After A’ma regained consciousness, her cloudy eyes slowly focused on He Yi’s face. She reached out with a hand thin as a dead branch and patted the back of his hand again and again, as though happy, or perhaps comforting him.
He Yi wanted to say, A’ma, you’re finally awake, but the words failed him. He did not know how to say it in the local speech. Although he had the original owner’s memories, unless a piece of information had appeared often, it was difficult to retrieve it precisely, much less string together isolated words and sounds into a sentence. And if he imitated the accent badly, wouldn’t that give him away…?
Listening was much easier. He understood A’ma when she slowly said, “Yi’er, are you hungry? A’ma will cook for you.”
He Yi was starving, but how could he let a sick old woman cook for him? He tried to refuse, yet after fumbling for words for a long while, he still could not get anything out.
While he was struggling, A’ma had already grabbed his arm and climbed down from the handcart.
Only then did A’ma glance back and realize that the quilt covering her was He Yi’s winter quilt. She thumped his shoulder and scolded fondly, “Why’d you give me the quilt? You’re still sick. Don’t you want your life anymore?” Then she noticed her outer robe drying over the carrying basket. She withdrew her hand, told He Yi to turn around, and put the robe back on. She kept muttering all the while, then quietly wiped the damp corner of one eye where He Yi could not see.
Once A’ma had dressed, she pulled He Yi behind the cattle shed to where piles of rice straw had been stored. “This is where we hid our things. Remember it.”
So this was where their rice, flour, pots, bowls, utensils, and changes of clothes had been hidden. At first, He Yi had thought A’ma came up from home every day to bring him food, but when he saw how much rice and flour had been stored here, he realized that from the beginning she had intended to stay in the shelter and had never planned to go back down the mountain. Most likely, she had been too worried about the original He Yi and wanted to remain close enough to care for him.
A’ma asked whether he remembered. He Yi came back to himself and nodded.
A’ma added that unfortunately, the seasonings had all been locked inside a cupboard by her eldest daughter-in-law, so she had not been able to get them or bring them up the mountain. At least she had managed to take some dried preserved mustard greens, which could go with congee or rice.
He Yi continued to listen in silence.
He had not said a single word since A’ma woke, but she found nothing strange about it because the original He Yi had always been like this: taciturn, honest, and dull. He had been more talkative and even a little wild as a child, but ever since both his parents died when he was ten, he had stayed this way.
He Yi wanted to persuade A’ma to go back and see a physician. After struggling with the pronunciation for ages, he managed to mumble a few words, yet A’ma understood everything he had failed to say.
“A’ma’s fine. Full of energy.” As though to prove she really was fine, A’ma stacked clay bricks into a square stove, leaving staggered gaps between them for ventilation. She stuffed firewood underneath, lit it, set a clay pot on top, and began preparing the meal.
He Yi could not persuade her otherwise, so he went over to help.
The two of them got busy.
In truth, A’ma did most of the work. Before He Yi could even figure out where to begin, she already had almost everything arranged.
The cantiaozi he had put into bamboo tubes yesterday were deftly beheaded and gutted by A’ma. After a quick rinse, she dropped them into the clay pot with a knotted scallion that had gone slightly limp and a few slices of ginger.
At the same time, she built another clay stove, put raw rice and water into a second clay pot, and set it over the fire.
A’ma muttered, “Yi’er is this sick, and we don’t even have a bit of poultry or meat to build your strength back up… Ai! There are so many wild things in these mountains. If only we knew how to hunt.”
A little later, something occurred to her and she said to He Yi, “Speaking of which, Yi’er, did you know Granny Zhang’s grandson lives up here on the mountain?”
“Granny Zhang and I used to be truly close. Never had another friend like her after that.” A’ma drifted into her memories as she spoke. A moment later she realized she had wandered off topic and hurriedly circled back. “That Xu boy of theirs learned to hunt from somewhere and has lived on this mountain ever since. Hasn’t gone back to the village even once. The villagers don’t like talking about him either. They all think he’s strange. He isn’t on this peak. I think he lives… anyway, less than five kilometers farther into the mountains from the little hut, if I remember right. He surely doesn’t know about your illness. If you happen to run into him over here, tell him. This mountain isn’t ours, after all. We can’t drag someone else into trouble.”
There was actually someone else living on this mountain? He Yi truly had not expected that. He glanced in the direction A’ma had pointed and quietly committed it to memory.
The fragrance of rice soon escaped from beneath the lid of the clay pot. Once the soup had simmered long enough as well, grandmother and grandson used the handcart as a table and began to eat.
He Yi froze when he first saw the rice. The grains were yellowish, clearly not the polished white rice he had often eaten in his previous life. White rice was refined rice; this yellow rice was brown rice, the grain obtained after removing the husk but before polishing.
In the original He Yi’s memories, white rice was rare. They had only a little during festivals and holidays. Ironically, even then, he ordinarily had no share. Eldest Aunt bought only a stingy amount and claimed that because He Yi had grown so tall while poor Jie’er was short, He Yi must have stolen all the nutrition. As the older cousin, she said, he should yield to He Jie, so she never intended to give him even a bowl of polished rice. He Jie might have been short, but he was built like an ox, or he would never have been chosen to become a yamen runner. In the end, A’ma could not stand it and gave He Yi half of her own portion. Only then did he get to eat white rice.
He Yi picked up a bite of brown rice with his chopsticks, hesitated, then put it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
It was all right. It was just like slightly undercooked white rice… Silently, he poured some cantiaozi soup into his bowl and mixed it into the brown rice, hoping that would make it easier to eat.
The cantiaozi soup did not taste fishy, perhaps because cantiaozi usually swam in the middle and upper layers of the water and did not have much of a muddy smell to begin with, especially with ginger added to remove it. There had been no seasoning, yet He Yi could still taste a faint natural sweetness.
The fish itself was unseasoned too, but some of it had melted into the soup while simmering. The soft, tender, savory-sweet flesh dissolved almost the instant it entered his mouth, and mixed with the slightly firm brown rice, it actually gave the meal a pleasant chew.
The soup coating the rice grains really did make them easier to eat. He Yi wondered whether A’ma’s poor teeth could manage brown rice and glanced at her bowl, only to discover that she had not served herself any rice at all. There was nothing in her bowl but thin broth, without even a piece of fish.
He Yi’s heart sank slightly. A’ma cared so much for the original He Yi. If she knew that the person before her now wasn’t truly her grandson…
He sighed inwardly and reached for her bowl, intending to add some fish for her. Before his hand got there, A’ma’s body abruptly tilted and began to fall sideways. He Yi hurriedly caught her by the shoulder as a terrible premonition rose in his chest. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw something that made his pupils contract sharply.
A gentle, kindly smile still rested at the corners of A’ma’s mouth, but her eyes had already lost focus…
He Yi’s breathing turned harsh without his realizing it. With a trembling hand, he reached beneath A’ma’s nose and found no breath at all.
She had been so gravely ill last night. Of course she could not simply have recovered overnight, much less become this energetic…
It had only been a final rally before death…
A heavy bitterness surged into He Yi’s mouth, and a raw ache stung behind his eyes.
After a long while, he wiped his face, closed A’ma’s eyes with his hand, then moved her onto the handcart and covered her with the straw mat.
The sunlight was blazing, yet all he felt was cold. He had arrived in this world only a few days ago, and already he had experienced the death of family again. Was there truly any meaning in living another life like this? He didn’t even know whom he could question.
He Yi realized he was about to sink into his familiar negative thoughts again and hurriedly looked toward A’ma. She was still lying on the handcart and still needed to be laid to rest. He could not sink. He should not let himself sink… He struggled for a while, then forced the need to settle A’ma properly to the front of his mind and barely pulled himself out of the depression.
People in ancient times placed great importance on ritual and propriety. Even children, let alone grandchildren, could not simply bury their parents however they pleased. Funerals involved many complicated steps. He absolutely could not bury A’ma by himself. He had to send her home and make Eldest Uncle arrange a respectable funeral, and A’ma’s death still had to be formally entered in the household register through the village head.
He was not particularly worried that Eldest Uncle’s family would cause trouble. They had already proposed dividing the household earlier. With A’ma gone, the division no longer required her consent and only needed the village head as witness. For the sake of separating the households, Eldest Uncle’s family would certainly arrange the funeral properly. With the villagers watching as well, even if He Yi could not return to the village himself, there should not be any major problems with A’ma’s funeral.
It was already the fourth month. Temperatures varied greatly in the mountains, but daytime could still grow warm under full sun. A’ma’s body could not be left for long… The immediate priority was to get her down the mountain and back to the He household as quickly as possible.
But he was carrying an “epidemic.” If he transported A’ma down himself, the villagers might avoid him in terror and create more complications. The safest option was to find someone who could take his place, either bringing her directly down the mountain or carrying a message to Eldest Uncle so he could come collect her body.
A suitable person came to He Yi’s mind. He had no time to hesitate. Taking a bamboo tube of water and a kitchen knife, he headed deeper into the mountain.
When he passed the hunter’s hut, He Yi did not stop and continued farther in.
He had not gone far before the path underfoot became increasingly difficult to distinguish. Plants no longer clustered neatly to either side of the trail but grew wildly without any order, countless stems armed with thorns. In no time at all, burrs covered He Yi’s trouser legs, and because the cloth was so thin, some thorns caught directly in the flesh of his legs, hurting badly enough to make him bare his teeth.
He Yi hacked as he walked, but the kitchen knife in his hand was too short. It cleared vegetation poorly and was awkward to use.
Still, he could not afford to slow down. There was plenty of daylight now and he could still see clearly. If he delayed until nightfall, he would not be able to see a thing. Forget finding someone else; he might lose his own life here.
He Yi could also feel plenty of insects crawling over him. This was not the false sensation caused by his itching rash. He could genuinely feel bristles and antennae pricking and wriggling against his skin.
But he could endure it. If he could not brush something off, he simply ignored it and kept moving with single-minded focus. Fortunately, he only needed to continue in one direction and had not deviated from his course. He had barely finished congratulating himself on that when he encountered what looked like a fork in the path.
Ahead lay two relatively open stretches of ground, one leading northwest and the other northeast. With no better option, He Yi carved a mark into the trunk of a tree hung with long bean-pod-like fruit, then chose the left path.
Perhaps he had reached a higher elevation. A gust of wind blew through and made him shiver, carrying a chill that seemed to sink into his bones.
There was an abundance of mountain produce along the way. Compared with this place, the ground around the hunter’s hut and cattle shed might as well have been barren. Strange mushrooms, luxuriant wild greens, familiar-looking wild crops, bushes hung with red and purple berries, and more could be found everywhere. There were also wild rabbits and birds darting through the forest. Branches above his head often rustled; when He Yi looked up, all he saw were leaves fluttering down and no living creature, most likely because monkeys, squirrels, or other animals had passed overhead.
What worried He Yi most were venomous creatures. He lacked a useful weapon. Perhaps he should have cut himself a bamboo pole before coming, but he had walked for more than an hour without seeing any bamboo, and it was too late to make one now.
Sometimes, unfortunately, the very thing you least wanted to encounter was exactly what appeared.
He Yi was exhausted and needed a rest, so he found a rock and prepared to sit. No sooner had he done so than he lifted his bamboo tube to drink and his gaze met, without warning, a pair of vertical pupils set in red.
Those unmistakable slit pupils belonged to a huge python not far away, slowly coiling around a tree branch.
He Yi was normally skilled at keeping his emotions off his face, but this time he truly could not remain calm. Cold sweat kept beading across his forehead. Thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind, yet he could not come up with any useful response.
This was no small snake. He Yi had never expected to encounter something so terrifying almost as soon as he arrived here: a giant python whose body was as thick as the mouth of a bowl, wrapped several times around the branch.
“…Fuck!!” At a moment like this, manners and refinement were worthless. He Yi only wanted to swear.
Was he really going to die here today?
He Yi felt as though his legs had lost all sensation. The soles of his feet were soft as cotton, and he could not even tell where he was supposed to put his strength.
Within only a few moments, his back was drenched with sweat. Even though fear had his teeth nearly chattering, He Yi did not dare shift his gaze by so much as a fraction.
The python, meanwhile, was perfectly leisurely. Its slick, heavy body slowly tightened around the thick branch while its tongue flicked out, as though it were studying He Yi.
He Yi badly wanted to pound his legs a few times and make them recover faster, but the more frightened a person became, the less their body seemed willing to obey. Other than remaining completely still, He Yi could do nothing.
Man and snake remained locked in that stalemate.
A few dozen breaths stretched out until they felt longer than a quarter of an hour. Suddenly, sweat dripped into He Yi’s eye. Pain flared, and for a moment he could not open his right eye. He instinctively raised a hand to rub it and failed to notice that he had been the first to break eye contact.
When the sting subsided, He Yi opened his eye again, only to find an enormous red slit pupil magnified dozens of times directly before him. His heart nearly burst from his chest. He recoiled on pure reflex.
As he fell backward, everything in He Yi’s vision seemed to slow. With the whistle of something tearing through the air, a lithe white figure suddenly flashed into view, leaping over him and slamming the giant python away. The thick branch its tail had been wrapped around collapsed with it, and a ring of dust, dirt, and dead leaves exploded through the air.