The sun sank in the west, spilling gold across the earth. The swift current curved around the foot of a low slope before flowing toward the distant golden horizon.
A pomelo grove stood along the riverbank. Huge fruits hung heavily from the branches, filling the air with their fresh, woody fragrance.
A palm covered in mud and scratches seized one of the pomelos and tugged downward, but it would not come loose. A pair of strong arms immediately wrapped around the fruit and yanked hard, tearing it free into his embrace.
The man was tall and powerfully built, yet his exhausted back was hunched. His clothes were torn and stained with blood. After picking two large pomelos, he staggered along the riverbank for a while. Catching sight of his reflection in the water, he stopped.
He crouched beside the river, scooped up water, and scrubbed his head hard. Once the muddy grime washed away, it revealed a face with bright, spirited eyes, rugged features, and a thoroughly masculine air. Stubble covered his chin, and a long, vicious-looking old scar ran beneath the corner of his left eye, making him look especially fierce and unruly.
He soaked his bloodstained arms in the river and washed them too. After searching around, he picked up a sharp shard of stone and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. Carrying one large pomelo beneath each arm, he staggered onward. After crossing a field, he reached an abandoned wooden hut. He pushed open the dilapidated, cobweb-covered door, walked inside, and tiredly dropped onto a filthy wooden bed covered with nothing but a thin layer of straw.
Another person lay curled up on the bed. She showed no reaction to his arrival and remained as still as a corpse. He ignored her, using the stone shard to peel away the pomelo skin. After pulling out the fragrant flesh, he buried his face in it and devoured it ravenously.
Only after quickly eating more than half the pomelo did he finally regain a little strength. He lifted an arm and slapped the backside of the person beside him.
“Hey. You dead? Get up and eat something.”
“…”
“Hey.”
“…”
When she still failed to respond, he did not even have the strength to shake her awake. He reached out and felt beneath her nose. Finding that she was still breathing, he climbed onto the bed, shoved her farther to one side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
…
Xiao Ma had struggled beneath the cliffs for two days with Jade Guanyin on his back before finding this place to shelter. He slept heavily from sunset until sunrise and did not wake until noon the next day, when his full bladder finally forced him up. Dizzy and unsteady, he climbed out of bed, pushed open the door, and thoroughly “fertilized” a small tree from head to toe. When he staggered back inside, Jade Guanyin was still curled up in the corner of the bed, completely motionless.
He walked over, rolled Jade Guanyin onto her back, checked her breathing, and felt her head and face. She was burning like a lump of hot charcoal.
He hurriedly stripped off all Jade Guanyin’s clothes. The garments had been soaked through with blood, muddy water, and sweat, then dried again until they had nearly congealed into a paste. He tore them off haphazardly and threw them aside. After rummaging noisily around the hut, he found a chipped earthenware jar, carried it to the river, and filled it with water. He tore a relatively clean piece of cloth from the clothing and used it to wipe Jade Guanyin’s body. Several of her wounds had already become infected and were oozing pus. Beneath the blazing sun, flies and mosquitoes entered through every crack in the ruined hut and buzzed around them.
He loosely covered Jade Guanyin’s wounds with pomelo peel, hid her naked body beneath straw, and carried all the bloody clothes and washed-off filth outside. After pacing irritably around the hut twice, he cursed and hurried off.
…
Covered in dust and grime, Xiao Ma climbed courtyard walls and crawled through dog holes, breaking into three nearby farmhouses in succession. He found no money or medicine, so he stole several clean garments, a thin blanket, and even carried off an old hen that had been in the middle of laying an egg. He wrapped the clothes around his waist, tied the hen’s beak shut, bundled it in the blanket, and strapped it to his back. Then, peering cautiously around, he headed toward the courtyard of a three-story house at the village entrance that looked like it belonged to a wealthy family.
After climbing a tree and dropping over the courtyard wall, he looked around and saw no one. He crept into the house, searched from the first floor to the second, then from the second to the third. He stuffed a pile of little bottles and jars beneath the old hen’s backside, grabbed a handful of gold and silver jewelry and tucked it into his waistband, and finally found a medicine chest inside a cabinet on the third floor. He opened it and discovered that everything was written in Thai. He could not recognize a single word.
He was frowning as he picked through the contents when he suddenly heard movement behind him. Turning instinctively, he found himself face-to-face with an elderly woman sitting in a wheelchair by the window, basking in the sunlight…
The old woman was so ancient that she resembled a piece of rotting wood. Her hollow eyes widened at the huge wild man before her, whose clothes hung in tatters, whose hair resembled a nest of weeds, and whose face was covered in beard. Her dry, twiglike hand trembled, and the segment of pomelo she held dropped onto her lap with a plop. A middle-aged maid emerged from the neighboring room, took one look at the scene, and immediately let out a shriek. “Ahhh!”
Xiao Ma was so startled that he screamed too. Hugging the medicine chest, he bolted! The maid chased him with a broom, shouting for help as she ran. Several teenage boys and girls suddenly emerged from various corners of the house, God only knew where they had been hiding, and joined forces to hunt Xiao Ma down. It was already impossible for him to circle around the back and climb over the wall, so he could only grit his teeth and charge toward the front gate. He carefully picked up a young boy who stood in his way waving a wooden stick, tossed him aside, rammed the courtyard gate open, and rushed outside. Women from several houses along the street were sitting outside their doors, chatting as they spread pomelo peels out to dry. Xiao Ma swept past them like a violent gust of wind. By the time they recovered from their surprise, more than half the pomelo peels in front of them had vanished too!
The peaceful village erupted into chaos. Along the path beside the river, a muscular man could be seen sprinting desperately while clutching dried pomelo peels to his chest, carrying a small wooden box beneath one arm, and bearing an old hen on his back. Behind him surged several dozen villagers, all women, children, and elderly people who remained at home during the day, and every last one of them sturdy and strong. Wielding farming tools, they cursed and shouted as they pursued him relentlessly. Amid the jolting, the old hen broke free of the restraint around its beak, stretched out its neck, and began providing musical accompaniment for the magnificent chase: Cluck, cluck, cluck! Cluck-cluck! Cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck!
Tormented by the pursuit, Xiao Ma grabbed the gold and silver jewelry wrapped around his waist and scattered it behind him like a celestial maiden flinging flowers. While the villagers stopped to pick it up, he hurriedly jumped into the fields. Relying on his height and long legs, he waded across the river and plunged into the pomelo grove, disappearing from sight in the blink of an eye.
…
At dusk, the able-bodied young and middle-aged villagers returned from the fields carrying shovels, hoes, and torches. They formed groups and searched the entire village before finally storming angrily into the abandoned wooden hut. All they found was an empty medicine chest and a floor covered in bloody chicken feathers. The people were gone, and the hut had already grown cold.
…
Jade Guanyin awakened to the mouthwatering fragrance of chicken soup. Xiao Ma was crouched beside a fire, frowning as he sniffed one little bottle and jar after another, trying to work out which one contained salt. For a moment, she failed to recognize the disheveled, heavily bearded brute. Dazed, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Not long afterward, someone gathered her into his arms and roughly shook her awake. A familiar male voice cursed in Cantonese, “Wake up! Stop playing dead!”
She barely managed to open her eyes. A pile of medicine bottles was spread out before her. “Look! Which one can you take?”
She was too dazed to react, so the man could only hold the medicine boxes beside her face one by one. “This one? What about this?”
At last, she raised a finger toward one of the bottles. The man unscrewed the cap, poured out several pills, and stuffed them into her mouth. Then he fed her a mouthful of hot chicken soup directly from his own mouth and helped her swallow. She began drifting back to sleep, but he shook her awake again and forced several more mouthfuls of soup into her, along with a few pieces of chicken stewed until they were falling apart and a boiled egg broken into small pieces.
The cooking fire was extinguished, and dried pomelo peels were lit to drive away insects. The cave filled with the fragrance of pomelo rind. Suddenly, Jade Guanyin struggled unconsciously and let out a pained moan. Xiao Ma was using a stone shard heated scorching hot to cut away the rotting flesh from her wounds and disinfect them. After that agony, which made death seem preferable to life, she sank into unconsciousness again.
…
The next time she awakened, a light rain had just fallen outside the cave, and water was still dripping softly from the entrance. The quiet drip, drip of water mingled with the faint rustling of wind through the forest. At that moment, she experienced a stillness and peace unlike anything she had ever known in her life.
A bearded wild man sat beside her, using his thigh as her pillow. His head tilted to one side as he slept with thunderous snores, and one hand still clutched the tattered cloth he had been using to cool her forehead.
She slipped a hand into the wild man’s trousers and felt around. Judging by the size and shape, she confirmed that he was Xiao Ma. Xiao Ma, meanwhile, had been enjoying a dream in which he toured the brothels of Portland Street with the Boss and Big Sister. Suddenly, someone grabbed his bird right there in the street, startling him awake.
Under his furious glare, Jade Guanyin calmly withdrew her hand as though nothing had happened.
Xiao Ma asked irritably, “Hungry?”
“Yes.”
Xiao Ma climbed to his feet and reheated the chicken soup inside the cracked earthenware jar. He poured it into a small bottle that had previously contained spices and set it on the ground before her. Jade Guanyin laboriously pushed herself upright, silently picked it up, and began eating and drinking by herself. Xiao Ma fished a chicken leg from the jar and handed it to her. She seized it in her greasy fingers and devoured it ravenously.
Xiao Ma knew she had a cheap life and was damn hard to kill, so he could not be bothered to waste time waiting on her. Without saying anything, he left the cave. An hour later, he returned carrying two fish he had caught from the river and a bundle of firewood. He discovered that Jade Guanyin had eaten every scrap of the remaining half jar of chicken soup and meat, without leaving a single drop.
Xiao Ma stared at her several times in utter astonishment. At last, he realized she was half a man after all.
“Still want more?” he asked, raising the fish.
Jade Guanyin held her stomach and nodded.
Xiao Ma skewered the fish and set them over the fire to roast. He selected several spices from the bottles and jars stolen from the kitchen and rubbed them over the fish. Wrapped in the stolen clothes, Jade Guanyin sat crookedly against the stone wall, her eyes fixed on him.
“What are you looking at?” Xiao Ma asked irritably.
“You’ve gotten darker.”
Of course he’d gotten darker! He spent every day running around beneath the blazing sun, stealing things, catching fish, and gathering firewood! Xiao Ma opened his mouth to curse her, but there were too many things he wanted to berate her for. They all surged into his mind at once, leaving him unable to decide where to begin.
In the end, he merely glared at Jade Guanyin, turned his face away, and continued roasting the fish.
Wind poured through the cave entrance, making the flames sway. Jade Guanyin felt cold and curled up, hugging her knees. Xiao Ma glanced at her, rose with a dark expression, and draped the stolen jacket he was wearing over her. Jade Guanyin immediately seized his arm.
“What?” Xiao Ma asked with a frown.
Jade Guanyin looked up at him and said sincerely, “I schemed against Liu Yi. I’m sorry.”
Merely remembering the matter sent rage surging through Xiao Ma. He immediately seized her by the throat! After choking her for a while, however, he found it pointless and released her. He even patted the coughing Jade Guanyin’s back to help her breathe.
“Forget it. I’m the pathetic one,” he admitted. “You fucking got the Boss and me into this mess, and I still can’t bring myself to kill you.”
All the way out of the mountains with Jade Guanyin on his back, he had thought countless times about abandoning her in the forest, strangling her on the spot, or picking up a stone and smashing her head into pulp. Countless times, yet not once had he actually done it. These past few days, he had constantly flown into rages. He did not hate Jade Guanyin. He hated himself for being so pathetic!
“You win,” he told Jade Guanyin. “Once your injuries heal, get lost. I never want to see you again for the rest of my life.”
For a fleeting moment, Jade Guanyin looked stunned upon hearing those words. Then she smiled as though nothing were wrong. “All right. As you wish.”
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