After a night’s sleep, everyone’s bodies had acclimatized somewhat to the altitude, and the various symptoms of altitude sickness had eased a little. Fu Yingtao was no exception. Although he didn’t get the watery porridge and light side dishes he had requested the night before, his breakfast stayed down this time. Even so, he was as full of complaints about the food and the environment as ever — in the same breath declaring that his requirements weren’t high, he went on to voice finicky criticisms.
Ba Yunye quietly said to He Ma: “I think this old gentleman resembles a certain animated character.”
“Who??” He Ma looked baffled.
“Guess.”
“Old Master Q? Uncle Baji? Master Roshi?”
Ba Yunye felt the generation gap was truly unbridgeable. “The victim in most episodes of Detective Conan.”
He Ma couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing. Ba Yunye looked at his guileless smile and laughed too, though a flicker of unease and hesitation passed through her eyes.
After the rope-tying and equipment training class, Ba Yunye noticed Diao Zhuo putting on his windbreaker jacket while chatting with Lu Jianyi. Neither of their gazes seemed to leave Huzi, and Lu Jianyi had his hand resting on Huzi’s head, apparently recounting the dog’s glorious history to Diao Zhuo. Ba Yunye realized that Diao Zhuo was very likely thinking about using Huzi to track down Zhang Chenguang or the thermos flask.
Worthy of being her man — they were thinking along exactly the same lines. Ba Yunye gazed at Diao Zhuo’s handsome and well-defined profile and his tall, strong physique, along with his black and yellow color-blocked windbreaker jacket, and kept grinning foolishly to herself.
Lu Jianyi went off to prepare for the practice drill. Diao Zhuo caught up with Ba Yunye, calling her name from some distance away. She turned around, her eyes blinking softly with the movement, lips curving upward. Her features were striking, her face bright and beautiful. Diao Zhuo was not a sentimental literary type, but at that moment a line of verse struck him — a cliché though it was. He walked toward her and spoke it aloud: “A single backward glance, a hundred kinds of charm.”
Perhaps because of the strong wind, Ba Yunye didn’t quite catch it. She raised a hand and rubbed her ear, her voice carrying what sounded like an imperfect northeastern accent: “Wha— what did you say?”
Diao Zhuo strode over, grabbed her chin and tilted it up, then pressed his lips firmly to hers. “I said — this man’s woman is one hell of a beauty.”
Plainspoken truths can be the highest poetry.
She was so thoroughly rattled by that move that she stood there dazed for three seconds. Then she heard him add: “Huzi can come up the mountain with us, but right now there’s no scent for him to compare against.”
That was quite the topic switch.
“I keep feeling like I somehow heard Han Dasheng mention Zhang Chenguang’s thermos flask before, but I didn’t pay attention at the time.” Ba Yunye said, and called Han Dasheng. He was probably driving and didn’t pick up.
“It was on the way to base camp. Han Dasheng cut me off, called me a wimp, I gave him the middle finger and figured that if he wanted to make something of it, I’d settle it with him properly — and use it to stall Zhang Chenguang at the same time. Never thought the clue we need now would be in his hands. Good thing we didn’t fight.” Ba Yunye said, reflecting on how things had turned out.
Diao Zhuo placed a heavy hand on her shoulder, suppressing his amusement. “Master Ba, unmatched in power and foresight.”
“Oh, stop it — you’re teasing me.” Ba Yunye gave him a look, then smiled again and pinched the zipper of his jacket between her thumb and forefinger. “I’ve never seen you wear this jacket before.”
Diao Zhuo said lightly, “You’ve seen all my clothes?”
“You deliberately bought a windbreaker jacket to match mine.” Ba Yunye stated plainly, “Even though you once said it looked like a delivery uniform for a certain food chain.”
“It’s not the same.”
Ba Yunye crossed her arms. “How is it different?”
“Here —” Diao Zhuo pointed to his upper arm. “One extra pocket.”
Ba Yunye clenched her fist and raised it, looking as though she could barely stop herself from punching him. Diao Zhuo opened his palm and closed it around her fist, neatly enclosing it. Their interactions looked like a tense game of cat and mouse, yet there was a quiet warmth to it all.
After a brief rest, everyone set out as planned to the north slope glacier for the practice drill, familiarizing themselves with equipment operation along the way. Ba Yunye kept a constant eye on her phone, knowing that once they arrived at the south slope base camp in the afternoon, the signal would be poor, and worried about missing any piece of information.
Lu Jianyi was a highly experienced climbing instructor. As he walked, he guided everyone through the practice of proper climbing footwork, movement on icy slopes, breath regulation, and how to pass through anchor points. This stretch of the route had everyone in a relaxed mood. The chatter was lively, accents from all over the country blending together like a group comedy act, with bursts of cheerful laughter breaking out along the way. Huzi wove back and forth among the crowd, occasionally earning pieces of jerky as rewards, though he would always look to Lu Jianyi first and only accept the treat after receiving a nod of approval. Someone tore open a Snickers bar and broke off half to give to Huzi. Lu Jianyi didn’t notice in time, but Ba Yunye reached out and grabbed the person’s hand. “Hey, don’t give him that.”
“Why not…”
Jiang Ao’hang happened to be passing by. He patted Huzi on the head and smiled. “Dogs can’t eat chocolate.”
A few steps away, Fu Yingtao cleared his throat loudly, making quite a noise. “Ao’hang, keep up. Don’t meddle in things that aren’t your business!”
Jiang Ao’hang pressed his lips together, looking a little flustered. Fu Yingtao shot him another displeased glance and strode ahead with great purpose.
Ba Yunye was baffled and couldn’t figure out why Fu Yingtao was reacting so strongly, as if he had been stung by a bee. She recalled how, of everyone present, he alone disliked interacting with any animal — he had never once fed the pikas, and even the well-behaved Huzi earned nothing but his disdain. She said quietly to the person holding the half-eaten Snickers bar, “He’s right — dogs can die from eating chocolate.”
“Take it easy, don’t laugh loudly or gasp, and slow your pace. If you can’t manage, say so — nothing embarrassing about it. You’ve got to know when to admit defeat.” Pu Lan reminded everyone.
“Bang!” The person at the front suddenly slipped and fell. Several people rushed over to help, and when they looked — it was Fu Yingtao. The fall had been so sudden that he hadn’t had time to react. The lit cigarette in his hand fell onto his trousers, burning a hole through the fabric.
Ba Yunye had been distracted and hadn’t gone over to help. Jiang Ao’hang, on the other hand, was extremely attentive — rushing over to check whether any joints were sprained, and asking if Fu Yingtao wanted to take the medicine Ba Yunye had given out the day before. He was like Fu Yingtao’s own son, making Fu Xingyue look by contrast like the daughter-in-law.
“No need. Keep moving.” Fu Yingtao waved a hand. Perhaps feeling that falling flat on his face had cost him his dignity, he deliberately made a show of being nonchalant. He pulled out another cigarette, lit it, and in a cloud of smoke, made a determined effort to project an air of lofty detachment.
Fu Yingtao’s smoking habit was severe. Like a walking chimney, by his rate and frequency of lighting cigarettes, he went through at least two packs a day. Ba Yunye thought — for his family members, breathing this secondhand smoke every day, longevity would be a stretch.
“Ow!” Another person fell to the ground — it was Jiang Ao’hang. As he was helped up by those around him, he said in an apparently casual tone: “This path is just so hard to walk — one wrong step and it’s your backside that pays the price.”
By slipping and making that remark, he simultaneously eased the awkwardness of Fu Yingtao’s earlier fall and created the impression that tripping was simply to be expected — as though no matter who stumbled and in what undignified manner next, it would be perfectly normal. Ba Yunye sighed inwardly: that bit of flattery was absolutely seamless and masterful.
The group moved noisily ahead. Ba Yunye followed along too. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something on the side of a sharp rock right where Jiang Ao’hang had just fallen — a rectangular object she nearly stepped on, stopping herself just in time. She bent down and picked it up. It was a mobile phone. As the phone was turned upright, the screen lit up right at that moment, and a line of text appeared —
Rui Rui: Don’t rush — a mountaineering accident is no small matter.
Ba Yunye’s eyes went wide. Her instinct told her this was a phone Jiang Ao’hang had accidentally dropped when he deliberately fell. She thought for a few seconds, quietly set the phone back beside the rock, and casually called out with her foot nudging it: “Hey! There’s a phone here — who dropped this?”
At that, she watched as the still-supporting-his-father-in-law Jiang Ao’hang instinctively reached for his pocket.
“Honey, you dropped your phone.” Fu Xingyue hurried over. Ba Yunye’s heart leapt upward — it felt exactly like one of those scenes that plays out repeatedly in television dramas, about to be reenacted in real life.
But she watched as Fu Xingyue picked up the phone and, without even looking at the screen, turned and handed it straight to the frantically rushing Jiang Ao’hang. He took it, gave an apologetic smile and said: “Ha! My phone actually fell out!” With that, he shoved it into his pocket at lightning speed and pressed the velcro flap down firmly several times, the whole motion executed in one smooth, uninterrupted movement.
Ba Yunye stared at the couple’s retreating figures, brow furrowed. She thought — this guy is plotting a “mountaineering accident”? That would only create chaos for us!
After that, she deliberately fell behind with Diao Zhuo, letting the group pull ahead. Diao Zhuo said: “The south slope is gentle. The time from summit attempt to descent isn’t long, with climbing support staff accompanying the whole way. Unless the weather suddenly turns, staging an ‘accident’ will be very difficult.”
“Man proposes, heaven disposes.”
He looked pained. He gently noted: “That idiom doesn’t apply here.”
“If the old man really does get into trouble, can you — a member of a rescue team — just stand by and ignore it?” Ba Yunye countered.
“I’d carry him down the mountain on my back.”
Diao Zhuo’s uprightness both frustrated and impressed Ba Yunye. She could only say: “So I’m worried their scheming will interfere with our search for the thermos flask — and also delay your identification of the photo’s shooting location. Should we… try reporting it to the police again?”
“Do you have evidence?”
“I saw his message — ‘Don’t rush, a mountaineering accident is no small matter.'”
“That sentence looks like an ordinary piece of advice. It only seems suspicious to us because we’ve already formed the preconception that he has ulterior motives.”
“Fair enough. And if the police think we’re filing a false report, they might just arrest me instead…” Ba Yunye hunched her shoulders slightly.
“I’ll have Da Qiang and the others keep Jiang Ao’hang and old Fu as separated as possible on summit day.”
Ba Yunye jabbed him with her elbow. “You should address him as — Director Fu.”
Diao Zhuo sighed helplessly and quickened his pace. He thought — given how urgent Jiang Ao’hang’s desire to harm his father-in-law seemed to be, why was he being so careless about his phone calls and messages, letting He Ma and Ba Yunye discover them one after another? Was he overconfident, or had a single gap opened up in an otherwise careful plan? Going further, he wondered — Fu Xingyue was the person closest to Jiang Ao’hang. Could she truly have noticed nothing about what her husband was plotting?
Near the end of the practice drill, Han Dasheng finally called back. Ba Yunye plugged in her earphones, and she and Diao Zhuo each wore one, then asked: “You mentioned Zhang Chenguang’s thermos flask to me before — do you still remember?”
Han Dasheng had grown familiar with Ba Yunye by now, and there was a slippery ease to his speech. “Every time you see me it’s Zhang Chenguang this, Zhang Chenguang that — are you secretly in love with him?”
“He owes me money.” Ba Yunye put the topic to bed with that one line.
Not knowing if it was true, Han Dasheng thought for a long time before saying: “I just remember him carrying that worn-out thermos the whole way. When we were at base camp I even warned him not to bring unnecessary things during the summit push — to bring his 1.5-liter one instead.”
“Worn-out thermos?”
“Well, I mentioned it to you before, didn’t I — it leaked. Got all over my backseat.”
Diao Zhuo’s doubts deepened. If it leaked, that meant it wasn’t sealed properly, which would significantly compromise its insulating ability. You wouldn’t even bring something like that on a holiday trip, let alone for a snow mountain ascent. Was there really something unusual inside the thermos flask?
Despite Ba Yunye’s extended prompting, Han Dasheng could recall no further details. She wracked her brain trying to piece together every memory of that time, and then a flash of inspiration struck: “Sheng ge, do you have low blood sugar?”
“Heh, can’t help it — inherited from my mum.”
Ba Yunye recalled more than once seeing Han Dasheng generously distributing small packets of cocoa powder to clients, claiming it helped with altitude sickness. She couldn’t help but ask: “When we reached base camp, I saw you distributing something to the clients — was that cocoa powder too?”
“Of course — when we take independent travelers up the mountain, it’s not like a base with meals and tents provided. If I don’t offer a few small touches of warmth, how can I build a reputation? I don’t know what others do, but on my end, I generally give clients a few tablets of acetazolamide and some cocoa powder as complimentary gifts — one reduces eye pressure and helps with altitude sickness, the other provides energy.”
Ba Yunye felt a surge of excitement, and her voice rose considerably. “What brand of cocoa?”
“Nestlé chocolate cocoa powder — you can buy it in any supermarket. The kind with brown packaging.”
Diao Zhuo gave Ba Yunye a silent thumbs up.
Ba Yunye asked Han Dasheng for the contact details of the climbers who had been in his group at the time and called each one in turn. One of the clients said that before setting out for the summit push, Zhang Chenguang had mixed a large batch of hot chocolate and filled both his large and small thermos flasks with it. That client had even given Zhang Chenguang the remaining packets he had, while also urging him to bring some hot water too — but Zhang Chenguang didn’t seem to have taken the advice.
“A leaking thermos filled with Nestlé hot chocolate.” Ba Yunye hung up the phone, a look of delight spreading across her face. “Let’s take a chance! The thermos in the lost property notice is Zhang Chenguang’s — during the climb, it would inevitably have leaked. As long as we have Huzi sniff out the scent, we might actually find it.”
That brand was well-loved by the general public, and the small shop near the base camp happened to carry it — at three times the outside price, naturally. By the time the two of them came back with it, everyone had already packed up their gear and luggage and set off toward the south slope base camp.