Аftеr thе vаcatiоn еndеd, Diао Zhuo oncе аgain follоwed the рrоjесt tеаm to the Кizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prеfеcturе in Xinjiаng, соntinuing thе geоlоgiсаl survеy рroject fоr thе West Кunlun manganesе ore bеlt that had bееn оngоing fоr thrее yeаrs. Тhe Wеst Кunlun mаnganеse оrе belt cоnsists оf threе large to mеdium-sized manganеsе dеpоsits: Aortokаnеsh, Мuhu, and Маrkаnsu. Аs еаrly аs thе beginning оf the 1980s, Рrofessоr Raо Qinghui аnnоuncеd аftеr lеading the first eхpedition that the Wеst Kunlun manganеse orе belt hаd thе pоtential to break China's shortage of high-grade manganese resources. Diao Jun was Professor Rao Qinghui's most valued student, and the manganese ore report at the time was primarily authored by Diao Jun.
Day after day of drilling work seemed repetitive, but over time, new discoveries accumulated. Sure enough, in the following months, the Xi'an Geological Survey Center made new breakthroughs in their years-long exploration. Through deep drilling in the Muhu mining area, an additional 700-plus tons of manganese ore were discovered.
Like most exploration engineers in the project team, Diao Zhuo was busy every day. The work remained the same, but something felt off.
The main issue was—he missed Bayunye.
Her social media feed was extremely active, clearly detailing which routes she was leading and when. Before departure, if the group wasn't full, she could post the itinerary five times a day, with captions like "Ali North Route, one spot left, two vehicles departing together, taking you to discover the depths of Tibet" or "Mirror of the Sky, departing on the 18th, two spots left, sign up now! I and the internet-famous Chaka Salt Lake are waiting for you." It was so annoying that he once blocked her.
But he always unblocked her after a few days.
He often recalled every day the Rescue Team spent searching for Zou Kaigui's body in Qiangtang, even every song that played randomly, especially "South Hill, South." When the chorus played, the sandstorm outside the window raged fiercely, yet Bayunye slept peacefully, as if all was well with the world.
Today, after the meeting with the inspection leaders from the Geological Survey Bureau, they filed out of the conference room one after another. Diao Zhuo pushed open the window. Outside, the gray-brown mountains stood thick and towering, like the weathered eyes of an elderly person, gazing upon everything.
The wind blew in, scattering the progress reports on the manganese ore project across the conference table. He lit a cigarette, the tobacco scent rushing into his nostrils and leaving a slight bitterness on his tongue.
National Day was just a few days away. Checking Bayunye's itinerary, while others were on vacation, it was her peak business period. This time, her group was taking the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway, a 20-plus-day journey. All three vehicles were already full, and guests who couldn't take such a long vacation could return early from the Ali or Kashgar airports.
The poet Bei Dao once wrote, "A person's walking range is their world."
From this perspective, Bayunye's world was far broader and busier than most. His work was nowhere near as free and unrestrained as hers. The length of the ore belt determined how far his footsteps could go. She was like an eagle, soaring freely under the vast sky and clouds, while he was like a tree root—partly exposed above the ground, partly deeply buried beneath.
As he finished his cigarette, Diao Zhuo turned to look for an ashtray and saw several colleagues returning to the conference room after seeing off the leaders, tidying up the meeting materials. The ones with a craving extended their "claws" toward the refreshment fruit on the table, each grabbing a big apple to munch on while chattering away.
"I say, the progress lately has been so good, no wonder the leaders came to check in. When we were drilling in the Quaternary covered area, I had a hunch, hehe, and sure enough, we discovered two layers of concealed manganese ore bodies..."
"Maybe we'll even get ten-plus days off because of this, so I can go back and hug my chubby son.""Would they give a break at this critical juncture? Based on past practices, everything is kept confidential until the results are fully out. How could they possibly let a big mouth like you go home?"
"The saying goes, 'One generation plants the trees, another enjoys the shade.' Professor Rao mentioned in his earlier paper that there are manganese ore layers in the middle section of the Malkansu manganese belt. If those experts were still around, the discovery of the new Permian manganese-bearing horizon would have come even sooner."
"Wasn't their survey data about gemstone mines? I heard there was also information about gold mines in the other materials."
"Come on, I heard it was uranium ore."
"Ridiculous. And you call yourselves professionals."
"What kind of mines were those experts looking for back then? Surely they weren’t so mundane as to search for gold mines!"
"Your opinions don’t count. You’d have to ask Professor He Zhengren, or better yet, ask Diao Zhuo directly."
Diao Zhuo stubbed out his cigarette. "I don’t know."
Their discussion continued, but Diao Zhuo didn’t join in again.
Not long after, the notice for the break arrived.
"This internship was hard for my dad to arrange. We were supposed to go together—why are you still hesitating?"
Since they started dating, Xiao Ai and Zheming had never argued, but this time, Xiao Ai was genuinely upset. The company was an industry leader, and while graduate students could usually intern without exams, her father had pulled strings. The chances of both her and Zheming, as undergraduate students, securing positions after the internship were quite high.
She knew Zheming’s family wasn’t well-off, and his parents couldn’t arrange such an opportunity. When she shared the good news with him, instead of being thrilled, he looked troubled.
"It’s not that I don’t want to go—I just want to go later." Zheming smiled apologetically, hugging Xiao Ai. "Remember when we went to Tiger Leaping Gorge with Tian’en this summer? Self-guided hiking is so much more fun than following a tour group! You can stop wherever you want, take photos for as long as you like, and it’s thrilling! Tour groups only let you stand behind railings to look at the tiger-shaped rocks in the water, but we hiked all the way in, even crossing the most dangerous Middle Tiger Leaping!"
Xiao Ai recalled the treacherous mountain paths of Tiger Leaping Gorge and shuddered. "So what?"
"Tian’en wants to hike across a big desert." Zheming’s eyes gleamed with ambition. "I want to take on a big challenge before stepping into society. I’m afraid that once I’m stuck in a nine-to-five routine, I won’t have the chance. So I told him I’d go with him."
"...The Sahara?" Xiao Ai asked, horrified.
Zheming laughed, tapping her nose with his finger. "Silly, the Sahara is in Africa. Why would we go that far? Our country has plenty of deserts too."
"Oh..." Xiao Ai relaxed. She had traveled to Europe and Brazil with her parents on tour groups and had visited many places domestically. She always felt that traveling within the country was much safer than abroad, so hearing that her boyfriend only wanted to hike a domestic desert, she stopped sulking.
"Tian’en is really impressive," Zheming sighed.
Xiao Ai nodded in agreement. "Tian’en isn’t usually very talkative, but he’s surprisingly reliable. He knows so much—what’s edible, what can be used for what. He’s like a tour guide. You’d never guess it was his first time at Tiger Leaping Gorge."
Zheming pretended to be upset. "Aren’t you afraid I’ll get jealous, praising another man like that in front of me?"
"Stop it!" Xiao Ai playfully hit him, and the two tumbled into laughter.Mani stone piles dotted the landscape, and howling winds whipped through colorful prayer flags. At the edge of the Payang grassland, a massive mountain loomed, its exposed gray-brown peak draped like a cloak of ice and snow.
"Up ahead is the sacred mountain, Mount Kailash," Bayunye announced, pulling over. "We'll have lunch in the village."
"Wow!" the tourists in her vehicle cheered excitedly, some wielding DSLR cameras, others selfie sticks. Guests in Hippo's and Adian's vehicles even had drones, though they wouldn't be needed here yet.
Taqin was a small village with a single road cutting through its center. As more and more visitors came to pay homage to the sacred mountain, the place gradually grew livelier, though amenities remained limited—water and electricity were available only during set hours. Its saving grace was the backdrop of the fifth sacred peak of the Himalayas, Mount Naimona'nyi, which made every photo a masterpiece.
Bayunye was the last to step out, as usual covering her face tightly with a buff, hat, and sunglasses. Dressed in a loose-fitting windbreaker, she stood tall and straight, looking like a handsome young man.
"Master Ba, look—they're about to film another video," Hippo whispered, pointing at two female guests.
This group of tourists hailed from several provinces, with one man and two women traveling together. The women were reportedly influencers on a mukbang app, their eating videos racking up tens of thousands of views.
Of course, in this era of explosive online traffic, there were countless such "influencers" across various livestreaming platforms and apps.
"Eat and earn money"—Hippo, who dreamed of becoming an influencer himself, had been eagerly seeking advice from them throughout the journey. Bayunye often teased him, saying, "Look at their looks, then look at yours. Watching them eat is a pleasure; watching you eat just makes me want to punch you."
Hippo quietly retorted, "Master Ba, don't be fooled by how they look on camera. Without makeup, they're even uglier than you."
For that remark, Bayunye nearly beat him to death—he really had no tact.
The man didn't participate in the video shoots; he seemed to be the girls' manager, named Shi Mengzhi. Bayunye occasionally observed them and noticed their personas were quite successful, appealing to most young boys and girls who loved idolizing influencers these days.
For instance, the leader, Abu, followed a cute, cartoonish girl aesthetic, with false eyelashes that made her look like a doll and a habit of ending every sentence with a "meow." The other girl, Aishuai, was tall and dressed in masculine attire, sporting a trendy shark-cut hairstyle popular among stylish young men. Her androgynous style truly blurred gender lines.
Since registering on the mukbang app, they had named themselves the "Bu Lin Bu Lin Foodie Squad." Perhaps due to limited sponsorship funds, they currently filmed only domestically, livestreaming in areas with good signal and recording videos for editing in places with poor connectivity.
To attract attention and compete with other mukbang creators for views, they loved livestreaming themselves eating various local delicacies in unique locations. Their most-viewed "work" was filmed during the Ghost Festival, where they peeled apples to make salad among a cluster of wild graves, deliberately breaking the peels several times.
For this trip, these individuals had no specific requirements for the itinerary but insisted on being taken to try as many unusual foods as possible.They imitated the locals' way of eating tsampa, though their attempts were rather clumsy. Bayunye could tell that Xiao Pei and Ai Shuai weren’t used to it at all, yet they chewed with exaggerated relish. To maintain their personas and promote their sponsors, they fed each other the provided drinks, occasionally exclaiming in feigned delight over the taste, creating a scene of harmonious enjoyment.
Bayunye recalled a few months ago when they were starving in the Uninhabited Area and finally managed to buy a lump of tsampa. Even though none of them were accustomed to it, they swallowed it down hastily. The memory brought a smile to her face. She was playful and forgetful—once something passed, it was gone, and any love or hatred from that time felt like fleeting clouds.
The only thing she remembered was Diao Zhuo biting her ear before leaving and saying, "Remember me."
Of course she had to remember him. He was, after all, the man she had taken a liking to at first sight—like the rugged off-road vehicles she adored, combining speed and comfort while satisfying every desire for control and being controlled. At the time, she lay lazily and replied, "I’ll remember. If you bring your girlfriend along on my tours in the future, I’ll give you a discount."
"Thinking too far ahead," he gritted his teeth and said, giving her butt a slap. "Would you really give a discount?"
Stung by the pain, she snapped angrily, "I’ll break your legs!"
It wasn’t funny at all.
She didn’t know if they’d have a chance to meet again, so she didn’t think about it often.
As for Brother Long, he later enthusiastically joined the volunteer ranks of Beidou Rescue. He had just returned to Chengdu after completing training in Shanghai. Coincidentally, a college student had gone missing while climbing Lingyan Mountain in Dujiangyan, and Brother Long joined the Sichuan branch in the search, successfully rescuing the student. He was particularly proud of it.
He actually had more opportunities to see Diao Zhuo.
"Get some rest early," Bayunye reminded them. "Don’t eat too much tsampa. You’re not used to it, and it might bloat your stomach and cause pain."
"It’s fine. At worst, I’ll eat it and then throw it up," Ai Shuai said.
"You really go through a lot," Bayunye shook her head helplessly.
"Thank you, Master Ba! We’ll be careful, meow!" A Bu said, even making a cat-paw gesture and waving it beside her cheek.
What the tourists did after getting off the bus was their own business. Bayunye didn’t interfere much and took the other guests to a Chengdu restaurant for a meal. Several guests from Zhejiang mentioned that when they first came to Tibet, they found it too dry—their noses were filled with blood clots every day, and no matter how much water they drank, they still felt thirsty. Even with premium West Lake Longjing tea on hand, their mouths remained parched.
"In Tibet, you should drink butter tea," Bayunye explained. "What you drink in a place is determined by nature itself."
The Zhejiang guests were half-convinced and asked if butter tea and sweet tea were the same thing. Just as Bayunye was about to explain, she saw the food streamers finish their shoot and take seats at the empty table. Having witnessed their actual eating habits over the past few days, Bayunye smoothly told the waiter to boil a few plates of plain vegetables for them—no oil, no salt.
"Huh? Can they get full eating that? If they’re not used to it, we have other stuff too~" The waiter, speaking with a Sichuan-accented Mandarin, thought he had misheard and asked in surprise.
"They don’t need to get full," she waved her hand, signaling the waiter to just do as told without further questions.She usually had no time to watch popular live streams of influencers singing or eating. On this trip, bringing along these two influencers, whether they truly loved food or not was beside the point—they could vomit out about two-thirds of what they ate afterward. Just watching it made her shudder, feeling like what they were throwing up wasn’t food but their very lives.
"Brother Hippo, could you buy us some sweet tea, meow?" Abi asked.
"Right away." Hippo eagerly got up and soon returned with a pot.
Bayunye mimicked Abi’s tone, "Brother Hippo, could you pour me a cup, meow?"
"Get lost," Hippo growled in reply.
"What a jerk!" She shot him a glare.
"Master Ba," Shimengzhi sat down with a smile. "Are there any particularly explosive spots along this route, like in Man vs. Wild?"
Bayunye poured herself some sweet tea. "In my opinion, the scenery along the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway is among the best in the country. The whole journey is full of highlights."
"We want to find those especially mysterious, off-limits places to film videos. The views when we get back would absolutely skyrocket," Shimengzhi said, squinting as he imagined a bright future. "We thought about going to Sertar before, but those girls absolutely refused."
Bayunye understood what he meant and replied with a forced smile, "Heh, if you dare to do an eating broadcast near a sky burial site, you’d be lucky to survive finishing the meal. Better find some scenic spots to eat and film instead. It’s much more pleasant, and I’m sure netizens don’t want to watch you risk your lives."
Shimengzhi sighed helplessly. "The competition is so fierce. Without something unique, who would pay attention? We need traffic! Men dressing as women and putting on lipstick, women dressing as men and shaving—that’s what gets views. It’s a youth-driven, luck-based career. One day, if you suddenly go viral, you’re set for years. Otherwise..."
She chuckled, half-jokingly saying, "Wait a few more days. There’s a place on National Highway 219 called Dead Man’s Gulch, at an altitude of 5,200 meters. The wind howls like ghosts, and some have even seen will-o’-the-wisps. If you really want to go big, why not spend a night there and film a segment?"
Shimengzhi was very interested. "Is it really that terrifying?"
"Peeing at Tianshan Daban, bathing in Bangong Lake, sleeping in Dead Man’s Gulch—ever heard of that?"
"...What does that mean?"
"The first is dangerous, the second is cold, and the third.Seeing everyone’s eager expressions, Bayunye said mysteriously: "Right after liberation, a Kuomintang cavalry division fled from Xinjiang to Ali and slept in Dead Man’s Gulch for a night." By the next morning, almost all of them were dead."
Shimengzhi gasped in amazement.
Bayunye waved her hand, no longer trying to scare them. "The oxygen level in Dead Man’s Gulch is less than 50% of that at sea level. Back then, technology was underdeveloped, and they didn’t understand altitude sickness. Starting from Yecheng in Xinjiang and suddenly ascending to over 5,000 meters—no one could handle it, let alone sleeping there overnight. We don’t plan to stay there, so you don’t have to worry."
Shimengzhi was delighted and immediately turned to whisper with the girls. Bayunye shook her head and muttered to herself, "Being an influencer is really tough."
Hippo lowered his voice and said, "If you were willing to wear less and act coquettishly, you’d be more popular than them without having to dress as a man and shave."
Bayunye imitated Abi again, making a beckoning cat gesture. "Like this, meow?"Hippo looked like he was about to vomit, "You'd better just stay a rough guy!"
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