Chapter 81: Through tear-filled eyes and a thick fog, Hua Songxu stumbled and staggered blindly...
In the thick fog, Hua Songxu stumbled and blindly descended.
Always sensitive to height and distance, she had no idea how much vertical height she was experiencing. The pickaxe handle had torn her gloves and cut her palms when she braked, but she felt no pain at the moment.
Because she needed to know the road conditions below in order to determine Xu Tingyun's location.
Upon reaching the bottom, Hua Songxu discovered that beneath the sharp, steep ice wall lay a gentle snow slope. As long as it wasn't bare ground composed of a mixture of ice and rock, the probability of an accident would be relatively low.
She rubbed her face to calm herself down, opened her eyes wide and searched with difficulty, finally finding a trail of snow that was about to be swept away by the wind.
"Xu Tingyun!"
Hua Songxu heard his own voice trembling.
"Xu Tingyun, can you hear me?!"
In a daze, she seemed to be transported back to the scene after the avalanche on December 28th. The world was vast and desolate, and she was the only one running and shouting, gradually growing more and more desperate.
The traces quickly disappeared, and Hua Songxu, unable to determine the direction, had no choice but to search in lower-lying areas.
After walking about twenty meters forward, Hua Songxu faintly heard a cough.
"Cough cough cough!"
She took off running, calling out, "Xu Tingyun!"
"Ah Xu, I'm fine."
When Hua Songxu saw Xu Tingyun leaning against a raised patch of ground, her heart finally felt half relieved. Then she saw the blood flowing from his forehead to the side of his face.
She rushed to his side, took off her bag, looked for a first-aid kit, and pulled out a bandage to press on the wound.
"Where else is the injury? Besides your head, where else does it hurt?"
Xu Tingyun gently took her hand. "No, my arms and legs are fine. Don't cry, I'm really okay."
"Who's crying—"
The rebuttal came to an abrupt halt. Hua Songxu rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, finding it damp.
His hand was facing Xu Tingyun, and his eyes narrowed. He gripped her hand even tighter. "Don't move, let me bandage you up."
Unable to break free, Hua Songxu was both angry and anxious. "Is my hand the important thing now?!"
Xu Tingyun insisted on wrapping the bandages around her again before loosening them, and readily agreed, saying, "They're all important."
Xu Tingyun had an open wound on her forehead, not large, but it had bled quite a bit. Only after the bleeding stopped did Hua Songxu have time to examine the cause of the ruptured tissue.
She brushed the snow off Xu Tingyun and went to check the seatbelts and equipment rings.
Upon seeing this, she stopped breathing.
The rope of the rope group was not broken; it was Xu Tingyun who manually unlocked the lock.
After stopping the bleeding and bandaging the wound, Hua Songxu used GPS to determine their location and the route to retreat. At the same time, he called Lao Zhou by satellite phone to come up and meet them.
Xu Tingyun walked steadily, but Hua Songxu was not at ease and continued to walk with her in a group and with her support until they returned to the foot of the mountain at around 9 p.m.
The three of them raced relentlessly toward the nearest county.
"You two are really lucky. The ten or twenty meters you fell just happened to avoid the most difficult section of the ridge," Zhou Yao remarked as he drove.
Hua Songxu sat in the back seat, letting Xu Tingyun lean on his shoulder, trying his best to keep steady.
During the descent, Xu Tingyun relied entirely on her mental fortitude. As soon as she reached the vehicle, she vomited, most likely suffering a concussion.
Hua Songxu didn't reply, but simply hugged the person tighter.
After the wound was treated at the hospital emergency room, a concussion was initially confirmed based on the symptoms, but imaging examinations were still needed to determine if there was any brain damage, so the hospitalization procedures were completed directly.
Xu Tingyun remained in a dazed state, occasionally regaining consciousness, and still remembered to ask Zhou Yao to take Hua Songxu to treat the injury on his hand.
"The weather was fine at first, then it changed so suddenly, catching us completely off guard," Zhou Yao asked. "What exactly caused the fall?"
With his palms torn and bleeding, Hua Songxu was in so much pain during the disinfection that he couldn't utter a word. Only after the treatment was finished and he thanked the nurse did he answer: "The visibility was extremely low, the environment was too harsh, and it was impossible to discern the road conditions. When going around the ridge, Xu Tingyun must have stepped on brittle ice covered by snow."
"Wow...that was close." Zhou Yao gasped. "And then?"
"At the time, I was using my ice axe as a walking axe, so when the entire block of brittle ice collapsed, Xu Tingyun lost both of his axes, and I lost one. During the fall, I could only brake with one axe, but—"
"He couldn't stop." Zhou Yao wiped his face. "No wonder he had so many bruises on his hands and arms... How did he finally stop?"
Hua Songxu remained silent for a moment, then turned and walked out of the hospital, stopping only at the green belt outside the gate.
She took out a cigarette, smoked half of it, and then said with difficulty, "He unlocked the safety lock of the coil."
After a full minute of blankness, Zhou Yao took the cigarette case from her hand and lit one himself.
"Damn it," he said.
After finishing one cigarette, the two of them simultaneously lit another.
"Damn," Zhou Yao exclaimed again, "It was only a dozen seconds at most, how could this kid react so quickly in such a short time?!"
Hua Songxu glared angrily, "Quick reaction? That's suicidal!"
"..." Zhou Yao had no way to refute, "He really doesn't value his life."
Falling down an ice wall without an ice axe means your only hope is to be stopped by a teammate. Untying the harness when you can't see the ground below or the drop is tantamount to leaving your fate to chance.
In the mountains, the summer night breeze lacked the heat of the city, carrying a refreshing coolness. The two stood on the curb, calming themselves for a while.
“Don’t get angry with him when he wakes up,” Zhou Yao said. “In that situation, he just didn’t want to be a burden to you. If the drop was too high or the road was rocky, it would have been certain death. Without his weight, you might have a chance to fight back.”
"I know," Hua Songxu rubbed his temples hard. "I know Lao Zhou, but I just—I just—"
"Love is always a heavy thing, there's no way around it."
"...If I were in that situation, I would be thinking about how to brake and stop, and I would never have thought that it could be done this way."
Zhou Yao patted her back, "Don't feel guilty. What he's most afraid of in this situation is that you'll feel burdened."
"It's easier said than done."
That night, Hua Songxu sent Zhou Yao to a nearby hotel to rest, while he stayed in the ward to keep him company.
On the hospital bed, the man's sleeping face was as handsome and peaceful as ever, but the gauze wrapped around his forehead and the faint traces of blood made her uneasy.
The room was stuffy. When Hua Songxu took off his coat, the gauze on his hand got caught on the zipper of the inside pocket. He carefully untied it after a while. Inside that pocket was Xu Tingyun's suicide note.
Hua Songxu felt a little breathless. So close, so unlucky… Was she really going to open the envelope today?
During her months in Beijing, she secretly contemplated countless possibilities for the future when she was alone, thinking about what she should do after retiring and longing for every moment she could spend with him.
This was the only situation she hadn't even dared to imagine.
Xu Tingyun seemed to sense something; her breathing became rapid, her thick eyebrows furrowed, and her hand frantically reached to the side.
Hua Songxu pulled the stool to the bedside, took his hand, and said, "I'm here."
Her hand was gripped tightly.
"I'm here, I'll rest a little longer," she said.
The frown lines between Xu Tingyun's brows gradually smoothed out, and he quickly calmed down, though the strength of his clasped hands remained unchanged. At the same time, feeling his body temperature, Hua Songxu's bewilderment was replaced by reassurance, and a wave of exhaustion washed over him.
She fell asleep while lying face down on the edge of the bed.
In her dream, Hua Songxu heard Xu Tingyun calling her. She wanted to answer but couldn't say a word. As the voice grew fainter and fainter, she rushed to chase after it, but her wrists and ankles were tightly entangled by vines, and she couldn't move at all.
From anxiety to collapse and despair, every second felt so long.
Just then, a clearer "A-Xu" came from another direction.
Hua Songxu turned around and saw the dazzling yet warm sunlight.
“Ah Xu”.
Hua Songxu suddenly opened his eyes, his vision filled with a blurry white. His gaze moved upwards to see Xu Tingyun leaning against the headboard, her face filled with worry.
"You're awake? How are you feeling?"
Why are you sleeping here?
The two spoke at the same time.
"I'm fine." Hua Songxu rubbed his cheeks and glanced at the time. "I'll take you for a CT scan at 8:30."
Xu Tingyun sighed sincerely, then nodded.
The test results confirmed it was just a concussion, with no other brain damage. Hua Songxu and Zhou Yao were finally relieved.
"The doctor said that after a few days in the hospital, I can go home to rest and then go directly back to Chengdu." Zhou Yao helped Xu Tingyun from the wheelchair back to the hospital bed.
Xu Tingyun had some reservations about the panda-like care, but she couldn't resist the insistence of the two and had no choice but to grit her teeth and accept it.
"Go back and rest for half a month before having a follow-up examination." Hua Songxu put away the test report. "You need to rest absolutely now."
Xu Tingyun pouted listlessly, but after receiving someone's laser-like gaze, she nodded obediently and said okay.
During the day, the two of them were busy with various tasks, but in the evening, Hua Songxu sent Zhou Yao back home. During this time, Xu Tingyun's opinions were completely ignored.
“I’m really fine, I’m not a child. Why don’t you and Brother Zhou go to the hotel to rest…” he tried to negotiate again.
Hua Songxu took out a blanket and draped it over his shoulders. "Shut up, I'm going to stay here."
Then she saw Xu Tingyun, who had been helped up during the day, suddenly get out of bed and walk over to her in a few steps, ready to hug her.
Hua Songxu was shocked. "What are you doing?!"
"I'll carry you to bed," Xu Tingyun said matter-of-factly.
Hua Songxu slapped his hand away, "I'm sleeping in the bed, where are you, a patient, going to sleep? Behave yourself!"
"A 1.2-meter bed is big enough for me to sleep on."
Ultimately, under Xu Tingyun's relentless and unreasonable demands, Hua Songxu was forced to compromise.
She rested her head on Xu Tingyun's shoulder and was about to shrink away when she was pulled back around the waist. "Don't move."
"I'm afraid you'll fall and hit your head."
“Your boyfriend has a concussion, not dementia,” Xu Tingyun chuckled.
Xu Tingyun waited for a while but she didn't speak, so he assumed she had fallen asleep. Then he noticed a wet patch on the shoulder of her hospital gown. Startled, he lifted Hua Songxu's chin and saw that her slightly flushed cheeks were covered in tears.
"Don't cry..." Xu Tingyun clumsily wiped her tears with her knuckles, but couldn't wipe them away completely. "What's wrong?"
Hua Songxu slapped her hand away, letting the tears flow freely, "Tell me what happened!"
Xu Tingyun spent the entire day in fear. He knew Hua Songxu would be furious about such a risky move. Now that it had happened, he felt a sense of relief.
“Isn’t everything alright now?” he said gently.
"What if something happens?" Hua Songxu stared at him with teary eyes. "What will I do?"
Xu Tingyun patted her head, her eyes gentle yet firm, a faint smile playing on her lips. "No matter what happens to me, you'll be fine. In my heart, you're like a ground lily."
Hua Songxu was heartbroken when he heard this. He sniffed and asked in a muffled voice, "What plum?"
“Cushion-shaped ground plum,” Xu Tingyun said. “It is mainly distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, growing at an altitude of 4,500-5,300 meters. Its small body can withstand extremely cold winds and the harsh climate of the plateau.”
Xu Tingyun looked at him, her mind filled with the last sentence of the suicide note.
You belong to the mountains, so you should climb to the clouds. And I will always be behind you, even in my eternal sleep.
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