I squatted down and saw the fat guy prying open a few blocks of ice, pulling out a piece of animal fur from inside.
“This is a snow leopard; there are at least four inside, frozen together, and there are some fragments of deer corpses as well,” the fat guy said.
“How could this happen? Four snow leopards? They’re fierce beasts! Who could have eaten them?” I asked. “Is there an even more ferocious beast than leopards here?”
“Bears can hunt leopards, but these leopards were all shot dead by a rifle. Look at the size of these leopards; they must have been the guardians of this lake. The villagers here raised them to roam around the lake, protecting it from outsiders. The rifles used to shoot these leopards have a lot of power; besides the rifle, they might have even used grenades.”
“How can you tell?”
“These wounds have blown the bones out; the entire flesh is smashed,” the fat guy said. “The corpses aren’t fresh; it’s so cold here that the meat has probably gone bad. They must have been dead for a while.” The fat guy looked around and said, “Damn, someone got here before us. First, there are quite a few people; second, their equipment is very good. They came in and directly took out the guards here.”
He glanced at the tents and the direction of the canyon, saying, “This is bad. Do you think something might happen to Kamba?”
Images flashed in my mind of the simple local people being invaded by foreign powers and slaughtered due to the disparity in weaponry. My heart trembled, and I looked at the fat guy: “No matter who the other party is, their way of dealing with obstacles is very brutal and violent. We should hurry.”
We made a simple sled out of bones and the tent, wrapping Zhang Haixing and Feng in sleeping bags, and dragged them along the lakeside.
It wasn’t as difficult as we thought, but it wasn’t easy either. We stopped and started, taking twice the time to reach the canyon on the opposite side of the lake.
The lake’s surface was frozen, but the river leading to the canyon showed signs of flowing water beneath the ice. In some places, the ice had cracked, revealing rushing water, indicating that the ice surface was unstable.
We carefully stepped on the ice, sometimes crawling forward. It was this action that allowed us to see the strange sights beneath the ice.
Under one section of the ice, we saw a row of wooden fences submerged in the water, with corpses of people in front of the fences—at least twenty or thirty of them. We broke through the ice and saw that the bodies soaked in the water were rotten, but not decayed; they had been waterlogged.
From the hair, it was clear that they were all foreigners, some of whom had equipment soaking in the water, and almost all of them were completely naked.
The fat guy pulled up a rifle and a tube of grenades, strapped them on himself, and began to pick up bullets one by one.
“It seems our comrade’s companions had come in here once but failed, which is why they decided to team up with the Zhang family. This batch should be those Germans’ accomplices.”
“They weren’t even wearing clothes. It looks like they took a shortcut across the lake and ended up in trouble,” I said. “This group must have found this place, killed the snow leopards by the lake, but something went wrong while crossing the ice lake, resulting in all of them dying. Their bodies fell into the water and were washed up here.”

I estimate that the number might not be limited to just those here; there should be more who died on the lake surface, frozen out there. The fat guy was picking up treasures, enjoying himself to the fullest, without a hint of sympathy for the dead. I asked him, “How long do you think these people have been dead here?”

“I wouldn’t know, but there might be survivors; we don’t know how many people actually came,” he replied.

“Foreigners wouldn’t abandon their companions’ bodies. Looking at the state of these dead people, I estimate that even if there are survivors, there can’t be many, and they are likely struggling to survive themselves,” I said.

We continued forward, and soon, after passing through the places mentioned by the Fatty, we finally arrived at the base of the suspended lama temple. The two idiots still hadn’t woken up. The Fatty crawled over, carefully pushed open the entrance, and found that the entire building was eerily silent, not a sound to be heard.

After much effort, we managed to carry the two of them inside. By this time, the sun had set, and the white clouds were clinging to the snowy mountains, forming patches of mist.

We stopped in a relatively enclosed room of the lama temple and lit a charcoal stove for warmth. The room was filled with felt, which helped retain heat, but when I checked the felt, I found it covered in a thick layer of dust, all crusted over.

“The lamas here aren’t very hygienic,” the Fatty said as he warmed himself by the fire and took off his shoes, a strong odor wafting toward me. “The ground is covered in dust too. Logically, there shouldn’t be much dust on a snowy mountain; the air is supposed to be very clean. With this much dust, how much incense do they burn every day?”

It was to be expected that there would be dust in the lama temple, but the thickness of the dust and the marks on the surface indicated that it had been there for a long time and that no one had cleaned it for an extended period.

Could it be that this temple has been abandoned? I told the Fatty to rest while I continued upward and saw the felt that the Fatty had mentioned, which was supposed to be where the King of Hell rides the corpses. The door leading to the upper level was just behind the felt, and there was a staircase, but the door was locked, likely secured by a large wooden beam.

I inserted my dagger, lifted the beam with force, and pushed open the door, immediately hit by a particularly unpleasant smell of incense.

Behind the door was a particularly spacious corridor, with doors on both sides, somewhat resembling a hotel layout. I walked up to one of the doors and tried to open it, only to find that the wooden bolts behind these doors were particularly heavy and thick, making it impossible to pry them open with my dagger. I had no choice but to return the way I came.

When I got back to the Fatty, I found that Zhang Haixing had already woken up and seemed to have regained her senses, drinking water. I pondered how to approach her; should I swagger over and say, “Look at you, you fool, didn’t I tell you to listen to me?” or should I pretend to be particularly magnanimous and comfort her by saying, “Well, I also have a bad temper; we don’t need to mention this matter again. How are you feeling?”

The latter might earn me some goodwill, but I didn’t want to flirt with this tigress. After some thought, I decided to go with the first option.

So I sneered and walked over, saying, “Awake, are you? You really are foolish; I told you to listen to me, and you didn’t. Look at you, bare—”