That very night, Li Cunxin heard roars coming from the neighboring thatched hut. It seemed like a fierce argument had erupted, but also sounded like a single person yelling and cursing.
Li Cunxin didn’t know what happened there. She just assumed the two were having a disagreement.
Early the next morning, Miao Bing came to find her, requesting Li Cunxin to let him join their group.
Yan Baiyu shot an unobtrusive, evaluating glance at Feng Huai. Feng Huai looked at Miao Bing, his joyful eyebrows rising. Yu Muyang curled a lip in disdain. Zhao Penglai and Xia Qing were pleasantly surprised by the addition of manpower and another Craft-type talent. Wang Ran and Jiang Beibei showed little emotion; they looked to Li Cunxin.
Li Cunxin was combing Liu Cuo Jin’s hair. Hearing Miao Bing’s words, she fell silent for a moment. She didn’t answer.
Feng Huai and Miao Bing thought she was hesitating and tensed up immediately.
Li Cunxin finished tying Liu Cuo Jin’s hair and patted her shoulder. Liu Cuo Jin got up to wash her face and rinse her mouth. Li Cunxin looked at Miao Bing. “If you’re sincere about coming, I naturally welcome you very much.”
Miao Bing let out a relieved breath. “I really did have a lot of reservations before, but now I’m truly sincere about coming over.”
Li Cunxin didn’t say anything more, tacitly giving her approval.
Miao Bing had come at the right time. Everyone was just preparing for breakfast. Yunxiu had made hand-rolled noodles. Last night, smoked pork ribs had been stewed with winter bamboo shoots, and plenty was left over. She used it for the noodle broth and topping.
Miao Bing wasn’t treated differently. He also got a bowl. Just because the table in the main room was truly too crowded to fit anyone else, Yu Muyang, Zhao Penglai, and Miao Bing had to sit outside on small wooden stumps and eat.
Miao Bing looked at his bowl of hand-pulled noodles. The broth was a milky white, with shreds of bamboo shoots hidden beneath the noodles. There was even a piece of rib in the bowl. When he stirred the noodles with his chopsticks, a hot, steamy aroma wafted up.
Miao Bing cradled the bowl with great care, as if wanting to savor it slowly, bit by bit. He put his mouth to the bowl’s edge and sipped the broth first. The hot soup had a very rich flavor of cured meat, followed by the pungent heat of ginger slices surfacing.
He thought about their life over this past year. Almost from dawn to dusk, they were working just for food. Among the three of them, only Feng Huai could cook. His cooking wasn’t exactly masterful, but in the primitive world, even the cleverest housewife can’t cook without rice. With no condiments, not even basic ingredients, knowing how to cook was practically useless.
Boiled wild vegetables were one of their daily dishes. They had once obtained a piece of mineral salt. They’d put some water in a stone pot, toss the wild vegetables in, stir the mineral salt around, boil the vegetables into mush, turn it into a soup, and then eat it.
That soup had no trace of oil. It carried a salty taste and a grassy flavor. After drinking it, a layer of lingering bitterness would stay on the tongue.
This taste had already replaced every memory of soup he had in his mind. The moment someone mentioned ‘soup,’ he could only recall salt-bitter and grassy-fishy tastes.
Miao Bing picked up a mouthful of noodles with his chopsticks and slurped them into his mouth. He couldn’t bear to bite them off, so he held them in his mouth, using his chopsticks to stuff the dangling noodles into his already full mouth.
The noodles were springy and soft with a simple, honest wheat flavor that needed slow chewing to appreciate. Only at the end of the chew could you experience its soft fragrance and sweet aftertaste.
In their year-plus of wandering, they had eaten all sorts of things. Whether they couldn’t process it right or lacked the tools, whatever was in their mouths couldn’t be described as having ‘texture.’ It had been hard to swallow at first, but later, when hunger got desperate, nothing was inedible.
The best-textured thing they’d eaten was roasted potato. After roasting, it was powdery and hot, very filling. But after eating too much, it was just like that. Their taste buds went numb. Eating became a mere procedure, without any enjoyment.
Miao Bing saved the rib for last. The rib was stewed until very tender. The meat fell right off the bone with a little suction, but it was still quite chewy. The cured flavor intensified as he chewed, the fat and savory broth flowing out together.
They had also hunted quite a bit of meat. They either stewed it in soup or roasted it over a fire. To them, that was considered a fine meal, yet something always seemed missing.
Miao Bing suddenly understood what Feng Huai had said yesterday. This bowl of noodles jolted him back to his senses, instantly pulling him out of the primitive-world-savage atmosphere.
He was a modern person.
When Miao Bing joined, everyone had already finished the iron forging. There was no extra ironware to spare for him.
Miao Bing could only use an axe as a makeshift machete. After discussing with him, Xia Qing immediately put the rice huller into the day’s schedule.
The men’s quarters there had three rooms. When Miao Bing came, he squeezed in with Feng Huai, and the rooms were perfectly full.
Everyone was secretly wondering why Taishi Huan hadn’t come looking for trouble with Miao Bing this time.
While everyone kept an eye on Miao Bing’s movements, the next day, Feng Huai went to the riverbank looking for stones and returned with a bruised and swollen face. After asking, they learned Taishi Huan had beaten him up.
Taishi Huan had guessed it was Feng Huai who stirred up Miao Bing to jump ship and defect. Enraged, Taishi Huan ambushed and beat him.
Li Cunxin and Yan Baiyu were out looking for white wax, so they were not around. In the end, Xu Yin took the lead to confront Taishi Huan.
Taishi Huan’s face showed few injuries. He glanced at Feng Huai, sneered, and said, “Brought people to back you up, huh.”
Zhao Penglai spoke righteously. “Taishi Huan, this is a no-man’s land. It’s true, whoever occupies it claims it, but there’s also a rule of first come, first served! You don’t want to integrate into our group—fine, that’s nothing. Our side is voluntary; we don’t force anyone. But you wanted to settle here. We all thought we were fellow travelers, having crossed over into this world together. We’re countrymen sharing the same disaster. We should help each other out. We’re already living a hard enough life here; if we make things harder for each other, life would be too miserable. That’s why we didn’t drive you away. We thought we could help a little. As long as you don’t stir up trouble, we can be good neighbors. Next spring, we can even help you open up a field, give you seeds, and teach you to grow crops! If you don’t want to live in peace, humph! We won’t be polite to you.”
Xu Yin’s voice rumbled like thunder. “This is the last warning. If you harass our village or our villagers again, it won’t be as simple as just driving you out.”
Taishi Huan coldly watched the people leave. He flipped over the pot on the fire with a sweep of his hand. The potatoes cooking inside rolled away.
A glimpse from the corner of his eye caught one. Taishi Huan picked up a potato, staring at it while lost in thought. After a moment, fire blazed in his eyes, the veins on his hands bulged as he squeezed the cooked potato into mush.
Yan Baiyu and Li Cunxin didn’t return until dinnertime.
Despite their frugality, with more people, the candles burned out especially fast. Given their current conditions, whether using animal fat for candles or vegetable oil for oil lamps, they didn’t have the resources. Out of any of those options, all they could do was go and try their luck, searching for white wax or beeswax. But those things were a chance encounter, not something found at will.
Finding things had a bit of metaphysics to it. You’d always stumble across them when you weren’t paying attention, but when you were, they were hard to come by.
Li Cunxin was already somewhat tired when she returned, her head numb. When Xu Yin told her about the day’s events, it was already late and the matter had passed. She was quiet and only said she understood.
Li Cunxin washed her feet with hot water, got into bed, and covered herself with the cotton quilt. She fell asleep in no time. Her sleep quality was always quite good.
In the sky hung an unusually clear, bright moon, dyeing the world a deep, quiet blue and casting a sheet of moon-shadows. In the winter night, there wasn’t a single insect chirp. Without the wind, it was eerily silent.
The breathing of the people sleeping inside the house was gentle and drawn-out. An odd noise came from outside, like a cry suddenly cut short, then silence returned.
Curled up asleep at the bedside, the gray wolf suddenly raised its head. Its green, ghostly eyes stared outside, both ears standing erect.
Tiny rustling sounds were nowhere to hide from the wolf’s ears. The gray wolf began to howl. Yan Baiyu woke first, followed closely by Xu Yin in the neighboring room.
Yan Baiyu saw Alpha walk to the door and claw at the door curtain. Yan Baiyu swiftly threw on her clothes and moved the curtain aside. The three wolves shot out into the moonlight like gray streaks of lightning.
The others were gradually stirred awake by the commotion. Li Cunxin was still groggy, asking in a sleepy voice, “What’s wrong?”
“Cunxin, the fire striker.”
Li Cunxin handed Yan Baiyu the clothes she’d been using as a pillow. Yan Baiyu took the fire striker from the pocket of Li Cunxin’s denim jacket and lit a candle.
Outside, Xu Yin called out, “Cunxin, Baiyu.”
Yan Baiyu was fully dressed. She came out holding the candle in one hand, shielding it from the wind with the other. Xu Yin, Wang Ran, and Yu Muyang were already waiting in the yard with torches. They lit them from the candle flame. Three torches blazed, illuminating the yard. Zhao Penglai, Miao Bing, and Feng Huai also rushed over.
“What happened?” Jiang Beibei and Liu Cuo Jin, fully dressed, came out of the bamboo room.
Xu Yin said, “You two stay inside for now.”
Xu Yin took the lead, holding his torch aloft and following the wolves’ howls. Wang Ran and Yu Muyang followed behind.
The sound came from behind the house. As everyone found their way there under the moonlight, they saw three gray wolves in the vegetable patch, dragging at a twisting black shadow.
Everyone moved closer, the circle of torchlight shifting through the moonlit night into the vegetable patch, illuminating a preposterous scene on the ground.
The pigsty and the goose coop had both been opened. Those clumsy geese, their flight feathers clipped, could only flutter just above the ground. Having been raised by humans, they didn’t run off even when let out of their cage and strolled about the vegetable patch as if casually pacing. Taishi Huan was lying on his side on the ground, pinning the small spotted pig beneath him, his large hand clamped over the pig’s snout to stop it from squealing.
The three wolves’ eyes glowed with a sinister light under the moon, their faces ferocious. Two of the wolves were pulling at Taishi Huan’s trouser legs, dragging him. The other wolf had its jaws clamped on Taishi Huan’s forearm. Steam rose from the wolf’s mouth.
Everyone was stunned for a moment. Then, instantly understood.
Taishi Huan was stealing a pig.
Yu Muyang spat a curse and shoved his torch into Zhao Penglai’s hands.
Yan Baiyu called out, “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, let go.” The three gray wolves reluctantly pulled back.
The moment the wolves released their grip, Taishi Huan scrambled up, only to be kicked right back down by a flying kick from Yu Muyang. “Stealing our pig? I’ll kill you!” Everyone spent most of their time laboring for food; knowing how hard-won meat was made them all the angrier now.
Yu Muyang straddled Taishi Huan and punched him square in the face. “I’ve wanted to beat you since the first day I saw you—who are you showing that gloomy face to all day?”
The punch had Taishi Huan seeing stars. His hands involuntarily let go of the pig. He crossed his arms in front of his head to block. Seizing a gap when Yu Muyang was winding up, Taishi Huan threw him off and returned a solid punch. The two of them wrestled in the vegetable patch, writhing like cabbage worms.
Xu Yin looked back at Li Cunxin and asked, “How should we deal with him?”
Li Cunxin didn’t speak.
Yan Baiyu glanced at her. “She’s not fully awake yet. It’s late. For now, tie him up. We’ll decide tomorrow.”
“Alright.”
Xu Yin went over. In a moment, he separated the two fighters and restrained Taishi Huan firmly. Zhao Penglai and the others carried the pig back to its sty and caught the geese, who were awkwardly ambling through the vegetable patch, and put them back in their coop.
Xu Yin dragged the captive back to the front yard and trussed Taishi Huan tightly with the rope meant for bowstrings. He threw him into the donkey shed, tying him to a fence post.
