A few days later, the convoy reached Urumqi. Ba Yunye coordinated the clients’ departures in batches according to their flight times, sending them off to the airport shuttle one by one. When she finally watched the Bu Lin Bu Lin Foodie Squad wave their goodbyes and board the bus, she felt a weight truly lift from her chest — they were gone. Whatever schemes they chose to cook up from here on had nothing to do with her. No wonder Han Dasheng had looked like he’d seen a ghost at the sight of them. Internet personalities, it turned out, were genuinely not worth the trouble.
By everyone’s accounts, the trip had been wonderful — next time they came to the western regions, they would look up the Soaring Eagle Club again. With the group sent off, Ba Yunye rounded up River Horse and A-Dian. “Let’s go. We’ve earned a proper lamb skewer dinner.”
“I’m going to grab a few soy-braised pork knuckles,” River Horse said, deadpan.
“And I’ll livestream it,” A-Dian added.
Every time they finished with a group of clients, they came away with fresh material to tease each other about for days.
“Alright, you two — enough. Next time the foodie squad shows up again, you’re both on them. I want nothing to do with it.” The most troublesome group was finally gone, but Ba Yunye couldn’t shake it — her right eye kept twitching in short intervals. Left eye twitches for fortune, right eye twitches for trouble — an uneasy feeling had settled somewhere in her gut.
“Actually, about next time,” River Horse said, “we could just turn them down. Immature, and the questions they asked were so strange. That day, one of them asked me whether we had camping arranged anywhere along the route. I said of course not — unless clients specifically request it and opt out of hotel accommodations — but we generally don’t advise clients with no outdoor survival experience to camp on their own. Then she told me she’d noticed the three university students who joined at Kashgar had what looked like a tent in their luggage.”
“Probably misidentified something,” Ba Yunye said without much concern. “Mistook a rain jacket for a tent.”
“Maybe.” River Horse didn’t think much of it either — they’d had their hands full watching the foodie squad and had paid relatively little attention to the other clients.
“Attention, valued passengers: We regret to inform you that your flight HU7879 is subject to air traffic control restrictions and will not be able to depart on schedule. Departure time is to be confirmed. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.”
“Ugh!” Su Zheming let out a long sigh. “Off to a rough start already!”
Zhang Tian’en was not superstitious, but hearing Zheming say it off-handedly still left him vaguely displeased. It’s just a delayed flight. Why fuss over it?
Ba Yunye’s convoy itinerary had no desert crossing at all. The three of them had used that story to keep their parents satisfied, stringing out the timeline long enough that, with any luck, by the time their families figured it out, they might already have walked out the other side of the desert.
“Nervous?” Zheming asked, pulling Xiao’ai close.
Xiao’ai gave a light laugh. “We’re only flying to Baotou right now — from there it’s another day and a half’s drive to the desert. Why would I be nervous at this point?”
“True, and we still need to stock up — water, food, all of that.” Zheming gazed out through the departure hall windows at the planes on the tarmac, a quiet certainty in his chest that this journey would stay with him for the rest of his life, and that by the time it was done, his bond with Xiao’ai would be something unbreakable.
“Attention, valued passengers: Flight HU7879 is now boarding. Please have your baggage and personal belongings ready…”
Zhang Tian’en shouldered his pack. “Let’s go.”
The plane didn’t touch down at Er Li Ban Airport until seven in the evening. After a day of travel, all three of them were worn down.
One night’s sleep and the young bodies had fully recovered. They cheerfully stocked up on mineral water and compressed biscuits. Meng Xiao’ai, in a moment of pure romantic sentiment, even bought a small potted cactus, announcing that she and Zheming would plant it together somewhere deep in the desert. Tonight, they would board the train to Ejina Banner, and the trek across the Badain Jaran Desert would begin.
When they got back to sort through their packs, Zheming and Xiao’ai finally grasped how far the reality of crossing a desert was from what they had imagined. Zheming’s pack came in at a full 70 jin. Xiao’ai’s was nearly 40. Most of that weight was water.
“My God! It’s so heavy!” The pack knocked the sense right out of Xiao’ai’s head.
70 jin — roughly half of Zheming’s own body weight. He felt it too, every ounce of it — but he took one look at Zhang Tian’en’s 80-jin pack and the fact that not a single complaint had come out of him, clenched his jaw, and said: “It’s nothing, sweetheart. If it gets too heavy for you, I’ll carry it.”
Xiao’ai brightened immediately.
“Once we’re in the desert, the load gets lighter with every meal and every drink,” Zhang Tian’en said, with none of Zheming’s sweet talk but with a steady, measured calm. “That said — water is not something to drain as fast as possible. Zheming and I are each carrying ten 2-liter bottles. Xiao’ai has eight. The plan is eight days to cross. That means neither of us men can drink more than one bottle a day. Whatever we save goes to Xiao’ai. Listen carefully — in the desert, water is everything. No water means death.”
Xiao’ai pressed her lips together, fingers picking at her nails, visibly frightened — looking as though she was already reconsidering.
Zheming was far more optimistic. “I looked it up — the Badain Jaran Desert has over a hundred lakes. Every account I read says you stumble across one just walking around. People even call it the ‘Jiangnan of the north’!”
Xiao’ai let out a slow breath. In her mind, she had genuinely begun to picture this desert trek as a stroll through a picturesque water town. What she did not know — what none of them truly understood — was that what they were attempting was called a full unsupported, unsupplied crossing: no resupply, no backup. It was the most dangerous form of wilderness traversal that existed.
Before heading to the train station, Zhang Tian’en ran through the contents of his pack one last time. “Food, water, hat and buff — GPS…Wait. Where are my spare batteries and compass?”
“With me,” Zheming said, expressionless. “You’re the one who put them in my bag, you know. And anyway, you already have a GPS — why do you need a compass?”
“Peace of mind.”
Zheming and Xiao’ai exchanged a look and both smiled, privately agreeing that Zhang Tian’en was being overly cautious.
Ba Yunye and the others had planned to head back toward Lhasa that day, picking up a few hitchhiking clients along the way to split the fuel costs. She had barely started the engine when her phone rang — an unknown number, but somehow it felt familiar.
She held up a hand out the window — one moment — and answered: “Hello.”
A woman’s voice: “Hello — is our Xiao’ai still in the vehicle? Could you ask her to take my call?”
It sounded like Xiao’ai’s mother — she had called once before, right when Xiao’ai first joined them. Ba Yunye blinked, genuinely confused. “I’m sorry — Meng Xiao’ai?”
“Yes.”
“She… hasn’t she already headed home?” Ba Yunye said. “She left with two male classmates by plane a few days ago.”
“Left?!” Xiao’ai’s mother sounded as though the ground had dropped out from beneath her. “You haven’t reached Kashgar yet?!”
“We passed through Kashgar a long time ago.”
“So she flew out from Kashgar?”
“From Urumqi.”
“How is this possible?!” Xiao’ai’s mother let out a stricken cry. Ba Yunye’s heart gave a sharp lurch. She heard the woman ask again, as if trying to confirm what she had heard: “So you’re telling me you were on the southern Xinjiang loop — you set out from Kashgar and circled back eastward to Kashgar?”
“We took the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway. Once we passed Kashgar, we went straight to Urumqi. We don’t backtrack with clients.”
A silence fell on the other end. After a long pause: “When exactly did my daughter leave Urumqi?”
“Five days ago.”
Another silence — longer this time. Xiao’ai’s mother seemed to be struggling to come to terms with what she was hearing.
“Xiao’ai hasn’t come home?” Ba Yunye asked. “Is she still with the two male classmates? I have their numbers — let me send them to you. Give them a call.”
“There’s no need…” Xiao’ai’s mother said, the defeat thick in her voice. “Their numbers won’t go through either.”
Ba Yunye had no means of helping beyond this. After hanging up, she sat with a knot forming in her stomach.
They had been so focused on the food vloggers. It had never crossed anyone’s mind that the ones about to cause trouble were the three university students who’d joined at Kashgar.
“Master Ba, what’s going on?” River Horse called from the back.
“Nothing — let’s go!” Ba Yunye waved a hand.
They hadn’t been moving long before another call came in — a landline number she didn’t recognize. “Hello?”
“Hello, this is the Qianjin Police Station.”
“Where?” Ba Yunye asked.
“Qianjin Police Station, North Yang City,” came the reply. “Were three individuals — Meng Xiao’ai, Zhang Tian’en, and Su Zheming — traveling in your vehicle in Xinjiang recently? Their families have reported them missing after failing to reach them for several days. We’d like to ask you for the details.”
Ba Yunye let out a slow breath, then recounted the timeline of the three from the moment they joined to the moment they left. “They told me their flight was at 8:30 in the morning, so we got them to the airport by 6. But one of my other clients later mentioned they’d noticed what looked like a tent in their luggage. We were staying in hotels the whole way — I couldn’t figure out why they’d need a tent.”
“Understood. We’ll need to verify what you’ve told us. If you think of anything else, please contact us — and if we have further questions, we’ll be in touch. Please keep your phone on.”
“Of course.” A quiet dread was beginning to settle over Ba Yunye — those three students were in trouble.
That evening at the hotel, she called Xiao’ai’s mother again. The woman told her that the police had pulled the three kids’ flight records and found they had flown together to Baotou, and the next day had boarded a train to somewhere with a name like such-and-such Banner.
River Horse asked, with genuine concern: “Are we in trouble? Were they taken at the airport?”
“We have no liability here,” Ba Yunye shook her head. “They flew to Inner Mongolia.”
“Oh, good.” River Horse patted his chest. “At least we didn’t lose them.”
“Good? What’s good about it? They’re missing.” Ba Yunye gave him a sharp look. “They didn’t tell us they were heading to Inner Mongolia — and that’s on us too, for not asking. All three phones are unreachable. Something’s wrong — I can feel it.”
River Horse was still taking it calmly. “Maybe they just wanted to feel the grasslands. You know — ‘the wind blows, the grass bends low, cattle and sheep come into view.'”
“And you chose this moment to recite poetry.”
“That’s… all I know…” River Horse pressed his lips together.
Later that night, she checked the news. Sure enough, it had already spread widely: the headline read Three University Students Joining Xinjiang Self-Driving Tour Reported Missing.
The article said: Recently, three final-year students from North Yang Institute of Technology — Meng Xiao’ai (female), Su Zheming, and Zhang Tian’en (Meng and Su are in a relationship) — organized a trip to Xinjiang and joined a local self-driving carpool tour. Having failed to contact their families for several days, with their phones also unreachable, the students’ families reported the matter to police today. Police contacted the tour’s Master Ba, who stated that upon reaching Urumqi, the three had been sent to the airport, and she was unaware of their subsequent whereabouts. As of this report, the three students remain unaccounted for. Members of the public with any information are urged to come forward. [Photos of the three students]
“What the hell — this is completely inaccurate!” Ba Yunye was furious enough to nearly throw her phone. “What do they mean ‘joining a Xinjiang self-driving tour’ — they flat-out lied to their families and went to Inner Mongolia and that’s why they’re missing! This has nothing to do with us! ‘Master Ba’ — who gave them permission to call me that?! I am not some pilgrim trekking to the Western Heavens! Master Ba! It sounds like some middle-aged man with cracked heels sitting around doing nothing all day! Master Ba! “