Some things are just destined, as the saying goes. When Yama, the King of Hell, wants to play a trick, even immortals can’t escape.
Beijiao’s phone was never set to silent or Do Not Disturb mode, but that day, for some unknown reason—whether he had accidentally touched it or not—the phone suddenly went completely silent in his pocket, so he had no idea that his phone had been ringing off the hook.
It had been snowing continuously for two or three days. The snow on the slopes of Songbei Ski Resort had gradually accumulated, and the tracks pressed down by skiers were neat and orderly. On an ordinary day, one could smoothly ski down the several-kilometer-long slope from the top of the mountain to the bottom in no less than twenty minutes…
But now, walking through it was extremely strenuous, with each step sinking unevenly into the snow.
They had already spent two hours in the afternoon and were only halfway up the mountain when another accident occurred—an incident where someone fell off the trail.
It had been half an hour since Beijiao fell into the snow pit before people managed to dig him out. Not only had he exhausted himself trying to climb out, but the guys helping to dig him out were also completely worn out. Once he was pulled up, everyone collapsed from exhaustion, unable to move.
Someone suggested taking a break, so they sat down and started chatting idly.
Beijiao initially had no interest in joining the conversation, sitting far away from them with a gloomy expression, staring blankly down the mountain. Fresh snow had just fallen, and thick fog had risen across the mountain. The rime and mist swirled together, and looking down, one could barely make out the colorful rooftops of the resort below.
It looked like a scroll of harmonious ink painting.
Normally, the slopes were bustling with people, so such a serene scene was rarely seen.
After gazing at the scenery for a while, Beijiao’s eyes lingered on one of the red rooftops below. He suddenly thought of Jiang Ran’s villa, which also had a red roof, and his thoughts naturally began to wander—
…Had Jiang Ran woken up yet?
Would she, upon waking, impulsively rush to the foyer and discover that he had taken Hongshu instead of the park board?
…If that happened, he was doomed.
Just thinking about it made his spine tingle.
His teenage mind wandered aimlessly, and he no longer followed what the others were saying, as if he had a guilty conscience. Suddenly, he wanted to call or text Jiang Ran…
Just as his hand reached for his phone, he somehow heard someone beside him say, “Damn it, you sent it!” Slowly, he withdrew his hand and turned his gaze away from the mountain base, looking back blankly.
It was the fat guy who had fallen into the pit first. Now he was sitting beside a girl with a high ponytail who had been waving her phone around and shouting. The girl was laughing, “Cui Tong! You posted it already, but why didn’t you blur my face! Where would Grandpa’s dignity go like this!”
She didn’t sound genuinely angry, just teasing and joking.
Beijiao only now learned that the girl’s name was Cui Tong, but none of that mattered. For the first time ever, he actually initiated a conversation with her: “What was posted?”
His teenage voice seemed to mix with the thick white fog halfway up the mountain, becoming mysterious and unpredictable.
“A video of us climbing the mountain, what else? I told you, Cui Tong, what’s the point of posting it when your stupid Douyin only has a few followers!” the guy with the big head beside him scolded, “And you even added a location! If the ski resort staff see it, we’re all going to be in trouble!”
The one being scolded looked innocent, but Beijiao seized the key point: “Wait, does that mean people can see it even if they don’t follow you?”
“Yeah, you didn’t know? Short video apps love to target people nearby—”
How would Beijiao know?
He was always too busy to even think about using such apps. He only opened them when he needed to catch up on breaking news. More often than not, he only opened the app to stalk Jiang Ran’s updates…
To check if anyone had the guts to flirt with her in the comment section.
Hearing this, he leaned over to look at the phone in Big Head’s hand. Coincidentally, Big Head was watching the post Cui Tong had shared. Seeing Beijiao leaning over, he kindly dragged the progress bar back to the beginning and pointed at the end of the line.
“There, you’re right here.”
Beijiao held his breath for three seconds.
Big Head thought he was excited from seeing himself on screen for the first time.
He kindly dragged the progress bar further: “Then you fall into the pit, and there’s a close-up shot of that too!”
In the video, Beijiao could be seen flipping and tumbling into the snow pit, with snow and broken branches making a loud crashing sound as the snow poured over him. The video ended with the girl’s shrill laughter.
Beijiao: “…”
He immediately stood up, walked over to Cui Tong, and bent down, saying in a concise tone: “Delete it.”
Cui Tong initially thought he was joking. Smiling, she said, “What’s the big deal? Even if you wear a face guard, who can recognize you?” But when she looked up, she saw the expressionless, icy gaze in the teenager’s eyes.
“Delete it,” he repeated coldly, his tone firm. “Don’t you understand human language?”
Her smile froze slightly. “What’s wrong? It’s just a video. Keep it as a memento. It’s such a rare experience—”
Beijiao didn’t feel like arguing with her.
He took out his phone from his pocket, originally intending to test whether he could see her post on his feed. If he could see it, he would snatch her phone and delete the video no matter what it took. But the moment he unlocked the screen, he saw 37 missed calls.
For a moment, Beijiao thought he was dreaming.
To put it bluntly, his heart sank with a loud thud, as if echoing the shutdown sound of Windows 98, and his vision momentarily darkened.
He didn’t even know how he managed to swipe through the list of missed calls. The first two were from Jiang Ran, half an hour ago. The next 35 were from Aju, Qiunian, Lixingnan, Zhaoketian, and a few other mutual friends.
Yama himself had arrived, flanked by Ox-Head and Horse-Face demons, ready to drag him away.
Still not giving up, he tapped into WeChat…
Only to find it completely blown up.
The messages ranged from—
“Answer the phone!”
“What’s the point of carrying your phone if you won’t answer!”
“If you don’t answer, you’re dead!”
“Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Jiang Ran is furious with you!”
“How could you sneak up the mountain by yourself! If you wanted to go, you should’ve taken Lixingnan with you! At least bring a guardian! Sneaking around like a thief, making people angry!”
“Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Brother, if you’re still alive, just answer the phone!”
To—
“Never mind, no need to answer now.”
“You’re dead.”
“Listen to me, don’t come back tonight. If you dare to come back, Jiang Ran will kill you.”
No one around had any idea what had happened.
They only saw the cold, intimidating teenager one moment, and then, the moment he looked at his phone, his entire aura changed.
If he had been six feet tall a moment ago, now it was as if his legs had been chopped off.
He dialed Jiang Ran’s number, fully expecting the message “The user is unavailable.” The boy’s pale lips pressed tightly together, afraid to imagine whether he had been blocked or something else had happened.
He randomly selected the most recent contact and dialed Aju. The phone barely rang once before Aju answered in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper: “Dude, you finally answered!”
“Where is she?” Beijiao didn’t waste time.
Aju was silent for a moment on the other end. “She’s angry. I’ve never seen her this angry… Maybe you shouldn’t come back today. Hide out at Big Head’s for a few days. Otherwise, you’ll probably be the victim of the first murder case at Songbei Ski Resort.”
Beijiao had no mood for nonsense. He lowered his voice: “She won’t answer my calls.”
Aju: “Because she broke her phone.”
Beijiao paused: “What?”
Aju said sympathetically: “She broke it when she saw the video and realized you took Hongshu instead of the park board this afternoon. It’s shattered.”
They spent half an hour picking glass shards out of the floorboards—but Beijiao probably didn’t care to know that, so he didn’t mention it.
Beijiao said: “Oh.”
He responded calmly.
He was doomed.
He stared blankly ahead, desperately thinking.
As everyone looked on in confusion, Beijiao hung up the phone, shoved it back into his pocket, sat down on the snow, took off Hongshu from his backpack, and started strapping on his skis.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Big Head was the only one who could talk to Beijiao somewhat easily. Still carrying his skis on his back, he crawled over.
“We haven’t even reached the top yet. Are we going back?”
As he finished speaking, the person who had been clicking the bindings looked up and glanced at him—
Just one glance, and Big Head instinctively scooted backward.
Between the face guard and the helmet, the boy’s beautiful eyes now looked lost and panicked, his eyes rapidly filling with red blood vessels, a deep red that signaled he was on the verge of emotional collapse.
“Yeah, I’m going back.”
He responded softly, his voice hoarse. “She’s waiting for me.”
He might have said that to himself.
Because at this moment, he was no longer sure if there was still someone waiting for him at home—
The fact that all his friends and family had mobilized in an unprecedented way scared him. He had a vague feeling that this time would be different from the incident in Xinjiang—it wouldn’t be resolved so easily.
He knew he had done something wrong, and hadn’t even figured out how to explain or apologize to Jiang Ran. Lying was just wrong.
But he didn’t have time to think about all that now. All he wanted was to return to her side immediately.
After strapping on his skis, he stood up like a soulless figure, looked toward the direction of the villa area below, and tried to spot Jiang Ran’s house through the fog. But no matter how hard he squinted, he couldn’t see which one it was.
No one knew what had happened. In the blink of an eye, Beijiao had already started skiing down—
Someone among the stunned crowd exclaimed, “Oh my god,” confused about what had just occurred, but honestly admiring, “So fast.”
Big Head hesitated for a moment, feeling that Beijiao’s state before leaving was abnormal. Worried, he took off the skis on his back and started strapping them on, preparing to follow Beijiao until he safely reached the bottom…
If climbing halfway up the mountain was wasted effort, then so be it.
It wasn’t that fun with these people anyway.
…
As the sunlight gradually shifted toward sunset, the once sunlit slopes began to tilt toward another area. Beijiao had already skied down over a hundred meters, and the visibility on the slope had dropped to a terrifying level.
Yet his speed kept increasing.
Later, the fog became so thick that he couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. He was skiing without thinking, his mind filled with memories of this afternoon when he was about to leave, and she followed behind him in slippers…
He stopped at the entrance, pulled up his face guard, leaned in, and she kissed his cheek, her deep brown eyes full of smiles. Then she personally helped him put on his helmet.
She smiled slightly at him, that smile probably expressing her satisfaction that he had obediently put on the helmet. After all, she had always been like that…
Because of Lin Shuang.
She had become a bird frightened by the mere sound of a bowstring.
Since then, she had demanded that everyone around her place safety as their top priority, with near-excessive strictness.
He should have agreed.
He should have been the best at following her rules.
Instead, he repeatedly acted like a fool, making secret moves behind her back, making mistakes again and again on the very things she cared about the most. After each mistake, he would pretend to be pitiful and apologize, and then stubbornly repeat the same mistakes.
In her eyes, how cheap must his apologies seem?
From the wild wolf valley in Xinjiang, to jumping off the platform without a helmet at Songbei Ski Resort in Jilin, and now today—
Suddenly, his mind cleared, and just imagining Jiang Ran, in extreme disappointment and anger, smashing her phone, made Beijiao feel like he couldn’t breathe.
It was as if the fog had taken away the air, and the fresh mountain air had become thin.
He felt like he couldn’t wait even a second longer to escape this suffocating fog. His skis flew chaotically down the slope, each edge extended as far as possible, as long as it could go fast enough!
He was used to carving turns, and long hours of practice on groomed snow had almost made him forget that when the snow is thick and soft, it can become extremely uneven—
The danger of backcountry skiing lies in this.
Sometimes, snow bumps may seem soft compared to hard rocks that damage skis, but at high speeds, they can easily throw both person and skis into the air!
Beijiao realized too late that a snow bump had suddenly risen under his feet. His front edge hit the bump, and the large bump caused his ski base to deform!
His feet left the ground, and he felt himself being thrown into the air!
Beijiao had experience flying off jumps in the terrain park. In mid-air, he quickly regained his composure from his daze, slightly bending his knees to try to absorb the unexpected impact—
However, his front edge had been too long and too fast. When he took off, he was almost completely out of control. The landing spot was only outside the trail, a line of trees in the twilight, like ghostly shadows!
If he had just crashed straight into them, the tip of his ski would have broken, and he would have bounced back onto the trail.
But now his mind was in chaos again. In a flash, while desperately looking for the safest landing spot, his peripheral vision caught sight of the small winged BC logo on the tip of his ski—
Suddenly, his mind flashed back to the day when he was packing in the room, and she was sitting on the bed, holding Hongshu, which had just been unboxed, carefully applying that sticker to the tip…
With pride and joy, it was the ski board and sticker she had won for him after personally returning to competition after years of absence.
At that time, Beijiao had casually looked up and thought how beautiful she looked when she smiled—
His thoughts stopped there.
Beijiao made his choice without thinking further.
In mid-air, he abruptly pulled his feet in and hastily performed a twist—
Then came a loud “Bang!” The next second, besides the snow falling from the trees after being hit, there was also the intense ringing in his ears and the sharp pain in his shoulder.
The previously soaring teenager let out a muffled groan, like a broken kite, falling from mid-air and brushing against the tree trunk!
He landed “Pah!” in a pile of snow at the tree roots, sending up a cloud of white snow!
The icy snow poured over him, giving him the illusion that he had been buried alive…
However, the cold powder snow did not save him from the full-body pain that followed—
His head buzzed. Even through the helmet, he couldn’t tell if he had hit his head and was bleeding.
The sharp pain came from his shoulder. Beijiao considered himself not to be someone who complained easily, but in that instant, he could feel cold sweat soaking through his moisture-wicking clothes.
The pain was almost enough to make him faint.
Until he heard Big Head’s shout from not far away, and the loud “swishing” sound of skis sliding through thick snow. In the empty mountain at dusk, his voice was so loud.
“This.”
The boy heard his own voice, weak and hoarse, like a ghost crawling out of hell, filled with despair.
The skis on his feet felt like they weighed a thousand pounds…
…
Jiang Ran had said, “Skiing is an extreme sport; you should have reverence—
Reverence for the mountains, reverence for life.”
He had always felt like he had heard these words so often that his ears grew calloused. Then, lazily picking at his ears, he would agree—thinking that simply wearing a helmet and protective gear was enough. As for the rest, he had never truly taken it to heart…
When she realized this, how disappointed must she have felt?
That was what he thought before slipping into unconsciousness.
Author’s Note:
PS: Let me objectively clarify something to avoid misunderstanding. Actually, climbing and skiing on closed slopes isn’t that unforgivable. Many people do it. After all, even though there are no protective nets, compared to real backcountry skiing, the risk in a ski resort’s planned route is almost minimal—
Being within the ski resort’s planned route + familiarity with the frequently skied routes + no sudden large rocks or big holes appearing halfway
The situation in the previous chapter was essentially just a minor, common act of sneaking around, not serious enough to warrant being exiled for three years. After all, the older sister genuinely liked him, so exiling him like that personally feels insufficiently justified emotionally.
But now, yes, now it’s serious enough. He can be taken away now.
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