Thinking it was one thing; actually doing it would take careful planning. Right now, He Yi had neither money nor connections, and he knew very little about the people and affairs of Chongzi Village. Even with the original owner’s memories, it was difficult to truly sort everything out without having experienced it himself. He would have to wait until he returned to the village and see for himself before deciding what to do.
As for when to return, He Yi decided that avoiding unnecessary trouble was best. He would follow Madman Tang’s advice and go down the mountain in two days.
What he could not understand was why Madman Tang had first said his epidemic illness was cured, only to later change his story and tell him he had never been infected at all. Could the two men have been quietly discussing whether to hide the truth from him? If so, then the earlier claim that he had the epidemic had clearly come at the village head’s instruction.
He Yi had a feeling there had to be some hidden interest or benefit tangled up behind all this, but he thought until his head hurt and still could not make sense of it. He sat on the stool with his legs apart and rubbed his temples with his wrist. Only after a long while did his furrowed brow gradually ease.
Then his gaze happened to sweep over the pile of mugwort and the clay bowl, reminding him of the things the village head had given him.
He picked up the clay bowl and untied the bamboo leaf serving as a lid. Beneath a shallow layer of clear reddish-brown syrup, the delicate, silky tofu pudding lay in uneven folds like jade bricks stacked at random, translucent and gleaming.
His head was still throbbing faintly, however, and he had little appetite.
He could leave it for later, but he had no idea how long the tofu pudding had already been sitting before the village head brought it up, or how well it would keep. If it spoiled, that would be a waste.
As he thought about it, the image of someone coveting the turtle-dove leg suddenly flashed through He Yi’s mind. His brow twitched, and he called loudly for Xue Ci, intending to have him help finish the bowl of tofu pudding.
Unexpectedly, after calling several times, he received no answer and saw no sign of Xue Ci. He Yi guessed that he must have gone far away, so he fetched a spoon and ate the tofu pudding himself.
The tofu pudding was smooth and tender, with a faint coolness to it. The brown-sugar water was sweeter than He Yi had expected. There was not much syrup, yet the sweetness was quite strong. Fortunately, it was not cloying at all, and paired perfectly with the mild tofu pudding, which tasted mostly of soybeans on its own.
The bowl was empty in no time. Tofu pudding was hardly filling, but He Yi could not be bothered making anything else, so he simply counted it as lunch.
After rinsing the bowl clean, He Yi picked up the bundle of mugwort and returned to the hunter’s hut.
…
Night fell. Bluish-white moonlight slanted across the quilt, cutting through the darkness of the room and casting a faint glow. A light breeze stirred, carrying the scent of fresh grass inside and dispersing the mugwort fragrance that had lingered in the hut for so long.
Frogs and insects chorused outside. Within the hut, there was only the faint sound of breathing.
He Yi had been lying in bed for quite a while. His head no longer hurt, yet he still could not fall asleep.
What had happened that morning had not passed for him. His thoughts were tangled and restless, and he felt more than a little anxious. Looking at it another way, he seemed to have accepted the fact of transmigration surprisingly well. Perhaps it was because everything here felt so real. His time with A’ma had been real, and witnessing A’ma’s death had been just as real…
He could not distance himself from it or remain unmoved. It had even faintly stirred the grief, helplessness, and bottomless despair he had once felt when his real family members died.
Had he come to a new world only to remain trapped by negative emotions? Leaning against the earthen wall, He Yi stared ahead with eyes that gradually went blank, his thoughts drifting.
In his daze, the vitality that seemed ready to leave He Yi’s body altogether was slammed back into him by a thunderous roar outside. Even after he snapped to his senses, the roar still echoed deafeningly, as though only a wall separated him from it. The sound was unmistakably tiger-like. He Yi jolted upright and clutched the quilt.
Were there really tigers on Yaluo Mountain? The villagers said there were, but those were old stories, and no one had seen one with their own eyes in recent years. People rarely ventured into the deep mountains anyway, so few took the stories seriously. They were more afraid of ordinary fierce animals like wild boars.
He Yi had not taken the stories seriously either. He had assumed tigers were little more than a distant legend. Besides, the hunter’s hut stood halfway up the outermost Peak A, where villagers dared to come gather wild plants. He had even been to the deeper Peak B, and aside from that giant python, he had encountered no dangerous beasts.
Great. Apparently he was not even going to be given time to wallow in melancholy. He had been kicked straight to the gates of hell.
Holding his breath, He Yi forced himself to calm down and tried to determine where the sound had come from. But the roaring had already stopped, and the chorus of frogs and insects resumed outside.
If it really was a tiger, the pads beneath its paws would make its footsteps almost impossible to hear. At most, he might catch the sound of it stepping on fallen leaves or something similar. He Yi listened carefully for a long time, but heard nothing.
The room was dark, but after his eyes adjusted, he could still make out vague shapes. A clay jar containing water sat in the corner. There was not much water inside, so it was not very heavy. It probably would not do much good as a barricade against the door.
Maybe playing dead was still his best option. He Yi slowed his movements to almost nothing, carefully slipped beneath the quilt, and lay still.
Time seemed to stretch, each minute and second crawling by. Just as He Yi’s heartbeat finally returned to normal, another howl suddenly rang through the night outside, audible even through the quilt.
“Awooo—”
The sound lacked the tiger’s earth-shaking, resonant force. Instead, it sounded oddly thick and almost goofy.
It seemed familiar, as though He Yi had heard it somewhere before. A moment later, he remembered. That was the snow leopard’s cry!
The howling continued for quite a while before finally stopping.
He Yi had just begun to think it was over when the tiger roared again. He lifted one corner of the quilt slightly, and the sounds became clearer. The tiger’s roar and the snow leopard’s howl traded back and forth, almost as though the two were arguing.
Both voices were loud, one from the east and one from the west, but it was clear they were not especially close to the hunter’s hut. If anything, they seemed to be moving farther away.
The two beasts were still threatening each other, but the snow leopard’s cries were nowhere near imposing and even had something absurdly funny about them. The atmosphere should have been tense enough to set nerves on edge, yet as He Yi listened, the heart that had been hanging in his chest dropped firmly back into place. He nearly fell asleep beneath the quilt.
A few minutes later, both sides fell silent, and no more sounds came.
Drowsiness washed over He Yi and his eyelids grew heavier. Just as he was about to fall asleep, the hut door was pushed open, and the old hinges let out a drawn-out “creeeak—”
He Yi snapped awake. Raising his head, he saw a blurry white figure enter, a huge tail held high behind it and particularly conspicuous in the darkness.
“The snow leopard?” He Yi’s intonation fell rather than rose. The moment he asked, however, he already knew the answer.
The other party did not respond. After using its tail to pull the door shut, it did not approach, merely standing motionless behind the door.
He Yi was baffled. Was it not the snow leopard? That could not be right. Even without much light, he could still make out its general outline and coat pattern. Surely it was not a white tiger.
“You’re the snow leopard, right? The one I know, right?” There could not be another snow leopard around here… could there?
“Rawr.” The other party answered.
So it was still the one that could understand him. He Yi relaxed and asked, “Where were you all morning? Why didn’t I see you anywhere?”
The snow leopard called several times as though answering, but He Yi still could not understand leopard language. That did not stop him from chatting with it as casually as if he had run into an acquaintance.
“Was that a tiger roaring on the mountain just now? Were you facing it down?”
The snow leopard nodded, and He Yi saw the motion. He could not make out its features clearly, but its movements were still easy enough to catch.
“You’re not afraid of it?” Logically, a snow leopard should not be as fierce as a tiger, and there was also a considerable difference in size. It did not seem like much of a contest.
The snow leopard appeared to hear the doubt in He Yi’s question about its formidable strength. It sprang onto the earthen bed in one bound, planted its muddy paws near the head of the bed, and shoved its great furry head against He Yi in displeasure.
Fortunately, the earthen bed had been packed solidly, so neither man nor leopard came to harm. The snow leopard, however, clearly had no idea how strong it was. It shoved He Yi so hard he nearly fell off the bed. Worse, it accidentally stepped on several strands of He Yi’s hair, tugging painfully at his scalp.
He Yi could only reach around the snow leopard’s neck to steady himself. Sighing, he swept his long hair to one side and kneaded the flesh beneath its thick fur, trying to soothe the overgrown brat. He had not expected it to have such a temper.
He Yi’s cat-petting technique was quite good, entirely because several of his friends had gotten cats one after another in his previous life. He visited often, and after petting them enough times, naturally became practiced at it.
Cats generally liked having their cheeks, chins, and the backs of their necks rubbed. Apparently the giant cat that was a snow leopard was no exception. It soon stopped butting He Yi, tucked its huge paws beneath itself, lay down, and narrowed its eyes in enjoyment.
A snow leopard’s fur looked short, but it was actually dense and thick. Petting through it properly took some strength. The texture was wonderful, but after a while it genuinely became tiring.
He Yi had no idea how long he had been petting it before his hand began to ache and he stopped. The moment the snow leopard noticed the kneading sensation atop its head disappear, its eyes opened round and wide, and a thin little “awoo” squeezed from its throat.
He Yi knew it wanted more and could only coax it. “I’m tired. I’ll pet you again after we wake up tomorrow.”
Sleepiness continued to rise, and He Yi could no longer fight it. He prepared to lie down. The snow leopard sprawled across the entire head of the bed with its head toward the right side. Afraid it might bite him unconsciously in its sleep, He Yi shifted his own head toward the side near its hind paws, smoothed his hair out of the way, and lay down.
The snow leopard seemed infected by his drowsiness. Once it saw that He Yi truly was not going to keep petting it, it gradually fell asleep as well.
Warmth radiated from the snow leopard’s body. Curled at the head of the bed, it looked imposing enough, yet its sleeping face was peaceful and serene, creating a striking contrast. Only its enormous tail refused to behave. It insisted on burrowing beneath He Yi’s arm, winding around his hand, while the tip occasionally tapped against his chin.
Fortunately, He Yi slept deeply enough that it did not wake him.
Early the next morning, sunlight pierced the mist between the trees, refracting into bluish-white pillars of light that stretched toward the sky in rows between the trunks, beautiful as a fairyland.
He Yi woke quietly and slowly opened his eyes. He stared at the thatched roof for a moment before the last of his sleepiness faded. Sitting up, he happened to notice scattered white hairs at the head of the bed and only then remembered that he had slept with the snow leopard the night before.
But the snow leopard itself was gone, and He Yi had no idea when it had left. He put on his straw sandals and opened the hut door to go outside, only to discover several footprints in the mud in front of the entrance. They were incomplete, but their shape and direction clearly showed that someone had walked outward. More importantly, there were prints going in only one direction.
“…” The footprints were that familiar size again. He Yi instinctively thought of Xue Ci and wondered whether he had come by looking for him. He automatically ignored the problem of the footprints only going one way. Seeing that the snow leopard was nowhere outside either, he went back into the hut to fetch his willow twig and cloth for washing up.