We felt like the clay figures hanging in that cave, suspended by safety ropes from the tree trunk. The morning light was so bright it made our eyes water. In the split of the tree, we spotted a dark red object, rectangular in shape, with its top edges smoothed into rounded corners.
Sunlight filtered through the tree gaps, casting a faint purple glow on it. What could this be? I struggled to use my climbing pick to hook onto the tree and climbed back up to the crown, then pulled Shirley Yang up with me. Fatty, who was already afraid of heights, was too scared to move much, his body stiff with fear. I thought about lowering him to the ground with the safety rope, but he refused, saying, “Old Hu, pull me back up to the tree! I need to take a good look at this thing. I bet it’s worth a lot of money!”
I had no choice but to use all my strength with Shirley Yang to pull the safety rope and help Fatty back up to the tree crown. By now, the sun was fully up, and looking down from over twenty meters high felt like standing on the edge of a cliff, walking on thin ice.