — Kailash.” Ba Yunye stopped the vehicle. “We’ll have lunch in the village.”
“Incredible!” The tourists in her vehicle let out happy cheers. Some had their DSLRs out, some had selfie sticks; the passengers in River Horse’s second vehicle and A-Dian’s third even had drones — though there was no need for those here just yet.
Tachen was little more than a small village with a single road running straight through its center. As more and more visitors made the pilgrimage to the sacred mountain, the place had gradually come alive — but conditions remained limited, with electricity and water available only at set hours. Its saving grace was the backdrop of Namu Nani, the fifth of the Himalayas’ sacred peaks, which meant that even the most casual snapshot came out looking like a work of art.
Ba Yunye was the last to get out of the vehicle. As she always did, she pulled a buff neck gaiter, a hat, and sunglasses over her face until it was entirely covered. In her oversized softshell jacket, she stood tall and straight — she could have passed for a young man.
“Master Ba, look — they’re filming again,” River Horse muttered to her, nodding toward two of their female passengers.
This particular group of clients had come from several different provinces. Among them, two women and one man who had traveled together — the women, apparently, were food vloggers on some eating platform, with tens of thousands of views per video.
Of course, in this age of overflowing internet traffic, every streaming site and app was filled with thousands upon thousands of such “internet personalities.”
Sitting and eating for a living — it’s a career — River Horse had been picking their brains for tips the whole journey, hoping to follow suit. Ba Yunye would regularly mock him for it, saying: Have a look at their faces, then have a look at yours. Watching them eat is a pleasure. Watching you eat, all I want to do is punch you.
River Horse had whispered to her at one point: Master Ba, never mind how they look on camera — take off their makeup and they’re worse-looking than you.
That remark had nearly gotten him killed — he had absolutely no tact whatsoever.
The man traveling with them — apparently their manager — was named Shi Mengzhi. Ba Yunye had taken a few moments here and there to observe them, and she had to admit that their persona-crafting was fairly effective. They had managed to appeal to the vast majority of young male and female fans who loved worshipping an idol.
For instance, the leader, A-Bu, had built her brand around the “cute cartoon girl” image — false lashes so thick she looked like a porcelain doll, and every single sentence ending in the word “meow.” The other girl, Ai Shuai, was tall, dressed in male clothing, and wore the shaggy “shark fin” hairstyle currently fashionable among trendy young men — a deliberately androgynous look, convincingly ambiguous.
They had named their food vlog channel, registered at the start, “Bu Lin Bu Lin Foodie Squad.” With what seemed to be a limited budget, they had so far filmed only domestically — livestreaming wherever the signal allowed, and recording videos to edit later wherever it didn’t.
In pursuit of viral traffic and views to rival competing food channels, they had a penchant for streaming themselves eating various specialty foods in unusual locations. Their most-watched video had involved sitting among graves during the Ghost Festival, peeling apples to make fruit salad — and deliberately snapping the peel several times in the process.
On this trip, they had no particular requirements for the route, but they had specified one thing: they wanted to be taken to eat as many unusual and distinctive foods as possible.
They had tried their hand at eating tsampa in imitation of the locals, making a rather unconvincing attempt. Ba Yunye could plainly see that A-Bu and Ai Shuai couldn’t stomach it at all, yet they chewed away with expressions of great relish, feeding each other beverages provided by a sponsor to plug the product, punctuating it all with cries of surprised delight — the picture of a happy, harmonious scene.
It brought to mind the memory of stumbling through the uninhabited wilderness several months earlier, ravenous, and finally managing to buy a lump of tsampa — which nobody had actually liked either, and yet everyone had swallowed it down in a few gulps. She found herself smiling at that. She was playful by nature, and equally quick to forget. Once something was over, it was over — whatever feelings it had stirred, fondness or irritation, all of it faded like smoke.
The one thing that lingered was the moment just before Diao Zhuo left — his lips close to her ear, murmuring: “Remember me.”
Of course she would remember him. He was everything she looked for in a man — like one of her favorite rugged off-road vehicles, combining raw speed with real comfort, and giving you the satisfaction of both controlling it and surrendering to it. She had replied lazily, half-lying against him: “I’ll remember you. Next time you bring a girlfriend to ride with my group, I’ll give you a discount.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” He had said through gritted teeth, landing a palm flat against her backside. “You’d actually give a discount?”
She yelped at the sting, indignant and fuming: “Discount on your legs!”
Not funny in the slightest.
She had no idea whether they would ever cross paths again, so she didn’t think about it very often.
As for Long Ge — he had actually followed through on his enthusiasm and joined the Beidou Rescue Corps as a volunteer. He had recently completed training in Shanghai and returned to Chengdu. As chance would have it, a university student had gone missing while climbing Linyan Mountain at Dujiangyan, and he had gone up the mountain with the Sichuan branch team to search, bringing the student home safely. He was tremendously pleased with himself about it.
He would have more chances to see Diao Zhuo than she would.
“Get some rest early,” Ba Yunye reminded her clients. “Tsampa is heavy — you two aren’t used to it, so don’t eat too much, or you’ll end up with stomach cramps.”
“It’s fine — worst case I’ll just throw it up,” Ai Shuai said cheerfully.
“The sacrifices you make.” Ba Yunye shook her head, resigned.
“Thank you, Master Ba — we’ll be careful, meow!” A-Bu added, making little cat-paw gestures with her hands on either side of her cheeks, wiggling them back and forth.
The tourists were free to do as they pleased after disembarking, so Ba Yunye didn’t interfere much, and led the others to a Sichuan restaurant for lunch. A few clients from Zhejiang mentioned how the first time they’d come to Tibet, they had found the climate unbearably dry — nosebleeds every day, perpetually parched no matter how much water they drank, and even their finest Longjing tea from West Lake sitting ready and waiting hadn’t made a difference.
“In Tibet, you drink butter tea,” Ba Yunye explained. “Whatever land you’re in, you drink what that land gives you — that’s what nature intends.”
The clients from Zhejiang were halfway persuaded, and began asking whether butter tea and sweet tea were the same thing. Ba Yunye had just started to explain when the food vlogging group finished their filming and came to sit down in the empty seats. Having watched their actual eating habits up close for several days now, Ba Yunye turned to the server without missing a beat and said: just blanch a few plates of vegetables for them — no oil, no salt.
“Huh? That’s enough to fill them up? If they don’t like it, we’ve got other options~” The server, speaking in a thick blend of Sichuan dialect and Mandarin, looked startled, clearly thinking she’d misheard.
“They don’t need to be full,” Ba Yunye said, raising a hand to wave the server off. No need for further questions. Do it as she said.
She herself almost never had time to watch the trendy food livestreams and singing broadcasts that were popular these days. This trip had given her up-close exposure to the two food vloggers, and whatever they might claim about truly loving food — what they ate, they generally managed to purge about two-thirds of afterward. Just watching was enough to unsettle her. She felt as though what they were throwing up wasn’t food, but their very lives.
“River Horse big brother, could you please buy us some sweet tea, meow~?” A-Bu asked.
“On my way.” River Horse jumped up eagerly and trotted off, returning shortly with a thermos jug.
Ba Yunye mimicked A-Bu’s tone exactly: “River Horse big brother, could you pour me a cup too, meow~?”
“Get lost,” River Horse answered viciously.
“Charming.” She shot him a look of pure scorn.
“Master Ba.” Shi Mengzhi slid into the seat beside her with an easy smile. “Does this route have any spots that are really explosive — like something out of Man vs. Wild?”
Ba Yunye poured herself some sweet tea. “In my experience, the scenery along the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway is among the top anywhere in the country. Every stretch has something remarkable.”
“We’re looking for somewhere that feels especially mysterious — somewhere most people are too intimidated to go. A video like that would get clicks through the roof.” Shi Mengzhi’s eyes narrowed as he savored the promising future ahead of him. “We considered going to Seda before, but these two refused point-blank.”
Ba Yunye understood what he meant, and gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Right. If they dared to set up a food vlog session anywhere near the sky burial platform, eating through it in one piece would mean they’d cheated death. Better to find somewhere with beautiful scenery and enjoy the view while eating — far more pleasing to the eye. I imagine the viewers would rather see that too, rather than watch you tempt fate.”
Shi Mengzhi sighed. “The competition is brutal. Without something different, who’s going to pay attention? You need the traffic. Men dressing as women to put on lipstick, women dressing as men to shave — that’s what gets views these days. This is a young person’s game, and a game of luck too. One day something you do randomly explodes, you go viral, and that carries you for years. Otherwise…”
She smiled and said, half-teasing: “Give it a few more days. On Highway 219, there’s a place called Dead Men’s Gully — elevation 5,200 meters. The wind howls like something otherworldly, and some people claim to have seen ghost lights there. If you really want to go for something big — spend a night there, film a segment?”
Shi Mengzhi’s interest was immediately piqued. “Is it really that eerie?”
“Have you ever heard the saying: ‘pissed your pants on the Tianshan Mountain Pass, bathed in Bangong Lake, and slept a night in Dead Men’s Gully’?”
“…What does that mean?”
“The first — sheer terror. The second — bone-cold. The third…” Ba Yunye paused, watching everyone lean in with interest, then said with deliberate mystery: “Back just after Liberation, a cavalry division of Nationalist troops fled Xinjiang for Ali, and stopped for the night in Dead Men’s Gully. By the next morning, nearly all of them were dead.”
Shi Mengzhi let out a sharp sound of disbelief.
Ba Yunye waved a hand, done with scaring them. “Dead Men’s Gully has an oxygen concentration of less than 50% of sea level. Back then, they had no knowledge of altitude sickness. They’d set out from Yecheng in Xinjiang and shot straight up to an elevation of over 5,000 meters in one go — no one’s body could handle that, let alone sleeping through the night there. We won’t be staying overnight in that area, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
Shi Mengzhi looked delighted and immediately turned to whisper excitedly to the girls. Ba Yunye shook her head to herself and murmured: “Being an internet personality is its own kind of hardship.”
River Horse lowered his voice: “If you’d be willing to dress a little more… revealingly and strike a few poses — you wouldn’t need to dress as a man and shave to get attention. You’d still be way more popular than them.”
Ba Yunye imitated A-Bu’s cat-paw gesture perfectly. “Is that right, meow~?”
River Horse looked as though he might be physically ill. “Just stay a rough-and-tumble tomboy. Please.”