As they passed the parking lot, Ba Yunye got the car keys from Old Wang, and the vehicle chirped twice as it unlocked. Long Ge’s brow furrowed. “You’ve been drinking — how can you drive?” She reached into the car and pulled out a bottle of chewing gum. “You’re all reeking of alcohol. If we show up at a hospital like this, people will think we’re there to cause trouble.”

“Master Ba really does have hidden depths beneath that rough exterior…” Long Ge said admiringly.

Ba Yunye pinched her waist and thighs — not a scrap of excess flesh anywhere. “Where exactly am I rough?”

Ma He laughed at her. “He’s talking about your personality, not your figure.”

Ba Yunye rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “So what he means is — even a rough old brute has her delicate moments?”

Diao Zhuo was exasperated. “How does every compliment turn to garbage the moment it reaches your mouth?”

Ba Yunye stood on her tiptoes, threw her arm around his shoulders, and even as she did so, her other hand crept quietly behind him. “Once you’re in my hands, you’ll end up as scraps sooner or later too.”

Diao Zhuo asked with genuine curiosity, “Are you the Supreme Lord Laozi’s alchemy furnace, or the Golden Horn King’s gourd?”

“I’m the Golden Horn King’s gourd — whoever’s name I call out gets sucked right in.” Ba Yunye leaped forward, closed her hand into a fist, and made the gesture of capturing a demon. “Long Ge! Diao Zhuo! Ma He!”

The three men exchanged a look, then answered her in perfect unison —

“Your grandfather is right here.”

“Get lost!!” Ba Yunye bellowed in outrage.

They picked up some fruit along the way and walked to the People’s Hospital. The attending physician for the three students said that Su Zheming’s overall condition was relatively good despite losing one ear, and Xiao Ai was recovering well thanks to the timely IV fluids she had received. Zhang Tian’en’s situation, however, had been critical — another moment and he would have been beyond saving.

A nurse mentioned that after regaining consciousness, the three of them refused to speak to one another. Their respective parents were behaving like bitter enemies — when they weren’t avoiding each other entirely, they were on the verge of coming to blows. Xiao Ai’s parents were calling Su Zheming a trafficker and a scoundrel. Su Zheming’s parents were accusing Zhang Tian’en of burning his bridges after crossing them, of betrayal and ingratitude. Zhang Tian’en’s parents, unable to defend themselves adequately, hurled back their own insults, calling the other two a pair of dead weight who had nearly killed their son. If the police hadn’t issued a stern warning, the altercation would have escalated into a full brawl.

They had set out together as would-be heroes on a desert crossing and come out as sworn enemies.

When the group arrived at the inpatient ward, several police officers were just finishing taking statements. Seeing Old Wang and Diao Zhuo, they asked the two men to stop by the public security bureau — they had questions regarding the unidentified strongly acidic liquid. The two had no choice but to head out first. Ba Yunye and the other two stayed at the hospital and chatted casually with the students.

Xiao Ai’s spirits had recovered considerably, though she looked utterly haggard — hardly recognizable as herself. The prolonged dehydration and relentless ultraviolet exposure had done significant damage to her face; a girl in her early twenties now looked at first glance like she was ten years older than she actually was.

Her parents had been terrified that she would fall apart when she saw her own reflection, but Xiao Ai was remarkably composed about it. She said she’d buy some good face masks when she got home and put them on for a while. Perhaps that was the growth that came from having faced life and death out there — compared to survival, what did appearance matter? What did love matter?

When she saw Ba Yunye and the others come to visit, she was clearly delighted and deeply grateful. “Master Ba, I really can’t thank you enough. We caused you so much trouble — the police questioned you several times, you ended up in the news, and yet you still ran out into the desert to find us… you’re truly a wonderful person!”

“Young lady, don’t go around calling just anyone a wonderful person,” Ba Yunye said, still unable to keep a straight face even when receiving compliments. “Consider yourself in my debt. Next time you or any of your friends want to travel to Tibet, be sure to support my business.”

“Of course, of course…” Xiao Ai immediately agreed.

Ba Yunye didn’t actually mean it seriously. She glanced at her phone, preparing to head over and check on the two male patients in the other rooms.

“Master Ba, um… that is…”

“Yes?” Ba Yunye noticed her hesitating and turned back to ask.

“The other people from the rescue team…” Xiao Ai looked a little embarrassed. After she had lost consciousness in the desert, the sharp, handsome profile she had glimpsed had been drifting through her mind for days, impossible to shake. “I… never got to thank him properly.”

Ba Yunye, sharp as ever, said, “Ah, you mean Diao Zhuo?”

“Uh…” Xiao Ai looked slightly caught off-guard.

“The Beidou rescue team member who carried you to the vehicle and put you on an IV drip.”

Xiao Ai nodded, a faint look of anticipation in her eyes. “I didn’t catch his name. I just wanted to thank him in person.”

Ma He inwardly cackled, then gave Ba Yunye a pat on the shoulder.

“Him, well…” Ba Yunye smiled — unhurried, unbothered, the picture of benevolence. “He’s got a second kid screaming for him to come change diapers. The moment the rescue mission wrapped up, he rushed right back.”

Long Ge and Ma He exchanged a glance, then looked at Xiao Ai, whose expression had collapsed into shock and disappointment, and thought to themselves — what made you ever think Master Ba was a good person?

Walking out of the ward, Ma He said sourly, “Master Ba, your nose just grew a little longer.”

Ba Yunye strolled on ahead without a care in the world. “I might as well rename myself Big Elephant. You and I — one elephant, one hippo — can grow old together in a zoo when we hit sixty.”

“She was only asking a question. Did you really have to go and ruthlessly crush her little hopes before they even had a chance to bloom? I never realized before how petty you could be.”

“So what you’re saying is I should have just handed over my man’s contact information with both hands?”

Ma He looked as though he might faint. “Diao Zhuo is already ‘your man’ this quickly?”

“He bet himself and lost — I might as well take what’s offered.” Ba Yunye smiled that roguish smile of hers. As it turned out, she had noticed Diao Zhuo’s subtle move during the hill-climb race the whole time. Whoever won or lost that race, the outcome was always going to be the same.

On the road back, Diao Zhuo was told by the police that the sand he had sent in for analysis had been found to contain highly concentrated hydrochloric acid. Su Zheming’s injuries had also been caused by concentrated hydrochloric acid. In addition, the police had detected traces of desert plant and beetle tissue in the sand. The preliminary assessment was that the concentrated hydrochloric acid was most likely the digestive fluid sprayed by some unknown omnivorous creature.

“A death worm!” Old Wang exclaimed with delight. “It’s definitely a death worm!”

The police officers laughed — they had clearly heard the legend before.

Old Wang showed his injured hand to the forensic specialist and had photographs taken. The police told him that his injuries and Su Zheming’s were among the factors being used to determine whether the male mummy’s death had been an accident. Because the story of the three students’ dangerous desert crossing had attracted so much public attention, the identity and cause of death of the male deceased had also become a point of interest for netizens online. After confirming the deceased’s identity, the bureau had published relevant information to the public through Weibo and their official accounts.

One of the officers pointed to their published Weibo post and said, “We didn’t specify the exact cause of death. We just told the public he died accidentally from dehydration — no foul play involved. In fact, his eyes had been corroded, which is precisely what caused him to lose his sense of direction. We found a GPS device and satellite phone in his backpack. If he hadn’t gone blind, he would never have ended up dying out there.”

Old Wang looked very pleased with himself. “Exactly what I figured!”

Diao Zhuo asked, “What was the deceased’s name? Was he one of those tourists with a previously filed missing persons report?”

“Song Fan — not sure if your rescue team ever received a request to search for him?”

…Song Fan? Diao Zhuo became alert at once. Feigning casualness, he asked, “We’ve never received any search request for him. Was this Song Fan doing the same kind of wilderness crossing as those university students?”

“Not a student — he was in his early forties. During the autopsy, the medical examiner found metal pins in his leg bones and noted that his spleen had been removed — he’d likely suffered a serious injury at some point. Once we confirmed it was an accident, we notified the next of kin. Interestingly, though, it seems he and his wife divorced long ago, and both his parents have passed away. His girlfriend and sister are coming to identify the body. We’ve confirmed that family members had filed a missing persons report, but strangely, not one of them knew he had come to the desert.”

Early forties, spleen removed, metal pins in the leg… Diao Zhuo’s gaze sharpened. That description fit all too well with Song Fan, the survivor from the geological survey team’s vehicle accident. After that accident, Diao Zhuo’s family had driven through the night to a hospital hundreds of kilometers away, where they were told another injured person — Song Fan — was undergoing surgery to remove his spleen and repair his leg.

“What was his profession?” Diao Zhuo asked.

One of the officers replied, “His girlfriend and sister said he was a photographer.”

Another officer rubbed his chin. “I don’t think he was just a photographer. We found more than ten missed calls on his phone. When we tried calling the numbers back, no one answered. We ran them through the system and found that the incoming calls were from…” The officer caught himself and stopped short — details of an ongoing investigation could not be disclosed.

Old Wang startled. “Was it organized crime?!”

The officer waved his hand. “Nothing like that. But I’m afraid we can’t say more. We’ve already handed that lead off. Incidentally, we found a photograph among Song Fan’s personal effects. We don’t know whether he came to the Badain Jaran Desert trying to locate the scene in the photo.”

“Anyone looking for a scene in a landscape photo should’ve come to me,” Old Wang said regretfully. “We’re seasoned veterans out here — we know this desert like the back of our hand.”

“The photo wasn’t very clear at all — it looked like a scanned copy of an older print, or possibly a photo taken of something in a magazine. Either way, it certainly wasn’t taken directly of the location itself. Even so, you could tell it was quite beautiful.” The officer smiled. “It was a pink lake.”

Old Wang suddenly asked, “Was it a pink, heart-shaped lake?”

“How did you know?” the officer asked curiously.

“I’ve been driving these roads for years. I’ve seen that lake fewer than three times.” Old Wang grew visibly proud at this, puffing up like a peacock. “It’s deep in the uninhabited interior of the Badain Jaran Desert. Unlike the other lakes out here that seem to drift and move, this one stays fixed — if it appears, it’s always in the same spot. Mind you, for all its pretty pink color, the water inside is undrinkable — salty and bitter. I gave it my own name: Maiden’s Lake. Ha! No one else knows where it is. Of course, I don’t usually take clients out that way either, because it sits right on the edge of a military restricted zone. If we’re talking about beauty, though, Temple Lake is the real treasure…”

Old Wang was still talking, rambling on with his boasts, while Diao Zhuo found himself puzzled. Zhang Chenguang had disappeared on Yuzhu Peak several months ago. And now Song Fan had been found dead in the Badain Jaran Desert, apparently having died there a year ago. What was the connection between them?

His phone buzzed. He picked up, and Ba Yunye — who had long since left the hospital and was wandering around at random — asked casually, “Is there something so interesting about a police station that you two would spend this much time in there?”

The seriousness of Diao Zhuo’s expression softened instantly. “Very interesting, actually. Want to come in and stay for a few days?”

“If we’re sharing a cell, a few days would be fine. Months, even.”

Diao Zhuo got to the point. “Find somewhere to meet. I have something to tell you.”

She laughed, and suddenly remembered that night in Lazi — she had stood outside Diao Zhuo’s door, waiting for him to open it, and he had asked why she couldn’t say whatever it was over the phone. So now she asked him the same thing: “What is it that can’t be said over the phone?”

“Hard to explain over the phone,” the straightforward, no-nonsense man answered honestly.

“Just say you want to see me.”

“I need to talk to you about something.”

Ba Yunye rolled her eyes, hung up, then said, “Diao Zhuo has something to tell me. You two head back to the hotel.”

“Wait — is he proposing?!” Ma He was thunderstruck.

“What — what proposal…” Ba Yunye was so caught off-guard by the question that she actually started to stutter.

“Don’t believe me? Let’s bet — a thousand yuan. Let me come along and watch, and if he really does propose… heh heh…”

Long Ge had been standing nearby for a while, and the moment he heard Ma He trying to follow along, he smiled and pulled him back. “These young people want to pledge their undying love — are you going to just stand there like a stone witness to romance?”

“Hey, I—” Ma He couldn’t wrangle free from Long Ge, who dragged him away half by force.

Ba Yunye walked alone along the wide, open road. A row of two-story buildings lined either side, distinctly Mongolian in character. She had never been to Alxa Right Banner before, so she walked and looked around as she went. The midday alcohol had slowly dissipated, and in the dry air, the distinctive aroma of lamb drifted past in occasional waves.

She spotted Diao Zhuo from a distance and raised her hand with easy confidence to mark where she was.

Diao Zhuo closed the distance in a few strides, handing her a cup of warm salty milk tea. He said it would help with the alcohol.

“I thought you were going to give me a diamond ring. Turns out it’s this.” The tea was scalding; she cradled it with the care one might give an offering to a deity.

“If I did give you a diamond ring, would you take it?”

“Of course I would — who turns down something valuable?” Ba Yunye said carelessly.

Diao Zhuo made a show of checking his pocket, which turned out to be completely empty. She shot him a look. “And here I thought you’d been mining and unearthed a pile of gemstones — one ring for every girlfriend you collect.”

He didn’t take the bait. He simply said, “When the teams were searching for Zhang Tian’en and the others, another team found a separate body. It was Song Fan.”

“Oh,” Ba Yunye responded absently, then seemed to catch on something. She froze for a long moment. “Song… Fan?”

Diao Zhuo asked, “Do you know who that person is?”

“Song Fan — that name I’ve heard before. I mentioned it to you once: my eldest sister died in a car accident, and a photographer named Song Fan was apparently in the same vehicle. From what I heard, Song Fan told the police that my sister went berserk on the bus — started attacking some man, saying he’d deceived her romantically — and somehow it interfered with the driver’s ability to steer, and the vehicle went off the mountain. I don’t know anything about who that man was, but my sister had the slowest, most gentle temperament imaginable. There’s no way she’d ever start a fight with anyone.” Ba Yunye made a dissatisfied clicking sound with her tongue. “…You’re saying the body is also named Song Fan? That’s not an uncommon name — it could be someone with the same name entirely.”

Diao Zhuo waited patiently for her to finish her rant, then said, “It’s not ‘also named’ — it’s the same Song Fan you know of.”

Ba Yunye’s brow creased, and she looked at Diao Zhuo with a bewildered expression.