“Meat” delivered itself right to his door. He Yi was washing the floor of the chicken coop when a big fat brown goose suddenly flew over his head, flapping its long wings before landing inside the chicken enclosure.
The goose landed steadily, then immediately tried to charge into the coop. Once inside, it shoved the hen out of her nest, forcing the hen and chicks to scatter in every direction. The entire West Courtyard erupted into chaos.
“…” What was going on? Why had a goose just fallen out of the sky? He Yi was baffled.
Not long after, a figure like ink splashed across snow leapt onto the top of the wall, then began pacing slowly along it while staring at the chicken coop.
It was the snow leopard.
He Yi looked up and saw that the snow leopard had eyes only for the coop, completely ignoring the hen and chicks huddled in another corner. Clearly, the leopard had come for the goose. Could the goose have flown into the West Courtyard because the snow leopard had been chasing it?
He Yi remembered that Madman Tang had gone into town early that morning and probably would not return this soon, while Qianli had already finished her cleaning for the day and gone home. He was the only person in the residence at the moment, but there was no telling whether Xue Ci might suddenly show up, so He Yi thought the snow leopard ought to keep itself out of sight.
He Yi therefore called the snow leopard down. At his voice, it leapt lightly from the wall, landed in front of him, and gave a soft aowu.
Without thinking, He Yi reached out to rub the leopard’s furry face. “Why are you here?” As he spoke, he glanced toward the chicken coop and caught sight of a tuft of short, upright feathers flicking past the entrance. He narrowed his eyes.
The snow leopard narrowed its eyes too, though only because He Yi was petting it. It bumped its head against him, then turned its attention back to the coop, its huge fluffy tail swaying gently behind it.
“Is that the goose you chased over here? I’ll get it out for you. Just don’t start fighting and tear my coop apart,” He Yi offered.
But He Yi had underestimated the goose’s fighting ability. The moment he reached his hand inside, it pecked him hard enough that he thought he had started bleeding. When he looked closely, however, there was no blood, only a red mark.
“Hiss…” This was going to be troublesome. Who would have thought such a fat goose could be this vicious?
The snow leopard opened its mouth and gave two low aowu, aowu growls, apparently trying to intimidate the goose inside.
But the snow leopard’s call was too distinctive. Afraid it might attract people who had no business coming over, He Yi hurried over and covered the leopard’s mouth. “Don’t call. Stop calling. Someone will discover you.”
Those two calls had frightened not only the goose but also the hen and chicks behind it. Their round little bodies trembled; some shook loose quite a few feathers as they cowered in the corner, while others wandered around in confusion, unable to settle.
In the end, He Yi used the wooden handle of a rake to prod the goose out. The moment it emerged, it tried to fly up onto the wall, but the goose was simply too plump. No matter how hard it flapped, it could not get airborne.
He Yi and the snow leopard simply watched as its bright orange webbed feet lifted several inches off the ground again and again, only to come stomping back down each time.
The snow leopard had originally taken up an attacking stance, but after watching the goose repeatedly fail to fly, it ended up standing there just like He Yi, expressionless and motionless.
He Yi could only wonder whether something this fat belonged to someone. Judging by its weight, it did not look like a wild bird could have grown that large.
After a while, the goose gave up on jumping around and instead turned to sip water from the trough.
He Yi was deeply impressed. The snow leopard was still staring at it, yet the goose could somehow be this carefree.
After drinking, the goose walked over to the feed trough and started eating rice bran on its own, as though it had completely forgotten He Yi and the snow leopard standing behind it.
Before long, it was actually the snow leopard that left first. It did not take the goose with it. After growling at the goose once more, it vaulted over the wall and departed with great nonchalance.
All it left behind was a courtyard scattered with chicken and goose feathers.
To He Yi’s surprise, however, the fat goose simply settled into the West Courtyard and refused to leave.
Not only did it stop chasing the chicks and refrain from stealing the hen’s nest, it even herded the chicks around the courtyard for walks like some sort of steward. Seeing that they got along reasonably well, He Yi made a temporary nest for the goose in the Silkie shelter so it would have somewhere to rest.
He Yi could not quite make sense of how his household had suddenly acquired a goose out of nowhere. Still, he did not intend to simply keep it. A bird this strong and well-fed might belong to someone. If the owner discovered that He Yi had taken it for himself, he might be treated as a thief and chased down while everyone shouted for his head.
So when He Yi went to the fields, he stopped by the Zheng residence and found Uncle Zheng, asking him to help find out whether anyone in the village had recently lost a goose. If someone had, Uncle Zheng could let him know.
Instead, Uncle Zheng asked, “What does it look like? Really, really fat? I’ve seen one like that! Every so often there’s this very fat wild goose swimming right out in the middle of the river where nobody can catch it. Its neck and backside are white, but overall it’s the color of dirt…”
What a coincidence. When He Yi went back and looked again, the description matched perfectly. Apparently, it really was a wild goose.
After that, He Yi did not tether it, but the goose still did not leave. It even appointed itself steward of the West Courtyard, watching over the chicks, and simply stayed.
*
Elsewhere, Xue Ci ran into the same man who had threatened to report him to the authorities. This time, the man was not standing outside his own home. He had deliberately been loitering near the Tang residence and came over to talk the moment Xue Ci was alone. There was no telling how long he had been waiting.
“You little wretch, did you not listen to a word I said? I told you to come serve me, and you didn’t. You really think I won’t report you?” The man’s gaze had grown even more brazen. Apparently irritated from waiting, he opened with filthy insults and crude language.
The malice rolling off him was already overflowing. Xue Ci did not need to understand the dirty words themselves to know he was being insulted, and his brows drew sharply together.
“There’s nobody around. Shouting won’t help you. Come here and make me feel good.” The shameless man reached out with a hairy hand and tried to touch Xue Ci’s face.
Xue Ci did not dodge. Instead, he stepped forward, planted one hand over the man’s face, shoved him backward, and slammed him hard onto the ground before driving a heavy punch into his stomach.
“Augh…” The moment the pervert’s head struck the ground, bile nearly rose into his mouth, and his entire back went tingling and numb.
Pain cleared his head. Fear flashed through the man’s eyes, and he began trembling as he begged, “Spare me… spare me! I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any harm! Please be magnanimous and forgive me, cough, cough, cough!” He spoke too quickly and choked on his own saliva, leaving him coughing so hard he could barely continue.
Xue Ci found his hands filthy. Without sparing the man another glance, he went into the Tang residence and found He Yi to ask for water so he could wash them.
He Yi looked at Xue Ci’s hands, which appeared perfectly white and clean. Unable to see any dirt at all, he reached out, opened Xue Ci’s palm, then turned the hand over to inspect the back. It was still completely clean.
But Xue Ci insisted, so He Yi went to the water jar anyway and ladled out water for him to wash his hands.
Only after washing did Xue Ci’s expression return to normal. Then he tugged at He Yi and asked him to read the storybook aloud.
Seeing Xue Ci’s spirits return, He Yi relaxed as well and began reading the storybook aloud.
*
Without realizing it, He Yi had already been living at Madman Tang’s residence for quite a few days. When he first spoke to Madman Tang, he had said he wanted to stay for a month, and more than half of that time had already passed. Madman Tang had said he could stay an extra month if necessary, so the schedule was not especially tight, but since He Yi had already bought land, it was time to start buying earth and timber in preparation for construction.
He had no intention of throwing together a thatched hut just to tide himself over. The money he had on hand was still more or less enough to support building an earthen-walled, tile-roofed house.
There were reasons he had chosen a rammed-earth house instead of a mud-brick house or one built with red or blue-gray bricks.
Most homes in the village were mud-brick houses, with a smaller number built from rammed earth. The Tang residence was the only especially rare blue-gray-brick house, and houses built entirely of wood were almost impossible to see.
Blue-gray bricks were expensive, so that option was the first to go. Red bricks were not especially common in this dynasty either. Building a house would require a huge quantity of them, which meant firing large batches specifically for the project; simply buying what was already available might not provide enough. Red bricks were therefore not cheap, their quality was also questionable, and the value for money was too poor, so He Yi ruled them out as well.
A house built entirely of timber was even less practical. Good timber alone was expensive enough, and construction wood could not simply be chopped down on the mountain and used as-is. It had to be cut and dried first. Since this was the humid south, it would also need tung oil to protect it against moisture, rot, and insects, and tung oil was not cheap either.
If he wanted the strongest and most durable material, concrete would naturally be ideal. But this dynasty had no cement. He Yi knew how it was made, yet there was one very troublesome problem involved: cost.
It was not that cement was completely impossible to make; the main obstacle was expense. First, it would be difficult to persuade a kiln owner to burn large quantities of stone at high temperature using costly coal in order to obtain quicklime. Second, concrete also involved materials such as clay and iron ore, and iron ore was difficult to acquire because this dynasty placed limits on how much iron ordinary people could possess. Even with money, an iron merchant could not possibly supply large quantities of ore to a commoner. After that, gypsum would still need to be ground into powder. Without suitable machinery, that would be extraordinarily labor-intensive and require a great deal of manpower, though it was already the easiest part of the process to accomplish. Finally, concrete depended on steel reinforcement. The fact that it contained the word “steel” was enough to show that getting hold of it would be even more absurdly difficult than obtaining iron ore.
In short, making cement and concrete was an industrial undertaking. In this dynasty, unless He Yi somehow became an official on the level of the Minister of Works and had the imperial court backing him, he could forget about it.
Rammed-earth houses, meanwhile, were sturdier than mud-brick houses. A mud-brick house needed glutinous-rice lime mortar if it was to be truly solid. By comparison, rammed earth cost much less, and a rammed-earth house stayed warm in winter and cool in summer, which suited someone as sensitive to cold as He Yi… though now that he had changed bodies, he did not actually know whether this body was as cold-sensitive as his old one.
After considering it for several days, He Yi finally decided to build a rammed-earth house.
The earth used when the Zheng family rammed their walls had been purchased by Uncle Zheng. He Yi had asked about it and learned that Uncle Zheng bought the material from Zhang Qin’s household in Zhangjia Village, the very same supplier the village head had recommended.
So He Yi rose while the sky was still dim the next morning and went to the fields. Once he finished his farm work, he set off for Zhangjia Village. He also brought a gift with him, because there was someone he needed to visit along the way.