At 4 a.m. on April 8, when Zhang Helai's group officially set out from Fifth Camp, only twelve people remained in the entire party.
The three teams had set out together, and there should originally have been twenty people. But while resting at Fourth Camp, eight of them had developed severe physical discomfort. It was not vomiting blood or any other grave symptom; rather, they lay limply on the ground as if drunk, their consciousness muddled. Even when they forced themselves up, they could not tell their shoes apart from thermoses—yes, one guy picked up a boot and tried to stuff it into his mouth, wondering why there was no water.
In their condition, they could only remain at Fourth Camp and wait for the Kamiya People to escort them down the mountain.
They were on Mount Hyjal above 8,000 meters, where the oxygen was only one-third of what it was at sea level. Even though they wore oxygen masks while sleeping at night, they could not stop their bodies from malfunctioning.
Compared to them, Zhang Helai was fortunate. He could still remain conscious and keep going. But he was also unfortunate: his physical strength had reached its limit, and he had to consume more oxygen to keep himself functioning.
Even after resting for six full hours in Fifth Camp, which was as large as a football field, Zhang Helai still felt incomparably heavy when he woke up.
When they set off together, the other team members could see that Zhang Helai's oxygen tank was being consumed faster than anyone else's. It was an extremely dangerous rate. Someone patted Zhang Helai on the shoulder and pointed at his oxygen tank. Zhang Helai shook his head, so no one continued trying to persuade him.
They had to conserve even this little strength for speaking, while also fulfilling their duty as human beings: urging others to cherish their lives.
Anyone who dared come to conquer Haijiaer Peak had to take responsibility for themselves. Even though the ascent had been made as safe as possible, they had seen quite a few corpses buried in snowfields and icefalls along the way. Aside from a few bodies that were too awkwardly positioned to recover, the rest belonged to climbers who had died on the route over the past year or two for various reasons.
Haijiaer Peak was undoubtedly a natural ice coffin. Bodies that died here decayed extremely slowly, and because climbers were usually fully bundled in cold-weather gear, those who came later would not see rotting flesh or heaps of white bones. They would see only corpse markers standing amid the snow and glaciers.
This was the truth of climbing routes above 9,000 meters on Haijiaer Peak: every path had been carved out step by step with the lives of countless climbers. Some could not even be called paths. On nearly vertical cliff faces, experienced climbers had to secure ropes before others could slowly crawl across. Sometimes, when they encountered fractured mountain paths, the veterans had to set the ropes and lay down planks before those behind could slowly cross the broken cliffs above 9,000 meters. One mistake, and not even a body would be found.
At first, they had felt complicated emotions such as fear toward these corpse markers. But in the end, they had completely accepted them. As they passed, they would give a slight nod as a greeting—after all, they might become part of them too. It was best to greet their future neighbors early.
Either conquer nature, become part of nature, or give up. If you dared come here, no one was obligated to take responsibility for your life.
Every climber had their own desire. Some wanted an experience worth bragging about, some sought fame and fortune, and some pursued a dream. But in this highest place in the world, above 9,000 meters, they had only one thought left: conquer it, then survive!
At around 8:50 a.m. on April 9, they had followed the mountain path to the 9,810-meter marker. At most, they needed another two hours to climb to the summit of Haijiaer Peak. After taking commemorative photos, they would be able to descend smoothly and return to Fifth Camp before 1 p.m.
The latest time to descend from Haijiaer Peak was 1 p.m. Any later, and the unpredictable weather might prevent climbers from returning to camp before nightfall, leaving them stranded to die halfway up the mountain. Beside the 9,810-meter marker Zhang Helai's group saw stood a corpse marker buried in snow. No one knew whether that person had frozen to death here after being trapped by the weather.
At that moment, Zhang Helai developed severe nausea, pallor, cold sweats, and other symptoms. He slowly fell behind the group, and his oxygen tank was nearly depleted—he was suffering from severe hypoxia.
Even if he could hold on long enough to reach the summit, he would lack the oxygen needed to descend. He had overestimated his stamina. He had consumed oxygen too quickly during the climb, and now he had finally reached the end of the road.
He could not turn back now either. He forced his body onward with heavy steps, thinking only that even if he died, he wanted to die at Ten Thousand Meter Peak. He had already arranged for his family's future security before choosing to come to Haijiaer Peak.
No one would help him here. At most, after descending, they could tell the Kamiya People where Zhang Helai's body was, so they could bring it back and notify his family to claim it for burial.
The lack of oxygen made Zhang Helai's body grow heavier and heavier. The equipment on him seemed to become chains extending from the mountain itself, trying to keep him forever in this natural burial ground.
At that time, he did not have many thoughts left. Ordinary people at least had their lives flash before their eyes before death, but someone dying of hypoxia would gradually lose consciousness from insufficient oxygen to the brain. Even the luxury of "remembering" did not exist.
Just as he was about to lose consciousness and close his eyes, Zhang Helai heard a strange sound coming from below through the howling cold wind.
It was the sound of gravel produced by colliding rock layers.
Had something fallen? Or had the wind torn open an icefall?
Zhang Helai forced his eyes open. Through his blurred vision, he saw what seemed to be a human figure below.
Below... a human figure...?
Zhang Helai was walking along a mountain path. Below him was a slope nearly eighty degrees steep!
In his daze, Zhang Helai thought he was suffering auditory and visual hallucinations from oxygen deprivation. But the figure rapidly approached him, then yanked off his oxygen mask!
Air as cold and sharp as windblades and frost swords instantly covered his face. Without the oxygen tank, he nearly blacked out on the spot. But in the next second, another oxygen mask was pressed over his face. Zhang Helai instinctively took a deep breath, and the rich oxygen instantly eased his hypoxia, pulling him back from the edge of unconsciousness.
Who saved me? As Zhang Helai regained consciousness, his first thought was, How could someone give me their own oxygen tank?
Everyone could carry at most one oxygen tank; any more weight would make movement impossible. The oxygen Zhang Helai was breathing now naturally belonged to someone else. He opened his eyes and turned his head, only to see an unfamiliar face.
The blowing snow and wind coated her golden hair in frost. Her exposed fair skin had been frozen red, and her thin clothing was as useless as armor in the cutting wind and cold, serving only to cover her body. Her exquisite face was wan and thin, yet the light in her eyes shone into Zhang Helai's heart like sunlight.
Her right hand held the oxygen mask over Zhang Helai's face, while her left carried the oxygen tank. A coil of rope was wrapped around her waist, and she had nothing else.
A... golden-haired girl.
A... climber who was not using an oxygen tank.
A... climber who did not follow the mountain path and climbed the rock face directly.
A... climber scaling a mountain above 9,000 meters with bare hands, bare feet, a bare face, and no cold-weather clothing!
No cold-weather gear, no oxygen tank—what did that even mean?
By the calculation that temperature dropped six degrees for every 1,000 meters of elevation, it was spring in the lowland regions of Tadamia, around twenty degrees Celsius. Then above 9,000 meters, it should be at least negative thirty-four degrees. In fact, when they had departed from Fifth Camp at 9,600 meters, the measured temperature had been negative forty degrees.
What did negative forty degrees mean? Spit, and it would freeze before hitting the ground. A normal person without cold-weather clothing in negative forty degrees would not even last an hour before heat loss dropped their body temperature below twenty-five degrees. Their thermoregulatory center would fail, their breathing and heartbeat would be suppressed, their blood pressure would plunge almost in a straight line, their reflexes would vanish, and they would stop responding to external stimuli. In the end, paralysis of the vasomotor and respiratory centers would lead to death.
Simply put, this golden-haired girl should already have become an ice sculpture. Her hands and feet should have been as brittle and stiff as frozen popsicles. There was no way she could still move!
Not to mention that she did not even have an oxygen tank!?
Among extreme mountaineering enthusiasts, some believed that human potential was limitless. After all, many climbers could gradually adapt to high-altitude climates through training at 6,000 meters. The partial pressure of oxygen in the alveoli and arterial blood of people from the plains was ten millimeters of mercury, while that of the Kamiya People from the highlands was one millimeter of mercury. They needed less oxygen in the mountains and could therefore climb higher.
Thus, some believed that as long as someone spent enough time adapting to the highlands, they could summit Ten Thousand Meter Peak on Mount Hyjal, where oxygen levels were below one-third, without carrying an oxygen tank!
But that was ultimately fantasy. Forget 10,000 meters—even at Third Camp, at 8,400 meters, no one could currently climb without an oxygen tank. Not even the Kamiya People, who had lived on the highlands for generations, could do it!
And this golden-haired girl was not even taking the normal route. She was climbing nearly seventy- to ninety-degree cliffs with her bare hands...
Countless complicated thoughts collided in Zhang Helai's mind, finally settling into a single sentence from his mouth. "Thank you."
He did not think his charm was great enough to make this golden-haired girl sacrifice herself to save him, so the reason was obvious—she had seen that he was about to die and had simply lent him a hand.
The golden-haired girl smiled and helped him remove the oxygen tank from his back, replacing it with the one in her hand.
Zhang Helai did not stop her. He had no standing to stop her. Was he supposed to worry that she had given him her oxygen tank and would die of hypoxia without one herself?
Bullshit. Zhang Helai could tell with his own eyes that the golden-haired girl was in much better condition than he was!
"At that time, you probably knew that the person before you..." the man in the black vest asked, "was not an ordinary person."
"It would not be an exaggeration to call her Superman." Zhang Helai smiled. "She was practically... the Goddess of Haijiaer Mountain, an existence that mortals could only look up to."