At 4 a.m. on April 8, when Zhang Helai's team officially set out from the fifth camp, there were only 12 people left in the team.

They set out together in three teams, and there were supposed to be 20 people, but eight of them became seriously unwell while resting in the fourth camp. They were not vomiting blood or having other serious symptoms. Instead, they lay lazily on the ground as if they were drunk, with their consciousness blurred. Even if they managed to get up, they could not distinguish between their shoes and the thermos - yes, one guy picked up his boots and stuffed them into his mouth, wondering why there was no water.

In this situation, they could only stay in the fourth camp and wait for the Kamiya people to escort them down the mountain.

Because they were at Mount Hyjal, which was over 8,000 meters above sea level, the oxygen here was only one-third of that on the plains. Even if they wore oxygen masks when they slept at night, they could not stop the constant oxygen produced in their bodies.

Compared with them, Zhang Helai was lucky because he was able to stay conscious and continue to persevere; but unfortunately, his physical strength had reached its limit and he had to consume more oxygen to maintain his skills.

Even though they had rested for six hours in the fifth camp, which was as big as a football field, Zhang Helai still felt his body extremely heavy when he woke up.

When they set out together, the team members next to them could see that Zhang Helai had consumed more oxygen than them - a very dangerous number. Someone patted Zhang Helai on the shoulder and pointed at the oxygen tank, but Zhang Helai shook his head, so no one continued to persuade him.

They must cherish the strength they have to speak and fulfill their obligations as human beings: to persuade others to cherish their own lives.

Anyone who dares to conquer Mount Hyjal must be responsible for himself. Even though the climb to the summit of Mount Hyjal has been set up to be very safe, they can still see many corpses buried in the snow and icefalls along the way. Except for some corpses that are difficult to collect because of their strange locations, the rest are climbers who died on the way for various reasons in the past one or two years.

Mount Hyjal is undoubtedly a natural ice coffin. The rate of decay of those who die here is extremely slow. And because climbers are often fully equipped with cold-proof gear, later visitors will not see rotting flesh and bones when they see the corpses. They will only see signposts and corpse tombstones standing on the snowy glacier.

This is the truth about the mountaineering routes above 9,000 meters on Mount Hyjal: each route was paved step by step with the lives of countless climbers. Some of them are not even considered routes, as they require experienced climbers to nail ropes on the cliffs with a slope of nearly 90 degrees and slowly climb over them. Sometimes, when encountering a collapsed mountain road, experienced climbers are required to fix ropes and lay down planks, and the people behind them slowly climb over the cliffs above 9,000 meters. If there is a mistake, even the bodies cannot be found.

At first, they had some complex emotions such as fear towards this kind of corpse monument, but in the end they were completely relieved and nodded slightly as a greeting when passing by - after all, they might also become a part of it, so now is a way to say hello to their neighbors in advance.

Either conquer nature, become nature, or give up. Dare to come here, no one has to be responsible for your life.

All climbers have their own desires, whether it is to gain an experience that they can show off, or for fame and fortune, or because of their dreams, but when it comes to the world's highest point above 9,000 meters above sea level, they only have one thought left: conquer it and then survive!

At around 8:50 am on April 9, they had followed the mountain road to the signpost at an altitude of 9,810 meters. It would take at most two hours to climb to the summit of Mount Hyjal. After taking photos, they would be able to descend the mountain and return to Camp 5 before 1 pm.

The latest time to descend Mount Hyjal is 13:00. If you are slower, the unpredictable weather will prevent climbers from returning to camp before dark, and they may even be trapped and die on the way. Zhang Helai and his team saw a 9,810-meter signpost with a corpse buried in the snow next to it - no one knows whether he was frozen to death because of the weather.

At this time, Zhang Helai began to experience severe nausea, paleness, cold sweats and other symptoms. He slowly fell behind the team, and his oxygen tank was almost depleted - he was experiencing severe symptoms of hypoxia.

Even if he could hold on to the top of the mountain, he would not be able to descend due to lack of oxygen. He overestimated his physical strength, and he consumed oxygen too quickly during the climb, and now he was finally at the end of his rope.

It was impossible for him to return now, so he forced himself to hold on and took heavy steps, thinking that even if he died, he would rather die at an altitude of ten thousand meters - he had already arranged the future security of his family before he chose to come to Mount Hyjal.

No one would help him here. The best they could do was to tell the Kamiya people the location of Zhang Helai's body after they went down the mountain, and ask them to bring his body back and notify his family to come and take the body back for burial.

Lack of oxygen made Zhang Helai's body heavier and heavier. The equipment on his body seemed to have turned into chains extending from the mountain, trying to keep him in this natural burial place forever.

He didn't have many thoughts in his mind at that time - ordinary people at least have a chance to recover before they die, but people who are deprived of oxygen will slowly lose consciousness due to insufficient oxygen supply to the brain before they die, and they don't even have the luxury of "recalling".

Just when he was about to lose consciousness and close his eyes, Zhang Helai heard a strange sound coming from below amid the whistling of the cold wind.

That was the sound of sand and gravel produced by the collision of rock layers.

Did something fall in? Or did the wind blow the icefall apart?

Zhang Helai forced himself to open his eyes, and in his hazy vision, he saw a figure appear below.

Below... a figure...?

Zhang Helai was walking on a mountain road, and there was a slope of nearly 80° below him!

In a trance, Zhang Helai thought he was experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations due to lack of oxygen, but soon the figure approached him quickly and pulled off his oxygen mask!

The air as sharp as a cold sword instantly covered his face. Having lost his oxygen tank, he almost passed out. However, the next second another oxygen mask was stuffed on his face. Zhang Helai subconsciously took a deep breath. The full oxygen instantly relieved his hypoxia symptoms and brought him back from the brink of losing consciousness.

"Who saved me?" Zhang Helai regained consciousness and the first thing he thought of was: "Why would someone give me his oxygen tank?"

Each person could only carry one oxygen cylinder, otherwise they would be too heavy to move. The oxygen Zhang Helai was breathing was naturally someone else's oxygen. He opened his eyes and turned his head, only to see an unfamiliar face.

The heavy snow and wind covered her golden hair with frost, and her exposed fair skin was frozen red. Her thin clothes were like useless armor in the biting wind and cold swords, and only served to cover her body. Although her delicate face was listless and thin, the light in her eyes shone into Zhang Helai's heart like sunlight.

She held the oxygen mask in her right hand and stuffed it over Zhang Helai's face, and held the oxygen cylinder in her left hand. There was a rope wrapped around her waist, and nothing else.

A...blonde girl.

A climber without oxygen tanks.

A climber who... goes straight to rock climbing instead of taking the mountain trails.

A climber... without cold-proof clothing, with his hands, feet and face exposed, climbing a mountain at an altitude of 9,000 meters!

No cold-proof clothing, no oxygen tanks, what does this mean?

According to the concept that the temperature drops by 6 degrees for every 1,000 meters of altitude, it is now spring in the Taidamia Plains, and the temperature is around 20°. So above 9,000 meters, the temperature is at least minus 34°. In fact, when they set out from the fifth camp at 9,600 meters, the temperature measured was minus 40°.

What does minus 40 degrees mean? If you spit, the saliva will freeze before it hits the ground. A normal person without cold-proof clothing in minus 40 degrees will lose heat within an hour, and his body temperature will drop below 25 degrees. The body temperature regulation center will fail, breathing and heartbeat will be suppressed, blood pressure will drop almost linearly, various reflexes will disappear, and he will not respond to external stimuli, eventually leading to paralysis of the vascular motor center and respiratory center and death.

Simply put, this blonde girl should have turned into an ice sculpture, with her hands and feet as fragile and stiff as popsicles, and it is impossible for her to move at all!

What's more, she doesn't even have an oxygen tank! ?

Although some extreme mountaineering enthusiasts believe that human potential is unlimited, after all, many climbers can gradually adapt to the plateau climate after training at an altitude of 6,000 meters. The alveolar oxygen partial pressure and arterial oxygen partial pressure of people in the plains are 10 mmHg, while the Kamiya people in the plateau are only 1 mmHg. They need less oxygen in the mountains and can climb higher.

Therefore, some people believe that as long as someone has adapted to the plateau for a long time, they can climb to the summit of Mount Hyjal, a 10,000-meter peak where the oxygen content is less than one-third, without an oxygen tank!

However, this is ultimately an illusion. Let alone 10,000 meters, even at the third camp at 8,400 meters, no one can climb without oxygen cylinders, not even the Kamiya people who have lived on the plateau for generations!

Then, this blonde girl did not take the usual route and climbed the nearly 70° to 90° cliff with her bare hands...

Countless complicated thoughts kept colliding, and finally settled into one sentence in Zhang Helai's mouth: "Thank you."

He didn't think that his charm was so great that the blonde girl sacrificed herself to save him, so the reason was very natural - the blonde girl saw that he was about to die and just helped him.

The blonde girl smiled, helped him remove the oxygen tank from his back, and installed the one in her hand.

Zhang Helai did not try to stop her, and he had no right to stop her - was he worried that the blonde girl would give him the oxygen cylinder, causing her to die of suffocation?

Shit, Zhang Helai could tell with his own eyes that the blonde girl was in better condition than him!

"At that time, you should have known that the person in front of you..." the black vest asked, "probably not an ordinary person."

"It's not an exaggeration to describe her as a superhero." Zhang Helai said with a smile, "She is simply... the goddess of Mount Hyjal, an existence that mortals can only look up to."