From the novel: I Promise You a River of Stars
“Not sure. He was in the hospital for… about two months.” As she said this, Ba Yunye gamely raised her arm in a show of muscle — but unfortunately, with all her layers of clothing and having been away from military-style training for so long, she wasn’t quite as lean and hard as she used to be.
Diao Zhuo glanced at his watch and jerked his chin toward the upper floor.
Master Ba took the hint obligingly. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and sleep.”
The phrasing was awkward again, but Diao Zhuo decided not to make an issue of it. Watching her slender silhouette and her easy, unhurried walk, there was nothing about her that was different from any of the men.
The window in the hallway hadn’t been closed, and like the night before, it was cold, with a strong wind. Ba Yunye pulled her jacket tight and walked with her head down. When they were nearly at her room, Diao Zhuo finished his cigarette, stubbed it out underfoot, and kicked it to the wall — then suddenly shot out one arm to block her path, while the other hand clamped firmly around her jaw. ???
She met his gaze without flinching, and noticed his lips were pressed tight, his eyes burning, his exhaled breath carrying the toasted scent of tobacco.
Then quickly, he relaxed his grip; his rough fingertips traced lightly across her cheek, like coarse sandpaper.
“See you tomorrow.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled — probably worried she’d repeat last night’s move — and walked swiftly back to his room, slamming the door shut with a bang.
Ba Yunye stood there for a long moment. Was this his better angel triumphing over his inner demon? In a daze, she went back to her room. The moment Xiao Zi saw her, she couldn’t help but burst out laughing, pointing at her face: “Master Ba, are you wearing opera makeup?”
Suspicious, Ba Yunye swiped the back of her hand across her face — and sure enough, it came away smeared with black engine oil.
She yanked the door open and bellowed toward his room: “Diao Zhuo! To hell with you!”
“Think you can manage that?” Diao Zhuo shot back from behind his door.
“Try me!”
“Not interested.”
“Your own damn self isn’t interested!”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I am your own damn self!”
Xiao Zi stood there baffled — how had these two gone from zero to screaming at each other in seconds?
Long Ge sat alone behind the storage counter in the courtyard of the inn — much like other Lhasa inns, the counter displayed carved yak horn combs, prayer beads, prayer wheels, and postcards; on the wall behind hung small handmade signs advertising “Proprietor’s exclusive insect-repellent powder” and “Short-trip car hire deals.” He turned a prayer wheel in his hands — one he’d picked up in Nepal — and spoke sincerely into his phone: “Mingliang, thank you.”
On the other end, Ge Mingliang laughed warmly. “Old squad leader, why are you being so formal? What you ask, I help where I can.”
“Call it fate — Diao Jun’s son has come to Lhasa, and I have to seize this chance to bring him and Ba Yunye together. I know that once they meet and talk openly, they’ll both want to know what really happened back then. That’s why, a little while ago, I asked you to strongly recommend our club to the rescue team.”
“I understand, squad leader! What you ask is no trouble for me. Only… you’ve been with Ba Yunye all this time, and now you’re handing her over to someone else just like that — can you really let go?”
Long Ge let out a sigh. “You really misunderstand me. She’s not my possession. She depends on me and trusts me, but I’m not entirely using her either. What she wants to know is what I want to know too. My feelings for Master Ba are purely those of a grandfather for his granddaughter.”
A burst of laughter exploded on the other end. “It would already be stretching it to say father and daughter — and now you want to be her grandfather?!”
Long Ge was about to hang up when Ge Mingliang added: “Oh, by the way — that thing you asked me to look into last time. I had a contact go and check — the person didn’t lie to you. I confirmed it, and it matched what they said. I’ll tell you, old squad leader: you could have looked into this yourself. Why go through me in such a roundabout way?”
“Better if it’s not me doing the asking.”
“What made you suddenly suspicious of that person?”
Long Ge hesitated, then finally said: “Gut feeling.”
That day, Xiao Zi sat in the passenger seat of Ba Yunye’s car, drowsily dozing off. She had never been to Tibet before, and even though she’d mentally prepared herself, she still couldn’t have imagined how vast it truly was. Just traveling from Lhasa to Shiquanhe — the starting point of Zou Kaigui’s crossing — had taken three days.
Ba Yunye said it should have been two days, but a day was lost to buying supplies, fuel, and checking over the vehicles.
That morning the convoy had set off from Rutog County, passed through Songxi Village, and driven along the paved road for about another twenty or so minutes. In a half-awake haze, Xiao Zi heard Ba Yunye give a reminder over the walkie-talkie to the vehicles behind —
“The road ahead won’t be this easy. Follow the wheel tracks; don’t rush.”
Xiao Zi yawned. “Where are we going next?”
“Qiang Tang.” Ba Yunye said it lightly. “Follow this dirt road far enough and you’re in the no-man’s land.”
“Huh?” Xiao Zi’s drowsiness evaporated instantly, her eyes going wide. The phrase “no-man’s land” had suddenly leaped at her, and she felt herself growing tense, her mouth going dry. That was a place where you could scream at the sky and get no answer, scream at the earth and get none either — the mobile phones people relied on most in daily life were, out here, little better than bricks that happened to glow.
“You haven’t forgotten why you’re here, have you?” Ba Yunye said, amused.
“I’m a little scared,” Xiao Zi admitted honestly, gazing out the window.
The sky was a deep, saturated blue. Both sides of the dirt track were covered in a layer of ice and snow, and ahead in the distance stretched the tawny brown grasslands, with the vague silhouette of snowy peaks at the far edge. Following the dirt road and the wheel ruts, you’d be drawn deeper into the heart of Qiang Tang — and you had no way of knowing whether what awaited you was scenery like paradise, or danger like hell.
“Being scared is normal. People survive because they have fear.” Ba Yunye may or may not have been offering comfort; one hand on the steering wheel, she spoke. “There are so many of us, and even you feel fear. Imagine the kind of courage it takes to come in here alone — it’s almost beyond reckoning. Of course, having courage and walking out alive are two different things entirely.”
“How long will we be in there…?”
“The north-south route, you’d be out in two or three days. For this east-west traverse, pure driving wouldn’t take that many days either. The key is we need to find someone. The dry rations and supplies we’ve brought can last ten to fifteen days.”
“Master Ba, you have to look out for me, okay?” Xiao Zi pleaded.
Ba Yunye made an “OK” gesture. “You need to do what I say, especially after every time you get out of the car.”
“Absolutely. Of course.” She nodded like a bobblehead.
She gave a small laugh. “I told you to clean yourself up properly last night — did you?”
“I wash pretty thoroughly every day actually.”
Ba Yunye remained unfazed. “Well then, you’ll have to endure a little discomfort ahead. If we spend a few days in the no-man’s land, that means a few days without washing.”
Xiao Zi sighed. “Will there really be no guesthouses or anything in there?”
Ba Yunye was silent for a long moment, and finally asked: “How long since you graduated?”
“Me? …I’m a fourth-year student. I found work and started early; I don’t get my diploma until June.”
Sometimes Ba Yunye genuinely envied these blissfully ignorant fresh graduates — how did they manage to ask questions even more naive than she did in school, and she was a poor student?
“What did you study in university, Master Ba?” Xiao Zi asked curiously. “Sports?”
“Didn’t go to university.” Ba Yunye curved one corner of her mouth upward, eyes crinkling with a breezy smile.
“Oh…” Xiao Zi was a little embarrassed. “Then aren’t your parents worried about a girl doing such tough work all by herself?”
“No parents.” Said in a perfectly ordinary tone.
Xiao Zi bit her tongue, not daring to open another topic.
On the road base, Ba Yunye’s modified Wrangler — even with its retrofitted seats — still couldn’t match the comfort of an ordinary sedan. But once they came off the asphalt and onto the dirt track, the excellence of the off-road vehicle made itself felt unmistakably. Whether as driver or passenger, amid the rolling and jolting, there was one overriding sensation: exhilarating.
The car had barely gotten going when the clear blue sky of a moment ago gave way to banks of heavy cloud. The horizon blazed with light, and the distant mountains turned dark and foreboding beneath it. The car bounced endlessly, as though driving over a washboard; gusts of fierce wind swept through, whipping up countless grains of sand that rattled against the car door with a soft hissing, and through the glass you could hear the wind howling with abandon. Mysterious Qiang Tang seemed to be greeting its intruders with a show of force in its own way.
“Master Ba, there’s a car over there.” Xiao Zi squinted to see into the distance; as the car drew closer, she realized it was just a shell — seemingly nothing inside but a crumbling outer skin of battered metal, the steering wheel nowhere to be seen, abandoned here at some unknown point by some unknown person.
“Not unusual.” Ba Yunye had seen it all before.
“Who left it here…”
“Heaven knows~” She shrugged.
And that was no exaggeration. What danger had the owner encountered, what malfunction had the car suffered, and why had it ended up in such a ruined state — had it broken down there on its own, or had some mysterious force brought it to this place? Only heaven knew.
Some mysteries of the no-man’s land have no answer.
Ye Xun’s Land Cruiser ran into trouble again. Whether he was distracted or trying to take a shortcut, he ended up stuck in a patch of snow, wheels spinning uselessly. Mud churned up by the turning tires flew onto the mud flap.
Fortunately, nearly every vehicle in the convoy was a four-wheel-drive, more than capable of towing it out. Ba Yunye led the way, grabbing a shovel — she dug and excavated with no hesitation, working alongside the rescue team members to scoop out the mud packed under the wheels. After a few rounds of jolting and rocking, the Land Cruiser was successfully extracted from the snow pit and back onto a firmer, flatter surface.
“Impressive, Master Ba.” The car window lowered, and Ye Xun’s smile carried a hint of flattery. “Steady hands, broad shoulders — a rose made of steel, a true heroine among women!”
Ba Yunye smoothed her hair back from her forehead, the thin sheen of sweat that had formed there evaporating in the wind. Her expression was serious; for a moment she looked genuinely authoritative as a convoy leader. “Don’t go thinking about shortcuts. It’s not easy driving in there.”
“Yes, yes, you’re the one with experience.” Ye Xun nodded vigorously.
Ba Yunye waved a hand. “Better to have as little of this kind of experience as possible… Last time I went to Hala Lake alone — blizzard, ice and snow everywhere, stuck, dug for three hours, the car didn’t budge an inch. Screamed at the sky, screamed at the earth — neither answered.”
The others asked curiously, “How did you get out?”
“Ran into a construction crew. A big truck pulled me out.”
“What were you even doing out there alone?”
“…Bored. Scouting the road.” Ba Yunye gave a guarded answer, then tossed the shovel into the pickup bed, clapped the dirt off her hands, and brushed off her trousers for good measure.
Diao Zhuo thought: Good people die young, bad people live a thousand years — that’s probably about right. Still, she really is a woman with stories to tell. And guts that border on reckless.
Everyone took advantage of the break to get out and stretch. Someone produced a box of chocolate bars and passed them around to replenish energy.
“Ah — there’s a wolf!! Over there!!” Xiao Zi suddenly cried out, ducking behind Ba Yunye.
Ye Xun, who had just gotten out intending to relieve himself at a distance, sprinted back toward his car.
Ba Yunye and the rest of the rescue team looked in the direction she pointed, and sure enough, a yellow wolf ran past — but it had noticed them too, and showed absolutely no intention of coming any closer.
This group looked like trouble. Even the wolf was wary.
“It’s fine. A lone wolf isn’t scary — a wild yak is far more dangerous.” Ba Yunye said, unruffled.
Her words had barely left her mouth before Xiao Zi pointed in another direction: “A wild yak? Um… is that one? Its tail is held so high…”
Everyone looked the way she pointed — two massive brownish-black animals were charging toward them with heavy, grunting momentum, the ground reverberating with a deep rumble. Ba Yunye peered into the distance, thinking at first they might be the easily-agitated male wild yaks — then looked more carefully, and realized they were golden-haired wild yaks!
She could see their pale gold fur covering their backs and flanks, gradually transitioning to brown further down, then sweeping out beneath the belly in dense, curling tufts like a rain cape. As they ran, the flowing fringe swayed up and down with their bodies. Golden-haired wild yaks typically inhabit the northern Tibetan Plateau above 5,000 meters elevation; perhaps something had provoked them, because these two huge, powerful bulls were thundering straight toward the group — clearly in the mood for a fight to the death.
“Holy—!! Get in the cars!! NOW!!” Ba Yunye bellowed, grabbed Xiao Zi, and everyone ran for the vehicles. She sprinted to one car, saw that Da Qin had already claimed the driver’s seat, and quickly shoved Xiao Zi into the passenger side. There was no time to run back to her own car, so she turned and ran for Ye Xun’s Land Cruiser instead.
Ye Xun had locked the door and — incredibly — refused to open it.
The rear seats of every vehicle were packed with fuel cans, water bags, and equipment; only the driver’s seat and the passenger seat had any space. With fourteen people in total, all seven vehicles were exactly filled.
River Horse hadn’t seen Ba Yunye’s situation, and had already started his engine and driven away toward a safer distance. A golden-haired wild yak stands up to two meters at the shoulder, and charges with impressive speed; combined with the enormous momentum of its bulk, it isn’t just a human’s fragile body that needs to stay clear — even a vehicle is better off not getting hit, because it’s common for a single wild yak to overturn an off-road vehicle. With everyone else in their cars and driving away, being left behind outside meant Ba Yunye was the target.
Ba Yunye stayed calm. There were only two yaks, and there were so many vehicles — they couldn’t all become targets at once. The priority now was to move away quickly and not provoke them further; if they were enraged, they would keep attacking until they exhausted themselves — though which side would exhaust first remained an open question.
“Get in!” Xiang’an’s pickup truck pulled up in front of her.
Just as she was about to vault up into the pickup bed, another vehicle came from the front and stopped beside her. A pair of iron-hard hands caught her around the waist, hoisted her up like an eagle snatching a chick, and deposited her in the passenger seat. She came to her senses and looked — Diao Zhuo had already climbed into the pickup bed. The vehicles scattered in different directions, then slowly regrouped into a single line, following the wheel tracks a little further down.
Ba Yunye felt that Diao Zhuo was being unnecessarily anxious on her behalf — she had plenty of ways to handle the situation herself.
“Master Ba, are you okay?” Xiang’an jumped out of the car and ran over to ask.
She tilted her chin in acknowledgment and said in a Shaanxi drawl: “Right as rain.”
With the wild yak crisis resolved, everyone returned to their respective vehicles. As Ba Yunye passed by the Land Cruiser, Ye Xun lowered his window, his manner very deferential, even giving her a salute: “Master Ba, I’m sorry about that. First time facing something like this — I completely blanked.”
Ba Yunye looked steadily at Ye Xun. Diao Zhuo gave Da Qin beside him a glance that said: be ready to intervene at any moment.
But she just smiled faintly, said nothing, and continued on toward her own car.
Diao Zhuo, who had fully expected her to unleash a torrent of abuse or even come to blows with Ye Xun, was quietly taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to have that kind of magnanimity. He suddenly recalled that a couple of days ago, when they were preparing supplies for entering Qiang Tang, Ye Xun had asked her if they should buy Tibetan knives or some kind of weapon. She had said: animals are the least frightening thing in Qiang Tang.
Then what did she consider truly frightening in Qiang Tang?