Zhou Hui and Chu He, along with their tag-along brother-in-law Zhang Shun, set off from Beijing for Tibet that very night. The next day, they arrived in Lhasa and then traveled onwards to Wangjia Snow Mountain—the place where the K7350 train had mysteriously disappeared.
Flying into Tibet is more likely to trigger altitude sickness than taking the train. Zhang Shun had thought his brother’s battered body would surely not withstand it, but to his surprise, he was the first to feel dizzy. Young Master Zhang spent a good while heaving into a trash can at the airport before he was dragged away by Zhou Hui, who held him by the scruff of his neck. As he was being dragged, Zhou Hui smiled apologetically at the airport security guards who had rushed over. “Sorry, sorry, this kid’s been a bit slow since he was little. Can’t be helped, he was the troublesome brother-in-law that came with the wife…”
The delicate and frail Young Master Zhang took a car from Lhasa to Rilang. Along the way, he lay on his brother’s lap, his breath as faint as a thread, much to Zhou Hui’s displeasure. Zhou Hui’s sharp tongue was no joke. He took every opportunity to throw in a few sarcastic remarks. “How’s it going, stupid kid? Told you not to come, but you insisted. Now you know it’s not easy being an artsy youth, huh?”
Zhang Shun: “Shut up…”
“Tsk tsk, what are we going to do with you, little indie kid? How about I find a backpacker’s hostel and dump you there? Who knows, in a couple of years, you might have a litter of kids with some indie girl from the hostel, hahahaha—”
Zhang Shun: “Just shut up…”
Zhou Hui, gloating, wiggled his waist in imitation of Li Hu. “Come hit me, come on, hit me!”
Zhang Shun didn’t even have the strength to lift a little finger. He just felt like he’d been screwed over a thousand times by a stampeding divine beast.
It wasn’t until they reached Rilang that Zhang Shun realized he hadn’t been screwed over by a divine beast, but by an elephant.
Rilang was already a very remote little place that even backpackers didn’t visit. The local train only stopped once every three days. After the K7350 disappeared, the local Tibetans believed it was due to the wrath of the gods and Buddhas, and they flocked to the railway tracks to kowtow and worship. The local government, fearing trouble, simply rerouted the train to bypass the area.
So Zhou Hui rented a beat-up second-hand car from a local, bought food and water, and prepared to drive from Rilang towards the previous station, searching for any suspicious traces along the railway line.
The mountain roads were rugged, and while the railway line was better, the rattling old clunker they were in was incredibly bumpy, and the brakes were faulty. Zhang Shun couldn’t even press the brake pedal down, so Zhou Hui and Chu He had to take turns driving while he continued to lie in the back seat, vomiting his guts out.
What bruised his ego even more was that Chu He, whom he had expected to collapse, showed no signs of abnormality at all. His face, already pale in Beijing, remained pale on the Tibetan plateau, neither improving nor worsening. It was as if he were sick in his own world, his physical condition completely unaffected by the external environment.
In the evening, they arrived at a plain at the foot of Wangjia Snow Mountain. Chu He got out of the car with Zhou Hui to search the nearby two kilometers of railway tracks on foot, while Zhang Shun could only sit whining in the back of the car, cleaning up his own vomit and resentfully starting a fire to cook.
An hour later, Zhou Hui and Chu He returned. Zhou Hui had the same lazy, slightly playful look as always. Seeing Zhang Shun, he smiled and asked, “Yo, brother-in-law is cooking! What’s this, tsampa porridge?”
The boiling point is low on the plateau, so no matter how much it boils, it never cooks through. Zhang Shun tasted the noodle porridge and said angrily, “I don’t care, we’ll just eat it like this!”
Zhou Hui said, “Hey—no, no, add some more ghee for your brother, to replenish his strength…”
Chu He got out of the car, clutching a handful of red and green shrub branches. He patted Zhang Shun on the shoulder. “I’ll do it.”
His eyes seemed watery, and the corners were faintly red, almost imperceptibly. His hair was slightly messy. Dressed in a black jacket and pants, his legs looked especially long when he sat down. His collar, hem, and pant legs were covered in dried grass. Seeing him like this, Zhang Shun asked casually, “What were you doing, bro? You’re covered in grass.”
Zhou Hui leaned against the car door, his collar half-open to reveal a strong chest. The corner of his mouth curled into a wicked smile. “M-hm-hm-hm—”
Chu He’s cheeks were flushed, but his face was expressionless. He took the pot off the fire and held it in his hands. A moment later, a faint red glow appeared in his palms, and the noodle porridge began to boil more vigorously.
“I picked some rhodiola for you,” he finally said, answering a different question after a long, awkward silence. “I’ll boil it for you to drink later.”
Zhang Shun was simple-minded and didn’t notice anything amiss. Chu He served everyone a bowl of tsampa porridge, and his attention was immediately diverted. He took it and buried his head in it, slurping like a little pig.
Young Master Zhang had been vomiting all day and his stomach was empty. He fought with Zhou Hui over the large pot of tsampa. Zhou Hui, surprisingly, lost the food fight to his brother-in-law. Annoyed, he lit a cigarette and walked away. Zhang Shun, satisfied, rubbed his stomach and lay down to play dead again. He saw Chu He go to the river to wash the pot, then fetch more water and begin to boil the rhodiola juice.
As evening fell, the sky darkened, filled with countless stars. In the distance, the Lhasa River, a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo, flowed silently through the plain, like a silver ribbon under the vast canopy of the sky, rushing towards the distant Nagqu.
The bonfire crackled. Chu He sat cross-legged by the pot, his placid profile serene in the firelight, giving off an indescribable sense of reliability.
Zhang Shun stared quietly at the bubbling water and asked, “Bro?”
“What is it?”
“Did I not help you at all by coming out this time?”
Chu He was a little surprised. He glanced at him and asked, “Do you want to help me?”
Zhang Shun nodded as if it were a matter of course. He lay on the mat, one hand tapping a spoon idly, the other propping up his chin. His handsome young face was squashed out of shape, looking particularly comical, but his expression was very gloomy.
“Fox sometimes says I’ve caused a lot of trouble, that if it weren’t for jealousy of me, Maha wouldn’t have gone to swallow the Buddha. Other times she says my existence is the biggest help to you… But I feel like you’ve always been the one helping me, taking care of me. Without you, even my company would have gone bankrupt long ago…”
“Sometimes I want to give something back, not out of gratitude, that would be too insincere between us brothers.” Zhang Shun scrambled up and stared at the leaping flames. “But your world is always so far from mine. I don’t know what I can do. I just don’t want to always be a second-generation rich kid who needs to be taken care of.”
Chu He moved the pot off the fire. The rhodiola water had boiled down to just the bottom. He carefully poured it into a bowl.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, seemingly casually, after a long time.
Zhang Shun didn’t hesitate. “Of course. Who would I trust if not you?”
“How much do you trust me?”
This question stumped Young Master Zhang.
He blinked, his mouth open, and stared blankly for a long moment. Finally, the cold night air made him sneeze loudly, and he hurriedly covered his nose.
“How… how do you measure that? Anyway, you’re my last relative in this world. How about I give you back the company…”
A faint smile flickered in Chu He’s eyes. He handed the bowl of rhodiola soup to Zhang Shun, gesturing for him to drink it. “I don’t need it. I don’t have much to spend money on.”
This was top-grade rhodiola grown above 4,000 meters. Its medicinal properties were much stronger than what was sold in ordinary pharmacies. The hot liquid flowed down his throat and into his stomach. Although it tasted bitter, Zhang Shun immediately felt much better.
He put down the bowl, wiped his mouth, and asked seriously, “Then what if I…”
“Let’s use an analogy,” Chu He interrupted him. “If one day, the two of us had to cross a dark plain together, with no stars or moon in the sky, and silence all around, and only I knew the direction, but not how many traps and thorns were underfoot. To prevent you from making a sound and attracting wild beasts, I had to knock you unconscious and carry you forward… would you let me knock you out?”
“…” Zhang Shun intuitively felt that something was wrong. After a moment, he said indignantly, “Wait, why am I already pre-set as the one holding us back?!”
Chu He laughed, packed up the pot and bowl, stood up, and brushed the grass from his pant legs.
“For no reason. I swore to someone I would protect you, but not for a childish reason like you being someone’s bone…” He walked towards the car without looking back. “Thanks for the trust, little brother. When the dark journey begins, please remember what you said today. Good night.”
·
The car was parked by the Lhasa River. In the dark of night, the howls of a wolf pack came from the distance, sweeping across the vast plain with the north wind.
The three of them spent the night in the car, which swayed slightly in the wind.
The next morning, Chu He boiled another bowl of rhodiola. After drinking it, Zhang Shun felt much better and was able to struggle along with them to search the railway line. However, the entire day yielded nothing. Chu He used the tortoise shell that Zhou Hui treasured to perform divination for a long time, but couldn’t divine anything.
In the evening, the old clunker almost broke down. They had to park it on a flat piece of ground not far from the tracks, build a fire, cook, and rest for a while.
“If this keeps up, we’ll have to go back to Rilang to refuel,” Zhou Hui said, opening the car’s hood and inspecting the engine. “Damn, I really miss my Desert King. Too bad it’s in Gansu, not enough time to drive it over… Dammit, there’s always some messy mission. Is this forcing me to keep an off-road vehicle in every province and city in the country?”
Young Master Zhang, who was also from a rich second-generation background, heard this and just wanted to smash his face in.
Chu He, however, was very used to his arrogant, nouveau riche style. He sat by the side, building the fire, and didn’t say a word.
“Let me tell you, brother-in-law—” Zhou Hui started rambling again.
“Choosing the right car for yourself is very important. All that fancy exterior, interior design, leather seats, that’s all bullshit. Like, I don’t really like that Bentley, it’s purely for show. The most important thing about a car is its durability. A car that can fight alongside you on roads, deserts, jungles, and even ice fields is a good car. If you say every man has the soul of a cold weapon in his heart, then the right car is a man’s best companion!”
“—Let me tell you, back when I first bought that G500!” Zhou Hui waved his hand and said with emotion, “I drove it across the Tengger Desert, up along the Hexi Corridor, all the way to Dunhuang! The lonely smoke in the great desert, the camel bells on the ancient road, it was this off-road vehicle that carried me over mountains and rivers, clearing a path through thorns and brambles! So, a good car can carry a person in the right direction. A car that suits you is a man’s soulmate!”
Zhou Hui slammed the hood of the old clunker with a loud bang.
“So true!” Zhang Shun applauded vigorously in agreement, then asked, “—Then what about my brother?”
Zhou Hui: “…”
Zhou Hui suddenly shivered and turned to look at Chu He.
He saw Chu He, expressionless, slowly put down the pot, bowl, and smokeless stove, place the uncooked tsampa flour on the ground, and walk away.
“Wifey—I didn’t mean it like that!”
Zhou Hui lunged forward, his arms wide open, straight for Chu He’s legs, his posture as graceful as a wild dog that had had its tail chopped off. The next second, Chu He nimbly dodged, got into the car, and slammed the door shut with a bang.
“Wifey! I love you!” Zhou Hui cried, pounding on the door, tears streaming down his face. “Don’t listen to that stupid brother-in-law’s provocations, I didn’t mean it like that! Wifey, open the door! Dinner isn’t even cooked yet!”
Chu He opened a crack in the car window and said coldly, “Let your soulmate cook it.”
Zhou Hui: “…”
Zhou Hui finally understood the grave consequences of his rambling. He blinked, his mouth opening and closing several times. Just as a brilliant idea struck him and he was about to say the car is my soul’s companion, but my dear, you are my soul’s master, he saw Chu He give a slow, malicious smile. “Go on, ex-husband.”
Zhou Hui stood before the half-built bonfire, his expression dazed, his heart taking a thousand points of critical damage.
Zhang Shun sat nonchalantly by the empty pot, banging the empty bowl with a spoon, reveling in the chaos. “Boss Zhou, I want to eat! I’m a temporary contract worker for State Security. As my superior, you can’t not guarantee a temporary worker’s travel benefits! I want to eat—!”
Zhou Hui said angrily, “Can’t you cook it yourself!”
“I don’t know how,” Zhang Shun said shamelessly. “I’m a standard rich second-generation. It’s always been pretty girls fighting to cook for me.”
Zhou Hui’s head was about to explode. He swallowed his anger, fetched water, and, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, began to mix the barley flour. After mixing for a long time, he finally got it cooking. Not caring about boiling points, he ran back to the car and knocked on the door again, saying pitifully, “My dear, I was wrong. The car is my soul’s companion, and you are my soul’s…”
The window opened a crack again. Chu He said coldly, “Your soul’s mistress?”
Zhou Hui was shocked and reflexively said, “How could that be?! You have to be the main wife!” The moment the words left his mouth, he wanted to slap himself.
Chu He, expressionless, closed the window again.
Zhou Hui was utterly depressed. With tears in his eyes, he finished cooking the half-raw tsampa porridge. He kicked aside Zhang Shun, who was lunging for the food, and first served a steaming bowl, bringing it to the car door.
But Chu He was in the back seat, eating the snacks Zhang Shun had brought—dried fruit, melon seeds, chocolate, dehydrated cake. Zhou Hui wagged his tail and knocked on the window, pointing at the bowl in his hand and shouting, “That stuff is unhealthy! Come on! Let hubby give you some protein!”
Chu He shook his head no. Zhou Hui knocked again. Chu He waved his hand to shoo him away. Zhou Hui knocked again.
Boss Zhou’s persistence could move mountains. Chu He finally rolled down the window for the third time and asked, “What on earth do you want?”
“My… my dear, I brought you dinner.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Come on, my dear. Staying in the car all the time is unhealthy. The air isn’t circulating, it affects the oxygen quality in your lungs…”
“I think it’s fine,” Chu He said nonchalantly. “After all, as the main wife, I have to be considerate and let you bond with your soul’s mistress.”
Zhou Hui was dumbstruck, his mouth twitching. He stood there, holding the bowl, petrified in the wind. But in the next second, Chu He completely shattered him. “—Oh, right, sorry. Former main wife.”
·
That night, the three of them still slept in the car. Zhou Hui tried every means to squeeze into the back seat with Chu He, but Zhang Shun’s butt was glued to his brother’s side and couldn’t be budged. In the end, Boss Zhou could only return to the driver’s seat, to sleep alone, aggrieved and lonely.
However, in the middle of the night, he secretly slipped out of the car. He fiddled around on the stone beach by the Lhasa River for over half an hour, then tiptoed back to the car and woke Chu He. “My dear, I want to show you something. Come on, come on!”
Chu He, who had been sound asleep, was woken up. It was freezing cold outside. His only thought was to shove Zhou Hui out and go back to sleep. But Zhou Hui kept poking him. A few minutes later, Chu He finally sat up in resignation, threw on a jacket, got out of the car, and asked hoarsely, “What on earth do you want?!”
Zhou Hui, mysteriously, didn’t answer. He took his hand and led him to the Lhasa River, stopping on a messy stone beach.
The night sky in Tibet was vast and boundless. The Milky Way stretched across the sky, and billions of stars twinkled quietly in the celestial curtain.
Zhou Hui raised his hand. An invisible film of light rose from the ground, stretching and expanding in the high sky, becoming a transparent screen that covered the sky. In the giant screen, the stars, as if pushed by a mysterious force, left their orbits one by one and gradually formed a huge, shining star map.
It was a phoenix. Its magnificent wings sparkled in the night sky, its tail feathers like a vast river of silver scattered across the sky. Its long, elegant neck was lowered, gently gazing at a giant beast below, which looked like a cross between a lion and a tiger. And the beast, though its fangs were bared in a skyward roar, had its hind legs prostrated on the ground, showing a posture that was both arrogant and willing to submit.
Chu He was slightly stunned. He saw Zhou Hui push with both hands, and the star map changed again.
The thousands of stars, as if reflected in a mirror, formed in the night sky the image of the two of them standing on the bank of the Lhasa River at that very moment. Chu He looked at his shining self in the celestial curtain. After a long, dazed moment, he turned to look at Zhou Hui. His mirror image in the sky also turned its head, and he and the Zhou Hui formed by the stars looked at each other.
“When we first moved to the human realm, we lived on the glaciers of Tibet. Every night, we could see a starry sky this clear.” Zhou Hui smiled, his eyes reflecting the light of the myriad stars. “I remember you especially liked to sit alone and gaze at the night sky in the dead of night. Sometimes the two children would run over and sit beside you, but as soon as I arrived, they would scatter.”
Chu He looked at him, then up at his reflection in the mirror of the sky, his heart filled with an unspeakable shock.
“Actually, my favorite thing to do is to sit with you, hand in hand, and quietly gaze at this eternal Milky Way. Life is full of helplessness and variables. You may have already chosen your future path, but as long as there is any possibility, I hope to walk it with you, until the very last day when the earth overturns and the stars fall.”
Zhou Hui took a ring box from his breast pocket. He opened it to reveal a pair of black rings inlaid with diamonds. His celestial counterpart, formed by the stars, also knelt on one knee. “My dear, let’s remarry, shall we?”
Chu He looked at him quietly, his eyes like water. After a long moment, he suddenly asked, “That soulmate car of yours…”
Zhou Hui immediately swore to the heavens, “I’ll sell it when we get back! Two hundred yuan, take it away!”
A clear smile appeared in Chu He’s eyes. He took one of the rings from the pair and put it on Zhou Hui’s finger, clutching the other in his own palm. Then he leaned down and, under the reflection of the starry sky, gave Zhou Hui a gentle kiss.
“No need to sell it…” he said, his voice soft and teasing. “Just give it to me as your prenuptial asset.”
·
That night, Zhang Shun didn’t sleep well. At first, it was Zhou Hui rustling as he got out of and back into the car. Then it was his brother rustling as he got out and back in. The two of them were doing who-knows-what outside. They didn’t come back together until almost dawn. The sound of the car door opening and closing woke him. He asked groggily, “…What are you two doing?”
Chu He didn’t make a sound. Zhang Shun blearily opened his eyes and saw his brother’s face flushed, his hair messy, and a jacket haphazardly thrown over him. Zhou Hui was looking back from the driver’s seat, letting out his evil “m-hm-hm-hm” laugh.
Zhang Shun yawned and asked listlessly, “…Stupid, what are you laughing at?”
Before Zhou Hui could show off, Chu He said softly, “Both of you, go to sleep!”
He didn’t need to say it a second time. Young Master Zhang, who could eat well and sleep well anywhere, immediately closed his eyes, forgot all his questions, and instantly sank back into a deep, sweet sleep.
The next day, Zhang Shun got up, refreshed and full of energy, not remembering anything unusual from the night before at all.
However, Chu He didn’t get out of the car. He stayed in the back seat, covered with a coat, catching up on sleep, looking extremely tired.
In contrast, Zhou Hui was abnormally excited. He had completely changed his usual lazy and slick style. For breakfast, he somehow found a few bird eggs, boiled them, generously gave one to Zhang Shun, and then brought the rest into the car to wake Chu He up to eat together.
Their plan for the day was to return to Rilang to refuel the car, restock supplies, and contact Beijing about the search. Although two days had passed with no progress, Zhou Hui’s mood seemed to be quite good. Zhang Shun, watching from the side, even thought that if Yu Jingzhong were to call and curse his ancestors for eighteen generations right now, he would probably just “m-hm-hm-hm” and laugh through it all.
In the morning, they searched another seven or eight kilometers along the railway tracks with one last glimmer of hope, but found no clues. At noon, they packed up, cooked some dehydrated beef, and prepared to head back in the afternoon. However, just before they left, things finally took a turn—
Zhou Hui had drunk too much water. He shamelessly went to the side of the tracks to relieve himself. As he was doing so, he suddenly discovered an anomaly left by the train before it disappeared.
