“Brother, is something weighing on your mind?” Li Miaomiao leaned in to study Jiang Ye.
Jiang Ye turned his face away and said flatly, “No.”
“There definitely is.” Li Miaomiao immediately sensed something was wrong. “Did the police send bad news? Are you going to look for Mom?”
Jiang Ye frowned. “Li Miaomiao…”
She cut him off. “Don’t worry. I absolutely won’t drag you down. Besides, I’ve practiced kendo.” She grabbed the broom. “If we really get into a fight, I might even be better than you.”
Jiang Ye shook his head. “But you’re afraid.”
“I won’t be afraid anymore!” Li Miaomiao’s eyes reddened all at once. “Dad is gone, and Mom left too. You can’t suddenly disappear like them. You have to take me with you.”
That night, after Li Miaomiao fell asleep, Jiang Ye slipped into the bedroom and secretly took a few pairs of underwear and changes of clothes from the wardrobe. Once she fell asleep, she was like a dead pig; even thunder could not wake her. Jiang Ye stood beside her bed, bent down, and tucked the blanket around her.
That place was too dangerous. He could not take her with him.
He left that very night, holed up at the airport for most of the night, and brushed his teeth in an airport bathroom in the morning. There was no one inside. He washed his face and saw Liu Bei’s ghost reflected in the mirror. She stayed quietly in the corner, her rolled-white eyes seeming to stare at him.
He ignored her, lowered his head, and unlocked his phone. Li Miaomiao had sent him countless messages asking where he was.
Argos: [I’m at a friend’s place gaming.]
Li Meowmeow: [You don’t have any damn friends. Tell the truth. Where did you go?]
He stopped replying to Li Miaomiao. He sent a WeChat message to his guitar teacher asking for a few days off, picked up his bag, went through security, boarded the plane, sat down, fastened his seat belt, and finally sent Li Miaomiao one last WeChat message.
Argos: [I’ll come back once I’m done. Don’t worry.]
He was just about to turn off his phone when it suddenly vibrated. The caller ID showed Jin Feize.
He blocked Jin Feize’s number and turned the phone off directly.
Jiang Ye first went to the provincial capital. Following the route Xiao Liu had mentioned, he took a train to Yuxi. He rested in Yuxi for one night, changed to a new SIM card, then took a long-distance bus to a small town called Gasa.
After arriving in Gasa, Jiang Ye asked around everywhere about Taisui Village. To his astonishment, none of the local residents had ever heard of that place name. The location Xiao Liu had mentioned ended at Gasa. The only large mountain nearby was the Xinu Mountains to the southwest.
The file on the 2005 Taisui Village incident had mentioned that Taisui Village was a settlement deep in the mountains, sparsely populated and almost cut off from the outside world. From that, Taisui Village was most likely inside the mountains. But most of the Xinu Mountains were undeveloped primeval forest and uninhabited land. Without a local guide leading the way, it would be very hard for Jiang Ye to enter the mountains alone. When the time came, he might get lost in the dense mountain forest before he ever found Taisui Village.
Jiang Ye returned to his hotel room, spread out the saucer spirit letter chart, and prepared to ask Liu Bei how to get to Taisui Village.
“Saucer spirit, saucer spirit, please appear.”
Liu Bei appeared across from him and shook her head.
She did not know how to get there either.
He thought for a while, put away the letter chart, and went to Wanfang Hotel, the highest-rated hotel in town, to ask whether any outsiders had checked in recently.
“Sir, would you like to book a room?” the woman at the front desk asked with a smile. “I’m very sorry, but we can’t disclose our guests’ information to other people.”
Jiang Ye paused, then said, “My brother-in-law ran away with his mistress and took all the family’s money. Right now, my sister is giving birth in the hospital, and the whole family is looking for him. I heard he’s hiding here. Please help me.”
He showed her a photo of Shen Duo that he had screenshotted from Capital University’s official website. “Have you seen him?”
The woman at the front desk gasped. “Something like that happened? He’s so handsome. I didn’t expect him to be that kind of person.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I have.” The woman at the front desk instantly became extremely enthusiastic. “He stayed here a week ago. Look, 302. That was his room.”
“Do you know where he went?”
The woman shook her head. “That, I’m not sure about. He didn’t come alone. There were five or six people with him, carrying all kinds of bags. Was your sister’s money inside? Oh, right.” She suddenly remembered something. “He asked me whether Gasa still had any old hunters who were still alive.”
“Are there any?”
“I told him Mojiang Village might have one.” The woman asked, “Your brother-in-law really knows how to pick a place. Hiding out here is way too remote. Eh… wait, that’s not right. I remember there weren’t any women among the people traveling with him. Where was his mistress?”
“Thank you for helping me.”
Jiang Ye shouldered his bag and turned to leave.
He went to the supermarket and bought some dry food. The ice axe, hardshell jacket, compass, satellite phone, and other things he had bought online two days ago had also arrived. Besides those, he also got himself a nail gun.
His backpack grew many times heavier. At three in the afternoon, he boarded the minibus bound for Mojiang Village.
The vehicle carried him farther and farther from human habitation. The road was narrow and dilapidated. The buildings on both sides grew fewer and fewer, while the forest gradually thickened. When the mountain wind blew past, green waves heaved and churned, crest piling upon crest.
The bus kept jolting. The person sitting in front of Jiang Ye got carsick and vomited, and an indescribable sour stink spread through the bus. Jiang Ye opened the window and gazed at the enormous mountain range towering into the sky in the distance.
He could not help thinking that many, many years ago, had Mom also traveled down this road?
They reached Mojiang Village a little after seven in the evening. Everyone who got off was local, each carrying a hoe or shovel and returning home, leaving Jiang Ye the only outsider standing at the village entrance.
He randomly stopped someone, gave him a cigarette and twenty yuan. “Sir, did a group of outsiders come to Mojiang Village a week ago? They should have been dressed about like me.”
The man’s face was dark, like a dried slice of sweet potato. He looked Jiang Ye up and down, then pointed to a stilt house on the hillside.
The stilt house stood at the end of the slope, some distance away from the other cement houses clustered together in the mountain village. Raised on its high stilts against the slanting sun, it was entirely black, almost merging with the deep mountain forest.
“Jijival,” the man said. He did not seem very good at Mandarin. “Find him.”
“You mean those outsiders came to find Jijival?”
The man nodded.
Jiang Ye confirmed again, “Jijival is the oldest old hunter here?”
The man nodded again, took two more cigarettes from the pack in Jiang Ye’s hand, shouldered his hoe, and left.
Jiang Ye carried his bag up the hillside. After walking for ten minutes, he arrived before the gloomy stilt house.
The house was an old-fashioned bamboo structure. At the very bottom were two pitch-black pigs, covered in filth and stinking to the heavens. Green vines crawled all over the side of the stilt house. If not for the several gleaming iron basins placed beside the well, along with three greasy sets of bowls and chopsticks, Jiang Ye would almost have thought the house had long since been abandoned.
He walked to the front door and saw three people dressed like mountaineers sitting beside the fire pit.
So before him, someone else had already arrived here.
Jiang Ye stood in the doorway, staring at them as they stared back. The one closest to the door stood out the most. He had a high nose and deep-set eyes, and his eyes were a light amber-brown. For some reason, Jiang Ye found him familiar. He seemed to look a lot like some male celebrity.
He nodded at Jiang Ye in greeting. “Jijival isn’t home. He went out to pick someone up.”
“You’re…” One of the others lifted an oil lamp and leaned closer to look at Jiang Ye’s face. “Little Ye?”
The man before him looked to be in his forties. He wore black-framed glasses, and there was a refined, scholarly air in his eyes and brows. Jiang Ye froze for a moment, then recognized the man in front of him. “Uncle Bai.”
He was one of Jiang Ruochu’s former colleagues at South China University, Professor Bai Nianci of the history institute.
“Little Ye, why are you here?” Bai Nianci asked.
“I…” If he told the truth, Bai Nianci probably would not believe him. Besides, those things were not suitable to tell outsiders. Jiang Ye paused, then said, “My mom came here before. She’s missing. I thought if I came to the place she once visited, I might find some clues.”
Bai Nianci sighed. “You, really. Running all the way out here alone. You’ll make people worry. Does your family know?”
Without changing expression, Jiang Ye lied. “They know.”
Bai Nianci introduced the other two people to Jiang Ye. “These two are professors from the Western Yunnan Geological Research Institute. This is Professor Huo Ang, and this is Professor Yilale. They’re entering the mountains for a geological survey. I happen to be on leave recently, and when I heard they were coming here, I tagged along to take a look.”
He pushed up his glasses. “Your mother showed me her papers and survey records. The last place she came to was Taisui Village around here. She spent the last several years studying Western Yunnan. My field doesn’t involve this area, but I’ve always been curious. What exactly made her so obsessed?”
Jiang Ye’s expression sharpened. “You read my mother’s papers?”
Bai Nianci nodded with a grave expression. “Your mother mentioned a mysterious faith in Western Yunnan. She firmly believed that the actual birth of that faith occurred far earlier than civilizations elsewhere. Only, over thousands of years of evolution, it merged and seeped into the region’s mainstream civilizations, changing its form and appearance. Little Ye, you should know your mother was dismissed by the university, right? Don’t blame the university. The things your mother argued were simply unimaginable. It was understandable that academia criticized her. But I had to come see it with my own eyes. I knew your mother for many years. Her scholarship was rigorous, and she was upright in character. She was absolutely not a fraud spouting nonsense.”
Jiang Ye fell silent for a moment, then said, “Thank you.”
Bai Nianci could be counted as his mother’s backup suitor, someone who had stayed by his mother’s side for decades. Whenever his mother had anything go wrong at work or anything unhappy happen in life, she would use him as a trash can, dragging him home to drink with her until deep into the night. Maybe they had even slept together while Jiang Ye was sound asleep.
When he was little, Jiang Ye had once thought Bai Nianci would become his stepfather. Perhaps Bai Nianci had thought so too.
No one expected Li Yi’an to drop from the sky and carry off the beauty.
After that, Bai Nianci rarely appeared before Jiang Ye anymore. Counting it up, they had not seen each other for several years.
Unexpectedly, Bai Nianci was still paying attention to his mother’s movements.
He was a good person. Jiang Ye did not want him to end up in trouble like Shen Duo.
Jiang Ye said solemnly, “Uncle Bai, you should stop thinking about my mother and go back.”
Bai Nianci instantly became very embarrassed. His pale face flushed red, and even his hands grew awkward. “You child, what are you saying?”
Huo Ang, who was smoking off to the side, burst out laughing. “You’re still young. You don’t understand. Let him be. As for you, the Xinu Mountains aren’t like other scenic areas. This place has never been developed. Coming here alone is too bold. Don’t you need to go to school?”
“I finished the college entrance exam,” Jiang Ye said.
“Kid, I advise you to go home. This place isn’t an amusement park,” Yilale said from the side.
Jiang Ye shook his head. “Sorry. I have to enter the mountains.”
Bai Nianci said to Huo Ang, “Let’s take him with us. I’m afraid something will happen if he’s alone.”
Jiang Ye hesitated. Even Shen Duo had gone missing inside. Could these people handle it? Maybe he should warn them.
Huo Ang was even more hesitant than he was. “Taking a kid is such a hassle. It’s not like we’re going on an outing…”
Yilale’s expression was serious. “Professor Bai, if what you told us earlier is true, it really isn’t suitable to bring this child into the mountains.”
Bai Nianci made a gesture at them. Jiang Ye did not see clearly what it meant, but Huo Ang’s attitude changed at once.
Huo Ang came over and held out his hand to Jiang Ye. “Kid, Professor Yilale and I aren’t entering the mountains for the first time. It’s just that the situation in the place we’re going this time is extremely complicated. I’ll say this first: it won’t be fun inside. If you want to go in with us, you have to listen to us.”
He shook Jiang Ye’s hand. The skin at the web between his thumb and forefinger and along both sides of his index finger was rough, scraping against the flesh of Jiang Ye’s hand.
Calluses.
And calluses formed from holding guns for a long time.
Jiang Ye did not let anything show. His gaze drifted behind Yilale and Huo Ang. Their backpacks were even larger than Jiang Ye’s, and he did not know what was packed inside. Both men had well-proportioned, powerful muscles. The one named Yilale had the look of a local ethnic minority. The one named Huo Ang was at least 190 centimeters tall, with a buzz cut and features cut like a knife. He looked like a wild leopard in the jungle, and there was a natural, intimidating ruthlessness in the corners of his eyes and brows.
If they said these two were fitness trainers, Jiang Ye would believe it. If they said they were geology scholars, Jiang Ye really could not.
Bai Nianci had read Mom’s papers, so he very likely knew some of Taisui Village’s secrets. He had probably hired two mercenaries to protect him on the way into the mountains. That gesture Bai Nianci made just now probably meant “more money.”
If that was the case, moving with them really was safer than fighting alone.
Jiang Ye nodded. “Okay.”
Huo Ang patted his shoulder, then went back to the doorway to smoke. Jiang Ye sat down beside the fire pit to warm himself and quietly waited for Jijival to return.
Huo Ang was already on his third cigarette. He looked out at the night and complained, “Why hasn’t that old man come back yet? We paid him so much money, and there isn’t even a late-night snack.”
Yilale placated him. “Forget it, forget it. Put up with it. We’ll sleep early.”
The moment he finished speaking, footsteps came from outside the stilt house.
Jiang Ye stood by the window and looked out. In the forest, one tall figure and one short figure appeared. The tall one was slender, and his outline was unbelievably familiar.
Just then, Jiang Ye’s phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number.
He answered. A light, shallow breathing sound came from the other end.
In the pitch-black night, the tall figure drew closer and closer. The stilt house’s lantern lit up his beautiful face.
Jiang Ye felt as if he had seen a devil. He almost stopped breathing.
“That young man is seriously good-looking,” Huo Ang sighed. “What the hell did he grow up eating?”
Jin Feize stopped beneath the lantern, lifted his head, and met Jiang Ye’s gaze inside the stilt house, his phone held to his ear.
His smile was warm and gentle as he said, “Little Ye, you broke your promise again. How should I punish you this time?”