By late spring, wave after wave of fresh green wild plants still flourished at the foot of Yaluo Mountain, with no trace of the barrenness one might expect after repeated gathering.
It was not that no one came to pick them; they simply grew too quickly.
Madman Tang did not head up the mountain. The moment they reached the foot of it, he crouched down with a small medicinal hoe and began digging into the soil. Before long, he had unearthed a plant with purplish joints along the stem and roots clustered together like a mass of tiny snails.
“What is this?” He Yi braced a hand on his knee and bent down for a closer look.
“Chuanxiong. It invigorates blood and moves qi.”
Elio’s Notes: Chuanxiong (川芎) is a traditional medicinal rhizome commonly associated with Ligusticum chuanxiong. Its effects and preparation in this chapter reflect the source’s traditional-medicine framework rather than modern medical advice.
“You take it directly?”
“Dry it for a few days, then simmer it into a decoction to take orally.” Madman Tang moved with practiced ease, separating the roots from the soil while keeping nearly all of them intact.
He Yi tried digging one up as well, but he broke some of the chuanxiong’s fine roots. Madman Tang said nothing when he saw it. He simply took the plant, shook off the dirt, and put it into the bamboo basket.
Seeing Madman Tang strip away the rather pretty stems and leaves growing above it, He Yi asked curiously, “Can the leaves be eaten?”
“Now that you mention it… these chuanxiong shoots…” Madman Tang thought for a moment. “I seem to remember people stir-frying them with eggs. You could try it.”
He Yi gathered the chuanxiong leaves and tossed them into his carrying basket.
After they finished collecting the chuanxiong, the two wandered around nearby for a while. Madman Tang seemed to know exactly what he was looking for and passed plenty of medicinal wild plants without stopping. Before long, they had followed the mountain’s foot around to the back.
There was no path into the mountain from here, so few people came this way. The weeds and shrubs had grown almost excessively wild. He Yi had no idea what Madman Tang had come looking for, but he figured that if they encountered anything edible, the other man would probably point it out to him.
Looking around, He Yi could see that some plants had very distinctive leaves and should have been easy to recognize. Unfortunately, with his painfully limited knowledge, he still had no idea what any of them were.
At last, he spotted a plant that looked very much like scallions and asked, “Is this a scallion?”
Madman Tang had watched He Yi look around in silence the entire way and assumed he was not interested. Apparently, the problem was simply that He Yi had not recognized anything. He could not help laughing. “That’s xie. People in the village call it wild jiaotou, and some call it wild scallion. But that usually gets mixed up with xiebai. Xiebai can’t grow down here at the foot of the mountain.”
“Jiaotou?” He Yi pulled up a clump and knocked the dirt from its roots. It really did look like the jiaotou he had seen at Auntie Zhang’s home.
“Right. Don’t people usually pickle jars and jars of it? Come to think of it, it is about that season.”
“What a pity it uses so much salt and sugar. Better to pick some and take it back to stir-fry with eggs.” He Yi sounded genuinely regretful.
“You went up the mountain earlier?” Madman Tang suddenly asked.
“Yes. I went to see my older cousin. He lives on the peak behind the next one.”
“Oh, that Xu Peng who fell out with the Xu family and moved up the mountain?”
“You know about him?” He Yi shot him a surprised look, his hands pausing in the middle of pulling wild jiaotou.
“I eat at their house every day. I’ve heard them curse Xu Peng so often I’m sick of it.” Madman Tang seemed to remember something and crouched beside He Yi with a thoroughly gossipy expression. “Does your older cousin really live on raw flesh and blood? Does he chew on bugs when he can’t get raw meat?”
“…Probably not.” That sounded far too exaggerated. Xu Peng’s little home was arranged quite exquisitely, and he was particular about his cooking, willing to use all sorts of spices and seasonings. By comparison, He Yi and Xue Ci were the ones who resembled the wild men Madman Tang was describing, eating raw meat and chewing bugs. Their life was rough as could be.
“Tsk. How boring.” Someone clearly loved watching trouble unfold and pouted in disappointment.
“Why would they think that?” Could the Xu family have been bad-mouthing his older cousin?
Madman Tang was still muttering to himself. A moment later, his thoughts suddenly leapt elsewhere, and he cried out as though he had discovered some enormous secret. “Then wouldn’t Qianli have to call you Cousin-Uncle?”
“…Ah!” Xu Qianli seemed to be the daughter of Xu Peng’s second younger brother. Put that way, it really was true. Qianli was indeed his cousin-niece.
Both men found their own delayed realization amusing. After laughing for a while, they resumed walking, and Madman Tang picked up the earlier thread. “Aiya, I just remembered. I wasn’t trying to ask about your older cousin. I wanted to ask whether you saw any xiebai up on the mountain.”
“What does xiebai look like?”
“Similar to wild jiaotou. Some people also call xiebai wild scallion or wild garlic. The root is used medicinally. Unlike jiaotou, it doesn’t grow in clumps. Each one grows separately, and the base is round.”
“I’ll keep an eye out next time I go up the mountain. Can it also be stir-fried with eggs?” He Yi asked, rubbing his chin.
“…Yes.” Madman Tang stared expressionlessly at He Yi.
He Yi did not pick much wild jiaotou or many chuanxiong shoots, estimating that they could finish everything that night. Wild vegetables were best when fresh. If he gathered too many and left them sitting around, they would wilt and stop tasting good.
Later, Madman Tang pointed out several other wild vegetables for him to recognize. He Yi picked a little of each, planning to sketch them with a brush after they returned so he could remember them more easily.
One of them was particularly unusual, called huihuicai. Madman Tang said, “If you eat this, you can’t go out in the sun afterward. Otherwise you’ll get the same skin condition you had before.”
Elio’s Notes: Huihuicai (灰灰菜), literally “gray-gray vegetable,” is a common name associated with Chenopodium album / lamb’s quarters; the source also gives its formal name as li (藜). The raw uses 癣症 here for the sun-triggered skin reaction, the same term used earlier for He Yi’s skin condition, so the translation preserves the source’s inconsistency rather than silently harmonizing it.
“A rash that serious?”
Madman Tang nodded. “That’s why people in the village don’t eat it. Who can avoid the sun? Everyone’s afraid of getting sick. Look at this whole patch. Nobody has picked any. But it grows quickly and gets old quickly too. Once it gets old, it doesn’t taste good. Some of these are still tender shoots and stems, though. Those are suitable for eating.”
Now that He Yi had the body of a farmer and the heart of one too, he could not help sympathizing. What household could avoid going into the fields or getting a little sun? If there was no sunshine for too long, he would be the first to worry. His cotton field did not tolerate too much rain. Once the roots sat soaked in water, they rotted easily, and the weeds grew wildly too.
Huihuicai was actually fairly easy to recognize. Its diamond-shaped leaves carried a layer of whitish-gray powder, which was where its common name came from. Its formal name was li. He Yi only committed it to memory so he would not eat it by mistake. There were plenty of other wild vegetables anyway. Even dandelions could be eaten, so why insist on this particular one?
So He Yi picked only one plant to take back and record, then started walking back with Madman Tang.
“Brother Tang, have you finished gathering the medicinal herbs you wanted?” For most of the latter half of the trip, they seemed to have done nothing but dig wild vegetables and had not encountered any medicinal plants. To He Yi’s surprise, Madman Tang said he had only come to dig chuanxiong in the first place. In other words, they could have finished almost immediately.
So Madman Tang had stayed this long simply to point out wild vegetables and teach He Yi how to recognize them.
He Yi said, “This evening I’ll stir-fry the wild jiaotou and chuanxiong shoots. Brother Tang, care to join us?”
“…Both stir-fried with eggs?”
“Yes.”
Although the dislike in Madman Tang’s eyes was impossible to hide, he ultimately did not refuse.
On the way back to the Tang residence, He Yi looked at the sparkling river to the east and suddenly felt his hands itch with the urge to fish. He abruptly wanted to get hold of a fishing rod and cast a line.
In truth, the thought surfaced for a while every day whenever he passed this river. Today was no exception.
He had already considered quite a few details. For the rod itself, cutting a length of moso bamboo from the bamboo grove seemed suitable. He remembered that the bamboo would need to be heat-dried, then sanded and straightened before it could become a usable fishing rod.
He still had to think about what to use for fishing line. He truly had no idea what kinds of thread or cord people in this dynasty had available for that purpose.
As for the hook, he had a few ideas. When he first took up fishing years ago, he had read quite a few books and learned some of the history of fishhooks, so he knew several ways of making one.
An iron hook would obviously be best, but having a blacksmith make one brought up the problem of cost.
Compared with an iron hook that required spending money, a bone hook was naturally better. If he could get the forked wishbone of a bird, formed by the fused collarbones, the bone would be hard and easy to polish. He would only need to grind a barb into it before it could be used.
He could also make a thorn hook from black locust, but he had no idea what black locust actually looked like, nor whether it even grew here. He vaguely remembered that it had another name, yanghuai. For all he knew, this dynasty had not introduced the plant yet.
Chicken bones were clearly much easier to obtain.
He Yi thought as he walked. It was not until he returned to the Tang residence, set the wild vegetables down in the kitchen, and caught sight of the brand-new iron wok that he remembered he had forgotten to stop by the Zheng residence and ask Auntie Liu how to season it.
So he had to go out once more. In the blink of an eye, He Yi stepped over the threshold again and left.
*
A certain black-and-white figure had been sprawled on the roof of the Tang residence basking in the sun. When it saw a familiar back appear at the gate, it slowly rose and stretched, then padded toward the rear of the house. Its paws made not the slightest sound on the roof tiles. With one light leap, it sprang into the woods.
When it emerged from the trees again, the fierce beast with the huge fluffy tail was gone. In its place stood a black-haired youth dressed in an olive-green coarse-cloth work jacket.
That person was Xue Ci.
Xue Ci came around from behind the house and followed the dirt road into the village. As he passed an earthen-walled, tile-roofed house, however, a broad-backed, thickset man hurried out and called to him, “Whose child are you? Haven’t seen you around our village before, have I?”
The man deliberately lowered his voice. An ordinary person might not have heard him clearly, but Xue Ci heard every word.
“I don’t know you,” Xue Ci replied, stopping.
The man apparently had not expected such a cold response and immediately looked embarrassed. Flustered, he blurted out, “As if I know you? You… you’re always so close to that boy from the He family who got thrown out of his home. Everyone says you’re his paramour. I didn’t believe it, but yesterday I really did see the two of you walking together.”
Xue Ci did not entirely understand what the man was trying to imply and could not grasp the meaning beneath his words, but he could sense the faint malice hidden underneath them.
Xue Ci lifted one foot to continue walking. Seeing himself ignored, the man hurriedly said, “You’re some boy of unknown origins wandering around our village, and you still dare look down on me! I’m telling you, if you don’t want me to report you to the authorities and have you arrested, get inside my house right now!”
The moment he said “report you to the authorities,” the man himself shuddered first, as though certain Xue Ci would be frightened too and would therefore obey him.
Yet Xue Ci remained unmoved. His features, carrying an exotic cast, stayed serene and unruffled.
Hot breath burst from the man’s nostrils and his face flushed bright red. He glanced around nervously and, seeing no one nearby, stepped forward and tried to grab Xue Ci’s hand.
But the instant his hand reached out, Xue Ci shifted half a step to the side and neatly avoided his touch.
The man refused to believe it. Relying on his own large, powerful build and looking at Xue Ci, who was not much shorter than he was but considerably leaner, he grew bolder and lunged forward, trying to seize him.
Yet no matter how he tried, after several attempts he still could not touch so much as a single hair on Xue Ci’s body.
What the hell? The man was on the verge of flying into an embarrassed rage when someone happened to approach from not far away. He hurriedly turned his back, whistling softly as though nothing at all had happened.
Only after he heard the footsteps fade did he turn around again, but by then Xue Ci had disappeared.
The man was left alone. He spat on the ground and glared toward the end of the dirt road with his eyes nearly bulging from their sockets. In the end, he muttered to himself and went back inside.