At dawn, at the foot of Mingdao Mountain, Sister Yu and another man set up a temporary camp and sat by the campfire in a daze.
Neither had slept all night. They had lost several companions overnight and had nearly been killed by thugs themselves. Grief and terror churned within them—how could they possibly sleep?
The man took out his phone and typed: (Sister Yu, there are only the two of us left. What are we supposed to do from now on?)
Sister Yu typed: (Zhao Yu, even for the sake of those who died, we have to do our best to survive.)
(...You're right.) The man named Zhao Yu nodded. (There are plenty of supplies in those thugs' Jeeps—enough to keep us alive for a long time.)
Seeing Zhao Yu's message, Sister Yu thought for a moment before typing: (I plan to take most of it up the mountain. You know as well as I do that without the people on the mountain helping us, we definitely wouldn't have survived.)
Zhao Yu typed: (That's true. We should thank them for saving our lives... But that person yesterday seemed like he didn't want to be disturbed. Won't bringing supplies up there make him angry?)
Sister Yu considered it. (We'll just leave them at the place we ran to yesterday. Think about it—the people on the mountain knew we had run up there in the middle of the night, so someone must have been standing watch. If we leave the supplies there, they should find them.)
Zhao Yu nodded, then thought of something and his expression darkened. (Sister Yu, if we'd had someone keeping watch last night and spotted those thugs early, could more of us have escaped...)
Sister Yu fell silent when she saw Zhao Yu's message, guilt on her