Diao Zhuo and his companions collected all the crampons that had been tossed away, distributed and confirmed that nothing was missing, and then — having apparently heard something from Fu Xingyue — he came striding quickly toward Ba Yunye, his expression carrying an almost uncharacteristic edge of anxiety. “You’re injured?”

“No.” Ba Yunye answered offhandedly.

Diao Zhuo looked her over with obvious skepticism, then suddenly gripped her right wrist and raised it —

The knuckle of her index finger had puffed up into a small lump of deep purple threaded with red.

“I suppose you could call it that.” Ba Yunye, rather than minding, seemed almost pleased, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Heart aching for me, is it?”

“How did this happen?”

“Probably when I was helping that leader get his crampons off. Knocked it by accident.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?” He didn’t take her bait, but his brow knotted tight.

“Doesn’t hurt.”

“You’re made of iron?”

She grinned, showing her teeth. “If I were made of iron, one lightning bolt just now would have struck you dead on the spot beside me.”

Diao Zhuo still hadn’t let go of her wrist.

“It’s not even bleeding.” Ba Yunye gave him a look and moved to pull her hand away.

“How much have you suffered in the past, that something like this doesn’t even hurt?” Diao Zhuo said, genuinely irritated.

“I’m not on some talent competition, going to sit and pour out all my hardships for you. Whether something hurts and whether you can bear the hurt are two different things entirely. A small injury — moaning and groaning, whimpering and whining — that is not the style of Ba Yunye.” She thumped her chest twice with a closed fist. “I am a body of iron and a heart of softness. Want to feel for yourself?”

“You have the heart of a rogue.” Diao Zhuo didn’t take the bait. “Fu Xingyue said she gave you some medicine. When we’re back, I’ll deal with it.”

“No need to go to all that trouble…”

Diao Zhuo pressed down on the bruised, swollen spot. Her jaw clenched, she swore, and stopped arguing. She knocked her shoulder against his. “Honestly… you just feel bad for me, don’t you?”

He was practically speaking through gritted teeth: “Obviously.”

The group set off for camp in loose clusters of two and three, their feet pressing into the snow with soft, muffled sounds. Hu Zi walked at the front, occasionally glancing back to check on everyone, shaking the snow from his coat. Despite the scare earlier, the mood on the way back was fairly light, with people talking and laughing as they went. Fu Yingtao alone remained displeased, grumbling every so often.

“…I didn’t notice who turned off his phone for him. My impression is that Fu Xingyue was the last one to touch it. Or perhaps no one actually thought to turn it off — this family operates like it’s in some kind of espionage drama.” Ba Yunye walked at the very back of the group, keeping her voice low. “Jiang Ao’hang is the most likely to pull something like this. But after I found out that Fu Xingyue isn’t Fu Yingtao’s biological daughter, I’m starting to think maybe the husband and wife are on the same side — or that Jiang Ao’hang is using this to manipulate Fu Xingyue into doing things for him, and then holding it over her to control her later.”

“At a lower altitude in an ordinary city, the risk in that kind of situation might not necessarily be that high. But we’re at over 5,000 meters, in terrain that’s completely open. The electrical field up here is naturally more uniform, and a person carrying a device with powered metallic components is statistically at a higher risk of lightning strike than everyone around them — that’s a hard fact.” Diao Zhuo spoke quietly. “Earlier, Fu Xingyue ran over toward Lu Jianyi and Pu Lan along with the other two women — it looked like she was just frightened. But the husband she claims to trust and adore so deeply was only a step or two away from her. She passed him right by and ran toward men she’d barely known for a few days. Why? — The mountain guide was positioned farther from Fu Yingtao. The husband was positioned near him. Running toward the husband wouldn’t rule out the possibility of being struck alongside him.”

“But she seems…” Ba Yunye thought of the things Fu Xingyue had confided to her, of the timid and gentle-spirited impression she gave off. And yet — how complex is the interior of a person, and how could the eyes alone ever reveal it?

Diao Zhuo said, “Tonight’s heavy snow may delay the summit attempt — it’s unlikely we’ll move before dawn as planned. In the meantime, our best course is to persuade Fu Yingtao to abandon the summit bid, and then relay what we know to the local public security bureau afterward.”

“We don’t have hard evidence. Will they believe us?”

“Finding evidence is the job of public security.”

Back at camp, everyone was ravenous, and even those who’d had little appetite before suddenly found themselves eating heartily. Diao Zhuo, worried about Ba Yunye’s injured hand, wolfed down a few bites to fill his stomach, then grabbed an empty mineral water bottle and went outside to pack it with snow.

“Ba Yunye, Diao Zhuo genuinely cares about you. I’ve never seen him this attentive toward any woman before.” Da Qiang spoke his mind plainly. “We used to give him a hard time about it — his work keeps him out in the field for months at a stretch, which means long-distance for whoever he’s with. We told him he had to put in the effort, make trips more often, say the right things — otherwise he’d never hold onto anyone. The man just let it go in one ear and out the other. I thought it was just his nature, but seeing how he is with you, Ba Yunye, and thinking back on how he was before — well.” He shook his head. “I get it now. Nature has nothing to do with it. It’s whether the person actually cares enough or not.”

Dong Bai gave him a nudge. “You just aired out Diao Zhuo’s romantic history.”

“What history? I was just making conversation.” Da Qiang looked mortified.

“I’ve known for a long time that he likes me.” Ba Yunye sat with one leg crossed over the other in a thoroughly unladylike fashion, her expression perfectly composed on the surface, while her foot bounced continuously — a clear sign that inwardly she was thoroughly pleased with herself.

Da Qiang kept it going: “He really is crazy about you!”

“Who are you declaring that to?” As he spoke, Diao Zhuo happened to lift the curtain and step inside, fresh snowflakes still clinging, not yet melted, to his forehead.

“Declaring on your behalf.” Da Qiang stood and handed him a dry towel.

Diao Zhuo gave a low sound of acknowledgment. “And here I thought you’d grown ten times the gall and were trying to poach someone from under my nose.”

“He’s jealous.” Dong Bai leaned toward Ba Yunye with a smile.

“Not terribly obviously.” She rubbed her chin in consideration. “He should’ve gotten into a fight for me — the kind where he ends up battered all over.”

Da Qiang flinched, then pointed at his own nose. “Between him and me — who ends up battered all over?”

Ba Yunye laughed and conceded the point graciously, then pointed at Diao Zhuo. “Him, of course.”

Diao Zhuo wrapped the mineral water bottle full of snow in the towel and held it out to her. “Press this against it.”

Dong Bai slapped his own forehead and shoved Diao Zhuo hard. “Do it yourself, will you?!”

The straightforward man finally caught on and personally cradled Ba Yunye’s right hand in his, pressing the ice-cold bottle against the bruised and swollen spot.

Ba Yunye turned a small bottle of Yunnan Baiyao over and over in her other hand, and found herself drifting back to the days of special forces training during her military service, and to comrades she hadn’t seen in a long time. Back then, nobody was precious about it. When you came away covered in bruises, someone would tell you to apply heat to get the blood moving — until the squad leader tore into you so thoroughly that you finally learned the truth: this kind of injury needed ice first, heat only a few days later.

Diao Zhuo looked up and held her gaze for a long moment. Her eyes always carried that faint trace of irreverence — sometimes clear and guileless, sometimes alluring and sultry. Right now, whatever she was thinking about, her lips curved in a slight smile, and the depths of her eyes were touched by a quiet, gentle warmth.

After a while, she came back to herself. “My hand’s going numb from the cold.”

He moved the mineral water bottle away. His thumb traced lightly over the bruised area, the roughness of his callused fingertip making her skin prickle with a faint itch. He sprayed some of the medicine onto his own palm, rubbed both hands together, and then applied it slowly to her hand — kneading with a little more pressure than she expected. She furrowed her brow, but held on without complaint.

Diao Zhuo watched her. “You’re allowed to say ouch, you know, hero.”

“What’s the point of saying ouch.” Ba Yunye was dismissive. “It’s the good things in life that are worth making a sound for.”

“Like what kinds of good things?”

“Like being with you…” She’d barely gotten two words out before he clapped a hand over her mouth — a hand that smelled entirely of medicine. She yanked his hand away in irritation, like a cat whose fur had been ruffled the wrong way. “You got that all in my mouth!”

“Aside from the indescribable things you were just about to say — what else counts as genuinely good to you?”

How do you know what I was going to say was indescribable? She shot him a look, distinctly annoyed. “You tell me first!”

He seemed to consider this for a long moment, drew in a breath, and then — with great deliberateness — said: “Being with you…”

Ba Yunye also reached out and covered his mouth with her hand. “Speak properly!”

“One time there was a senior inspector overseeing something I’d been working on almost around the clock for what felt like forever. When it was finally done, I was heading back, and the flight got delayed five or six hours. Sat there at the airport doing nothing. Got back to Xi’an at eleven at night. Cold weather, bone tired. Passed a hot spring hotel on the way. Walked in without a second thought — soaked until I couldn’t move, then stretched out on a long chair afterward, every part of me finally at ease.”

She stirred up trouble deliberately: “Did you call for any special services?”

He turned it around on her: “I don’t know what special services are. Care to demonstrate?”

“Please — do go on. Anything else?”

“There was another time. Coming back from a rescue operation. Had a bit to drink, figured I’d go back and sleep. On the way, some woman in the corridor stopped me — not bad looking…”

Ba Yunye’s ears perked up. So he actually has the nerve, she thought. Sharing this kind of thing with me.

“—and asked me to help her undo a button.”

A beat passed before she caught up. “The setting of this story wouldn’t happen to be Deji Guesthouse, would it?”

He didn’t answer. “Your turn.”

“When the Lin-Lhasa expressway had just opened and I was driving a group of passengers along it — there was not a single rest stop on that whole road. And I, being entirely too confident in myself, had gone and eaten both soy milk and rice porridge for breakfast. After four hours of driving with no exit in sight, I was absolutely desperate… I couldn’t take it anymore. Hazard lights on, pulled over to the shoulder, climbed over the guardrail to the other side, dropped my trousers and relieved myself right there. There is no gold or silver in the world that could have felt better.”

“And the traffic officer just let you roam free like that?”

“Chased me and yelled the whole rest of the way!” She burst out laughing. “I started sobbing my eyes out on the spot. He probably felt that human nature can’t fight biology, took pity on me — no fine, no demerit.”

Diao Zhuo stared at her in something approaching disbelief.

She raised an eyebrow with supreme self-satisfaction. “Tears are a woman’s best weapon against men.”

“I thought for you it was fists.”

“Depends on the situation. Are you really going to use your fists on a traffic officer?” Ba Yunye had the air of someone who’d been around the block a few times. “The first couple of years I drove, I learned some hard lessons from traffic officers. I know which kind of person you have to be tough with, and which kind you soften up for.”

The medicine had been applied evenly. He held her hand and leaned in to ask, “With me — soft or tough?”

She made a low sound of amusement, reached up with one hand and grabbed his collar, and said with deliberate warning: “If you ever dare do me wrong one day, I’ll make sure you see exactly what Ba Yunye looks like when she gets tough.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“You dare?”

“Everyone — just a quick announcement.” Lu Jianyi stepped inside.

Ba Yunye released Diao Zhuo’s collar and leaned back against her arm with an unhurried air.

“The original plan was to head to Camp C1 after dinner, but we’re pushing that back to tomorrow evening. Camp C1 sits at 5,600 meters — several hundred meters higher than Everest Base Camp, and with even less oxygen. That said, your bodies have been acclimatizing over these past few days, and anyone who’s made it this far shouldn’t experience severe altitude sickness. Tomorrow night, you probably won’t be able to sleep anyway — so tonight, get proper rest. Eat plenty tomorrow and stay well hydrated. The day after tomorrow, at 3 a.m., we make for the summit!”

A stir of excitement ran through the room — most of it from people thrilled to be on the verge of summit day.

Diao Zhuo thought: whatever useful information there was to be found, it would have to come in those few hours during the summit bid. Otherwise, they’d have to wait until next year. And the longer this dragged on, the dimmer the hope became.

Ba Yunye glanced at her electronic calendar. Doing the math, it meant that after descending, she’d have to head straight to Deha’er to pick up her next group — almost no time alone with Diao Zhuo. Life and its demands, she thought with a pang of rueful feeling. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught He Ma quietly drifting toward the doorway. She pretended not to notice. The moment he stepped outside, she darted over and lifted the edge of the curtain: she saw him jog to the vehicle, start the engine.

“Hey! He Ma! Where are you going?!” Ba Yunye called out as she went after him. “Deserting in the middle of things?!”

“I… I figured we’re stuck in this godforsaken place for another day, so I went down to buy some snacks! I’ll be right back!” He Ma said, and pressed his foot to the accelerator and drove off.

The vehicle disappeared quickly into the gathering dusk. Ba Yunye stood there for a moment, a quiet unease pressing at her heart. Diao Zhuo appeared at her back without her noticing, and rested a light hand on it — a small gesture of comfort. She turned around. After a long hesitation, she pulled up a text message that Long Ge had forwarded to her the previous day and held it out for him to see —

He Ma is hiding something from us.