He Yi reflexively caught the tail. Xue Ci immediately let out a small “wu,” and the huge fluffy tail struggled toward his clothes before shooting back inside and disappearing.
“Why did your tail come out? Be careful someone doesn’t see it.” The place where they were crouching was surrounded only by low, lush cotton plants. If anyone passed by, they really would be visible at a glance.
“I forgot I had to keep it under control,” Xue Ci murmured.
“Be more careful next time.” He Yi pushed himself upright with his hands on his knees. He planned to ask around about the natural enemies of cotton aphids, so he sent Xue Ci home first to help cook some congee.
Normally He Yi did most of the cooking, but Xue Ci often watched from the side and had learned quite a bit. At the very least, he could manage a pot of congee, so He Yi felt comfortable leaving it to him.
Afterward, He Yi walked around the village and eventually found a household that had been growing cotton for three or four years.
When he arrived, everyone in the family looked wary. But after seeing the anxiety and worry on He Yi’s face because of the infestation, they remembered having gone through the same thing themselves. Their hearts softened, and they let down their guard enough to offer him some advice.
He Yi was very grateful. From them he learned that fields without crop rotation were especially prone to cotton aphids. Ladybugs ate the aphids, so once the aphid population grew, ladybugs would naturally be drawn in. But if too few ladybugs came, they could not suppress an outbreak.
“Ai, that’s just what growing cotton is like! There’s nothing we can do. The stems, the fronts of the leaves, the backs, they get covered everywhere. You wipe off what you can. If it’s only a few dozen plants, you can burn them, but when there are too many, who can bear to?”
That was exactly what He Yi had been thinking, and he nodded in agreement.
“There really isn’t much of a solution. Old Ao’s family next door stopped planting cotton. A few years ago their bolls were pitifully few, and the lint came out late too. Truly…”
“Our family got some this time too. We only finished dealing with them yesterday, though it wasn’t too bad. Don’t worry so much. This may sound unpleasant, but you get used to it. Who grows cotton without suffering through this? In another couple of months, those greasy bugs, the cotton aphids, will naturally thin out.”
He Yi returned home with mixed feelings, still wondering what he ought to do. Was he truly supposed to leave the infestation alone?
As he passed the vegetable garden, his gaze fell on the yao grass and he stopped. Every morning he collected yao dew. If Xue Ci did not drink it, He Yi sealed it in a jar. Yesterday all the seeds had sprouted and been planted, so there was no longer any need to soak them. That meant there was still some unused yao dew in the jar.
Pests… Could yao dew be useful against them? He Yi turned the idea over and over in his mind. Even when Xue Ci called him in for congee, he was still thinking about it as he walked.
He had two mu of cotton. It was not a huge amount, but neither was it small. Yet there was far too little yao dew. Even diluted with water, it probably would not be enough to water two plants. Feeding it to ladybugs did not seem workable either. He vaguely remembered reading somewhere that ladybugs did not drink water, and there was no practical way to get close enough to them. If aphids touched the yao dew instead, who could say whether the infestation might become even worse?
Seeing He Yi frown in thought even while eating his congee, Xue Ci tried to help come up with ideas. Unfortunately, after a while they still could not think of anything worth trying.
After they ate, He Yi asked Xue Ci to leave the bowls soaking so he could wash them later. Xue Ci merely agreed. He Yi had no idea that after putting them away, Xue Ci went ahead and washed them clean himself.
He Yi returned to the fields to check the cotton plants. He brought a piece of coarse hemp cloth and tried to wipe away as many aphids as possible. Just as the other family had said, removing even a few was better than nothing.
He spent the entire afternoon at it. By the time he had just barely wiped the aphids from all the affected cotton plants across two mu, his back could scarcely straighten.
Yet the next day, plenty of grass-green cotton aphids were once again clinging to the leaves and stems. Some leaves had even developed mold.
“…” He was exhausted. Wiping them off like this really did not accomplish much.
After struggling all day for almost no result, He Yi became thoroughly discouraged.
That night, Xue Ci wanted He Yi to read Youxue Qionglin to him, but for once He Yi refused.
“I’m not in the mood today… Maybe in a couple of days.” He Yi lay on the mat and slowly closed his eyes. He was not sleepy. He did not actually feel like sleeping at all. He simply did not want to face Xue Ci’s expression just then.
Yet after closing his eyes, his mind filled instead with the image of Xue Ci looking dejected, his round ears seemingly folded down.
Worse, with his eyes closed he could not see Xue Ci’s reaction, and he heard no sound from him either. Restless and irritated, He Yi finally opened his eyes again. He found Xue Ci’s face very close to his own, handsome brows drawn together as he studied him.
“What is it?” Why are you staring so hard? He Yi felt guilty and confused at once.
“What’s wrong with you?” Xue Ci asked in return.
He Yi hesitated over whether to confide in him. In truth, this was hardly something worth becoming this disheartened over. Of all the things that had happened before, which had not been difficult? Which had not exhausted him? Yet when his emotions turned bad, sometimes they could arrive without warning and crush his state of mind all at once.
Maybe he would feel better tomorrow. Maybe it would take a while. Maybe he would not get better at all. He felt lost.
He Yi had a great many things he wanted to say, but what came out instead was:
“I’m so tired. Xue Ci, can you support me?”
A faint flash of blue crossed Xue Ci’s gray eyes, almost hidden by the darkness. His clear, refined voice followed. “I can.”
He Yi froze slightly. He had only meant it as a joke, yet Xue Ci had answered with complete seriousness. As far as he could remember, he had never taught Xue Ci what it meant to support and care for someone, so he asked hesitantly, “Do you know what ‘support’ means?”
Xue Ci nodded.
“Then tell me.”
Xue Ci cleared his throat before saying, “For the small ones, you feed them six meals every day. For the big ones, three meals. You have to clean where they live. In spring and summer, you can let them outside. And after seven to ten days, they have to be castrated.”
“Wait, what was that last part?” The longer He Yi listened, the more wrong this sounded.
“Castrating pigs. Like this.” Xue Ci even made a gesture.
He Yi immediately felt phantom pain between his legs and fell silent for a long moment.
Was this supposed to be a lecture on raising pigs?!
“Who taught you all this?” He Yi asked, caught between laughter and tears.
“Uncle Li. His family raises three Huahua.”
He Yi thought for a moment before remembering who Uncle Li was. There really was a pig-raising household in the village surnamed Li.
“That’s how you raise spotted pigs. What I meant was…”
Before He Yi could finish, Xue Ci’s perfectly serious face suddenly broke into laughter. He Yi stared for a beat, realized what had happened, then reached out and pinched his cheeks.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You’ve even learned how to tease me now?” He Yi pretended to be angry.
“Hahahaha, becau’ you’re shtupid!” Xue Ci’s soft cheeks were being mercilessly kneaded, so the words came out distorted. He tried to wriggle free. With a flash of white light, a powerfully built snow leopard replaced him and landed lightly over He Yi, enthusiastically rubbing its head into the hollow of his neck and beneath his chin.
He Yi said helplessly, “I think you’re the real Huahua. Always shoving your head into people.”
Xue Ci did not care. He was going to keep nuzzling.
With this little clown interrupting him, the heart that had felt sealed beneath ice slowly warmed again.
He could be discouraged, but it was time to stop. Xue Ci had only recently entered the human world, yet he could already give He Yi something to lean on. He Yi needed to pull himself together too, so that he could be a source of support for Xue Ci in return.
Planting only one crop left him far too vulnerable to risk. Having another livelihood on the side was important. He Yi stroked the troublesome cat’s head and quietly made up his mind.
In the middle of the night, rain began pouring down. The storm continued on and off for two days. When He Yi returned to the fields afterward, he was astonished to find that the aphids on the cotton plants had decreased dramatically. After a rough count, only a small number of plants remained badly infested. He pulled up those that could not be wiped clean and whose leaves were severely curled and mottled with mold, then carried them to an open patch farther away and burned them completely.
He had never expected the torrential rain to arrive at such a useful moment. They still had to see how the cotton plants developed afterward, but at least there was much more hope now.
He Yi’s mood brightened too, as though the sky had cleared after the rain.
*
After the storm, one mud-brick house in Chongzi Village had half collapsed. Eight people lived there. The outer walls of the bedrooms had fallen, leaving them nowhere to sleep, and the roof was still leaking incessantly. The family was frantic and had no choice but to immediately look for someone who could help repair the place.
Everyone they approached told them, “Why don’t you go look at the Zheng family? They rebuilt their walls recently, and those walls stayed standing through both storms this month. Whoever did them really knew what he was doing!”
“They’re really that sturdy?” the family asked in astonishment.
“I thought they’d just thrown something together too, because I heard that He Yi from the village had helped build them. You saw what the Zheng family’s old walls looked like, practically falling apart. When the new ones first went up, nobody thought much of them. But after two storms, other houses collapsed while theirs had nothing happen at all. Who would’ve thought He Yi really had some skill?”
“I heard it hardly cost them anything either!” someone else added.
Those words sounded like a miraculous cure to the desperate family. They immediately decided to send the head of the household to the Zheng home.