After years of sleeping in the open, experiencing a proper bed for the first time—even if it was merely a layer of dry thatch atop cold, hard wooden boards—Song Zhiqi couldn't sleep.
After tossing and turning all night, brewing a little sleepiness amidst her fatigue, the sky was barely bright when Song Huiya grabbed her with one hand and hauled her to the door for lessons.
Song Zhiqi could barely open her eyes. Listening to the roosters crowing in the backyard, she secretly contemplated plucking out their feathers.
Unfortunately, the old man also rose early. Spotting the vicious murderous intent in her eyes, he monitored her every step, denying her any opportunity.
As the sun rose, Song Zhiqi walked to the open main road to bask in the warmth, holding a wooden stick to write and draw on the ground, learning characters.
Before long, a woman emerged from the opposite house, an enormous bamboo basket strapped to her back, her hands wrapped tightly in cloth yet still unable to stop shivering as she walked. The weight behind her made each step unsteady. She hadn't even left the street when, predictably, her feet slipped and she fell.
Song Zhiqi looked back, dropped her stick, and ran over to help lift the woman up.
She thought happily: Master has eyes in the back of her head—she must have seen this. Won't she praise me for doing good deeds every day?
The woman coughed so violently that when she opened her mouth to say thank you, she choked on a breath of wind and nearly passed out.
Song Zhiqi felt her own lungs ache hearing it.
After she left Cangshi City, she too had developed a high fever and cough not long after. Having learned many useful things from Song Huiya, seeing the opportunity, she couldn't help showing off, patting her chest and saying confidently, "Don't you have money to see a doctor? You can go up the mountain to pick herbs. Many herbs can cure coughs, and the mountains are full of them. I'll help you pick them, as long as you..."
She'd casually wanted to say: Give me something to eat. But the words pivoted urgently and changed to: "Reward me with some money."
After speaking, she reconsidered and felt something was still wrong.
Could it be I'm naturally suited to be a beggar?
The woman shook her head, feeling there was nothing to discuss with a child. She said vaguely, "There's no mountain around here that will let you collect herbs, little girl. Don't wander around—go back quickly."
Song Huiya didn't watch for a moment and discovered her apprentice missing. Walking out of the front yard, she spotted her in the distance raising her head and talking to someone on the road.
Is this girl a dog? Sees someone and runs after their heels.
Song Huiya leaned against the door and shouted, "Song Zhiqi!"
"Here! Master!"
The little girl rushed back.
Song Huiya tossed her a cloth bag and ordered, "Go to the city and buy some rice. Your grandpa's family is so poor they can't open the pot."
Song Zhiqi examined the money inside, compared the weight, felt she could carry it back, hung the bag around her waist, and said obediently, "Okay!"
She stretched her neck and leaned in, suppressing a smirk while deliberately being disgusting: "Grandpa, when I buy the rice at noon, let's stew chicken together! I'll save the chicken head just for you!"
After speaking, her short legs picked up speed. Like a bird escaping its cage, she vanished in an instant.
The old man set up his whetstone and began his tedious work, day after day, treating the girl's provocation as if deaf. He only casually reminded, "If you let her go, something will happen."
Song Huiya said, "Then you really underestimate her. My apprentice has no other skills, but her life-saving kung fu is the most powerful. Her survival instincts are very sharp."
The old man seemed to mention it only casually. Seeing she didn't believe him, he said no more.
Broken Goose City was surrounded by mountains, their peaks still green, retaining spring and summer's scenery.
Song Zhiqi circled the streets twice without thinking, found the rice shop through her own ability, straightened her clothes, and was about to enter when the clerk inside had already darkened his face and scolded first: "Where did you come from, daring to enter anywhere? If you dare step your dirty shoes into this store, I'll break your leg today!"
Song Zhiqi was scolded from head to toe, but she wasn't angry. She untied the cloth bag from her waist, tossed it over, and said proudly, "Fill it!"
The clerk heard the sound of money falling. His face softened slightly, and he asked, "Who are you buying rice for?"
Hearing his question, Song Zhiqi played dumb, saying with calculated innocence, "I don't know. A little lady over there gave me a bag and asked me to run an errand."
The clerk opened the bag and checked. Somehow he grew angry again, as if regretting giving her even one good expression just now, wanting to reclaim it twice over. He said in a rough voice, "Fill it? Why, you want one or two silver pieces! Do you have that money?"
Song Zhiqi dug at her ear, thinking she heard the old yellow dog at the village head barking from hundreds of li away.
"How much did you say?!"
The clerk pointed at her nose and scolded, saliva spattering: "Dog thing, dare to come cheat me for food! Don't want to live?"
The fire in Song Zhiqi's heart also surged upward. She stretched out her hand and said loudly, "Give it back! I won't buy it!"
A woman hurriedly stepped forward from behind, covered Song Zhiqi's mouth, and said submissively, "Buy it. She's here to help me buy it. I really don't have the strength to lift things. You can buy as much as you want. Please."
Song Zhiqi raised her head to look at her. Seeing it was someone she'd just met that morning, she didn't struggle.
Seeing her sensibility, the woman released her hand. Song Zhiqi hid behind her.
The clerk was about to erupt, already grasping a wooden stick with one hand, but the woman groveled and begged for mercy repeatedly. Unable to find a reason, he had to swallow his anger back. Irritably, he scooped half a scoop into the rice bag and threw it back on the table.
The woman pleaded bitterly, "Give me more. There are several mouths at home waiting to eat."
The clerk's face turned ugly. Hearing her cough, he felt unlucky. With an expression of disgust impossible to conceal, he threw the untied rice bag directly over.
The rice scattered from the bag and spilled all over the floor.
The woman hurriedly knelt down, swept her hands across the ground, and poured the yellow earth into the bag together with the rice.
Song Zhiqi used to beg for food and had to kneel. Now when going out to buy things with money, she still had to kneel.
In the former case, when others kicked, scolded, and insulted her, she cursed them in her heart and felt the matter was over.
Now there was a kind of resentment of being stripped of bones and stepped on under someone's feet. She endured it and said nothing unpleasant.
The woman quickly gathered up the rice, lifted the bag, grabbed Song Zhiqi's arm, and took her away.
Upon reaching a quiet place, the woman stuffed the rice bag into her arms and explained, "This year's harvest is poor. Rice is indeed expensive—a bushel costs five coins. Where can ordinary people afford it? Only mountain people can buy it at a cheap price. He didn't see a waist token, thinking you were trying to deceive him, so he was fierce with you. Looking at you again, he was deliberately making things difficult. Go back and tell the adults at home not to come alone next time."
Song Zhiqi's fists clenched tight, her heart haunted. She said in a muffled voice, "So I said I wouldn't buy it."
The woman said good-naturedly, "The money is in their hands. If you don't buy it, you can't get it back. Which of the clerks and shopkeepers there has no relationship with the mountain people? You're young and don't understand the rules. Don't make them unhappy."
The wrinkles on the woman's face cut deep into her flesh with a kind of weathered sorrow. Her eyes were full of love, like a deep, slightly turbid pool of water. Looking at her, Song Zhiqi always felt something unreal, as if the woman drifted away from time to time.
Song Zhiqi looked at her timidly. The woman blinked, waking from her wandering state again. "Are you outsiders? You don't understand anything. What are you doing in Broken Goose City?"
Song Zhiqi tilted her head and asked, "Who are the mountain people?"
The woman smiled bitterly. "Mountain people are mountain people. Broken Goose City is named after Broken Goose Gate. What do you think mountain people are?"
"Oh." Song Zhiqi said disdainfully, "What I know is going up the mountain. What I don't know, I'd think they'd become immortals. Bah!"
Song Huiya listened to the sound of knife-sharpening in her ears for a moment, growing somewhat annoyed. She felt the wound that hadn't fully healed beginning to itch again. Even the wind across the four fields felt oppressive.
She closed her eyes, leaned on the recliner, and asked, "Senior, you should have a close relationship with me, right?"
The old man's tone wasn't fast, but the speed of answering seemed rushed to clear up any connection with her: "I've only met you three times. Can't talk about the word 'relationship.'"
"Three times?" Song Huiya inquired. "Including this time?"
"No." The old man cherished words like gold. After speaking, feeling the other party wouldn't stop, he reluctantly added, "The first time was when I happened to pass by Buliu Mountain. Having some friendship with your master, I went up to say hello by the way. The result was seeing you."
That expression was like encountering a harbinger of disaster.
Song Huiya said cheekily, "Why didn't you visit often after that?"
The old man displayed his dislike for her very bluntly, tugging at the corner of his mouth in a sneer: "I don't think my life is long enough."
Song Huiya laughed twice as if nothing had happened and asked, "What about the second time?"
The old man turned his head, staring at her with a pair of yellowed eyes without waves, as if wanting to look at the distant past through her. But in the end he just shook his head calmly and said, "The second time, it was you who came to kneel and beg me to help you save your master."
Hearing the first half of the sentence, Song Huiya almost laughed out loud. At the second half, she fell silent in contemplation. After a moment she asked, "You didn't agree, did you?"
The old man hummed: "I only promised your master to save your life, never promised to help with revenge. He is the same as your master, choosing his own path. The disciples of Buliu Mountain have always been proud in life and death, bearing no grudges against others."
The old man said more: "It was useless for you to ask in the past. You are not the same as before."
Song Huiya opened her eyes, her thoughts ethereal and unpredictable, as if discussing someone else. She sharply reprimanded, "Really? So in the past, Song Huiya was a waste who would only be angry with her own people, and when encountering something, would cry and beg others to take action?"
The old man's sharpening hand stopped. He turned his head to look at her once more.
The blurred vision and familiar face made him feel as if he'd returned to that rainy night more than ten years ago.
The fourteen-year-old youth knelt before the potholed, muddy house, hoarse, tears flowing, begging him to enter the mountain over and over again.
It wasn't until sunrise and dawn that she raised her head and looked at the mountain in a daze, as if having died once. Leaving with a new body, she departed in despair.
But it was unprecedented. For the first time, he felt the child was too pitiful and couldn't help defending her: "That waste accomplished a great thing."
Song Huiya asked curiously, "What thing?"
The old man said word by word: "Staying alive."
Song Huiya had difficulty reading anything from these two light words. She just felt that a person with a light life, no matter where they were, was like rootless duckweed. Probably not easy to live.
She asked, "What about the third time?"
The old man's attitude cooled: "If you can't remember, the third time, just pretend it doesn't exist."
Song Huiya nodded.
Several jackdaws stood on empty dead branches, wailing bitterly.
Song Huiya spoke again: "How did my master die?"
The old man simply stopped. His eyes turned cold, his tone stiff. "If you continue asking, you will regret it."
Song Huiya really shut up.
The old man looked at her, angry for no reason, and said heavily, "You are not as good as her!"
Song Huiya didn't grasp his meaning: "Who? My master?"
"Song Huiya!" The old man said. "She feared nothing, and you—you fear everything!"
Song Huiya said aggrievedly, "What do I fear?"
The old man raised his hand, patted his shoulder, then patted the knife at his feet.
Song Huiya didn't dare agree.
She didn't know anything. How could she take responsibility, how could she draw the sword? Just rely on the two grievances in other people's mouths?
She had no intention of arguing. Feeling the atmosphere too tense, she changed the topic with a dry laugh: "What do you call yourself, senior?"
The old man picked up the knife, threw it into the house with one hand, kicked the door shut with his foot, and only left a cold sentence: "You don't have to know!"
Song Huiya ate a noseful of ash, somewhat sneering. She muttered in a low voice, "So moody? I just said something bad about myself. This old man clearly scolded me plenty."
She stood up and thought of her cheap apprentice.
Just buying some rice—how can she be gone so long?
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