“Honey! Honey!” Jiang Ao’hang called out in a panic. Fu Yingtao also crouched beside Fu Xingyue, face stricken with alarm. “What do we do! What do we do now!”

“Oxygen!” Diao Zhuo indicated to Lu Jianyi, who immediately produced a canister of oxygen and fitted it over her face. There was no time to dwell on why Fu Xingyue was the one in trouble — saving her was what mattered. “You and Pu Lan — one of you carry her down. Get in contact with base camp and have them prepare for treatment.”

Fu Xingyue was devastated. She had never for a moment imagined she would develop such a dangerous set of symptoms. Everything had only gotten halfway through — why was she the one to collapse first? Could it really be… fate?

Da Qiang asked: “What medication does everyone have on them?”

At that, everyone began pulling out their medicine from their packs — altitude sickness tablets, oxygen-supplement capsules, aspirin — none of them of any use in this situation. Fortunately, Lu Jianyi’s pack contained a box of dexamethasone. Da Qiang tipped out four tablets and asked Jiang Ao’hang to find a way to get her to swallow them.

Jiang Ao’hang, whether from panic or shock, fumbled clumsily. Lu Jianyi stepped forward to take over, forcing the medication down for Fu Xingyue. “Pu Lan! You carry her down!”

“No problem.” Pu Lan had encountered clients who suddenly developed pulmonary edema during summit pushes before. He hoisted Fu Xingyue onto his back and looked over at Fu Yingtao and Jiang Ao’hang. “The family members — are you continuing up? It would be best if you could help take turns carrying her.”

Fu Yingtao appeared to hesitate. Jiang Ao’hang grabbed his sleeve. “Dad, there will be other opportunities. This time… let’s give up on the summit!”

“We’ve already come this far…” Fu Yingtao clicked his tongue. “You go down with them. I’ll still…”

Hearing that, not just Fu Xingyue — even Ba Yunye felt her heart plummet.

Fu Xingyue lay there staring wide-eyed, and an soundless hysterical laughter erupted inside her. You see! You see that! At any given moment! He only ever thinks of himself! He has never treated her as a daughter, yet he demands she treat him as her own father! His “fatherly love” was a mountain that crushed the breath from her lungs. Her entire life — was it really going to be like Sun Wukong, never escaping from the palm of his Tathagata Buddha’s hand?!

She wouldn’t accept it! She couldn’t bear it!!

“Father…” she struggled to call out to him.

Fu Yingtao breathed heavily, his chest heaving. How much genuine feeling did he have for this adopted daughter? She had never been anything more than an instrument for him to fulfill his own desires.

“Xingyue, since you’re not well, hurry and descend. There are so many people here — everything cannot stop because of you. I’ve always told you since you were small: you must consider the bigger picture.” He said it with the full-bodied authority of a leader.

“I’ll go down with you!” At the critical moment, Da Qiang’s physician’s conscience rose to the fore, and he resolutely gave up his own chance at the summit to accompany Fu Xingyue in the descent.

Fu Yingtao quickly said: “Right — you go with them. You’re a doctor; you have a professional responsibility to heal the sick. You absolutely must…”

“Excuse me! She is your daughter! Do you have any idea how dangerous this condition can be without immediate treatment?!” The sisters from Tangshan spoke their minds without any filter, sticking up for her on the spot. Panting and speaking in raised voices, they said: “What do you mean you’re still thinking about reaching the summit?! What kind of father is this?! If you won’t go down, we’ll go! We’re not going for the top! We’ll take turns carrying her!”

“You won’t be able to carry her. Don’t add to the chaos.” Lu Jianyi stopped them. “The men will carry her — you two don’t have the strength or physical reserves. We don’t want to end up rescuing you before we can even rescue her. Both family members — you should go down with her!”

Though Fu Yingtao’s expression was invisible in the dark, everyone could guess that his mood at that moment must be terrible.

“You two… carry her down first. I’ll talk to Dad.” Jiang Ao’hang pulled Fu Yingtao aside.

“Enough. I’ve already notified base camp. Pu Lan! Move out quickly!” Lu Jianyi pressed the SOS button on his device, transmitting the situation. There was no time to waste. Pu Lan had no desire to see any of his clients come to harm, and set off downward at a rapid pace.

“I’ll go too!” Hema ran after them — after all, he hadn’t come for the summit anyway.

Diao Zhuo turned and fixed his gaze on Ba Yunye. “Can you manage on your own with Huzi?”

“You’re going down too?” she asked.

“I told you before — if anyone runs into trouble on the mountain, I would carry them down on my back if I had to. I don’t go back on my word.” Diao Zhuo placed his hand on her shoulder and pressed firmly. “Watch yourself.” And with that, he also quickened his pace and caught up to Pu Lan.

Ba Yunye watched his retreating figure and thought with a smile: this man — utterly dependable.

Lu Jianyi felt reassured. Several men had gone down together to take turns carrying the patient; there was a doctor among them as well as members of a rescue team, which would both speed the descent and improve the timeliness of treatment. As for the patient’s family… he glanced at Fu Yingtao and Jiang Ao’hang still muttering to each other on the side, and curled his lip.

Fu Yingtao was still weighing it up. Just 300 more meters of climbing, and he would stand at the highest point of 6,178 meters. To descend now meant returning all the way to the starting point at Golmud — and next year, would he even have the time and energy to attempt this again?

“Stop dithering! If you’re going, go!” Ba Yunye shouted at the two of them.

“I can barely walk myself, so even if I went down with the group, I couldn’t carry her. I can see there are plenty of hands already…” Fu Yingtao said. “You go and look after her.”

“Dad, I will definitely go down — but if you keep going for the summit, what will people say about you?” Jiang Ao’hang said anxiously.

Fu Yingtao’s brow snapped together; he was visibly furious. “Why should I care what anyone else says? What do they know?! If not for me, she’d still be in that small village where my cousin lives, feeding pigs and doing farm work! She’s a girl, with two older sisters above her and a younger brother below — what kind of life could she have had in the countryside? She’d have been lucky to make it through middle school before going out to find work. What have I given her? I raised her like an only daughter — food, drink, everything provided! Without me, there would be no her today! Don’t talk to me about summiting or not summiting — if I ever needed her to go die for me, she’d have no choice but to go! That is repaying a debt of gratitude! Do you understand?!”

Jiang Ao’hang had heard this speech at home more times than he could count. “Okay, let’s not talk about that now — she’s seriously ill! Let’s come back another time!”

“There’s a doctor there, and the rescue team — what is there to worry about?”

“This is wrong… it’s just wrong!”

“Woof woof!!” Huzi seemed to have detected something and suddenly began barking.

Ba Yunye followed the sound with her eyes but couldn’t see Huzi — she could only go by instinct and head in that direction. She walked for some distance before her headlamp finally reached Huzi; it was far away, jumping twice in place, pawing at the ground with its front feet. She pressed forward through the snow at a light run. Seeing her come, Huzi grew even more excited — wagging its tail furiously and barking twice more.

“Is it here? You’ve caught the scent?!” She was overjoyed. She pulled the folding shovel from her pack and dug in with practiced ease. From April until now, there had been snowfall after snowfall; each layer had been compressed by the one above it, packed just as dense as soil. Ba Yunye dug and thought: if she found the insulated flask here, she wouldn’t need to continue to the summit — she could go and lend a hand to Diao Zhuo’s group on the way down.

Even through her gloves, her hands were frozen solid as stone, and gripping the shovel sent needle-sharp pain through every knuckle. She huffed and gritted her way through it, muttering as she went: “Huzi, if you pull off this great deed, I’ll buy you ten pounds of jerky when we get back!”

“Ba Yunye! What are you doing over there——” the sisters from Tangshan called out from a distance.

“Nothing! Just tracking down Huzi! It’s a bit slippery here!” Ba Yunye dug away happily — she had come prepared, while no one else had brought a shovel, so there was no way for them to help.

“We’re moving out!” they called again.

“You go ahead! I’ll be right there!”

A burst of commotion from that direction — it sounded as though they had reformed their line and were setting off again. Ba Yunye thought: once she found the flask, there’d be no point summiting anyway.

It must be said that the sense of smell of a specially trained search-and-rescue dog is extraordinary. Layer by layer, the snow was dug away. Ba Yunye spotted a white cap. Elated beyond all reason, she dug a little more and hauled out a white insulated flask from beneath the snow. She sat down right in the snow, pulled Huzi to her by the neck and praised it over and over.

“Hey! What’s going on!” Lu Jianyi’s shout rang out from some distance away.

Ba Yunye was still reveling in the joy of having found the flask. Huzi, hearing its owner’s voice, shot forward like an arrow and vanished instantly into the darkness. She stowed the flask securely, got to her feet, and ran toward the light — where she found everyone gathered together, as though something else had happened.

She pushed through to the center, and recoiled in shock. Fu Yingtao was on the ground, clawing at his own throat as if someone had thrown a rope around his neck from behind, eyes bulging with a look of sheer terror.

“What — has he got pulmonary edema too?!” the sisters from Tangshan cried.

Huzi, following its instincts, shoved its nose frantically around Fu Yingtao’s face and body — then lifted its head, located Ba Yunye, and barked twice as if expecting a reward, tail wagging, seeming to say: the thing you asked me to find — it’s here too.

Diao Zhuo had been right. Fu Yingtao’s allergen was indeed chocolate.

“How did he end up eating chocolate?!” Ba Yunye called out loudly. Seeing everyone’s bewildered expressions, she felt that something was wrong — and after a long moment it finally clicked. Someone was missing.

“Where is Jiang Ao’hang?!”

“He went down with the others to look after Fu Xingyue.” Dongbo answered.

“What has the older Fu eaten or drunk?!” Ba Yunye demanded.

Unfortunately, it seemed that no one had been paying attention to Fu Yingtao’s actions just now. “This is bad.” Ba Yunye could see that Fu Yingtao appeared to be struggling to breathe. “Hurry and call Da Qiang back!”

“I’ll go get him — everyone should probably prepare for a full descent!” Lu Jianyi was the person among those remaining who was in the best physical condition and knew the route the best. He shot forward in one swift step.

When word spread that everyone might have to abandon the summit push, the group erupted — voices of every kind. Understandable, really. Every one of them had paid money and invested time and effort to persist all the way to this point. To be forced to descend due to the successive emergencies of two fellow climbers, when there was nothing wrong with their own bodies, was a genuinely frustrating thing no matter how you looked at it.

Fu Yingtao stretched out his hand and pointed at something not far off, as if trying to say something. Ba Yunye looked back: an insulated flask was lying overturned in the snow. She picked it up — it was empty. “What is this…” She paused. She noticed that Fu Yingtao’s own pack already had a flask in the side pocket. She looked back at the one in her hand, and it came to her: he must have poured the water from someone else’s flask into his own.

“Jiang Ao’hang’s flask.” Lu Jianyi said. “He left his pack and his flask behind here.”

Ba Yunye poured out the water remaining in Fu Yingtao’s flask and tasted it. It wasn’t hot cocoa — it was sweet, like a glucose drink. Huzi sniffed it, then barked to tell her: there was a trace of cocoa in the water.

In an instant, she understood. At some point, a small amount of cocoa powder had been put into Jiang Ao’hang’s flask. Because both liquids were sweet, mixed in with the glucose water, a human tongue wouldn’t have been able to detect it right away. Fu Yingtao, intent on reaching the summit, had poured the water from Jiang Ao’hang’s flask into his own — and in doing so, drank down the allergen he could not tolerate.

Was it Jiang Ao’hang who had put in the cocoa powder — or Fu Xingyue? Was Fu Xingyue’s pulmonary edema truly an accident? Was it a coincidence that Fu Yingtao had mistakenly drunk from Jiang Ao’hang’s flask? Everything had suddenly become murky, tangled, seemingly a confluence of hidden intent and accidental circumstance all at once.

“Over here…” From somewhere in the distance, Da Qiang’s voice — clearly out of breath from running, the exertion of these past few hours of the summit push probably comparable to his time rotating through the emergency department years ago.

“Here! Over here!” Everyone shouted out.

Fu Yingtao’s condition was far more serious than Fu Xingyue’s had been. He had already developed symptoms of laryngeal edema, which was obstructing his breathing — there was not a single second to spare. The moment Da Qiang delivered his assessment, everyone understood that the summit was truly out of reach this time, unless someone was willing to proceed without a guide.

“Sigh! Saving a life comes first.”

“Right — we’ll come back for the summit another time… next time, we’ll definitely make it.”

“Anyone who runs out of strength, say the word, and the next person will take over!”

A few days ago, these people were strangers with no connection to one another. A few days later, they were working as one, united in purpose without counting the cost, to save a human life. There is darkness in this world — but light always outweighs it.

“All men, follow me!” Lu Jianyi hoisted Fu Yingtao onto his back; Da Qiang took hold of the oxygen canister. “Yunye! He can’t afford any delay — we have to go first. You take the two sisters down, follow our footprints. I’m counting on you!”

“Go, hurry. I’ll handle those two.” Ba Yunye waved them off to signal they should move at once.

The climbing base received the distress signal and, while dispatching personnel with medication to assist in the descent of the patients, contacted the local hospital in Golmud to prepare for subsequent care. At high altitude, oxygen levels are already depleted — under normal conditions, running a few steps leaves you gasping. All the more so with someone on your back; if you weren’t careful, the exertion could compromise your own heart and lung function. And yet, every second counted, and no one dared pause. One by one they took turns carrying Fu Xingyue and Fu Yingtao on their backs, every one of them heaving for air.

Fu Xingyue’s condition began to improve once the group had descended to the southern slope base camp. Fu Yingtao was still in danger. By now, daylight had fully broken — today was indeed fine weather, just as promised. The ice and snow on the mountain caught the light of the rising sun and glittered gold. Had the two of them not fallen ill one after another, the group should have been reaching the summit by now.