Stranger in the Snowy Mountains

Six months before he was discharged from the army, border guard Wang Long encountered a series of strange events while on duty in the Pamir Plateau: ibexes gazing collectively at the post under the moonlight, kestrels carrying copper coins from the Tang Dynasty, and snow leopards whose pupils reflected the phantom of the ancient city. What made him even more uneasy was that his body showed abnormalities after each incident - wounds healed rapidly, flame-like dark marks appeared on his palms, and he began to understand ancient whispers in the wind. After leaving the army with unsolved mysteries, Wang Long stayed in Kashgar and became a self-driving tour leader, secretly pursuing the truth. He met Yue Ziming, a former reporter who was investigating animal mutation phenomena, and Sima Yan, a graduate student who studied religions in the Western Regions, and the three formed an exploration alliance. Following clues, they went deep into a Tajik village and found a centenarian who guarded the secret; visited an abandoned lead-zinc mine and discovered a Tang Dynasty stone tablet engraved in Chinese and ancient Persian; and in the ice cave of Muztage Peak, they encountered the descendants of the border guard generals of the Han Dynasty. All clues point to a secret that has been shrouded in dust for thousands of years: in the eighth century AD, the remnants of Prince Belus of Persia fled eastward to the Pamirs with a mysterious symbiotic fungus called "Blood of Immortality", and together with the remnants of Tang general Gao Xianzhi guarded this taboo object that could slow down aging but could also trigger madness. When the fungal matrix that has been frozen for thousands of years awakens, the "door" deep in Kunlun is about to open, and a final decision about the mystery of immortality and the crisis of annihilation lies before us. On the top of the snow-capped mountains, Wang Lung must make a choice: become the new guardian of the secret, or completely destroy this ancient power that coexists with temptation and curse...