Freezing rain had just fallen, leaving the ground a muddy mess. Three vehicles drove through the sludge, carving long tracks whose starting point was nowhere in sight.
"There are tire tracks!" Samba, who was driving, reminded them.
Duojie grunted. "Stop the car. Let's see which direction they went."
Samba stopped, and the two vehicles behind followed suit. Everyone gathered beside the tracks, smoking and talking as they judged the directions to the left and right.
Everyone knew White Chrysanthemum had been learning how to determine a vehicle's direction from its tracks. Samba smiled and asked, "White Chrysanthemum, take a look. Which way did they go?"
White Chrysanthemum curled her lips. "The tracks are so deep; they must go both ways. Honestly, we don't even need to look. Didn't those three tourists say that group was to the west? Then we should just head west."
Shao Yunfei said, "Not necessarily. The three tourists said west, but we've already come this far. East, south, west, and north aren't so easy to pin down anymore. Besides, this group knew enough to let the people go—basically begging our mountain patrol team for mercy. They're not brainless. Maybe they deliberately led those tourists in circles to confuse them."
"Whatever tricks they used, they're nearby. Looking at the weather, these tire tracks can't be more than a day old. We'll head west first. If they aren't there, we can come back." White Chrysanthemum was unconcerned. "I think either direction has a fifty-percent chance."
Samba and the others walked around, stopping now and then to inspect the tracks. "We should still go west."
"How did you determine that?"
Samba and the others gave an impromptu lesson. It wasn't systematic, but the factors they considered were already quite comprehensive: how many vehicles there were, how heavy they were,