Xi Yu discovered the rock paintings the day after they left the hoodoo rock formation.
They followed a dry riverbed northwest, flanked by low gravel mounds bleached white under the midday sun.
Que Zhi said that this riverbed had once held water—that summer meltwater from the snow mountains would rush down from upstream, carrying silt and gravel all the way here, only to be swallowed by the Gobi without a drop left behind.
“Then why is it dry now?”
“There’s less snow on the mountains.”
Xi Yu said, “Oh,” and fell silent for a moment, then said that the snow mountains must have been beautiful back then.
Que Zhi glanced back at him and said they were still beautiful now—that if they crossed the mountain up ahead, they’d be able to see the snowline.
Xi Yu kicked his camel’s belly, and the camel trotted a few steps to draw alongside him.
“Have you ever been up there?”
“I have.”
“What’s up there?”
“Snow. Rocks. Eagles.”
“Who asked you that?” Xi Yu pursed his lips and turned his face away, but after a moment he turned back. “What I meant was—when you stand on top of the snow mountain and look down, what can you see?”
Que Zhi didn’t answer right away.
His hand tightened slightly on the reins, his gaze traveling past the gravel mounds ahead and settling somewhere very, very far away.
After a long while, he said, “You can see a long way. Farther than the Gobi.”
Xi Yu didn’t ask again.
He sat up straight on his camel, pushed the brim of his hat up a little, and squinted toward the mountains in the distance.
The snowline wasn’t visible yet, but the mountains themselves were—their bluish-gray outlines floating above the heat haze like mirages suspended in midair.
Xi Yu stared at that mountain silhouette for a long time, then looked down, pulled the dagger from his sleeve, and turned it over and over in his hand.
The carvings on the leather sheath had grown polished from all his handling, but he still hadn’t asked Que Zhi what that line of script meant. Whether he’d forgotten to ask, or was waiting for a better moment.
In the afternoon, the riverbed curved, leading them to a wall of ochre-red rock.
The wall wasn’t tall—about two and a half men’s height—and had been smoothed flat by wind and sand, like a natural canvas.
It was covered in carvings—not script, but pictures. The lines were rough and primitive, chiseled with blunt tools, cut deep and shallow into the ochre-red sandstone.
There were deer with antlers branching like tree limbs; horses with all four hooves lifted mid-gallop; oxen with high-arched backs and horns curved like new moons; and human figures astride horses, spears in hand, their bodies outlined with just a few strokes, yet posed so vividly they seemed about to charge right off the rock face.
The arrangement had no order—layers upon layers crammed together, clearly carved at different times. Some lines were blurred by wind and sand, their edges rounded and stained the same ochre-red as the rock itself, having endured countless rainy and dry seasons. Others still retained sharp, angular cuts, with grains of sand glittering faintly in the depths of the chisel marks—new additions perhaps added only decades ago.
Xi Yu scrambled off his camel and almost ran to the rock wall.
He reached out, his fingertips hovering an inch above those lines, not daring to actually touch them, afraid of damaging something—but unable to resist wanting to feel them.
That deer with branching antlers—the lines of its legs were cut deep, showing that the carver had used great force, striking once and never retouching, crooked as they were, yet brimming with a clumsy vitality.
“Who carved these?” he asked.
Que Zhi tied the camels to a clump of tamarisk by the riverbed, walked up beside him, and looked up at the paintings. “Herdsmen. Hunters. Caravan drivers. People passing through.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Some might be decades old. Some might be centuries.”
Xi Yu said nothing more.
He gently placed his finger on the nearest deer figure and traced along its crooked leg.
The stone was hot from the sun, the rough sandstone texture rising and falling beneath his fingertip. He could feel the depth of every chisel mark, the pause at every turn.
Some day centuries ago, someone had passed by here, stopped, and used a dull iron tool to carve a deer into the rock face.
That person might have been a herder who’d lost a sheep, resting beneath this rock wall and carving a deer out of boredom. Or a hunter who’d seen a deer so beautiful for the first time that he wanted to remember it. Or a camel driver who’d walked this road his whole life, carving one more line each year he passed through—which was why the rock bore both new marks and old, both edges rounded by wind and sand and edges still sharp with chisel angles.
That person would never know that centuries later, someone would escape from the cold palace, stand before the very same rock wall, and trace that deer he’d carved with the very same hand.
And that person, and that person—they were both just passersby.
They never knew each other, separated by centuries of time, yet their fingertips had touched the same carving, their boots had trodden the same riverbed, and they had stood beneath the same ochre-red sandstone, looking up at the same rock wall.
The walls of the cold palace were dead—the bricks were dead, the tiles were dead, even the moss climbing the walls couldn’t survive a single winter. But the stones here were alive. They remembered every person who passed through, preserving the marks they left behind, waiting for the next passerby to come and see.
Xi Yu lowered his hand, stepped back two paces, and swept his gaze across the entire rock wall from end to end. Then he bent down, picked up a sharp-edged stone from the ground, walked to an empty corner on the far right of the wall, stood on tiptoe, and carved upward with all his strength.
Que Zhi stood still without moving, watching Xi Yu struggle to carve into the rock with the stone fragment, stone dust showering down onto his shoulder and his empty right sleeve, raising a small patch of gray snow. He was still wearing that same blue robe with one sleeve missing, its frayed edges whipped ragged by wind and sand. As he stretched on tiptoe, his back arched slightly, his shoulder blades pressing two clear outlines through the fabric.
After a long while, Xi Yu lowered the stone, dusted off his hands, stepped back, and looked up at his work. A thin horizontal line now marked the rock wall—identical to the one he’d carved into the hoodoo rock the day before.
Que Zhi walked up beside him, his gaze settling on that horizontal line. “You carved it.”
“Mm.”
“Just this one line?”
“Yeah. One line means I’ve been here once. Every time I come back, I’ll carve another.”
Xi Yu turned to face Que Zhi, his peach-blossom eyes curving slightly. A smear of stone powder marked his cheek, a pale white streak beneath his cheekbone, like a flake of mica embedded in the grain of his skin.
His tone was light, but the light in his eyes was resolute—as if announcing a decision already made. “Your carvings are too deep—I can’t learn that. So I’ll do it my way.”
Leave a Reply