The South Slope Base Camp was still lively. Another mountaineering team had moved in, planning to reach C1 that evening and begin their summit push in the early hours of the following morning. Word had already spread about two members from the previous summit group who had been forced to descend due to physical ailments, and this cast a certain degree of psychological pressure on those who were yet to attempt the climb.

Ba Yunye dropped herself into the driver’s seat and slumped over the steering wheel, her body feeling as though it had been beaten in turns by several burly men — aching all over. Some mountaineers, noticing that she had descended from C1 with two others, swarmed around her, nosily prying for details. Exhausted to the bone, she dumped the three backpacks she had been lugging all this time into the trunk, locked herself inside the car, rolled up the windows, and shut out the world.

Her phone had long since died. She hadn’t expected to need charging so soon, and now she couldn’t reach anyone. She had no idea how those two people were doing, only that the vehicles sent to receive them included not just an ambulance but a police car as well.

She slept in the car for quite a while before being woken up by hunger. She went out, got herself a cup noodle and instant coffee, and wolfed down the undercooked noodles — soaked in water barely reaching seventy degrees — slurping great mouthfuls of the broth. It was only when she reached the last of it and glanced at the packaging that she realized she’d been eating braised beef flavor.

She checked the time. Two in the afternoon.

Her phone had charged enough. Three missed calls at the top — two from Diao Zhuo, one from Ma He. She had been sleeping so deeply she hadn’t heard any of them. She drove toward the western shore of the lake, and as the signal gradually improved, she began returning calls. Diao Zhuo didn’t pick up. Ma He did, saying he was at the western shore — and that Diao Zhuo had gone with the police to Golmud.

“How are those two doing?”

“Fu Xingyue stabilized once she was brought down to the western shore — nothing too serious. Old Fu is in worse shape, currently on the way to the Golmud hospital.” Ma He paused. “What about you?”

“I’ll come pick you up. Let’s head back to Golmud. We’ve already lost two days — can’t afford to linger. Tomorrow we rest and get ready; the clients arrive in Delingha the day after.”

“Oh right, Master Ba — weren’t you looking for that thermos? Did you find it?”

“I…” Ba Yunye hesitated. “How did you know I was looking for a thermos?”

“What the hell, didn’t you tell me yourself? Three thousand yuan!”

Ba Yunye was silent for a few seconds, then finally let out a long sigh. “With everything that happened right after the summit, who had time to worry about that? Pitch dark, everyone scrambling — I had my hands full just getting those two women from the Tangshan group safely back down. Find a thermos? Even if it were a gold mine, I’d need time to dig, wouldn’t I?”

After hanging up, Ba Yunye called Long Ge to ask what he had actually dug up on Ma He.

“He’s not from the Burning Sun convoy.”

“That’s all?” Ba Yunye said, disappointed. “I thought you’d found something like loan sharks, gambling, or a warrant out for his arrest…”

“— Let me finish.” Long Ge cut her off, his tone unusually serious. “The Burning Sun convoy insists for some reason that he was once a partner of theirs, and we were fooled by that identity — so we never looked into him closely over the years. This man, Ma He… I’ve been asking around for days now, and I still can’t find any trace of his life before he joined our club. Not even the ex-wife and daughter he always mentions — nobody knows where they are, what they do, what school the daughter goes to. Nothing.”

A chill ran up Ba Yunye’s spine. “Who on earth is he? And why did you suddenly start looking into him?”

Long Ge sounded somewhat frustrated. “If I hadn’t noticed him constantly wandering around taking photos with his phone, I wouldn’t have become suspicious. But — I checked the accounts, and there’s no sign he ever touched the club’s money. These past few years he’s basically worked alongside you handling clients. I don’t know what’s going on in his head, and I don’t know who he really is. After all, I’m not the police — I can’t investigate someone that thoroughly. But since you spend the most time with him, I think… you’d better be careful.”

“He’d better not be here because of me,” she muttered. “He knows full well I’ve still got a car loan. He’s never once brought up money, and apart from having a big mouth, he hasn’t really done me wrong these past few years.”

“Can you sense anything different about the way he treats you?”

“He’s quite interested in the few photographs my older sister Ba Xiye left behind,” Ba Yunye said. “In that way, he’s a lot like you, Long Ge.”

There was a brief silence on Long Ge’s end. Then he said, “Get lost.”

Ba Yunye laughed, gave Long Ge a brief rundown of what had happened on Yuzhu Peak, and he said nothing much — just told her not to go sticking her nose in. She agreed and hung up. Gazing out, she saw the trucks still lined up in their long queue along the road. The weather was fine; the Kunlun ranges beneath a blue sky were spectacularly beautiful. The car passed in turn through the Sonam Dargye Nature Reserve, the Budongquan spring, and the Kunlun Mountain Pass. Now and then, a great flock of sheep appeared by the roadside, and the prayer flag towers beneath the snowy peaks burned with vivid color in the bright sunlight. Ba Yunye rested her chin on one hand, the other on the steering wheel, and thought back to a few days earlier — how they had all set off cheerfully toward the South Slope Base Camp in weather that had not been nearly so fine. Today, with such radiant sunshine, her heart felt only weariness.

Before long, Ma He called again to say he’d heard from a passing driver that a police car on the road toward Golmud had been rear-ended by a large freight truck, with details unknown. Ba Yunye, who had been drifting in a languid haze, jolted awake at the news and slammed the brakes — the car lurched to a stop with a sharp screech of tires.

She called Diao Zhuo three times. Nobody answered.

The car behind her honked and hurled a curse. Ba Yunye stared blankly out the window, utterly unresponsive. She gripped her phone, not dialing again, her left eye twitching without stop. In her twenty-some years of life, everyone she had been close to seemed to have left forever in some sudden, abrupt way — parents she never met, Ba Xiye, Ba Yuanzhang… A wave of panic and dread rose from somewhere deep inside her. Even though experience had taught her better than anyone that some things were beyond any person’s will or control, she still kept asking herself — could Diao Zhuo really be taken the same way?

It was like a taut rope, suddenly snipped in the middle.

She restarted the car and drove toward the western shore. Every press of the accelerator felt utterly powerless. When she found Ma He, she didn’t ask a single question — she just told him to take over the wheel for a while.

Ma He noticed her uncharacteristic silence and felt, with a vague unease, that something was wrong. He swallowed, and chose his words carefully. “It’s probably not that serious… think about it — if you saw a police car, would you floor the accelerator? It was most likely just a minor scrape…”

“Life and death are fated; wealth and honor lie with heaven.” Ba Yunye said woodenly, her voice carrying that particular flavor of reckless resignation — whatever happens, happens.

Ma He glanced sideways at her and said nothing.

After a while, Ba Yunye’s phone buzzed. Her shoulders stiffened. She glanced at the screen — her eyes went wide.

Diao Zhuo.

She held her breath and answered. “Hello.” She hadn’t been this tense even waiting for her college entrance exam results — then again, she wasn’t going to get in regardless of how she looked. The other end was noisy, and no voice came through. She balled her fist and shouted: “Hello! Diao Zhuo!! Is that you?! Dead or alive, make a sound!!”

“Where do you get all this hatred for me? Where are you?”

Crisp enunciation. Full, steady voice.

Ba Yunye swore under her breath, sank back against the headrest, and stayed silent for a long time. It had all felt like a nightmare — and now she had finally woken up. “You… weren’t you rear-ended by a freight truck?”

“The car broke down halfway, rolled back, and bumped into a freight truck that had already stopped behind us. Nothing serious.”

“And now?”

“Getting it fixed.”

Ba Yunye was seething. “Why didn’t you pick up my calls?!”

Even the most emotionally oblivious man knows that in the face of a woman’s fury, all explanations are futile.

Golmud City.

The Kunlun Park at night had few working streetlamps and barely a soul in sight. Some sections along the outer perimeter were under renovation, making the road rather uneven. The city’s People’s Hospital sat right beside the park. Ba Yunye’s Jeep Wrangler shot through the park’s side entrance in a blur, stirring up a cloud of dust in its wake.

“He’s waiting for you over there.” Ma He spotted Diao Zhuo standing at the hospital entrance from a distance — tall, with broad, solid shoulders that made him impossible to miss. “All because he didn’t pick up your calls — was it really necessary to blow up like that… Master Ba, I shouldn’t say this, but you’re getting more and more like a woman.”

“I haven’t even settled my score with you yet, and here you are teasing me?” Ba Yunye, seeing that he was still driving, held back her urge to kick him. “You were the one who told me they’d been rear-ended. I thought he was—”

Ma He’s voice rose. “I only heard it secondhand too!”

“Spreading rumors that reach five hundred reposts lands you in jail!!” Ba Yunye’s voice was even louder.

“How are you getting five hundred reposts?!”

She pointed a thumb at her own chest. “I’m talking about the victim’s heart rate.”

Ma He pressed his hand to his forehead and obediently pulled the car up to the hospital entrance. Ba Yunye jumped out and made a straight line for Diao Zhuo. He shook his head, drew a deep breath, something unreadable flickering in his eyes, then turned the car toward the parking lot.

“You—” Diao Zhuo had barely begun to speak when she launched herself at him and planted a firm, full kiss on his lips. Their noses collided in the impact; she let out a small sound of pain but kept her arms locked around his neck regardless, like a particularly ferocious cat that had caught a mouse and was intent on swallowing it whole.

Deeply entangled, shameless as anything.

When it was finally over, the iron-willed Master Ba’s legs went soft, and she simply crouched down right there on the spot, both hands wrapped around her head.

The emotionally oblivious man considered this carefully, then asked in earnest sincerity, “Angry that I was carrying another woman on my back?”

She seemed not to hear him, rambling on to herself, “I thought you were dead. Ma He told me the car you were in got rear-ended by a freight truck… I’ve worked the road circuit, I’ve seen more than one accident — freight trucks are heavy, even a light hit can be fatal. And I’ve seen small cars sandwiched between two trucks before…”

“I haven’t even fully won you over yet — some hero I’d be, going to report in alone first.” Diao Zhuo reached down to pull her up. She said she was exhausted and couldn’t stand. He simply hoisted her up, swung her over his shoulder, and started walking.

“Put me down! What are you doing?!”

“Finding you somewhere to rest.”

Ba Yunye braced a hand against him and jumped free. “What happened to those two?”

“Nothing too serious, but Fu Xingyue…” Diao Zhuo paused for a moment. “After the doctor ran a thorough examination, she said Fu Xingyue’s physical condition is unsuitable for high-altitude environments — let alone summiting Yuzhu Peak. She has a mild congenital deficiency in certain aspects of her heart and lung function. In the lowlands, daily activities are basically unaffected, but at high elevation the probability of a sudden medical episode is extremely high. She falls into the high-risk category for high-altitude pulmonary edema. After we descended, I received a call from a friend I’d previously asked to look into their work unit. It turns out Jiang Ao’hang is a known figure in the same-sex social circles in their city, and has been involved in an extramarital affair with a man — reportedly a doctor. Before this trip to Yuzhu Peak, he had been in contact with real estate agents, inquiring about the transaction prices of Old Fu’s apartment and other units of the same floor plan in the building where their marital home is located, suggesting intent to sell. One woman with pulmonary edema, one man with an anaphylactic near-suffocation — Fu Xingyue’s original plans were upended, and everything appeared to unfold as a sudden emergency. But when you think it through carefully, it’s not simply a case of one predator being preyed upon by another — there’s every reason to believe Jiang Ao’hang had a hand in arranging these events behind the scenes.”

“This family… and the one who seemed the most reckless — Old Fu — turns out to be the most guileless of the lot?” Ba Yunye’s eyes went wide.

“I’ve already explained the situation to the police. They’ll handle the investigation from here.”

“Then let’s leave it to them — they have far more means at their disposal than we do.” Ba Yunye raised an eyebrow. “Guess what I found? Heh heh, come on, let me show you—”

Diao Zhuo stared at her. “Could it be…”

Ba Yunye was savoring her moment of triumph, just about to gloat — when: “Excuse me, are you… Ba Yunye?” A middle-aged woman walked over, and in her hand, of all things, were Ba Yunye’s car keys. “Your friend asked me to return these to you.”

She took them. Her mind went blank for a moment. Once it clicked, she was already on the phone with Ma He and sprinting toward the hospital’s parking area.

Ma He’s phone was switched off.