I thought that after the fat guy moved aside, I would see some horrifying scene, but unexpectedly, there was nothing—only the steep steps I often took to climb the mountain. These steps had been described as extremely dangerous, but later I found that with advanced climbing boots and using all four limbs, there wasn’t anything particularly difficult to climb.

There was nothing at the entrance; I only saw that a large area of snow had been cleared. I asked the fat guy, “What are you looking at? What did I do in my past life for you to treat me like this?”

“Look, although the snow at the entrance has been cleared, it only goes up to about six or seven steps. Below that, the snow on the steps is still there. We just messed around for a while, and the footprints from when we came up are still there. If the others in the temple had gone down, this snow would definitely have been trampled, but clearly, not many people have walked this path in a short time.”

“Are you saying these people are still in the temple and haven’t gone out?”

The fat guy said, “Are there any other exits in the temple?”

I shook my head; as far as I knew, there shouldn’t be any. Otherwise, when the muffled oil bottle appeared back then, it wouldn’t have caused such a level of surprise. If we were to say there were other exits, it might only be towards the snow-capped mountain.

Sure enough, the fat guy continued, “Then, either these people are still inside the temple, or they went to where the little brother came from?”

I shook my head; it was impossible. It didn’t make sense at all. We hadn’t left Zhang Haixing and Zhang Haike for long; how could they reach a consensus in such a short time and set off immediately? Unless they all grew up on Viagra and were particularly impatient.

Moreover, it wasn’t just them who were missing; those lamas were also gone. Lamas surely wouldn’t take Viagra, right?

The fat guy clicked his tongue a few times, suddenly realizing that he still had someone on his back. He said, “Almost forgot about him. There’s no use just thinking; we should wake this guy up first. He might know something. I have a gloomy feeling in my heart, as if these people are really ghosts, putting on a show for me here.”

It was too cold outside, so we returned to the temple. The fat guy said, “Since the people are gone, there’s no point in going back to your room; it’s too dangerous. We can’t go to the firewood room we were in earlier; it’s too messy and terrible there. Let’s go to the big lama’s place. The conditions there are particularly good; let’s check out his back room. Maybe there are many treasures in his bedroom.”

I said, “Here you go again. You can go down to the pit, but you can’t steal from the living; that’s too low.”

The fat guy replied, “Come on, I’m just taking a look. Plus, in this situation, we can consider ourselves rescue personnel. It’s not unheard of for rescue personnel to use the property of those being rescued to fundraise.”

I knew there was no point in arguing with him; he would definitely have a bunch of twisted reasoning. So, I went straight in.

Once again, we returned to the big lama’s courtyard, entered the place where we had chatted before, and set the lama on my back down on the ground. I went to light all the charcoal stoves and oil lamps.

The person we knocked out seems to be in worse condition. Although the blood from his nose and ears has coagulated, his eyes have started to bleed continuously. I felt a bit dizzy, wondering if we had really killed someone this time. But why did I feel like I hadn’t hit him that hard when I smashed the lamp over his head? I actually held back a bit, right? Even though the sound was terrifying, it shouldn’t have been enough to kill someone. When the guy was hitting people earlier, his hands were really vicious, and he didn’t kill anyone. Is there a trick to using a weapon to knock someone out?

I went to the yard to get some snow and melted it on the stove. I found a piece of cloth, dampened it, and wiped the blood from the lama’s nostrils and ears, then placed it over his eyes, hoping the bleeding would stop. During this process, I could still hear him breathing and his heartbeat, which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

The fat guy was rummaging through the room, searching for valuables, but unfortunately, all he found was a few bankbooks. He kept cursing, saying that the current lamas have no style at all and that if they weren’t hoarding gold at home, they were keeping it all in the bank. Didn’t they know that the RMB was depreciating domestically? He kept grumbling but didn’t give up, continuing to search, even not sparing the jars in the corners.

I said, “What are you doing? Do you think the lama is a miser who hides all his money in these places?” He replied that I misunderstood him; he was just hungry and couldn’t find any money, so at least he wanted to see if there was something to eat. After a few days of eating local food, he was about to get sick of it. After a while, he actually found a bag of something. When he opened it, it looked like some kind of dried plant, and it smelled really good. The fat guy chewed on a piece and sat down next to me, saying, “You should eat some too. If we’re full, we can think of a way. Haven’t you heard? Three fat guys are as good as Zhuge Liang.”

I also took a few bites; it really tasted quite good. At that moment, it started to warm up around us, with the doors and windows closed, making the room feel pretty safe. I said to the fat guy, “Let’s start from the beginning and figure out what’s going on. You mentioned you had something to tell me earlier; can you say it now?”

The fat guy took a sip of tea and said, “Do you remember when I pretended to be a Menba person and spoke a few sentences of Tibetan to Zhang Haixing? Actually, I was speaking a very obscure local language called Galai, which sounds a lot like Menba, but it’s not. There are fewer than three thousand people who can speak Galai. I didn’t actually know how to speak it; I just memorized it. Any local person would know I was just reciting it from memory when they heard my accent, but outsiders, even if they know Menba, wouldn’t be able to tell from my accent. I put a lot of brain cells into memorizing those useless words. At the time, Zhang Haixing asked me in Menba, so I planned to pretend to be a local who couldn’t speak Menba to fool her. Galai people are even more of a minority than the local ethnic groups, so they definitely wouldn’t understand.

“It’s just that I thought she would tell others that she didn’t understand, but she not only didn’t show any sign of not understanding, she also rambled on with an explanation,” the fat guy said, burping. “This is a bit suspicious.”

I frowned and asked, “What do you mean?”

The fat guy said, “Assuming she really fell for it and thought I was a local, she would definitely have told that Zhang Haike that she didn’t understand what I was saying. But she didn’t; instead, she pretended to understand and relayed the meaning of the Menba language. This indicates that there’s something wrong with this Zhang Haixing. There are a few possibilities: the first is that Zhang Haixing doesn’t want others to know she doesn’t understand Menba language.”

“Why is that? Is she a particularly vain person?” I asked, thinking that such a lower-level character flaw would have been overcome by the Zhang family during childhood. So, it must be another situation: that others know she can speak Menba, but in reality, she cannot.

This suggests that Zhang Haixing might be a fake, or that she knows the fat guy is a fake and is trying to help us.

I frowned and said, “But her angry reaction earlier didn’t seem fake.”

The fat guy replied, “Have you thought about Xiao Ge? What he’s usually like, but how he acts when he’s pretending? These people are all damn movie stars.”

Suddenly, an image of the Oscars flashed in my mind, with Xiao Ge and Zhang Haixing simultaneously taking the stage to accept awards for Best Actor and Best Actress. I immediately shook my head to dismiss this strange thought and said to the fat guy, “So, it seems there are actually problems within the Zhang family.”

The fat guy nodded, “I think there might be some mutual infiltration, but this matter is significant, and I can’t make any definitive statements about it right now. Even if we find them, we can’t fully trust them.”

I nodded, thinking it was too chaotic. The various struggles and undercover investigations from earlier must have involved countless entangled forces. If even the Zhang family has issues, it indicates that the level of entanglement exceeds our imagination, and it certainly cannot be resolved just by reporting something.

Given the current situation, I found myself questioning: what is the purpose of all this? Everything I’ve experienced is a tangled mess, but the various twists don’t follow any logic. If this is a play, then the director seems to have some issues, or the artistic approach is too advanced for me to comprehend.

The fat guy thought for a moment, shook his head, and said, “Actually, I have some clues, but you might not like what I’m about to say.” I asked why, and the fat guy replied, “Just wait a moment, I’ll go get a piece of paper and draw it for you.”