After several heavy snowfalls, Tibet was blanketed in silver-white, with snow lines on the mountains descending dramatically. The glaciers and their surrounding scenery had reached the most beautiful time of year, though the danger of avalanches gave some tourists pause.
Since their parting in Golmud, Ba Yunye had not seen Diao Zhuo for three months. In her line of work, any romantic relationship was a long-distance one. Looking at the other drivers in the club, most were older singles or divorcées; of the two who had not yet divorced, their marriages were said to be on the verge of collapse. Coincidentally, Diao Zhuo’s work also kept him away from home for months at a time, so the two of them had managed to reach a fragile equilibrium.
One evening, she asked Diao Zhuo: the girls from Xinjiang are so beautiful — how come you haven’t tried to hook up with one?
The question left Diao Zhuo completely speechless.
The following evening, Ba Yunye received a video he had sent her. It was filmed at their work site. Forget beautiful Xinjiang girls — there wasn’t even a beautiful rock in sight. What met the eye was a group of rough-hewn men, their sunburned faces forming a sharp contrast with their bright work jackets and yellow hard hats on their heads. From a distance, even their own mothers couldn’t tell which one was their son.
Not a woman in sight.
“Film yourself,” she said. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d seen him in the flesh. She really missed him — truly.
A moment later, he sent a photo. And indeed — it was unmistakably a selfie taken by a man of unwavering stoicism. Shot with the notoriously unflattering front-facing camera of an iPhone, with no regard for angle, lighting, or composition whatsoever. He used a furrowed brow to mask the awkwardness of facing the lens directly. His beard had grown wild, and his expression looked thoroughly sour. It was as unflattering as a photo could possibly be.
As Ba Yunye typed her reply, the corners of her mouth were turned down. “You look terrible.”
“You asked me to take it, and now you say it’s terrible.”
“It’s not that you’re terrible — it’s that you took it terribly.”
“Fine. Show me how beautiful you can look.” Brazenly requesting a photo from a woman.
Ba Yunye also opened her front-facing camera, tilted her chin up, and flared her nostrils with great effort — the kind of look that would probably prompt an ordinary person to break up with her on the spot.
She looked at the photo herself, laughing continuously, and hesitated over whether to send it to him.
“Hurry up, I can’t wait anymore,” he urged.
“Please calm yourself.” With that, she sent the selfie.
For a long while, he didn’t reply.
“Fainted?” she teased.
“Just came to.”
“Even Team Leader Diao has days like this.”
“Long live Master Ba.”
Knowing he was heading out for fieldwork the next day, Ba Yunye wrapped up their idle chatter early and tidied up her contacts list, blocking him from advertisement messages as he had asked. After midnight, estimating that he had already fallen asleep, she adjusted the lighting, pulled one side of her collar down, and took a photo of herself looking utterly alluring and sensual. She was already a beauty by nature, and in such a tantalizing pose, her charm was beyond words.
Fieldwork meant days without contact. Hmph — Ba Yunye rolled her eyes. She was aching with longing, so she wasn’t about to let him have too comfortable a time either.
“Good night.” She sent the photo to him.
Two thousand seven hundred kilometers away, Diao Zhuo gripped his phone tightly and typed out each word as though squeezing blood from a stone: “Good night, my foot!”
Early the next morning, Ba Yunye’s three university student passengers for this trip were still at breakfast, chattering excitedly, looking thrilled and full of wonder. They were all from Yunnan Province, taking advantage of the just-begun winter holiday to fly straight to Lhasa and ride in Ba Yunye’s car back to Yunnan along the Dian-Tibet route in reverse. With the Spring Festival approaching, after completing this trip, Ba Yunye would either stay in Yunnan or switch to other routes, waiting until March when the peach blossoms of Linzhi bloomed and Tibet tourism entered its next minor peak season.
Ba Yunye and the one remaining staff member at the Deji Inn loaded the passengers’ luggage into the trunk. Long Ge walked around to the back of the car and asked in a low voice: “You’ve been watching for a while now — what’s your read?”
“They’re after me.” She slipped her fingers into her hair, gave it a casual comb-through, and put on her knit hat. “They’ve switched vehicles and followed me multiple times over various trips — every single one. I asked a young woman I know at a nearby petrol station, and she told me the people with them seem to have a criminal background. One of them has a faded tattoo on his hand, probably a gang marking. They’re likely just a group of thugs… though I still don’t understand why. They’re not after money and not after anything else obvious.”
“Since the Hippo left with the three photo coordinates and Zhang Chenguang’s thermos, whoever is above him must believe there’s still more they can dig out of you.” Long Ge walked around the car, tapping here and stepping there, doing a casual check of the vehicle. “Be careful on the road.”
“Long Ge, I’ve had enough.” Ba Yunye’s expression was severe, her gaze cold. “This time I’m going to give them a taste of what they’re in for.”
“There are passengers in the car…”
“Don’t worry. Their safety won’t be compromised.” Ba Yunye put on her gloves and called for the passengers to board. “Besides — they keep following us, which isn’t exactly good for the passengers either.”
“Does Diao Zhuo know about this?”
“Distant water can’t quench a nearby fire.” Ba Yunye waved her hand carelessly and climbed into the car with easy confidence.
Long Ge watched Ba Yunye’s car disappear into the distance. When he turned back, he immediately received a call from Ge Mingliang, who regretfully informed him that he had still been unable to locate the Hippo’s whereabouts. It was worth noting that his fellow veteran Ge Mingliang had joined the public security system after leaving the military. As long as it didn’t violate regulations, he always helped Long Ge look things up — sometimes even delegating to a colleague of his surnamed Hou, who was also quite helpful. During the last investigation into Zou Kaigui, it was thanks to young Officer Hou’s assistance that they had made any progress.
Ge Mingliang hinted obliquely that while the police now had investigative tools capable of pinpointing any individual’s location, using such measures without cause to locate an ordinary citizen with no criminal record was a disciplinary violation. Even so, he also told Long Ge that the Hippo appeared to possess counter-surveillance awareness — he seemed to know what channels the police could use to find him and had therefore abandoned all of them.
Having heard this, Long Ge understood that he could not press his old comrade any further, and had no choice but to let the matter rest.
Diao Zhuo and several colleagues from the project team went out to the field to conduct cross-sectional geological surveys of the area around the mining zone, in preparation for the next phase of documentation. On the small blackboard outside the door of the project team’s base, the chief engineer had written a poem long ago:
Snow lies on Tianshan in May; no flowers bloom, only cold. Would that I could take the sword at my hip and cut down Loulan outright.
A colleague joked that in a place with no family, no entertainment, and no social life, without something inspiring to read, the heart would constantly want to give up and go home.
“The grade estimate is around 30 to 35 percent… deposited in the form of oxides and hydroxides under oxidizing conditions.” While several colleagues were still discussing the results of the survey and the samples they had collected, Diao Zhuo sent Ba Yunye a message saying he was back and would call her later.
“Diao Zhuo! Leave the samples for the interns to sort out and come here for a moment.”
A colleague informed him that during the few days they had been out in the field, his girlfriend had come to the site to “check up on him.” Since she couldn’t get through on his phone, she had temporarily gone to Kashgar and asked him to come find her at the hotel once he returned. The colleague then handed him a hotel business card and room number.
Diao Zhuo thought of the tantalizing selfie Ba Yunye had sent him a few days earlier.
A colleague who had gone out on fieldwork with him asked excitedly: “What does she look like? Is she pretty?”
“Quite pretty. Tall, big eyes, long hair… down to here.” The colleague gestured to his own shoulder.
“She came alone.”
“She’s given you the room number. Get going.”
Pretty, tall, big eyes, shoulder-length hair — each feature matched Ba Yunye one by one. And yet she was supposed to be running the Dian-Tibet route. In just a few days, she probably wouldn’t even have crossed into Yunnan yet — how could she have ended up in Kashgar? Puzzled, Diao Zhuo tried calling Ba Yunye, but her number showed as out of service.
Compared to his colleagues’ almost electric excitement, Diao Zhuo was noticeably calm. “What’s her last name?”
“How many girlfriends do you have? Are they from different families?!” a colleague asked in astonishment.
Diao Zhuo was embarrassed.
“The machinery outside was too loud — I didn’t catch it clearly. Three-character name.” The colleague clapped him on the shoulder. “The woman came all this way to find you, and you’re still dragging your feet?”
Diao Zhuo remained doubtful. “Did she leave a phone number?”
The colleague shook his head. “You don’t have your girlfriend’s number? Just get over there — she’s been waiting for you for days.”
Another, slightly older colleague spoke to him earnestly: “In our line of work, finding a wife isn’t easy, and keeping her is even harder. Since you have someone this devoted to you — someone who comes all this way to find you and waits for you — you’d better cherish that.”
Diao Zhuo looked at them all with a helpless expression.
“Why aren’t you leaving yet?!” The colleagues were more anxious than he was.
“I’m going to shave first.” With that, he turned and walked away, leaving a chorus of teasing behind him.
Half an hour later, her phone still wouldn’t connect. Diao Zhuo drove to Kashgar following the address given to him, his beard shaved clean, leaving only a faint dark shadow behind.
Given her personality, a surprise ambush wasn’t out of the question. At this point, all reason and logic went out the window — his head was full of the tantalizing selfie Ba Yunye had sent him, of her teasing gestures and flirtatious words. The feelings he had been holding back for so long surged forward like the Yellow River after a dam breaks, roaring and crashing all the way.
From the moment he had met Ba Yunye, he had never had the composure he’d always prided himself on.
The car pulled into the hotel parking lot. Diao Zhuo made one last attempt to call Ba Yunye — still out of service.
“I’m here. Open the door.”
The message went out, and still no reply came. Diao Zhuo sat in the car, both hands resting on the steering wheel, straining to recover a trace of reason, and absentmindedly scrolled through their chat history. When the tantalizing photo she had sent him days ago appeared on his screen again, he got out of the car in one clean motion, locked it, and headed straight up into the hotel.
Ding dong.
From inside came what sounded like very hurried footsteps, and the door was about to open. Diao Zhuo’s heart rose in his chest for no clear reason — like being suddenly shoved onto a stage to give a speech — his pulse quickening. The door opened. With restrained eagerness, he cast a quick glance inside — a woman.
But it was not Ba Yunye.
“I’m sorry, wrong room.” He apologized politely and turned to leave. But just then, a soft, gentle woman’s voice called out from behind him —
“Diao Zhuo…”
Earnest and full of feeling.
Diao Zhuo paused and turned around. “…Who are you?”
“I’m — Meng Xiao’ai! Do you… still remember me?”
Diao Zhuo had come to Kashgar freshly groomed, his short hair clean and crisp, his features carrying the rugged handsomeness of a man well-built and self-assured. A black trench coat was draped over his arm, and his sweater hugged the powerful lines of his upper body, the subtle contours of his muscles faintly visible. To Meng Xiao’ai, all of this made him even more attractive — especially since he had been the first glimmer of hope she had seen when she was at death’s door.
After more than half a year of recovery, Meng Xiao’ai had returned to her former self — a fresh-faced beauty who bore no resemblance to the woman who had been carried out of the desert.
Diao Zhuo relaxed instantly, and at the same time, all the heat that had risen in him on account of Ba Yunye went cold.
“What do you want?” His expression became composed. The reason he had lost around Ba Yunye snapped back into place — solemn, straightforward, all business. “Do you need me to sign any documentation for your school or another institution?”
Meng Xiao’ai thought there was something slightly different about how he looked now compared to when he had first appeared at the door. “Uh… no, actually…”