Аrоund siх in the evеning, thе sunlight wаs still bright аs thе convoу drоve through thе vast grasslаnds аnd mоuntаins, еntеring Lazi Cоunty as planned. Bеtwеen thе two rоаds stооd a раrtiсulаrlу eуe-catсhing stаtue оf four Tibetаn peоple singing аnd dаnсing with musiсаl instrumеnts. Тhe words "Wеlсomе tо Lаzi—Hоme оf Duiхie" werе сarvеd in red on the bаse, refleсting thе jоy аnd hospitalitу оf thе Tibеtаn реорle еvеrywhеre.
Аfter a dаy оf gеtting tо know еасh оther, everуone had grown morе familiar, and thе atmosрherе аt dinner wаs even more harmonious. Since Bayunye mostly led tourists, she couldn’t help but explain what Duixie was, even tapping the table and singing a section of "Lazi Duixie." No one understood the lyrics, but they found it novel and clapped along to the rhythm. Her outgoing personality made her sing even more passionately, swaying her head from side to side, her eyes unusually bright and lively.
Diao Zhuo sat diagonally across from her, the smoke from his cigarette blurring his vision. At noon, she had seemed like the worst of the highlands, but now she didn’t seem quite so bad.
Ye Xun was someone who never settled for less when it came to food and accommodation, so that night they checked into the most luxurious Ibis Hotel in Lazi County. Though it couldn’t compare to big cities, it was clean and comfortable enough.
Next to the hotel was a large supermarket. Before it got dark, everyone went in to browse, looking for yogurt or biscuits to snack on at night or to fill their stomachs in the morning. Bayunye was holding some biscuits and ham sausages when she noticed Ye Xun sneaking off to the checkout counter. She glanced over and saw him take a small box of condoms from the shelf, urging the cashier to hurry up.
Hah... Bayunye chuckled. Ye Xun kept complaining about his Altitude Reaction, but when it came to the one thing you really shouldn’t do when first arriving at high altitude, he didn’t hesitate at all. She looked elsewhere and saw Xiao Zi leaning against a shelf, engrossed in some game. A male boss and a female assistant—it was a relationship prone to ambiguity.
At Ye Xun’s age, he was probably already married, maybe with a child in middle school. Bayunye had led many such guests before—wealthy middle-aged men bringing young, beautiful girls to Tibet to cleanse their souls, learning to prostrate like Tibetans in front of the Jokhang Temple, praying for their businesses to thrive and their wives to live shorter lives.
Lost in thought, she dropped a few items from her arms. As she bent down to pick them up, the rest of the things tumbled to the ground. She couldn’t help but curse under her breath and crouched to gather them one by one.
A pair of camel-colored high-top waterproof boots appeared in her line of sight.
She looked up.
From this angle, Diao Zhuo looked as strong and handsome as a Greek god in an oil painting.
She didn’t expect him to kindly help pick things up, but to her surprise, he used his foot to scatter the snacks even more, making it even harder to gather them.
"Hey, you..." Bayunye gritted her teeth, but when she saw the slight upward curve of his lips, her anger immediately faded.
Forget it. He’d been at a disadvantage with her earlier today, so wanting to get back at her was understandable. She smiled and slowly picked everything up again.
At the checkout, they stood in line one after the other. She saw Diao Zhuo reach toward the shelf filled with boxes of condoms. She froze, her eyes widening, her mind filled with inappropriate associations. She couldn’t help but glance back at Xiao Zi... With that thought, the things in her hands clattered to the ground once more.Reaching over the top shelf to grab a pack of gum from the second row, Diao Zhuo turned and stared at her with a puzzled expression, as if asking, "Are you doing this on purpose?"
Only then did Bayunye breathe a sigh of relief. She once again picked up the items from the floor with a pained expression. "Don’t just stand there like a statue—give me a hand, will you?"
"So you can tell men and women apart?" he retorted, unmoving.
Hah, still holding a grudge. Bayunye chuckled inwardly as she knelt on the floor to gather the scattered items. Suddenly, a shadow fell over her. She saw him crouch down and thought, "This guy has some manners after all." But instead of helping, he simply tore open the gum, shoved a piece into her mouth, and stood up to leave.
Bayunye chewed the gum, the mint flavor refreshing her senses. She blew a few bubbles and happily went to check out.
A little past eleven, Bayunye was dozing off when Xiao Zi finally returned to the room. She headed straight for the bathroom, and soon the sound of running water filled the air. Amid the splashing, there seemed to be muffled sobs. When she emerged after her shower, Bayunye glanced at her and noticed her eyes were slightly red.
"Want some yogurt?" Bayunye asked, not moving an inch.
Xiao Zi shook her head, her expression neither happy nor sad. She recalled Ye Xun’s warning after he had finished with her earlier—"That Master Ba is sharp. Stay with her, say what you should, and keep quiet about what you shouldn’t."
Bayunye turned and looked at her intently, studying her, scrutinizing her.
She seemed fresh out of the ivory tower, the scholarly type, unlike the flirtatious mistresses Bayunye had seen before. She probably wasn’t willing but had her reasons. During the day, she sometimes carried a small camera, filming Ye Xun as he complained about his Altitude Reaction, the empty road and grasslands ahead, and the road signs marking the altitude.
"Master Ba..." she hesitated, sensing that Bayunye knew what she had just gone through. The company had plenty of attractive and fiery female employees, but she wasn’t particularly outstanding—usually low-key, honest, and plainly dressed. Yet for some reason, Ye Xun had singled her out. From verbal harassment when she first joined the company to physical advances, and now to forced possession in recent encounters, he had grown increasingly brazen. She had a thousand thoughts of reporting him or seeking revenge, but she held back—partly because she didn’t want to lose this stable, respectable job in the eyes of her parents and others, and partly because she felt too ashamed to speak up.
Bayunye stretched lazily, her face returning to its usual playful, irreverent expression.
"Oxygen... Mr. Ye said he’ll need more tomorrow."
"No problem," she replied without hesitation. She had as much of that stuff as he wanted.
Xiao Zi pursed her lips.
"He doesn’t have Altitude Reaction at all," Bayunye cut straight to the point.
Xiao Zi still wore an awkward yet polite smile, appearing somewhat timid and submissive. She seemed like someone who was soft-natured and didn’t want to offend anyone. Some men specifically targeted girls like her.
"Enough is enough," Bayunye said. "If you really want to film a documentary about a philanthropist organizing a search in the Uninhabited Area, the focus should be on finding the person you’re looking for, not on the hardships along the way."
Xiao Zi jolted upright like a small animal whose tail had been stepped on. "Of course we have to find them!""Don't get your hopes up too high." Bayunye immediately poured cold water on the idea. "It's your first time in Tibet, and you were amazed by cooking dumplings in a pressure cooker. Do you know how vast Qiangtang is? It's China's largest Uninhabited Area! Once someone strays from the planned route, there's no telling where they might end up. If he really collapsed within the planned route, the previous two searches would have brought him back long ago."
"But Mr. Ye said the person must be found," Xiao Zi said nervously.
Bayunye didn't want to engage in meaningless arguments with her anymore, so she changed her approach: "Does your Mr. Ye hope Zou Kaigui is dead or alive?"
Xiao Zi was taken aback, her eyes darting around. "Of course he hopes he's safe and sound."
Bayunye deliberately said, "Based on my experience, Zou Kaigui is definitely dead. This time, if we can bring back his bones, it'll be sheer luck. Understand?"
"Ah... well..." Xiao Zi's level was still far below Bayunye's, and she immediately revealed the truth, her eyes showing no trace of regret—even a hint of satisfaction. "Even if it's just bones, they should be properly brought back for burial."
Bayunye finally understood: Ye Xun knew better than anyone that Zou Kaigui couldn't possibly be alive. If the previous two searches without his involvement were genuinely about saving a life, this search he initiated was solely to find Zou Kaigui's remains and bring them back.
As for whether they were truly being brought back for burial, only Ye Xun himself knew.
Zou Kaigui was just a pitiful father searching tirelessly for his daughter. Even if Ye Xun had sponsored him, was he really worth such a costly search? Bayunye secretly felt that Ye Xun's purpose for joining the Rescue Team into the Uninhabited Area to search for someone was far more complicated than mere charity.
Diao Zhuo had just finished showering, his bare body glistening with a thin layer of moisture. Their group had an odd number of people, with two sharing a room, leaving him alone.
His phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, his expression darkening, brows furrowed tightly.
"Hello."
"I've thought about it for a long time and finally mustered the courage to call you," a woman's voice came through the receiver.
"Take your courage back," he replied curtly.
"I know we probably won't meet again in the future, it's just..."
"Then why are you contacting me?"
"It's just... I wanted to sincerely apologize to you, and then I..."
"The signal here is bad. That's it." Diao Zhuo had no intention of continuing the conversation. He wasn't heartbroken—why should he accept so many apologies?
A clean break was best.
"Are you..."
"Hanging up." Diao Zhuo didn't give her a chance to expand on the topic and ended the call directly.
He usually spent months at a time on project sites, and sometimes participated in rescue missions that kept him away for ten days to half a month. A clean break with exes, with no further interference, was his principle. His buddies said that although he never lacked women around him and was often pursued, he should still invest more effort in relationships to make them last.
He said he had no time.
His buddies then said he had no time because he hadn't met someone he truly fancied.
In these times, justice was often delayed, let alone a woman who fancied him as much as he fancied her?
He pulled out a cigarette and was looking for a lighter when his phone rang again. Irritated, he grabbed it, only to see the caller ID flashing with the name he hadn't had time to change yet: "Master Ba."
He answered the call, but she spoke first.
"Are you asleep?"
"I am."
"If you're asleep, how can you answer the phone?""Do you need something?"—That one sentence alone shows why some steel-straight men manage to stay single all on their own.
"Open the door."
Diao Zhuo glanced at the wall clock—midnight. According to plan, they were supposed to get up at 6 a.m. tomorrow.
Why think about waking up now? He took a deep breath. "Can't it wait until a phone call?"
"It can. But it's freezing out here."
To Diao Zhuo, she wasn’t exactly a wolf or tiger. He threw on a shirt and pants, took two steps to the door, and pulled it open. Sure enough, she was standing there, wrapped in a black-and-yellow windbreaker that made her look like a food delivery rider, stomping her feet repeatedly. She really was cold.
"I didn’t order takeout."
"Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t." She looked up and met his gaze. "Try it if you don’t believe me."
He ignored her.
"Go on, call one." She got worked up. "Louder."
He glanced up, scanning her from head to toe, noticing she was barefoot in slippers, her toes slightly upturned, painted with bright orange nail polish, with a tiny mole on the side of her left big toe. The wind outside was fierce, tousling her hair—half stuck to her cheeks, the other half flapping like a swallow’s wing. No wonder she was hopping from the cold.
He reached out, pulled her inside, and shut the door.
She shivered and hopped in place a few times, seeming to warm up. He walked straight to a chair and sat down, legs apart, one hand holding an unlit cigarette, the other resting on his knees, back straight as he watched her—like a boss waiting for a work report.
"Don’t you think Ye Xun and Zou Kaigui are both suspicious?" she asked, squinting.
"What do you mean?" He paused, then asked a second question. "You… know Zou Kaigui?"
"No, but… I just read all the reports about him carefully." Bayunye had a habit: no matter how many questions people asked, she always answered only the last one.
Diao Zhuo gestured forward with his hand. "The floor is yours."
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