I hadn’t finished speaking when suddenly she moved her hand, and something instantly hit me on the forehead. I let out an “ouch” and immediately crouched down, holding my head. Once the pain subsided, I saw that it was her water cup that had fallen to the ground.

I immediately got angry and shouted, “Old lady, do you know how much effort it took me to drag you here? And you repay me with this?”

“You didn’t drag me for nothing; I know how much you took advantage of me,” Zhang Haixing retorted.

I spat, “Who the hell wants to take advantage of you, you silly old lady?” As I said this, I noticed the fat guy laughing on the side. I thought to myself, no way, it can’t be that he was taking advantage of her while I wasn’t around, right?

But then I remembered that although the fat guy indulged in all sorts of vices, he had a basic moral bottom line that was higher than anyone else’s. Of course, his moral bottom line was his own—so I knew he probably wouldn’t do something so sleazy.

The fat guy noticed me looking at him and said, “Our little naive, handsome young master here, there are plenty of girls who throw themselves at him. You’re just like a zombie cow eating tender grass.”

Seeing Zhang Haixing’s face darkening, I thought, forget it, forget it, and waved my hand to stop the fat guy from talking. I said to her, “Stop messing around; I really didn’t take advantage of you. Of course, you are definitely a girl worth taking advantage of. But think about it, we have to drag you back to the shore and set up the sled to bring you here; there’s no time for those boring things. I don’t know if the fat guy told you about what we encountered on the way, but the situation here is a bit delicate. Can we just stick to the facts?”

Zhang Haixing looked at me; her face still didn’t look good, but she was gradually relaxing. I touched the bump on my head, and she suddenly burst out laughing.

I thought she looked quite cute when she laughed. The fat guy wanted to keep teasing her, but I waved my hand to stop him. I recounted the things that the fat guy and I had encountered on our journey. After listening, she frowned and remained silent, so I asked, “What exactly did you encounter on the ice lake? How could you have hallucinations? Those dead Germans should have faced a similar situation.”

“It was the bells,” Zhang Haixing said. “Under the ice cover of the lake, there was a section that was suspended, filled with those bronze bells. These bells made sounds as we walked, but due to the ice cover, the sounds were very faint. At first, I didn’t pay attention, but when I realized that I was starting to burn up, I became aware of it. However, at that time, my mind was already very unclear; the only decision I could make was to run back, knowing that there must be deadly traps ahead.”

“There must be pit traps ahead,” the fat guy said. “That group of Germans must have had the same experience, but they chose to run forward and all fell into the traps. They took off their clothes and drowned under the ice cover. When you were cooperating with the Germans, did they ever tell you that they had sent people here before?”

Zhang Haixing shook her head and looked around. I then explained the situation here to them again, and the fat guy said, “If you didn’t see anything yourself, could it really be empty here?”

“The little brother came here a long time ago. A lot must have happened here during this time,” I replied.

That night, we rested in that room; it was particularly quiet, and nothing happened. In the morning, Feng also woke up.

The fat man let Feng have breakfast first. Just as Feng’s complexion started to improve, the fat man suddenly made a move and lifted him up. Feng was still chewing on his bread and, startled by the fat man, ended up spraying him with crumbs.

The fat man was furious and slammed Feng down to the ground, shouting, “Are you hiding something from us?”

Feng was confused. After he mentioned seeing the German corpses, he said, “That has nothing to do with us; that’s another department’s team.”

The fat man retorted, “Damn it, there’s another department?”

“That was a year ago. If it weren’t for this team, our company wouldn’t consider acquiring Qiu’s loss-making assets. Let me go, and I’ll explain it to you in detail.”

The fat man released Feng, who twisted his arm that had been hurt and said, “You’re very rude.”

The fat man glared, “Can that thing be eaten?”

Feng replied, “Before our company acquired Qiu’s assets, we had already hired many people from Qiu Company to join us. This group had conducted a previous investigation, which was handled by another department. Our department’s head believes in collaborating with the locals, but the other department was very reckless; they went into the mountains alone and then lost contact. I wasn’t in the company at that time, so I don’t know how they communicated, but I do know that the company suffered significant losses because of this incident, and the insurance alone paid out a lot of money, which is why we wanted to acquire Qiu’s data and assets.”

The fat man asked, “What about the other departments now? Why didn’t you tell us in advance?”

Feng replied, “Not a single one of that group has returned. We don’t know what to say; we don’t even know where they died.”

“That’s just making excuses.”

“I believe him,” said Zhang Haixing. “We have conducted investigations on them and have relevant data.”

“So, that group came here a year ago and died here, and no one collected the bodies?”

“Have the traps in the lake been here for a long time?” the fat man asked. “It wasn’t mentioned in the memoirs.”

“Whether it was mentioned or not, we at least know of several illogical points. First, the bodies of the people who died here a year ago were never dealt with; second, the lama temple looks like it hasn’t been visited in a long time. Today, we will go to Kambala and see if my guess is right,” I said. “Something may have happened here that we don’t know about, and this trip has taken a turn.”

We immediately set off for Kambala, and by then, I had prepared for countless possibilities in my mind, such as an entirely empty village, a vanished village, or a village full of foreigners. I had mentally prepared for any strange future.

We traveled in silence, the scenery along the way was breathtaking, as if we were in a fairyland. After circumventing several mountain peaks, the village of Kambala appeared before us.

However, what we saw was still beyond our expectations.

In fact, we did not see Kambala, but the village did exist. We saw the same expanse of snow and could vaguely make out the tops of a few ancient Tibetan-style buildings peeking through the snow.

We couldn’t move forward; the snow in the field was deeper than anywhere else. The fat man took a few steps ahead and soon discovered that the snow here couldn’t support a person’s weight. With each step, large patches of snow collapsed, revealing huge cracks and holes beneath the surface.

The entire valley was frozen over, and Kangba was covered in ice and snow, never to see the light of day again.

We looked up at the surrounding snow-capped mountains. Feng pointed to a particularly exposed black rock on one of the mountains and said, “It’s an avalanche. There was a massive avalanche once that buried the entire valley.”

“How could there be such a massive avalanche?” I asked. “It seems like all the snow from the mountain just shook off and spread into this valley.”

“The mountain has warmed up,” Feng replied. “There must have been some change in the geological structure of that mountain, causing it to heat up and melt the snow.”

We followed Feng’s gaze to look at the rocks. The fat man picked up a pair of binoculars and said to us, “We need to go over there.”

“Why?”

“There are a lot of bones. That mountain is full of bones.”