Everyone returned to their rooms. The night slowly grew quiet again. In the darkness, Li Cunxin kept her eyes open. The winter night’s chill wrapped around her body like a thin membrane, and even under the quilt, it didn’t dissipate for a long time.
She couldn’t sleep.
Yan Baiyu said she wasn’t fully awake, but the night breeze had actually snapped her fully alert the moment it hit her. She was clearly aware of what was happening in front of her and heard Xu Yin asking her a question, but words failed her.
She didn’t know what to do with Taishi Huan.
Punish him and then let him stay here? Would he learn his lesson?
This man was a troublemaker, an unpleasant person. He stirred up conflict, was highly aggressive, and created incidents that destroyed their peaceful days. They shouldn’t let someone like him torment people who followed the rules and were gentle and peaceful.
Drive him away?
Even someone as tough as Xu Yin, with an appropriately chosen talent, lived a ragged life alone. Taishi Huan, shorn of Feng Huai and Miao Bing, was like a man with his arms chopped off. Even if he survived the winter, how long could he last alone in the wilderness?
If Taishi Huan really died, one could say he brought it upon himself.
But she couldn’t use ‘he brought it upon himself’ to ease her own conscience.
She felt she would be karmically entangled if his death occurred. She had a premonition that this life would become a pebble embedded in a cushion—not fatal, but perpetually perceptible. It would trouble her for good.
The night was cold and heavy, pressing down on Li Cunxin, dragging her spirits down to their lowest point.
Her mind kept spinning, thoughts continuing on. She thought she was still awake, but in reality, she had already fallen asleep. Her thinking became illogical, delusions and dreams overlapping, seeming both real and unreal.
The scene shouldn’t have been in the forest, yet it was. The sunlight was pale and the air utterly dry.
In the center of a green carpet of grass, there was no turf, exposing the soil beneath. The turf hadn’t been dug up, nor did it naturally fail to grow there. As a result, the surface was not flat but extremely chaotic.
On the long blades of the wild weeds growing around that patch of earth, grass sap and red liquid mixed with dirt, becoming the darkest, foulest color as it dripped down. Red droplets, white droplets, one by one, weighed down the wild weeds until they bowed low.
A pale, jagged piece of broken bone seemed to sprout from the muck, pointing upward as if trying to pierce the false canopy of the sky.
Gray-white eyeballs were filmed with a layer of turbid mucus, freely staring into the distance at an odd angle.
The wind rustled the wild weeds. Occasionally, an insect or bird cried. Li Cunxin stood before the grassland, a profound stillness around her. Her feet were weighted with a thousand jin and couldn’t be moved. Her eyes stared straight ahead. She wanted to look away, but her head wouldn’t obey. She could only stare rigidly at the center of that grassland, at that muddy pit—a mess of smashed grass corpses, human bone and flesh, and fragments of dirt.
The crow’s broken-sounding voice cawed raspily. It descended and, head lowered, tore something from the mud pit.
That thing inside wasn’t Taishi Huan, but in Li Cunxin’s consciousness, she identified it as him.
Li Cunxin couldn’t make a sound. The organs and flesh in her chest had solidified into one piece. She couldn’t breathe. The back of her head felt like needles were stabbing into it, a falling, heavy pain and sharp stabbing pain coming together, jarringly strong.
Li Cunxin woke with a sudden start. Darkness filled her vision. She broke out in a cold sweat, gasping for air as if starved of oxygen. Her chest heaved, but that foul feeling wouldn’t dissipate.
The door curtain wasn’t properly closed; a sliver of light was in the room. Li Cunxin’s eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. She saw the newly installed horizontal bar for hanging meat inside the room, the vague shadows of dangling sausages.
Li Cunxin’s pupils contracted. Her stomach churned, a feeling as if a stick were trying to push its way out of her throat.
She quickly moved to the edge of the bed, leaned over, and vomited.
“Cunxin?”
Yan Baiyu sat up and moved closer to that blurry shadow. Her hand groped around until it found Li Cunxin’s back. Her voice tightened. “What’s wrong with you?”
Yan Baiyu followed Li Cunxin’s position forward and touched her jacket. She took out the fire striker. Smoothly finding her own shoes by the bed, she slipped them on, felt her way to the table beside the candle, and lit the candle. The flame illuminated the entire room.
Still unsettled by the ruckus with Taishi Huan, the others hadn’t slept soundly either. Yunxiu and Xia Qing quickly woke up, threw on their clothes, and came to the main room.
Sweat soaked the hair at Li Cunxin’s temples. Her face was pale. She braced her hands on the bedside, her body bowed over the edge of the bed. Eventually, there was nothing left to throw up. She started coughing, her cheeks turning bright red.
Yunxiu asked, “What’s going on? Did you eat something bad tonight?”
Feeling her residual sleepiness scared right out of her, Xia Qing said, “But we didn’t have anything weird, did we?”
Yan Baiyu felt Li Cunxin’s forehead. It wasn’t hot, rather cool. She sat on the bed, patting and stroking Li Cunxin’s back. “She might have caught a chill during the night.”
Yunxiu said, “I’ll go make her some brown sugar and ginger tea.”
“No, no need…” Li Cunxin paused to catch her breath, her throat tight. “Just get me a cup of plain water.”
“But you’re…” Yunxiu didn’t say more. She moved the door curtain aside and went to the kitchen to pour water. Xia Qing went outside with a broom and dustpan to scoop a bit of dirt.
This commotion woke Xu Yin in the other room again. His roommate, Yu Muyang, was also forced awake. The two walked over. Seeing the light on in the main room, Yu Muyang strode toward the door, his voice full of anger. “Is that bastard, Taishi, making trouble again?!”
Xu Yin clamped a hand on Yu Muyang’s shoulder. Already one leg forward, Yu Muyang staggered back, pulled hard by the force. “Brother Xu, what’s the deal?”
Xu Yin called from outside, “Cunxin, Baiyu, is everything okay?” His voice was full and powerful, easily heard inside the room.
Liu Cuo Jin and Jiang Beibei, also light sleepers, came out in the dark to check.
Yunxiu emerged from the kitchen with a cup of water. “The Village Chief might have caught a chill from the night wind and threw up.”
“Ah? Is it serious?” Yu Muyang craned his neck toward the door. Liu Cuo Jin took the water from Yunxiu’s hands, and she and Jiang Beibei, wrapped in clothes, went into the main room to see her.
Xu Yin frowned. “Does she have a fever?”
Yunxiu said, “No. I’ll make her some ginger tea later. Do you two want some too?”
Yu Muyang said, “Sure, sure.”
“You two go back to your room for now. Don’t catch a chill yourselves, one after another. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Leaving that warm bed for the winter night outside, that first warm breath of air after waking was quickly gone. A gust of cold wind slashed through, and the body shuddered.
Confirming nothing major was wrong, the two returned to their room.
Inside the main room, Liu Cuo Jin handed the water to Li Cunxin. Li Cunxin took it and swished it around her mouth. Holding the water in bulging cheeks, she wanted to get up and go outside to spit it out.
Xia Qing returned with the dustpan full of dirt. She poured the dirt over the vomit by the bedside. “Don’t go out. Just spit it on top. Right on top. I’ll sweep it all up together.”
Li Cunxin spat the water onto the dirt pile. Xia Qing swept it with the broom, the dirt engulfing the filth and rolling into the dustpan. With the bedside cleaned, Xia Qing took the dustpan outside to dump the garbage. Yan Baiyu pulled the quilt up a bit and wrapped it around Li Cunxin.
Liu Cuo Jin worriedly asked, “Are you sure you don’t have a fever?”
Jiang Beibei asked gently, “Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere else?”
Li Cunxin looked up and glanced at the sausages hanging from the pole, pursing her lips. Following Yan Baiyu’s lead, she said, “I’m fine. Just a slight chill, and my stomach’s upset.”
Yunxiu still made the brown sugar and ginger tea. Li Cunxin couldn’t stomach it, but under everyone’s worried gazes, she forced herself to drink a little.
After everyone had drunk the ginger tea to ward off the cold, they tidied up and returned to their rooms. Through the repeated disturbances, the outside was already turning gray. The deep, dark blue world was shrouded in a thin layer of mist, still before the dawn.
Li Cunxin lay in bed. She was tired but couldn’t sleep. The feeling from the dream still lingered. Her breathing trembled ever so slightly.
She was not someone decisive and ruthless, calm in the face of life and death. On the contrary, she was quite cowardly.
Everyone else was easygoing, and when interactions were natural and without conflict, Li Cunxin hadn’t deeply considered the responsibility that came with the position of Village Chief. She thought she only needed to make decisions about external matters like agriculture and development. She hadn’t yet realized that she would also need to handle interpersonal relationships.
As the beacon fire kept burning, more people gathered, all sorts of people. In the future, there would be more than just one Taishi Huan. There would be disputes arising from clashing worldviews and conflicting principles, or even more violent conflicts sparked by bad tempers and combative natures. Friction between people, fights between people—there would be no shortage.
But she hated disputes. She held a silly wish in her heart that she found laughable herself: if only everyone were reasonable and followed the rules.
In the future, villagers might be red-faced from arguing, fighting until their heads bled, and she would have to get involved in those disputes. There might even be extremely heinous events, and she would have to decide someone’s life or death.
No matter what decision she made, the resulting consequences would become her responsibility, weighing on her like a burden.
Just imagining it made the flesh in her heart feel like it was being stabbed, unable to find peace. The desire to retreat grew within her. She called out, “Baiyu…”
I don’t want to be Village Chief anymore.
The words stuck in her throat. She was very afraid Yan Baiyu would think she was a coward unwilling to shoulder responsibility.
The quilt shifted. Yan Baiyu gently moved to her side. This time she faced her, lying on her side. As she lifted the quilt to come in, her soft hair fell onto Li Cunxin’s ear. “Still uncomfortable?”
Li Cunxin scratched her ear. “No.”
“Thinking about Taishi Huan’s situation?”
“…Mn.”
Yan Baiyu pressed the quilt around Li Cunxin firmly and lay down. She didn’t ask Li Cunxin what she planned to do with Taishi Huan. Instead, she said softly, “People like Taishi Huan fear power, not virtue. If you’re good to him, he won’t know gratitude. He won’t know how heavy that kindness is. He’ll just see you as weak and easy to bully, so he’ll press his advantage, inch forward to take a mile. You have to make him afraid of you, make him fear you. Only then will he respect you, honor you.”
“How?”
Yan Baiyu’s eyes fixed on Li Cunxin’s forehead. She couldn’t help it and raised her hand to gently wipe the cold sweat from Li Cunxin’s brow, brushing the clinging hair aside.
Yan Baiyu’s hand was very warm. Uncomfortable, Li Cunxin ducked down to avoid it.
Yan Baiyu lowered her eyes. “You need to project your strength, firmly establish your authority. This is not only what you need to do as Village Chief now but also what you’ll need to do in the future. Make them love you, and make them fear you.”
“I can’t.” Li Cunxin’s voice was muffled and low. She considered herself self-aware. She wasn’t a powerful person. Authority was a thing far removed from her.
“If you trust me, let Uncle Xu and me handle it.” Yan Baiyu said. “Mix hard and soft tactics, extend both kindness and power. If he’s still an untamed wolf that won’t bow its head, then we’ll chase him away—no sooner than necessary.”
After a long pause, Li Cunxin gave a sound of agreement. “Alright.”
Another moment passed. Li Cunxin pulled her head out from the quilt. “Baiyu, can I hold you for a while?”
She asked so directly, so candidly. Yan Baiyu was silent. Any fleeting romantic thought died before it could form. “Mn.”
Li Cunxin very naturally moved closer. Yan Baiyu had anticipated it, but her body still stiffened for an instant.
Li Cunxin hugged her waist, her head lowered, resting near Yan Baiyu’s shoulder.
Yan Baiyu placed her hand on Li Cunxin’s back and shoulder, patting her in a slow rhythm. “Sleep.”
