Chapter 1 Jade Belt Through the Mountains, Twin Peaks Hidden in the Wilderness

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"Jade belt crosses the mountains, twin peaks hide the wilderness."

I recited this poem, gazing at the Kunlun peaks. Following the guidance of the first half, we arrived at the edge of the Kunlun Mountains along the Cherchen River.

The poem's guidance seemed accurate, so our next step was to find the "twin peaks."

These "twin peaks" must be hidden within the Kunlun peaks.

I glanced at the others' facial expressions. Apart from Fatty, who looked rather grim, everyone else seemed quite calm.

"Let's go. Let's enter the mountains," I said to everyone.

Fatty pulled me aside, sighed, and whispered in a voice only I could hear, "Young Master, how about we not let Jennifer and Zoey enter the mountains?"

"What is it?" I asked, puzzled. "Why shouldn't Jennifer and Zoey enter Kunlun?"

Fatty's eyes were filled with sadness. He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, "In my second year in the army, I came to the Kunlun Mountains with the troops for a mission. This Kunlun Mountain is very strange..."

Fatty looked left and right, as if afraid of being overheard. He furtively moved closer to me.

After confirming that Zoey, Jennifer, and Dodge weren't paying attention to us, Fatty finally revealed the "huge secret" in his heart: "The story I'm about to tell you is a secret that my superiors ordered us never to reveal when I was a soldier..."

Fatty's mysterious appearance successfully piqued my interest. I listened intently to the secret Fatty was about to reveal.

It was in the late 1990s, Fatty's second year in the army. His unit was stationed at the border of Qinghai and Tibet due to a mission.

At that time, "something" happened in the Kunlun Mountains that required urgent assistance. Fatty's unit, being the closest mobile force, was immediately dispatched to the Kunlun Mountains for a rescue mission.

Fatty initially thought it was a natural disaster like a landslide that had trapped the Kunlun Mountain garrison. But when they arrived at Kunlun Mountain, Fatty realized that things were far from as simple as he had imagined.

The incident was triggered by the disappearance of a patrol team from the garrison during a routine patrol in the Kunlun Mountains.

Patrolling in the Kunlun Mountains was one of the garrison's daily tasks, both to drive away poachers and to dissuade and rescue adventurers entering Kunlun from within China.

The patrol routes and times were fixed.

Each garrison patrol team usually had four to five groups, each with five people, patrolling different routes at different times. Generally, two teams were sent out on patrol during each time slot.

The problem this time was with a team patrolling westward.

To ensure safety, the patrol team had to strictly follow the established route and report any problems in a timely manner. Due to the chaotic magnetic field in the Kunlun Mountains, communications were limited, so the patrol team's patrol route was not very long or deep.

The western patrol team departed from the garrison at 5:30 PM. According to the usual schedule, they should have returned by 7:00 PM, but they had not returned by 7:30 PM.

(The sunset time in the Kunlun Mountains is generally around 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM Beijing time.)

The garrison headquarters did not receive any distress calls from them and didn't take it seriously, assuming they had been delayed by something.

It wasn't until 8:30 PM, when the sun began to set, that the garrison officers realized something was wrong, as the western patrol team still hadn't returned.

Therefore, the garrison immediately dispatched two more teams familiar with the western patrol route to search for the missing team.

If the missing team was found, they were to immediately fire a flare to notify the headquarters of their location. If assistance was needed, a second flare was to be fired.

However, after the two teams were dispatched, the headquarters received no reports until 9:30 PM, when the last ray of sunlight disappeared.

After dark, the Kunlun Mountains were pitch black, with visibility limited to within half a meter by the faint, pale moonlight in the sky.

Although the patrol teams carried searchlights, relying on this light source to navigate the complex terrain of the Kunlun Mountains was definitely not enough.

The three teams had neither returned nor sent out any signals, so it was very likely that they had encountered danger.

The sudden problem made the atmosphere in the entire garrison extremely tense.

Moreover, the most terrifying thing was that a heavy snow fell in the Kunlun Mountains during the night that the three teams disappeared.

It was well known that snow in the mountains made the roads very difficult to travel, and it also changed the terrain. When people were active in the mountains, low temperatures and getting lost made it very easy for accidents to happen.

Almost everyone in the garrison stayed up all night. At dawn the next day, the garrison dispatched three more rescue teams, equipped with snow removal tools and survival supplies, to the western route to search for the missing personnel.

The garrison officers reported the disappearance of the soldiers to their superiors and requested reinforcements.

After receiving the news, the higher-ups decided to mobilize nearby troops on missions for emergency assistance, and Fatty's unit was among those mobilized.

When Fatty's unit arrived at the garrison's location, the garrison's personnel had already decreased by nearly half. Those who were missing had gone to search for people along the western route and had not returned, with no news at all.