True to his word, Wei Chain returned exactly one week after that midnight call.
He didn't walk home on his own two feet. Old Bear had somehow hired a private car, chauffeuring him directly to the alley beneath the tenement.
It was a sweltering midsummer afternoon. Upstairs, Fatty San was slurping a bowl of instant noodles for a late lunch in his singlet.
The boxy cathode-ray television droned with municipal afternoon news: A local meat processing plant warehouse keeper, while heavily intoxicated on shift, wandered into the industrial cold-storage vault. The graveyard relief staff proceeded to engage the outer padlock per standard protocol, unwittingly trapping the custodian inside, resulting in fatal hypothermia...
Forced to grind through her summer worksheets, Song Lee Lee scratched her temples in agony, constantly drifting off. Overhearing the broadcast, she couldn't help chiming in, "What's a cold-storage vault?"
Without glancing up from his textbook, Wei Zhi Yuan replied flatly, "A giant refrigerator."
"Whose fault was it, then?" she pressed.
A razor-thin, frigid smirk ghosted across Wei Zhi Yuan’s lips. "The relief guard dropped the lock right on schedule. He went off-duty into the freezer room against plant regulations. Naturally, it was his own fatal violation of operating procedures."
Song Lee Lee blinked in bewilderment. "Then why the heck did he go into that... uh... giant fridge when his shift was over?"
"Who knows?" Wei Zhi Yuan murmured with dark, double-edged irony. "He was probably sick in the head."
Song Lee Lee pondered for three seconds before declaring, "Ugh, this is the first time I've ever heard of someone freezing to death in the middle of summer. Couldn't he just jump up and down to warm up?"
Wei Zhi Yuan finally raised his eyes, picked up the remote, and clicked the television off.
Song Lee Lee stuck her tongue out, lowering her head to tackle her math drills with an aggrieved pout.
Wei Zhi Yuan scrutinized her for several quiet seconds, genuinely baffled: Could this girl and Big Brother really have crawled out of the same woman's womb?
Down below, Bear Beau -- having roasted in the plateau sun until he resembled a glossy, charcoal-black sheep pellet -- stepped out of the sedan. Leaning down toward the car window, he smoothed his collar and finger-combed his windblown hair before standing upright to bellow up at the concrete balconies:
"Is Mr. Spit-tune here? Mr. ...Spittoon?!"
The passenger window was cranked down, and Wei Chain’s irritated rasp spilled out. Months of chaotic, near-death escapades had entirely obliterated any remaining reverence for his affluent employer. "What the hell are you shouting his full legal name for? Would it kill you to give me a hand, you useless prick?"
Old Bear retorted in his trademark, unhurried drawl, "I accept your constructive criticism to pursue cardiovascular conditioning in the future. However, given my current state of physical depletion, I couldn't haul a twenty-pound gas canister up three flights, let alone an esteemed gentleman such as yourself."
A vein throbbed against Wei Chain’s temple. After a strangled pause, he groaned, "Don't use his formal name. He'll take your head off."
Old Bear smoothed his lapels with polite decorum. "Ah. And by what title should I address him?"
Wei Chain: "...Fatty San."
Old Bear gave a dignified nod, drew a deep breath, and projected toward the third-floor window with crisp courtesy: "Is the Esteemed Mr. Fatty present, by your leave?!"
Inside the sedan, Wei Chain buried his face in his palm.
Fortunately, Fatty San had a sixth sense for absurdities. Hearing muffled shouts of "Mr. Fatty" while slurping his noodles, he tossed his plastic chopsticks aside, shoved the casement open, and poked his round head out: "Who's hollering for me?!"
Wei Chain shoved the car door open with his good shoulder, waving weakly from the curb. "Third Brother... come haul my ass upstairs."
Fatty San squinted his beady eyes through the midday haze, staring for three long seconds before roaring in pure shock: "Holy mother of God! Chainr?! Didn't you say you went to flip medicine with some fathead fish who has more money than brains?! Why the fuck do you look like you've been working the midnight shift at a sketchy kebab stand?! What happened to your skin?!"
The "fathead fish" stood beside the front tire with folded arms, taking the slander in absolute silence.
Upstairs, the window of the adjoining flat was shoved aside with terrifying violence. The frame slammed against the exterior brick with a resounding CRACK, rebounding off the masonry.
Wei Zhi Yuan: "Brother!"
The boy's cracking adolescent voice nearly tore at the seams. Wei Chain lifted his heavy lids, sweeping a lazy, tired glance up at him. "What are you screeching for? Summoning a ghost?"
Wei Chain was in no better shape than Old Bear; the only pale patches remaining on his face were his teeth and the whites of his eyes. Yet to Wei Zhi Yuan, that sun-scorched charcoal head was nothing less than Aladdin's lamp descending from the heavens, instantly flooding his dark world with dazzling light... though beneath that sacred flame lingered the faint, lingering shadow of that sinful wet dream.
Old Mrs. Song was away at the market. Wei Zhi Yuan, Song Lee Lee, and Fatty San thundered down the stairwell in a stampede, only to halt dead in their tracks: Wei Chain remained seated on the passenger bench, his left leg encased in a heavy, chalky plaster cast.
Fatty San’s eyes bugged out. "This... this won't screw up your university registration, will it?! How bad is it?!"
Before Wei Chain could open his mouth, Old Bear chimed in with the serene monotone of a monk chanting scripture: "Fret not. Bone fractures demand a hundred days of mending; he has roughly fifty days remaining on the clock. Given that his hide is thicker than an armored tank, the cast should come off right around autumn enrollment."
Using Fatty San’s beefy forearm for leverage, Wei Chain levered himself up on his sound foot, waving dismissively at the eccentric merchant: "Alright, scram. Your countdown has expired."
Old Bear cleared his throat, shifting with rare bashfulness. "Seeing as we’ve just been to hell and back together... could you shelter me for a few days so I can catch my breath?"
Wei Chain scowled. "Did an earthquake hit your house?"
Old Bear’s puffy face twisted into an awkward grimace. "Don't laugh at my plight. The madam of my humble house possesses the ferocity of a wild tigress. Having failed to check in for nearly two months, this humble brother is genuinely terrified she will tear my flesh from bone."
Fatty San burst into uproarious laughter: "Brother! You can dodge the first day of the month, but you can't dodge the fifteenth! A true warrior looks a grim life dead in the eye -- just go home and kneel on the washboard like a real man!"
Old Bear flashed a tranquil smile. "I am no true warrior. I am merely a 'fathead fish with more money than brains.'"
Fatty San: "..."
Wei Chain: "..."
When reality finally dawned on him, Fatty San’s round face turned an ugly shade of green. He forced out a dry cough and shot Wei Chain a murderous glare -- this wretched brat hadn't warned him at all!
Bracing his core with a deep breath, Fatty San dropped into a low horse stance, slapped his broad shoulder, and gestured to Wei Chain: "You... ugh, climb on."
Hoisting Wei Chain onto his back, Fatty San grumbled all the way up the stairwell: "These virgin shoulders were meant for my future bride, and here they are being desecrated by an unfilial grandson... What a tragedy."
He peeked back at Chainner’s blackened arm, attempting to salvage his bruised dignity through a quick hit of superiority: "Let your thrid bro ask you something: when you scrub down later, is that paint job actually gonna wash off?"
"Why wouldn't it?" Wei Chain muttered deadpan. "It shrinks in hot water, too."
Hearing him crack jokes, the boulder in Fatty San’s chest finally dissolved -- the boy wasn't mortally wounded, merely battered.
In the end, that cowardly wimp Old Bear lacked the courage to face his wife.
Yet Wei Chain’s small flat had no room to spare. Moreover, Wei Chain assumed the boy's childhood trauma had left him chronically distrustful of strangers -- Wei Zhi Yuan had been eyeing Old Bear with cold, simmering hostility ever since he laid eyes on him.
Ultimately, Old Bear was bundled off to crash at Fatty San’s place across the hall; Fatty San’s parents were away on a buying trip and wouldn't return until morning.
The two plump figures -- one stark white, one burnt charcoal -- shuffled shoulder to shoulder up the stairs like a matched pair of contrasting pigs, heading off for an evening summit.
Wei Chain didn't even touch a grain of rice. Dropping his duffel bag in the corner, he collapsed onto the mattress and fell into a dead sleep, not shifting an inch or turning over once.
At dinner, Old Mrs. Song debated for half an hour before trying to shake him awake for a few bites. Wei Chain was depleted down to the marrow; though his subconscious registered the voices, his body refused to move. Finally, summoning the iron will that had kept him alive through two months of Old Bear’s madness, he crawled upright like an extra from a zombie flick, shoved two mouthfuls of rice down his throat without chewing, and dropped back onto the mattress like a felled log.
That night, Wei Zhi Yuan worked at his desk until one in the morning.
He had originally intended to use his camp allowance to buy Little Bao a new cotton dress and skip the program entirely. Now, those plans were dead in the water; with Big Brother back, abandoning the camp was out of the question. He had to burn the midnight oil to finish the advanced Olympiad worksheets he had neglected over the past two weeks -- the instructors would demand an inspection the moment he checked in.
As for Song Lee Lee, she required zero domestic sympathy. The moment Wei Chain crossed the threshold, the girl's brief stint as an austere, sensible martyr vanished into thin air. By mid-afternoon, she had scampered off to play with her schoolmates, dumping her saved allowance to buy a frilly new frock at lightning speed.
Shutting his textbook, Wei Zhi Yuan sat motionless in his chair, quietly scrutinizing the man asleep on the bed.
This battered, charcoal-faced figure bore little resemblance to the ethereal, half-unbuttoned phantom that had provoked that fevered dream. Curling his fingers inward, Wei Zhi Yuan drove his trimmed fingernails into the meat of his palm, using the dull pain to steady his racing thoughts.
It was just a dream. It meant nothing, the youth reasoned with cold, calculated detachment. Does a man who dreams of running naked actually strip in the street? Does someone who dreams of flipping a car possess the physical power to overturn steel? Impossible. If dreams weren't inherently absurd, nobody would use the word 'daydreaming' to describe pure bullshit...
Still, having slept on his side for twelve hours straight, aren't his ribs going numb?
Rising silently, Wei Zhi Yuan stepped toward the bed. Hooking his arms under Wei Chain’s broad shoulders, he steered clear of the splinted leg, gently easing his brother onto his back and centering his head upon the pillow.
Wei Chain’s steady breathing remained unbroken. A warm, shallow puff of air brushed across Wei Zhi Yuan’s wrist.
The sharp silhouette in the gloom sent a jolt through the boy's chest. Retracting his hands as if scorched, he lay down beside the bed frame, stiff as a wooden plank.
A bizarre dissonance gripped him. Wei Chain’s return had loosened the suffocating tension coiled around his spine, ushering in an immense wave of exhaustion that should have dragged him into instant oblivion. Yet instead, a feverish vitality surged through his capillaries, pumping hot, restless blood straight to his temples.
He couldn't close his eyes.
Looking upon this man from the perspective of an older youth, the childish worship that once painted his brother as an invincible, towering god had evaporated.
He saw clearly that his brother was merely mortal flesh and bone.
Yet this fragile mortal shell -- a mere speck no grander than an ant among the teeming masses, sun-scorched into the likeness of an Egyptian mummy -- had torn through the pitch-black storm clouds of his mind like a localized whirlwind. In an instant, the heavy rain was swept clean, leaving behind nothing but a boundless horizon under a vast, cloudless sky.
Lying on his back, Wei Zhi Yuan picked through the meticulously dissected strings of his own heart. Armed with a magnifying glass, he sought to uncover every microscopic trace of emotion hidden in the very crevices of his bones -- gazing down at himself like a third soul suspended in the night sky, scrutinizing a self that was still consumed by terror and dread... a weak, utterly powerless coward.
He concluded that he remained far too dependent -- weak enough to require an anchor like Wei Chain to hold his soul together.
I have to purge this dependency once and for all.
Yet even with that resolution, his thoughts refused to settle. A heavy, cloying stickiness still clung stubbornly to his ribs.
His introspection ground to an abrupt halt. An instinctive fear warned him away from that shadowed crevice -- the forbidden vault holding the root of that sticky hunger. Driven by sheer self-preservation, he slammed the iron doors shut.
It was tainted with death, bound to an unnatural, monstrous desire that far exceeded what a thirteen-year-old soul could safely endure.
The spring breeze cares nothing for the parting chill, stirring wild waves in a young man's chest.
The old song sounded romantic on the radio, but within the ribs of a boy, the storm was rarely gentle.
Wei Zhi Yuan understood with chilling clarity that he was sliding into an abyss. He simply had no idea how to pull the brakes.
Wei Chain slept straight through until dusk the following day.
Staggering out of bed beneath the anxious, hovering gazes of his household, he had thinned down to a walking coat hanger. He ducked into the bathroom, blindly twisting the tap to attempt a shower.
The plumbing in the shantytown was primitive: two rusted galvanized pipes running between a rooftop solar drum and the municipal line. Cold tap water flowed faster than the heated reserve, ensuring the spray turned freezing within ten seconds.
The icy water struck his back. Wei Chain recoiled an instinctive half-step before remembering he was back on the oxygen-rich northern plains, far from the frost of the plateau.
His joints ached down to the marrow. Balancing on his good heel, he threw together a hasty shower, hobbled to the table, and inhaled three massive bowls of rice in one go, finally feeling the blood return to his limbs.
His knuckles were scraped and raw from climbing rock, yet his chopsticks moved with practiced speed.
Old Mrs. Song hovered beside his chair, clucking like an agitated hen: "You heartless, white-eyed wolf! Where on earth did you go running off to?! Trying to scare this old woman into an early grave, aren't you?!"
Where had he gone?
It was a long, painful story.
Wei Chain had never intended to plunge the household into panic. On this run, however, he had tasted every flavor of bitter hardship the earth had to offer, surviving a catalogue of pure disaster.
Beyond Wei Chain, Old Bear had hired three other strapping lads. Yet upon reaching the plateau, every single one of them was struck down by acute mountain sickness -- except a resilient fellow named Little Six.
Their first stop had been Zadoi County in Qinghai, sitting at an elevation exceeding four thousand meters. Wei Chain had spent the entire transit vomiting his guts out.
He had heaved until his stomach was dry of bile. At its peak, sleep was impossible; his chest felt flattened beneath a stone slab, and his temples throbbed as if clamped in an iron vise. During those days, everyone had looked upon the energetic Little Six with envious awe.
Yet within forty-eight hours, Little Six was dead.
Surrounded by groaning companions, Little Six had felt indestructible, mistaking his lack of initial symptoms for an iron constitution. That evening at the rural guesthouse, he decided to indulge in a long, luxurious hot shower. In remote county lodgings, hot water ran thin; halfway through, the stream turned icy cold.
The moment the sun dipped below the peaks, the temperature plunged by twenty degrees. By midnight, Little Six was burning with a raging fever. Assuming it was standard high-altitude fatigue, he waited hours before bothering to alert Old Bear. Rolling out of his blankets, Old Bear rushed him to the county clinic in the dead of night, only for the doctors to diagnose acute high-altitude cerebral edema. It was too late for a low-altitude transfer; emergency intervention was staged on the spot.
They couldn't save him. Little Six was gone at twenty-seven.
From that sunrise forward, no one needed reminding to bundle themselves up like terrified quails.
Yet that had merely been the natural hazard; on its heels came the human catastrophe -- and Old Bear was a walking, talking disaster zone.
After scouting the local markets and purchasing a modest initial batch of wild Cordyceps to test the waters, Old Bear made a unilateral executive decree: Drive south into Tibet!
At the time, Wei Chain had been naive enough to assume the merchant possessed some brilliant, hidden strategy. It wasn't until they reached a settlement south of Lhasa, where Old Bear fell madly in love with a stone cooking pot and insisted on trekking off-road into uncharted territory to buy it, that Wei Chain realized Bear Beau was entirely unhinged.
As they pushed deeper into the unpopulated wilderness, cellular signals evaporated first -- followed shortly by the vehicle itself.
During a midday rest stop, some passengers ate dry rations in the cab, while others climbed out to "sing mountain songs" -- the regional euphemism for relieving oneself in the wild.
Having zero appetite, Wei Chain stepped out to catch a breath of thin air. Suddenly, Old Bear, who had stepped behind a rocky outcropping, burst into view with a face white as a sheet, shrieking at the top of his lungs: "Get out! Abandon the vehicle! JUMP!"
Old Bear’s expression was rarely so terrified, his shrill scream scraping like a dull cleaver against rusted iron. The sheer panic in the shout nearly loosened their bladders. Trained by weeks of hardship, the crew snatched their bags of cash and kicked the doors open, leaping into the gravel.
Wei Chain was the last one out. Old Bear’s meaty arm reached inside, yanking him out by his collar; boy and pack crashed into the scree together. Rolling over, they watched their heavy off-road vehicle tumble off the sheer cliff edge with a deafening BOOM, vanishing into the canyon below.
Later, Old Bear explained that as he was walking back, he noticed the shoulder under the rear tires beginning to fissure and crumble. Sensing imminent disaster, he had sounded the alarm. The sudden shift in mass as the men leaped free triggered the final landslide, consigning the rugged truck that had carried them across thousands of miles to an early grave.
No settlements ahead, no inns behind. Only their own two feet to carry them out.
Wei Chain had asked with deadpan sincerity, "Boss Bear, could you clarify for the record why the fuck we are marching down this godforsaken goat path?"
The son of a bitch answered with equal gravity: "To buy the pot."
Wei Chain spoke from the depths of his soul: "You are an absolute, certified dumbass."
A master fool leading a band of junior fools, completely severed from civilization. Fortunately, along the Sichuan-Tibet Route, one occasionally crossed paths with devout Tibetan pilgrims prostrating their way toward Lhasa -- solitary souls, or small bands pedaling heavily laden cargo tricycles. After several days of freezing, famished hiking, by the grace of the Buddha, they encountered such a pilgrim convoy.
Though the pilgrims possessed few material assets beyond their sturdy tricycles, their hearts were pure gold. They shared their roasted barley and dried meat, and the veteran travelers knew how to forage and navigate, keeping the stranded city slickers from starving in the snow.
Hitchhiking, sleeping rough, and rationing scraps, they tasted every flavor of misery the border had to offer. Old Bear joked that their ragtag band was destined for historical greatness -- wasn't this the exact grit displayed by the ancient Shanxi traders crossing the Great Wall or the Huizhou merchants traversing the old southern trails?
Nobody laughed. Every man present wanted to drown the fathead fish in a ditch.
Eventually, Old Bear fulfilled his obsession and secured his cookware -- authentic Namcha Barwa stone pots, carved from natural soapstone quarried off the treacherous, unclimbed peaks. The mineral was remarkably soft, easily gouged by a fingernail, demanding that every vessel be chiseled by hand. Even Wei Chain, branded an uncultured barbarian by Old Bear, could tell the craftsmanship was extraordinary.
Unfortunately, the terrain was impassable to modern vehicles. By the time each man was weighed down with bundles of wild Cordyceps, high-altitude safflower, and multiple massive stone cauldrons, marching across the scree with backs bent against the sky, every laborer nurtured a murderous, class-conscious hatred for culinary stone.
The return trek was a nightmare of snowmelt, jagged scree, and alpine bogs. Navigating a steep gully, Wei Chain took a violent tumble down the ridge, fracturing his lower leg.
Fortunately, though Wei Chain lacked religious piety, he possessed a feral greed that valued money over mortal life. Strapping his calf into makeshift wooden splints, he dragged his busted limb across the rock for another full day before stumbling into an inhabited nomadic pasture.
The herders lived cut off from modern telecommunications, but they welcomed the battered travelers with open arms. A local family that ran transport runs to Lhasa owned a light pickup truck, but the owner was away on a freight run. Old Bear was forced to wait out nearly a month in the pasture until the driver returned, finally renting the vehicle to haul their bruised bodies and cargo back to Chengdu.
Only upon reaching Chengdu was Wei Chain able to find a working payphone to dial home.
After lingering in Chengdu for three days, Old Bear -- wielding a tongue slick enough to sell water to a drowning man -- flipped the Namcha Barwa stone pots for nearly ten times their acquisition cost, recouping the entire operational expenses of the expedition with a tidy surplus to spare.
Buyers begged to purchase their medicinal stocks as well, but Old Bear flatly refused. The herbs were lightweight, dense in value, and far easier to transport back north, where mainland margins were substantially higher.
With the pots liquidated, they didn't waste another hour in Sichuan, boarding the train north to Qinghai to reclaim their deposited luggage before rolling straight back to the capital.
The entire saga contained enough near-fatal trials to rival the eighty-one tribulations of the Monkey King.
Yet looking upon the weathered, anxious faces of his household, the protective maturity in Wei Chain’s chest smothered his youthful urge to brag about his brush with death. Smoothing his expression into weary calm, he murmured:
"It was nothing. The mountain signals were down the whole way, so calls couldn't get through. We flipped some regional goods and made a solid profit. Grandma, you're getting up there in years -- don't go taking on those grueling market shifts anymore."