Chapter 34: Crossing Mountains and Seas (2)
The things he said sometimes were too blunt—no one could handle them.
If even a bunch of sharp-tongued men from his past couldn’t keep up, how could Yin Guo, who had always spoken gently? But she had learned her lesson—when she couldn’t win an argument, she’d just admire the scenery.
“No comeback?” The man beside her was still teasing her.
Pushing his luck after getting his way… Yin Guo pointed at the car window, changing the subject. “Look, the rain seems lighter.”
Lin Yiyang was still smiling.
Fine, he’d stop teasing her. If he pushed too far, he’d be the one who had to coax her back.
The raindrops hitting the windshield grew smaller, much lighter than before.
Rain on the island was always unpredictable—it came and went without hesitation. Ten minutes later, the sky cleared, and the sun shone blindingly bright.
Originally, he had planned to head straight to their lodging, but seeing her in good spirits, he changed his mind last minute. He drove her straight to the Dormant volcano, over four thousand meters above sea level.
Before ascending, he gave Yin Guo some private space to change into warmer clothes. Alone, he stood by the roadside, his back to the car, gazing at the vast grassy slopes. The terrain here was much better—at least the ground wasn’t covered in black, cooled lava but instead with patches of yellow-green grass and half-withered shrubs.
There were no large predators on this island, which directly led to an ecological imbalance—wild goats were everywhere.
As Yin Guo fastened the button on her jeans, she kept watching the herds of wild goats through the car window. There must have been hundreds, grazing across the rolling grasslands. Not far away, in a depression, lay the bleached bones of a goat.
“A rainbow!” The moment she jumped out of the car, Yin Guo pointed at the vibrant arc stretching across the distant mountains.
It was the first rainbow she had seen on the island. Hours later, by the time she counted the seventh one, they no longer felt special.
“This is the Rainbow State,” he said, pointing to a passing car and urging her to look closely at its license plate. Aside from the numbers, there was a rainbow emblem. “You can try counting how many you see in a day. Someone I know once spotted fourteen in a single day.”
Familiarity breeds indifference.
After a short rest at the foot of the mountain, they first went up to the visitor center at over two thousand meters, where they warmed up with hot drinks. He wanted Yin Guo to acclimate there for half an hour to avoid altitude sickness from the sudden ascent.
Seeing she was handling it well, he felt reassured and took her up to the peak at over four thousand meters.
The higher they climbed, the worse the road conditions became—nothing but gravel and no guardrails for protection. Fortunately, he had experience and had rented a four-wheel-drive off-road vehicle with strong climbing power. Skilled at mountain driving himself, he smoothly reached the summit by noon.
In the near-freezing wind, Lin Yiyang held her hand as they climbed the final stretch to the peak. The thin April snow couldn’t fully cover the ground in some places, exposing the brown volcanic soil beneath.
This was the place on Earth that most resembled the terrain of Mars—above the clouds, desolate and silent.
Lin Yiyang searched for the best angle to show her the distant Active volcano crater, where faint white smoke and crimson flames could be seen at the far end of the mountain range. Meanwhile, scattered across the uneven summit were over a dozen spherical and cylindrical white structures. Were they equipment or buildings?
“That’s the Observatory,” Lin Yiyang told her.
It was her first time seeing an observatory up close, and she was fascinated.Around them, scheduled hiking tour groups were arriving, with the guide pointing at the Observatory and giving detailed explanations to the tourists. They said this was one of the best astronomical observation points in the world due to its favorable latitude, offering a view of the entire northern hemisphere's starry sky and over eighty percent of the southern hemisphere's—truly a paradise for astronomy enthusiasts and a sacred stargazing spot for ordinary tourists.
The guide concluded by saying: "This is the closest place to the sky."
Not in literal distance, but in the breathtaking purity of the starry sky. At night, looking up, the arched Milky Way seemed right before their eyes, almost within reach.
Yin Guo listened with keen interest and quietly asked him, "Do we use these telescopes to see the starry sky at night?"
"The Observatory isn't open to the public," he said. "No one is allowed to stay on the summit after dark to ensure the Observatory can work properly."
Stargazing could be done anywhere on the island unless you were an astronomy enthusiast who brought your own telescope or queued up to use the ones at the visitor center.
He had brought her here to see the Milky Way and the starry sky.
But that was for the evening.
The summit was too cold and high in altitude, unsuitable for prolonged stays.
He unzipped his hiking jacket, took it off, and wrapped it around her, then rubbed her hands between his palms. "Does your head hurt?"
Yin Guo shook her head, breathing a little heavily but otherwise fine.
Lin Yiyang led her back to the car, turning the heater to maximum to warm her up. After a brief absence, when he returned to the off-road vehicle, he brought not just the cold wind but also snowflakes clinging to his sleeves.
He started the car, took the watch off his left wrist, and handed it to her. "Put this on."
What for?
"Keep track of time," he said. "Within three hours, I'll get you down to sea level."
At first, she didn’t quite understand.
After driving her down the mountain, Lin Yiyang kept his foot on the gas, moving much faster than on the way up. It was manageable on the mountain, but once they hit flat ground, it was pure speeding.
The altitude kept dropping, and the temperature kept rising—from zero degrees to over thirty.
Apart from a quick change into summer clothes and a stop to refuel, they didn’t pause. Two hours and seventeen minutes later, the car stopped by the coast.
She stepped out barefoot, ran to the trunk, and rummaged through her backpack for flip-flops. Before she could put them on, Lin Yiyang had already grabbed a dark blue cooler from the trunk. "No need. Let’s go to the beach."
Holding the flip-flops in one hand and his hand in the other, she followed him down a sandy path. Under the scorching thirty-degree heat, torches burned along the shore.
He set the blue cooler down on the sand.
Yin Guo thought it was filled with chilled drinks, but when she opened it, white cold mist billowed out.
It was packed tightly with snow—he had actually brought snow from over four thousand meters above sea level. Had he driven like a fugitive just for this cooler of snow?
Tourists nearby turned to look.
Originally, he had planned to rent a pickup truck and bring a full load of snow down for her to build a snowman on the beach. But he changed his mind—partly because there wasn’t much snow at the summit this time of year, and partly because loading it would be too troublesome and spoil the surprise.
"Not much, just for fun," he said, dumping it all onto the sand, forming a small snow pile.Yin Guo watched as the snow melted before her eyes. Though it had been packed tightly, it couldn't withstand the scorching thirty-degree heat. Frantically, she tried to salvage the snow on the beach, exclaiming, "It's all melting! What do we do when it's gone?"
Meanwhile, Lin Yiyang sat nonchalantly in the shade of a tree, knees hugged to his chest, watching her cry out about the melting snow while desperately trying to scoop it back up—like a madwoman being gawked at from afar.
As the snow dissolved, soaking into the sand, she finally threw her arms around his neck, uncaring of his sweat or the sand on her hands, clinging to him stubbornly. What kind of man was this? He took her up a snow-capped mountain, then raced to a midsummer beach in the heart of the Pacific, where, amidst torches and crowds of bikini- and swimsuit-clad tourists, he presented her with an entire crate of winter snow in broad daylight.
His hand patted her back gently, indulgent and soothing.
Onlookers speculated—some thought it was crushed ice from a cold storage unit, others guessed dry ice, only to be corrected that dry ice couldn't be touched. Theories flew, but no one knew them, and no one guessed the truth.
Lin Yiyang's hand slid down, resting on the edge of her shorts pocket, tracing the stitching slowly. "Happy?" he asked the girl clinging to him.
"Mhm." Ecstatic, really.
Even if he had hauled a truckload of snow here like a lunatic for the sake of romance, it wouldn’t have brought her this much joy. Everything done to please someone you love is, in truth, a way to please yourself.
Seeing her happy made him happier.
The empty cooler sat beside them, its melted snow soon evaporated under the sun.
Lin Yiyang bought her a pineapple slush to cool off. Yin Guo cradled the pineapple shell, sitting on the sand watching surfers, sweat rolling down her cheeks as she sipped through the straw, unable to stop smiling at him every few seconds.
Restless, she eventually abandoned the pineapple and began circling him, trudging unevenly through the sand—like a star orbiting its sun.
After who knows how many laps, he suddenly reached out and caught her ankle mid-step. "Not dizzy?" he asked.
She shook her head, grinning, before he tugged her down to sit in front of him.
Her eager eyes met his, her damp bangs and sideburns plastered to her skin. A bead of sweat trailed from her right temple down her neck, disappearing beneath her round-necked shirt.
Lin Yiyang could picture that drop tracing its path beneath her clothes, sliding over her body.
"What are you thinking about? You’re so quiet," Yin Guo asked.
Her smile, unchanged since the snowy mountain, still brightened her face.
"Thinking," he murmured, his palm resting on her shorts, "about you."
His hand was warm, grains of sand lightly abrading her skin.
"Thinking," he added, "you should catch up on sleep."
At this point, returning to the mountain for sunset was impossible. Better to head to their campsite, rest, and venture out again at night—from the Starry sky to sunrise.
"Shall we?" he asked.
She nodded. Anywhere. To the ends of the earth, she’d follow.
Lin Yiyang had booked a large tent with a bed in a jungle clearing, nestled in a small town.On the way there, her mind was wandering. She rolled down the car window, letting the hot wind rush in, which didn’t bring any coolness but instead carried the island’s unique humidity and sticky sweat clinging to her skin.
The car stopped on the grassy area in front of the tent. Yin Guo fumbled for her flip-flops with her feet near the seat. Before she could put them on properly, Lin Yiyang had already bent down into the car, cradling her back and the bend of her knees, lifting her out of the car.
Yin Guo wrapped her arms around his neck and noticed two umbrellas floating past, followed by three girls turning to look. Embarrassment crept in. "I can walk myself," she said.
"It’s raining. You’re too slow."
Rain again—Pacific rain.
In less than two minutes, Lin Yiyang stepped into the tent at the edge of the jungle, nudging aside three wooden folding chairs blocking the way with his leg before setting her down on the bed. The jungle was damp, and so were the sheets and blankets.
There was even the sound of frogs croaking.
Sleeping in a jungle tent, surrounded by the earthy scent of rain and the sound of droplets hitting the canopy, gave her the illusion of being exposed in the open, watched by unseen eyes. "Will there be a lot of bugs here at night? And mosquitoes?"
Even Lin Yiyang, who had never had a girlfriend before, understood from childhood how much girls cared about bugs. He swiftly dismissed her fears. "We’re not sleeping in the tent tonight. I just brought you here to rest for a bit."
"Then isn’t booking the tent a waste?"
They had arrived close to nightfall—leaving it empty all night seemed wasteful.
As she debated this with him, her legs pressed against the quilt, swaying back and forth right under his gaze. Lin Yiyang had genuinely intended for her to sleep, considering she had spent the entire day playing after a long flight—her energy was already drained.
His plan had been to settle elsewhere—the folding chair by the bed was meant to be his resting spot, where he could check emails and get some work done. But now… her legs were so fair and slender, delicate without being bony, even the curve of her knees when slightly bent was beautiful.
The rain grew heavier, drumming against the tent roof.
Yin Guo looked up at the canopy, thinking the tent might not be suitable for rainy days—it was too noisy. Gradually, waves of heat spread over her, either through her clothes or directly against her skin.
Fatigue eroded her willpower, making her easily led astray—and once led, she strayed further.
The tent door was closed but not fully sealed. A faint breeze slipped in through the gap. He pulled the quilt out from under her and draped it over her.
"It’s hot," she mumbled. The stifling humidity, combined with the quilt, felt like torture.
"If you don’t cover up, people outside can see."
"...Why didn’t you close it properly?"
Too lazy to move.
Lin Yiyang was still fully dressed, not having removed a single piece of clothing. From the outside, it would only look like he was holding her while talking—nothing more noticeable.
He fumbled at the hem of her shorts, undoing a brass button before slipping his hand inside.
For a moment, confusion and subconscious resistance flickered in Yin Guo’s eyes. Lin Yiyang simply watched her, studying her expression without kissing her. The postponed kiss only intensified her restless emotions.
He hadn’t kissed her in over twenty hours.
She thought about how he had packed snow into the cooler on the mountain earlier that day, about his fingers pressing into the snow—then, in an instant, all the strength left her body.For the first time in her life, her vision blurred into a swirling mix of black shadows and white light—had it been white first, then black? Or black before white? The moment it happened, she forgot, as if her memory had been wiped clean. Only the overwhelming fatigue and sudden relaxation of every muscle in her body remained, surging from her legs and arms all the way to her fingertips, screaming in unison: So tired.
"How do you feel?" Lin Yiyang asked her first.
"Mmm..." It was strange, but oddly comforting.
For the next half-minute, she didn’t even think about moving, clinging to him like a koala, nuzzling against him, brushing her nose against his collarbone. He watched her dazed, still-unfocused eyes and guessed that she probably didn’t even realize what had happened.
In the end, Yin Guo didn’t even have the strength to roll over. Her throat burned with a raw ache—not from thirst, but more like the aftermath of her body being too overstimulated. Nestled in Lin Yiyang’s arms, she adjusted her position, resting her face in the crook of his elbow, her voice hoarse as she murmured, "I’ll sleep for a bit… just ten minutes… that’s all."
Those were her last words before drifting off.
Hazy and half-asleep, she felt Lin Yiyang slip something around her ankles and wrists—two elastic bands, like bracelets. She frowned, tugging at the one on her wrist, but didn’t try to remove it. Too tight. That was the last thing she did before sleep fully claimed her.
"Mosquito repellent bracelets—for kids. Thought they looked cute, so I bought them for you to try." That was the last thing she heard him say before she fell asleep.
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