Chapter 5

Hé Jiānqiáng seemed very content with his current life. This legendary experience had distanced him from all the humiliation and sorrow. The only person in the world who had never mocked him was right beside him, so he felt he had lost nothing.

Yún Zhēng’s heart, however, was groaning. He, who could savor raw bamboo shoots when fighting for his life, now held a bowl of white rice with no appetite, let alone the small piece of greasy smoked meat on top.

He couldn’t farm, hunt, raise silkworms, or weave. How could he feed two bodies? This was a big problem. Relying on others for charity, begging like a beggar every day, Yún Zhēng thought, was worse than death.

After dawn, he left Hé Jiānqiáng at home and borrowed a machete to go chop wood on the mountain. This was the only reliable way to survive that he could think of after a night of contemplation.

Chopping wood was not as easy as Yún Zhēng had imagined. The young men who went up the mountain with him had already chopped a large pile, while Yún Zhēng’s pile was still very small. The machete was old, or rather, the material was poor. After a few chops at a dead tree, the blade would curl. Many of the dead branches, Yún Zhēng had to saw through.

A robust young man, as strong as a calf, snatched the machete from Yún Zhēng’s hand, poured a little water from a bamboo tube, and began to sharpen it on a stone. Soon, the machete was sharpened. He held the machete and chopped diagonally, and the machete seemed to meet little resistance as it cut into the dead tree. The young man then handed the machete back to Yún Zhēng, asking him to chop wood like he did. The first chop wasn’t good, but after three chops, Yún Zhēng found he could finally control the machete.

Perhaps the noble virtue of simplicity had been ingrained in their blood. The young boys helped Yún Zhēng chop and bundle the wood, then sat around a small fire to eat their rice balls. Yún Zhēng looked up at the sky; the sun was already high. His stomach growled, but he had no extra grain to make rice balls.

He drank some water from a stream, planning to wait for the children to finish eating and then carry the wood to Dòushā Pass to sell. This would be his future source of income, and he needed to figure everything out.

He declined the rice ball offered by the young boy, as they didn’t have much grain either. The mountain children were generous, forcing the rice ball into Yún Zhēng’s hand and then laughing and playing on the hillside, searching for bird eggs and picking wild fruits. They even used a long reed to poke an ant nest. When the reed was lifted, it was covered with white ants. Yún Zhēng thought they were just playing, but then he saw the young boys scrape the ants into a small iron pot over the fire. The pot immediately sizzled, and the ants were quickly snatched up by the boys. They were eating ants.

Yún Zhēng knew that there was an animal called an anteater that loved to eat ants, and gorillas would also poke branches into ant nests and eat the ants that climbed up. He never thought they would eat them too.

The robust child pinched a handful of ants from the pot and tried to feed them to Yún Zhēng. Without hesitation, Yún Zhēng opened his mouth and ate the scorched yellow ants. After chewing a few times, Yún Zhēng became the most enthusiastic about scraping ants, as fried ants were incredibly delicious, salty, and richly aromatic.

The fun was short-lived. When no more ants climbed up the reed from the ant nest, the small adventure ended. The young boys picked up their wood, formed a neat line, and followed the narrow path down the mountain.

The older boys would sing love songs to the girls in embroidered dresses, who would blush and scold them. If they were unlucky, the mothers with black headscarves would chase them with brooms. Although Yún Zhēng was hit several times, he felt extremely exhilarated.

Selling wood was simple. The herbal medicine shops in Dòushā Pass needed a large amount of wood to process herbs every day. As long as your wood was dry, they would buy it. There was no worry about not being able to sell it.

A load of wood was worth three coins. Eight children received twenty-one coins. The shop assistant, a little rascal, couldn’t fool Yún Zhēng. Even if he were foolish, he couldn’t miscalculate 3 times 8 as 21. Seeing the assistant about to hand the money to the robust, smiling young man, Yún Zhēng pressed the young man’s hand down and smiled at the assistant without a word.

The assistant felt guilty and added three more coins. Yún Zhēng still smiled without a word. The assistant, about to get angry, saw Yún Zhēng about to call out to the kind-looking old doctor and quickly took out ten more coins from his pocket, slapped them into Yún Zhēng’s hand, and stormed off.

“Tomorrow’s wood will be settled at 3 times 8 equals 27, okay?” Yún Zhēng shouted at the assistant’s back. The assistant almost tripped, glared at Yún Zhēng, and then entered the shop.

The young boys were extremely excited, surrounding Yún Zhēng and shouting, but Yún Zhēng couldn’t understand what they were saying. It wasn’t until the robust young man told him word by word that Yún Zhēng understood. This damned assistant had been deceiving everyone, reducing the agreed amount of money.

After Yún Zhēng promised to teach everyone to count, the extra two coins were unanimously given to him. Six coins bought two pounds of rice, which disappointed him greatly.

Back home, Jiānqiáng was already watching from the bamboo window, shouting happily. He liked it when someone came home and hated being alone. Since his mother disappeared, he had been terrified of an empty house.

To earn two pounds of rice, Yún Zhēng’s hands were covered in blisters, his shoulders were raw from the pole, and the sweat stung his wounds, causing excruciating pain. Life was always hard, and Yún Zhēng knew it. No matter how tired he was from carrying wood, he gritted his teeth and said nothing. He ate his own food, endured his own hardships, and did his own work. He had this awareness from his previous life.

Another day dawned, and Yún Zhēng struggled to get out of bed. A new day was about to begin. After washing up, he prepared a meal for Jiānqiáng, hastily made two rice balls wrapped in lotus leaves, sighed at the nearly empty grain bag, and left home. He planned to chop two loads of wood today to have some reserve in case of rainy days when they couldn’t chop wood, so the two of them wouldn’t go hungry.

As soon as Yún Zhēng left, the little yellow dog emerged from Jiānqiáng’s bed, wagging its short tail, waiting for Jiānqiáng to get out of bed.

Yún Jiānqiáng, looking at Yún Zhēng’s distant figure in the morning mist, muttered to the little yellow dog, “The more I interacted with people, the more I liked dogs. But my brother is different, isn’t he?”