The air at four in the morning was not just cold; it was a physical weight, a thin veil of frost that clung to the lungs like shards of broken glass. At this altitude, the world was a monochromatic landscape of jagged granite and unforgiving shadows.
Wang Fan stood at the base of the "Eagle’s Rib," a vertical limestone cliff that soared five hundred meters into the predawn gloom. Behind him stood Grandpa Shentu, leaning casually against a gnarled pine tree, a flask of cheap sorghum wine in one hand and a stopwatch in the other.
"Thirty-nine minutes," Shentu said, his voice grating like sandpaper. "That’s how long it took the last boy I trained to reach the summit. He ended up dead in a ditch in Somalia, but at least he wasn't slow. You? You’re still breathing like a pampered city cat."
