The snow leopard had now gotten into the habit of obediently letting He Yi wipe its paws clean before it climbed onto the bed.
As soon as it got up there, it swished its big tail, then tucked the tail beneath its paws and stepped on it.
A little while later, He Yi climbed into bed as well.
They had not seen each other all day, and He Yi had missed it, though nothing showed on his face. That composure vanished almost immediately, however. He simply could not resist the snow leopard’s soft, fluffy fur. After a full day of work, he did not want to think about anything anymore. He only wanted to bury his face in the warm, rounded belly of the snow leopard.
The snow leopard was clearly startled when He Yi suddenly buried himself against it, and its body stiffened for a moment. But it soon rolled onto its side and exposed its belly.
That position made it even easier for He Yi to burrow in. He rubbed first one cheek and then the other against the silky fur on the snow leopard’s belly, even taking the occasional deep sniff. His behavior could only be described as decidedly forward.
“Aoo.” The snow leopard lay sprawled on its back with its forepaws raised, showing no annoyance no matter what He Yi did to it. It simply did not seem to understand why He Yi was behaving this way. Its expression looked a little blank, its eyes wide and round, yet it did not resist at all.
To be fair, He Yi’s lack of restraint was not entirely unreasonable. Sometimes when he got up in the night, the snow leopard would follow him. At first he had thought that, given how intelligent it was, having it watch him like that felt rather inappropriate, almost as though another person were staring. But after it happened a few more times, he got used to it. College roommates saw one another coming and going from the bathroom all the time, after all. What was the big deal? From then on, He Yi’s sense of boundaries around the snow leopard grew looser and looser.
No matter how intelligent it was, it could not turn into a human anyway, right? He Yi thought.
Seeing how cooperative the snow leopard was, He Yi could not resist kissing its furry face, which could look imposing one moment and adorably foolish the next.
After thoroughly indulging in the big cat, it was He Yi’s turn to rub its cheeks and scratch the back of its neck. The snow leopard grew so comfortable that it gradually flattened into a snow pancake. That was hardly an exaggeration. Unlike the dark markings on its back, the fur on its belly was pure white. Seen from above, it really did look like a snow pancake.
By the time He Yi grew tired from petting it and fell asleep halfway through, the snow leopard slipped beneath the quilt, pressed itself against his side, and settled down there, radiating warmth as it too drifted off to sleep.
*
The next day.
According to Old Master Zhang Qin, the earthen building materials would need at least another day to arrive, so He Yi was free today.
He had been studying for so long that it was about time to relax a little. Work and rest ought to be balanced.
Once He Yi had that thought, he began considering his grand fishing plans.
He noticed that Qianli had not gone back to the Xu household as soon as she finished sweeping today. Instead, she was sitting in the main hall, sewing and mending something with needle and thread.
A thought struck He Yi. The hemp thread in Qianli’s hand looked as though it might work as fishing line, and since she was so skilled at making clothes, perhaps she also knew what other kinds of thread were available.
He sat down near her and asked, “Qianli, do you know of any thread that’s tougher than hemp and less likely to snap? Ideally something thinner too, so it won’t be easy to see.”
Qianli thought for a moment. “Tussar silk.”
“What kind of silk?”
“It’s a kind of silk from somewhere far away. I think it comes from some sort of oak silkworm. It’s tougher than mulberry silk.”
“Where can you buy it?”
“Only in places very, very far from here. There isn’t any in our village. I only heard about it from a tailor.”
“I see.” He Yi could only abandon that “option” for now, though it could hardly be called an option in the first place when he had no way whatsoever to obtain that kind of silk.
In the end, He Yi took a spool of hemp thread from Qianli to make do with. Qianli refused payment, so He Yi promised to give her a fish if he caught any.
Qianli said softly, “I can’t take a fish home anyway. Just let me have a taste after you cook it.”
He Yi smiled. “I’ll give you a whole bowl. Don’t worry. I’m something of an old hand at this. I’ll catch something.”
He had already made his fishing rod earlier whenever he had a bit of spare time. It had not been difficult, perhaps because he had not tried to make anything especially refined. The finished product looked decent enough: an ordinary straight bamboo rod.
The float was another matter. He knew how one could be made, but putting it into practice was difficult. He did not have tools for gluing or sanding, nor did he have any lacquer. In the end, he plucked three feathers from the big goose and picked up a few more from the ground, stripped away all the barbs, and cut the shafts into equal segments. Using a sewing needle and the coarse hemp fishing line, he strung seven or eight segments together. Thus was born an extremely crude line float with almost no precision to speak of.
As for the hook, he fashioned it directly from the sewing needle he had just used to thread the float segments. The needle had come from Peddler Zhang. It was slightly thick, which made it just about right for a hook. He heated it over the fire for a while, and because he had no pliers to bend it with, he could only hammer it against the back of a kitchen knife to curve it into shape. Without proper tools, the barb was crude as well, leaving him with a bent hook that did not look especially sturdy.
Once the fishing tackle was finally ready, He Yi went out alone.
He had originally considered taking Xue Ci along to relax, but then he thought about how crudely made his equipment was. What if he failed to catch anything? All the confidence he had shown in front of Qianli vanished at once.
He Yi himself did not even notice that, when it came to Xue Ci, he had somehow developed a strange need to save face.
In any case, he would test everything by himself first and bring that kid along next time. So before leaving, He Yi set out books, paper, and brushes in the main hall and even ground the ink for him.
It had not rained much lately, and He Yi could not find any earthworms. He had not seen many grasshoppers either and guessed they were not active yet. There were plenty of other insects that could be used as bait, including beetle grubs that stayed underground during the day, but those things looked rather disgusting and he really did not want to dig them up.
Forget it. He could gather foxtail grass and reed leaves, tie them into bundles, and make a grass baiting spot. Reeds grew thickly along the river, and the tender reed pith could be used as bait. Just like that, both his hook bait and groundbait were settled.
At times like this he sorely missed corn. Fresh corn or fermented corn both worked very well for baiting a fishing spot, and they were cheap too. Once he finished planning the house and marked out the vegetable garden, he would find some corn seed and plant a patch.
He Yi chose a backwater bend where plenty of aquatic plants broke the surface. The current there was slower, making it easy for vegetation drifting down from upstream to collect. At midday, when the temperature rose, the exposed weed beds also provided shade, so plenty of large fish liked to shelter or feed in places like this.
Wearing a straw hat in the light breeze, He Yi tossed several bundles of grass into the river, baited the hook, cast his line, and began fishing.
Sunlight glittered over the water beneath a high sky and pale clouds. A small stool, a wooden bucket, one rod and several floats; amid the vastness of heaven and earth, it seemed as though he were the only person there, quiet and at ease.
The floats made from goose-feather shafts formed a half-circle and lay flat on the water with the ripples. He Yi had actually never used this sort of line float before. He merely remembered how it was made and was not very good at judging, from how many segments went under and in what manner, whether a fish was testing the bait. All he could do was watch closely.
Fishing was a test of patience and also a contest of skill with the fish. He Yi did not find the waiting tedious. Whether a fish bit depended heavily on luck, but technique could make up for or support a great deal. Every wait was a kind of test.
He had to determine whether the fish had not been attracted by the bait at all, whether they had come but would not bite, or whether one had been hooked but he had failed to land it. Every stage had its own factors, and there were many things that could still be improved. Which issue mattered most would depend on the result of each attempt.
The first proper result came rather late. Four segments of the float quietly plunged beneath the surface, and a heavy pull traveled up the rod. He Yi immediately tightened his grip and lifted in the opposite direction.
Before long, water splashed across the surface.
“Got one!” He Yi swallowed hard, a glimmer flashing in his ink-dark eyes.
Without a reel, he could only drop into a half-kneel to lower his center of gravity, then slowly edge backward and try to draw the fish toward shore.
Judging from the force in his hands, He Yi guessed it was a fairly large fish, though his guesses about size were only right about half the time. Some fish were small but ferocious enough to make the same commotion as a large one, while some big fish were lazy and barely struggled, preferring simply to dive downward. If he had hooked something truly large, he had no landing net and no idea whether the hemp line would survive long enough for him to bring it ashore.
He had barely finished thinking that when a plump, dark bluish bighead carp burst from the water and was dragged into the air by the hook and line. Just as He Yi began pulling again to bring it ashore, the fish suddenly whipped its tail the other way. With a splash, it plunged straight back into the river, sending rings of silver ripples spreading outward.
“…” He Yi was about to say something when a white-and-ink-black blur suddenly shot past him and stopped sharply at the riverbank, staring fiercely into the water.
Coming back to himself, He Yi realized it was the snow leopard.
He walked over quietly and led it back until it was roughly three feet from the bank. In a low voice, he said, “Don’t go so close to the river. It’s dangerous.”
Besides the danger, he was also worried that a predator like the snow leopard would frighten the fish away from the spot he had baited.
The snow leopard let out an “Awoo,” as though answering him. Even if the sound was not as deafening as a tiger’s roar, it still carried remarkably far along the open riverbank.
He Yi hurriedly hugged the snow leopard, rubbing its round ears as he whispered, “Shh, shh. Don’t call out. You’ll scare everything out of my fishing spot.”
The snow leopard blinked eyes the same color as the sky, then padded behind He Yi’s stool and lay down. Bored, it curled its huge tail around the reeds standing nearby, even breaking off a clump and using the leaves to brush He Yi’s neck.
“That tickles…” What a brat. He Yi snatched the reeds away, twisted them into a bundle while he was at it, and tossed them into the water to top up his groundbait.
The fish had thrown the hook, but when He Yi checked, the hook itself was still there, so he could keep fishing. He straightened the tackle at the tip of the rod and baited the hook again.
He Yi adjusted the positions of the goose-feather floats so they were not all bunched together end to end, but spread slightly apart. Once he had finished, he cast again, sat back down on the stool, and waited for another fish to take the bait.
The snow leopard remembered He Yi’s warning and did not go too close to the water, but from where it lay behind him it could not see the surface, and it quickly grew bored. It raised both thick paws onto He Yi’s shoulders, stood up on its hind legs, and rested its furry head on top of He Yi’s straw hat as it peered toward the murmuring water and the floats drifting there.
He Yi did not move. It was a little hot like this, but once he got absorbed in fishing, he hated moving for fear of startling the fish. Besides, if he pushed this chubby thing away, who knew what new trick it would come up with. Better to leave it as it was, so long as it stopped fidgeting.
And so, one man and one leopard waited for the next result in that strange posture.
Fortunately, the fishing spot He Yi had chosen was away from the stretches of riverbank the villagers usually passed through, so almost no one came by. Otherwise, if someone saw them like this, they might very well summon a Daoist priest to perform an exorcism.
The problem was probably the float. Whenever the current grew even slightly stronger, the segments kept taking on water. They were nowhere near as precise as the professional floats He Yi had used in his previous life. He Yi pulled up an empty hook several times, each time thinking a fish had bitten, only to find nothing there. The reed pith was still perfectly intact on the hook, with no sign that anything had nibbled at it.
“…”
With a makeshift float like this, he could not even tune the rig properly. So the first problem he needed to solve was the float itself. He had to make something sensitive enough to show clearly when a fish swallowed the bait.
After so many empty lifts, the fishing spot had probably been disturbed. Even after he added more groundbait, the rod showed no further response.
Without realizing it, He Yi fished until the sun sank below the horizon and insects began chirping all around him. In the end, he had no choice but to stop and head back with an empty bucket.
Before leaving, he looked at the stretch of water, then at the distant fields. Coming home empty-handed from his very first fishing trip felt rather inauspicious. Chongzi Village was not like Hejia Village; no one here raised fish, so he could not even buy one from somebody and pretend he had caught it.
Then another thought occurred to him. Once it got dark, perhaps he could secretly go to Eldest Uncle’s fields and catch a few frogs. The whole family had moved to town anyway, and the fields had already been handed over to some household in the village to manage. Even if he were spotted, those people might decide it was better to avoid trouble and not report him to Eldest Uncle’s family.
As for why he did not catch frogs in his own fields, of course it was because frogs ate crop pests. They were beneficial amphibians.
Before He Yi could put his wicked plan into action, however, a tremendous splash suddenly sounded behind him. A huge spray of water shot high into the air and crashed toward the bank, almost drenching him.
He Yi spun around and discovered that the snow leopard had actually jumped into the river. He hurried to the bank to look.
“Why did you jump in? This river is deep!” It had better not have fallen in. He knew how to swim, but hauling a snow leopard that size out of the water would be difficult even for a swimming instructor.
For a moment, the snow leopard vanished beneath the surface, leaving only violently churning water behind.
If He Yi remembered correctly, when the snow leopard had been chased by bees on the mountain, it had once dived into the water. But the stream up there had been very shallow. That was completely different from this river, which was nearly as deep as a person was tall.
Just when the snow leopard had stayed under so long that He Yi was preparing to jump in after it, several lively grass carp suddenly burst from the surface one after another, whipping their tails in midair as they flew straight toward his face.
Fortunately, He Yi reacted quickly and raised the bucket in his hands to shield his face. Unfortunately, he did not manage to point the mouth of the bucket fully outward. He caught only three large grass carp in it, while the last fish struck the side of the bucket and was about to bounce back into the river.
In the blink of an eye, the snow leopard kicked off beneath the water near the bank, broke through the surface, and rose into the air. It caught the last grass carp squarely in its jaws before landing back on shore, water streaming from its whole body.
Its spectacular entrance also splashed He Yi, who was standing by the bank, from head to toe.
“…” He Yi was utterly speechless with amazement. He stared blankly as the snow leopard walked toward him with the fish in its mouth, then noticed it staring fixedly at the bucket he was holding. His mind was still in complete disarray, yet by instinct he held the bucket out so it could drop the fish inside.
As though seeking praise, the snow leopard shook its wet head and nudged He Yi. He Yi coughed once to cover his lapse in composure, then rubbed its big head.
Perhaps because it was soaked, the fur on the snow leopard’s head felt strange to the touch. He Yi also noticed a few strands of waterweed clinging to its body and reached out to remove them.
“You got yourself completely soaked,” he said.
The moment the words left his mouth, He Yi sensed something was wrong, but before he could stop it, the snow leopard had already started whipping its head and body around to shake off the water. Not a single droplet went to waste; almost all of them flew straight onto He Yi.
He Yi wiped his face. His hand came away dripping wet and carrying two bonus strands of waterweed. His expression slowly went blank. “…”
Now it really was time to leave. He Yi instinctively started to pick up the fish, then suddenly remembered that the snow leopard had caught all of them. He asked, “Can you give me one of these fish? Next time I catch some, I’ll give you two in return.”
To his surprise, the snow leopard shook its head. Perhaps because it had always been so generous with him, often giving him the best of whatever it had, He Yi had assumed it would not refuse this time either. So when he saw it shake its head, he could not help feeling disappointed. It was not disappointment over losing the fish. It was probably disappointment at not receiving special treatment from the snow leopard.
Although the snow leopard had shaken its head, it pushed the wooden bucket toward He Yi’s feet and gave a cheerful “Aoo.”
He Yi froze. “You mean… you’re giving me all of them?”
Only then did the snow leopard nod.
“You worked so hard to catch them. You’re not going to eat any?”
The snow leopard wrinkled its nose and cast the bucket of grass carp a sidelong glance that looked faintly disdainful.
Snow leopards did not eat fish? He Yi could not help reflecting on his own feline stereotypes, then laughed and rubbed the snow leopard’s head.
After the snow leopard’s vigorous shake, the fur on its head had already dried quite a bit and returned to its usual fluffy, flowing, imposing appearance.
“Thank you, Snow Leopard.” Since it did not want to eat them, that meant it had caught these fish especially for him. By now, He Yi had lost count of how many times the snow leopard had saved him or helped him. Its closeness to him, and the way it relied on him, filled him with delight.