Chapter 3: Section Two

The shout made Huang Shi spin around at once. The voice came from a panting young man. He looked barely twenty, with only a few wisps of beard, a grayish deerskin cap on his head, and the dress of a hunter’s son.

The young hunter ran over angrily, but when he got a clear look at Huang Shi’s one-meter-eighty-five frame, his expression immediately turned uneasy.

Huang Shi gave a friendly smile. “Is this your bird?”

Four bird bodies stood upright in the snow, each with its rump pointing skyward, both legs ramrod straight, and its long slender neck driven straight into the ground, head buried in the snow.

The young man grunted “Yeah,” his eyes shifting constantly as he studied Huang Shi. Huang Shi looked closely at the birds on the ground — their necks stretched into a hole in the earth — and noticed several other small round holes nearby, so faint he had missed them earlier.

After finishing his inspection, Huang Shi saw that the hunter’s son was still sizing him up, so he gave him a friendly smile and made an inviting gesture. The young man then skirted past Huang Shi, walked over to those little “ostriches,” crouched down, pulled them out one by one, and casually wrung their necks.

Old Zhang’s household had gone a long time without meat again. At the sight of these small birds, Huang Shi could not help drooling. “Little brother, could I trade you some firewood for two of those birds?”

The hunter thought it over. “Fine.”

With that, he tossed two birds over, then bent down to examine the two bundles of firewood at Huang Shi’s feet. He pressed down hard on one bundle and even tore off a few remaining leaves — apparently he had already made his choice.

“What are these birds called?” Huang Shi hefted the birds in his hands; the two together weighed about a jin.

“They’re called silly half-jin.” The hunter hoisted the firewood onto his shoulder and walked off without looking back.

After the young man had gone far, Huang Shi crouched down to inspect the pits that had caught no birds. Each held a few grains of rice. He tested the depth of a hole with the dead bird in his hand — “Just right.” He weighed the two birds separately; their weight was about the same. He muttered to himself, “Silly half-jin indeed.”

Starting the next day, whenever he went into the woods to chop firewood, Huang Shi brought Zhang Zidi along, and from then on Old Zhang’s supper table regularly featured roasted bird meat. His savings also grew faster, and half a month later he even bought Zhang Zidi a new pair of shoes. The boy now had the right to eat before his mother and sister-in-law.

After the second month, the catch gradually dwindled. Huang Shi guessed that food in the wild was becoming more plentiful, and a little millet could no longer tempt the prey.

Zhang Zidi grew very irritable because of this. He could never sit still and would run off every few days to check the places where they had dug pits. But the more often he checked his own pits, the smaller the catch became. Huang Shi spoke to him twice with no effect, and in the end could not be bothered to mind him anymore.

Today Zhang Zidi had already made several trips. This time he had been gone a long while without returning. Just as Huang Shi was about to set down his axe and go look, he heard the sound of quarreling drifting from that direction.

Hurrying over, Huang Shi saw Zhang Zidi arguing furiously with someone, their faces red. Looking more closely, he realized the other party was none other than that silly half-jin.

The moment he recognized Huang Shi’s face, silly half-jin grew even angrier, his face red and neck bulging. He jabbed a finger at the prey in Zhang Zidi’s hand and the pits on the ground. “This is my method — you secretly learned to dig pits by watching me.”

“Methods all come from nature — whoever uses them, they belong to.” Huang Shi spoke with a cheeky grin, though after recognizing silly half-jin he felt a bit embarrassed himself.

Once Huang Shi arrived, Zhang Zidi fell silent. He quietly circled around behind silly half-jin. Hearing Huang Shi spout such shameless words, Zhang Zidi suddenly drove a fist into the back of silly half-jin’s head.

Silly half-jin, who had been pondering how to retort, let out a miserable cry and collapsed to the ground clutching his head. Zhang Zidi snatched up a tree branch and began beating him wildly, cursing all the while: “Let you think up ideas, let you dig pits! Beat you to death, you pit king!”

The sudden turn of events stunned Huang Shi as well. In the blink of an eye, silly half-jin was being lashed by Zhang Zidi until he rolled all over the ground. Only then did Huang Shi snap to his senses. “Stop! Little brother, stop right now!”

When Huang Shi helped him up, silly half-jin’s face was flushed bright red. His hands waved about for a long time without a single word coming out, then he stamped his feet fiercely several times, shot Huang Shi a resentful glare, and still could not spit out half a word. Zhang Zidi watched him coldly, lightly tapping the branch against his left hand. In the end, silly half-jin slumped dejectedly to the ground, nursing his sore spots.

“How about this, little brother.” During the few minutes that silly half-jin spent licking his wounds, Huang Shi divided half a bundle of firewood and handed it to him. “From now on, little brother can come here every day and take some away. Consider it my compensation to you — what do you say?”

Silly half-jin shot Huang Shi’s face a few suspicious glances. Just as he reached out his hand, he heard Zhang Zidi give a vicious snort and hastily pulled his hand back. Huang Shi turned and glared at Zhang Zidi, then stuffed the firewood into silly half-jin’s arms.

Silly half-jin clutched the firewood aggrievedly. “Fine, it’s settled then. You can’t go back on your word.”

By now, silly half-jin clearly understood which of the two before him was harder to deal with, so as he spoke, his eyes remained warily fixed on Zhang Zidi.

Huang Shi patted silly half-jin on the shoulder and drew his gaze back. “Of course. We’re acquainted now — how should I address you, little brother?”

“My name is Zhao Manxiong!” Silly half-jin announced his name with pride, not forgetting to add: “Zhao as in Zhao Zilong of Changshan, Man as in slow, Xiong as in bear.”

Huang Shi committed the name to memory. “Ah, so it’s Little Brother Zhao. You have fine skills, little brother. My name is Huang Shi — just call me Stone. This Little Brother Zhang is called Zaidi.”

Zhao Manxiong repeated the name to himself twice and nodded. “Mm, Old Brother Stone, Little Brother Zhang — I’ll remember.”

Now that they were acquainted, Huang Shi drew Zhao Manxiong into conversation, sharing his dry rations with him as he ate, and along the way probed into why the pits kept multiplying but the catch never increased.

Zhao Manxiong did not answer the question right away. Instead, his eyes darted about as he thought nervously. Seeing this was going nowhere, Huang Shi added, “I don’t have much else, but I do have a pair of strong arms. How about this: Little Brother Zhao makes the plans, I do the digging, and we split the catch evenly?”

“The weather’s warmed up — of course fewer silly birds get trapped! When food is scarce, silly birds fall into pits more easily.” Once Huang Shi gave his assurance, Zhao Manxiong immediately put on an expression that said how-could-you-not-understand-that. His experience was clearly extensive. “When digging pits, you can’t think only of one kind of prey. You have to keep changing the pattern, changing the bait — that’s how you catch more and pit them well.”

Truly far-sighted and deep-thinking. After silently admiring Zhao Manxiong’s pit-digging skills, Huang Shi smiled again. “Many thanks for the guidance. Let’s do this: from now on, the firewood we chop together will also be split three ways — you take one share.”

“Good, it’s settled.” Zhao Manxiong agreed at once, while casting a shrewd glance at Zhang Zidi. The boy, seeing that Huang Shi had already spoken the words, could only keep silent in resignation.

In the days that followed, Huang Shi’s little team became three. Zhao Manxiong was not strong, but he was full of resourceful schemes — small pits to trap birds, large pits to catch hares. From time to time he even devised ways to catch fish. He also designed quite a few pit-digging tools himself, and every one of them proved genuinely useful.

Huang Shi divided the catch into three shares, and everyone was satisfied and happy. Zhao Manxiong suggested that after a while they start digging large pits — deeper ones too, of course — so they could trap big game. Huang Shi quite admired such pit-digging enthusiasm and ambition.

Zhang Zidi, however, was not entirely satisfied with Zhao Manxiong. He felt that although Zhao Manxiong contributed many ideas, the main physical labor was all borne by Huang Shi, so every time they divided the harvest equally, he always had a few sarcastic remarks to make.

In private, Zhang Zidi also always wanted to take less. He told Huang Shi more than once that there was absolutely no reason for him to split the harvest evenly with Huang Shi.

At the end of the second month, Regional Commander Chen Ce led the famed Sichuan White-Pole Troops, renowned across the realm, to reinforce the Shenyang front. When they passed through Liuhe, Huang Shi was among the soldiers and civilians watching. As he looked at the faces of the soldiers marching past in rows, some proud, some confident, his heart was filled entirely with sorrow and pity, knowing full well that these young soldiers he was seeing were stepping onto a road of no return.

Ten thousand bodies, still brimming with vitality now, would soon become corpses and dry bones. Yet Huang Shi could do nothing. He imagined these Sichuan soldiers bidding farewell to their parents, wives, and children back home, rushing to Liaodong from thousands of li away amid the worry and longing of their loved ones, and then watched them pass before him in neat formation, marching toward their fated future.

The resonant drumbeats grew fainter as they moved farther away. The roadside crowd gradually dispersed, until only Huang Shi remained, staring blankly at the swirling dust.

The transmigrator’s eyes pierced through the fog of history. He felt as if he stood among the clouds, watching the Later Jin’s six thousand vanguard troops of the Plain Yellow Banner sweep past Fengjibao, racing toward Shenyang. He seemed to hear Regional Commander You Shigong’s grief-stricken and furious roar when the city gates of Shenyang were opened by traitors. When the vision reached the instant a sharp blade slashed across a throat, Huang Shi’s body shuddered.

Once this shuddering began, it could no longer be stopped. His mind was still imprinted with the faces that had just walked past. Tonight, these men would still meet their wives and children in dreams. A month from now, these soldiers, still alive at this moment, would be tightly encircled by several times their number of Later Jin armored cavalry. Huang Shi knew they would press close together, standing shoulder to shoulder with long spears raised against the massed horsemen, until Nurhaci brought up cannons and blasted them into pulp.

At this thought, Huang Shi had already closed his eyes and sunk into the hallucination. Unknowingly, his arms rose, as if he too were one of those brave soldiers, locked in a life-and-death struggle against a nonexistent great foe. Suddenly, someone slashed him across the back…

The one patting his shoulder was Old Zhang’s second son, Zhang Youdi. He stared in astonishment at Huang Shi, who was drenched in cold sweat from fright, and took a bewildered step back. “Stone, what’s wrong with you?”

The heart in his chest nearly burst from his throat. Startled awake from the vision, Huang Shi almost suffocated. It took him a long while, mouth agape, to force out a sound. “I’m fine. Is there something you need, Brother Zhang?”

“They’ve long gone — what are you still looking at? Hurry back, the household is about to serve dinner.”