He Yi led the two little piglets by a rope into the pen he had sprinkled with plant ash. They had short legs and short necks, with black markings scattered over their tender pink skin. As the plump flesh on their backs quivered with each step, the markings really did resemble plum blossoms swaying in the wind.
Although the pen was spacious, the two insisted on squeezing together, nudging each other in a corner with remarkable energy. The wounds from their castration appeared to have healed well; nothing seemed wrong with their gait.
Watching from the side, Zhou Qu admired He Yi all the more. The young man had not even reached the age of twenty, yet he kept his small household so orderly, raising chickens and pigs and, from what Zhou had heard, tending quite a few fields. He occupied such a large home alone, with no family member in sight to lend him a hand. It seemed a terribly lonely life.
While Zhou Qu was feeling sorry for him, He Yi was thinking about pig feed. As far as he knew, piglets were fussier eaters than grown pigs. Red amaranth was available in summer, and some farming households fed their pigs sweet-potato vines, but unfortunately he had planted no sweet potatoes. Perhaps he ought to obtain more seeds and fill the empty patches of his vegetable garden.
Li Chi had said they could eat distillers’ grains too, which could be bought from a wine brewery. But the brewery was in town, and going there and back would be troublesome as well as expensive.
After calculating it, He Yi concluded that letting them forage during the day might be more economical. The land enclosed by the Li family at the foot of the mountain would suit them nicely. He could lead the piglets over and ask whether they could graze inside the Li family’s enclosure.
He Yi was so deep in thought as he crouched there that he jumped when something poked him in the back. Turning, he discovered that the big goose had wandered over from its own pen.
The goose seemed to want a look at the new piglets, but it was not tall enough to see properly through the bamboo gate. It flapped its wings and tried to fly, without rising an inch. Hardly surprising, considering how close its round belly was to dragging on the ground!
It kept prodding He Yi at intervals while stretching its already long neck toward the pen.
“There’s really no dealing with you.” He Yi understood perfectly well what it wanted. Resigned, he scooped the goose up beneath its hefty body and held it high enough to peer over the gate.
Alarmed to find themselves under inspection by a man and a goose, the piglets scrambled into a corner against the earthen wall, their tightly curled little tails trembling.
“You’ve frightened them. Had a good look? Come on, back you go.” Ignoring the goose’s indignant honking, He Yi lowered it to the ground.
Behind them, Zhou Qu stared open-mouthed. He Yi and the goose looked as though they really were having a conversation.
The piglets were quiet that night and made scarcely a sound. Having never raised pigs before, He Yi worried that they might have escaped or met with some mishap. Their silence seemed almost suspicious. He got up several times during the night to check the pen and only returned to bed after reassuring himself that all was well.
*
The Patrol Inspector’s Office.
“Why hasn’t the inspector returned? He said he’d be back by now, and several days have passed.”
“Who’s leading today’s drills?”
“…He Jie?”
“Tsk. Just like him. He has the nerve to come swaggering back as though nothing happened. Look at the time! He isn’t even here yet. With all those airs he’s putting on, does he think he’s the patrol inspector himself?”
That was the gossip Wu Yundi heard when he returned, travel-worn, to find the officers gathered together.
The officers had not heard his almost soundless footsteps. When one happened to catch sight of a figure behind them, they nearly jumped out of their skins. A closer look showed that the town patrol inspector himself had returned. None knew how long he had been standing there or how much he had heard, and all were left speechless.
Wu Yundi had no time for them. He sent them off to carry out their drills, took off his hat, and entered his inner office.
After resting a while, he drew an envelope from an inner pocket. As he tapped his knuckles against the desk, he recalled something a fellow officer had said when he departed the Northwestern Main Camp.
“Where did you find this youngster? His martial skills are exceptional, perhaps second only to yours. He reminds me of you back in the day! I heard he was originally going to be drafted into Xuanjiao Camp. How did you manage to snatch him away? Tell your brother!”
Wu Yundi remembered that he had not answered. He had never imagined Xue Ci was so skilled himself. Their sparring bout had been casual rather than a serious fight, but Xue Ci had seemed so much at ease that he plainly had not exerted his full strength, any more than Wu had.
It was the first time Wu Yundi had faced someone capable of holding his own against him. Despite Xue Ci’s youth, crossing hands with him had sent an instinctive shiver through Wu. His true ability might well be unfathomable.
If anyone wanted to know where Wu had found such an expert, Wu himself wanted to ask where He Yi had discovered such an extraordinary person.
Running his fingers over the envelope, Wu Yundi smiled faintly. Once he finished his official business, he would visit He Yi in Chongzi Village and deliver the letter Xue Ci had written. If He Yi wanted this letter, however, he ought to offer intelligence of equivalent value in exchange. Wu was no saint who helped others without expecting anything in return.
At the same time, on the outskirts of Wuting Prefecture’s county town.
Xing Zhaoyu reclined against a couch, a servant kneeling by his feet to massage his legs. A personal guard stood beside his head, reporting news delivered at full speed by a subordinate.
“Oh? How unusual. Tang Huai actually sent someone? What’s so urgent?”
The guard hesitated, but his ingrained obedience would not allow him to conceal or delay the report. “It’s about that young man called Xue Ci…”
Xing Zhaoyu’s face stiffened, and his sharp gaze settled on the guard.
Steeling himself, the guard continued, “They say Xue Ci presented his foreign-resident papers when entering the county town, only to be arrested by the gate officials and assigned to military service at the Northwestern Main Camp.”
“Foreign-resident papers.” “Military service.” From those few words, Xing Zhaoyu soon grasped the maneuvering behind the affair.
Those foreign-resident papers had been arranged through his own connections. If anyone wanted to investigate that arrangement, it would not be difficult, since the county in question had never been part of his sphere of influence.
No one would single out an obscure youngster entering the county town for the first time without reason. It looked very much like someone seizing on a pretext, hoping to find fault with the boy and then direct the flames toward Xing Zhaoyu as his ‘guarantor.’
Only, the Northwestern Main Camp… A succession of figures involved in the tangled political forces behind it crossed his mind, but he could recall no particular conflict of interest with any of them. Had it been one of the eastern camps, such as Huntian or Xuanjiao, he might have had some idea…
Though Xing Zhaoyu could not immediately work out what was happening, his tightly drawn brows gradually relaxed.
Because something had suddenly occurred to him: whatever else might be going on, did this mean Tang Huai was worried about him?
*
He Yi did not drink his yao dew that day. Instead, he diluted it with water and poured it over several chili pepper plants and green Sichuan pepper plants.
During his earlier experiments, he had carefully controlled the dilution ratios and compared their effects, trying to find the point at which the dew lost its efficacy.
He eventually discovered that the dividing line for storage was twelve double-hours, while the dividing line for dilution was a ratio of one to ten.
In other words, yao dew left standing more than a day would become ineffective, or at least scarcely effective. Diluting it with ordinary water at a ratio of one part dew to eleven parts water also rendered it ineffective. The greater the proportion of water, the weaker the effect.
The chili peppers and green Sichuan pepper plants were growing quickly, especially those grown from seeds he had soaked in yao dew until their white sprouts emerged. Soon he would need to insert support stakes and tie them in place to keep them upright.
Time flew. Every day was filled with tasks: building roofs, tending the fields, feeding the chickens and collecting eggs (the goose foraged for itself), taking the piglets out to graze, and much more.
Before Xue Ci left, He Yi’s days had been just as full, busy and sometimes frantic. But back then Xue Ci had been present. Whenever He Yi taught him something, simply watching Xue Ci learn brought him tremendous peace.
Now he still found moments of leisure, but no longer knew what to do with them. He might think of practicing calligraphy, only to find he could not calm his mind, and besides, Xue Ci had taken the brushes, ink, paper and inkstone with him. He Yi did not know whether the boy had any chance to use them at the military camp. Without the means to practice writing, he could only sit and stare into space. Eventually work seemed more appealing, so he busied himself again.
At night he was often so exhausted that he fell asleep as soon as he lay down, sometimes even before an old fellow like Zhou Qu.
Within a few days, the canopy bed was finished.
Zhou Qu had coated it in tung oil as well. He said it would need eight to ten days for the smell to dissipate. With two cabinets still to make, he moved to another room and set about his carpentry again.
He Yi went to look at the bed. It was exquisitely made, with delicate openwork patterns of flowers, birds, wind and moon carved into the railings and upper frame to complement the grain of the acacia wood. Every visible surface was finely polished. From a distance the bed looked grand and stately, and set in the otherwise empty main bedroom it transformed the room into an elegant scene from an ancient costume drama.
The care Zhou Qu had poured into it left He Yi a little guilty. The money he had offered hardly seemed enough to match such craftsmanship. And since Zhou was his guest, He Yi felt even more embarrassed to feed him plain vegetarian porridge day after day, blander than the fare in a Buddhist monastery.
He therefore began giving more thought to their morning and evening meals.
While gathering amaranth for the piglets, he deliberately saved the tenderest leaves. Sometimes he cooked them into vegetable congee, sometimes he stir-fried them with eggs, and at the very least he could blanch them for a vegetable dish.
From time to time the Zheng family generously came to his rescue. Auntie Liu brought over some preserved century eggs she had made herself, and He Yi prepared a version of amaranth in superior broth without any actual superior broth. He boiled amaranth, century eggs and garlic together, producing a soup that was barely passable.
Zhou Qu did not complain about the humble fare. He drank it cheerfully and said he would not mind having it again.
Cooking was tiring, especially preparing the ingredients. He Yi had grown weary of constantly borrowing scallions, ginger and garlic from the Zheng household, so he asked Uncle Zheng to teach him how to grow them and then tried it himself.
Scallions did not need to be grown from seed. One could cut off the rooted bases and plant them, burying the roots while leaving a length of the white stalk exposed above the soil.
Scallions were usually planted around White Dew in autumn. It was only late in the sixth lunar month, not yet the seventh, and they disliked heat, so the weather was hardly suitable. He Yi refused to give up. He erected a small shelter in an east-facing corner of the garden and planted his scallions underneath.
After all, he had yao dew to fall back on, so he was not particularly worried.
Ginger was grown from pieces of seed ginger. Uncle Zheng gave him two large pieces that had been buried in the ground through the previous winter.
Uncle Zheng instructed him to cut each piece into sections. The protrusions on the ginger were buds; each section should retain three. He was to set the sections in the soil with the buds pointing up, their cut surfaces facing down, then cover them with earth.
Ginger was generally best planted in the fourth or fifth lunar month, but planting now was still just about possible.
As for the harvest, Uncle Zheng said it would take half a year. When the leaves turned yellow, the ginger beneath could be dug up. He Yi thought the yao dew might shorten the wait. He would simply use yellowing leaves as the sign that it was ready.
Garlic could also be grown without seed. He only needed to plant the cloves four or five cun apart in soil that had been deeply turned and allowed to air. But garlic required plentiful nutrients, and he did not know whether the garden soil was fertile enough to support it. He had no farmyard manure at the moment either, so he would have to trust the yao dew.
Like scallions, garlic was best planted in the mild seasons of spring and autumn. This was far from an ideal time. Nevertheless, He Yi planted scallions, ginger and garlic in the vegetable garden all at once, with no exceptions.
Now all that remained was to water them diligently.