Chapter 1: The Young Swordsworn

The sky faintly brightened, morning mist lightly veiling the land.

It had just passed Xiaoman; the proverb said, “Xiaoman, Xiaoman, wheat grains slowly fill,” as winter wheat north of the Yangtze began to fill with grain, growing plump but not yet fully ripe—hence the name “Xiaoman.”

On the Guanzhong Plain, millennia of wind, frost, blood, fire, and clashing war drums had long vanished into the yellow earth’s gullies; now only the morning breeze stirred the wheat waves, shaking dewdrops loose with a soft rustling sound.

Bai Lu Yuan, Li Family Village.

In the fields outside the village, two youths walked slowly.

The one behind was lean and wiry, dressed in coarse black cotton short robes with leg wrappings, a wooden-handled long spear slung over his shoulder.

The boy’s skin was dark, and when he smiled, his teeth gleamed white.

This was the mark of years spent laboring in the fields.

A farmer’s child, from childhood, followed adults into the fields, braving wind and rain, sweating three catties under the sun—dark skin was only natural.

The one walking ahead stood noticeably taller, back straight, skin pale, features delicate, hair loosely tied into a topknot.

He wore the same black cloth robes and leg wrappings, but carried a bow and a saber at his waist.

The boy was not handsome, merely with refined features; his eyes, however, drew immediate attention.

His eyes were long and slanted—classic phoenix eyes—but his pupils were like suspended pearls; to meet his gaze was to feel a piercing cold glare, faintly imposing.

This was called Dragon Eyes, or Dragon Pupils; the “Book of Observing Men” states: “Dragon pupils differ from all others, their light unmoving like dark pearls, still as autumn’s frozen pool—truly a wonder of the mortal world.”

Phoenix eyes paired with Dragon Pupils were exceedingly rare.

The boy’s name was Li Yan, and he was not of this world.

As they reached the edge of the field, he could not help but brush his fingers over the wheat ears, feeling their fullness; his eyes narrowed, the chilling glare faded, and a smile touched his lips.

The wheat before him, he had planted himself.

Since arriving in this world, Li Yan had initially struggled to adapt, but as the glittering lights of his past life faded from memory, he had grown accustomed to this life.

The earth could embrace all things.

Rise with the sun, rest with its setting; the anxieties and restlessness of his former life had long been buried beneath this yellow soil, then washed away by the joy of repeated harvests.

“Yan Ge.”

The lean, dark boy interrupted his thoughts, glancing around. “Xia Laosan might’ve already run off—let’s head back.”

Li Yan turned his head. “You coward—aren’t you going to avenge Erniu?”

“What kind of talk is that!”

The lean boy flared up like a stepped-on cat, face reddening, neck stiff. “Erniu’s my sister—if I don’t avenge her, I’ll pluck every hair from my balls and strangle myself!”

“But ‘chickens roost, wolves eat children; at noon, wolves feast’—we don’t go out at night, don’t turn back at noon—how can we find anything this early?”

“You’ve got proverbs lined up like a scholar preparing for the imperial exams!”

Li Yan cursed, then shook his head toward the distant mountains. “Xia Laosan isn’t just any wolf…”

Wolf attacks in Guanzhong have never ceased since ancient times.

Especially these past two years, something unknown has stirred in the Qinling Mountains, and vicious wolves frequently emerge, descending onto the plateaus to wreak havoc.

These wolves are larger and far more cruel and cunning than before.

They don’t just prey on livestock—they prefer to eat children.

“Chickens roost” refers to dusk; “at noon, wolves feast” refers to midday.

“Chickens roost, wolves eat children; at noon, wolves feast”—this means wolves most often strike during these two hours.

Some might wonder: nighttime is understandable, but how dare wolves attack during the bright noon?

Yet few realize that villagers labor from dawn till dusk, avoiding the fiercest heat of midday—and so do the wolves.

They’re especially cunning, slipping in while adults sleep, stealing children hidden among the crops—this is called “pulling garlic sprouts.”

They even hide in wheat fields, whimpering like crying infants; if children, curious, venture in, they’re snatched away.

Xia Laosan is a wolf that descended from the Qinling.

It is a full fist thicker than other wolves.

Over the past two years, every village on Bai Lu Yuan set traps to guard against wolves; Xia Laosan, new to the area, fell into one and was shot blind in one eye—since then, it has harbored a grudge and targeted Li Family Village.

Repeated hunts failed to catch it.

Thus, the name “Xia Laosan” began to spread.

Some say Xia Laosan is unlike other wolves—it was raised in Zhongnan Mountain, absorbed the mountain’s spiritual energy, and gained cultivation.

Others, terrified, even proposed building a shrine to worship it, hoping it would cease its attacks—until the Li clan patriarch stopped them.

In short, Xia Laosan had become a kind of terror in Li Family Village.

Each year, just before and after the summer harvest, wolf attacks peak.

Erniu was Blackie’s sister, just two years old; when her parents went to the fields, fearing she’d be unsafe alone, they carried her on their backs.

Midway through work, inconvenient to carry, they laid her down at the field’s edge.

The field’s edge bordered the official road, with many villagers passing by—they thought it safe enough.

Yet in the blink of an eye, Xia Laosan lunged out, snatched Erniu, and fled.

Villagers of Li Family Village chased for miles with sickles and hoes, but when they found her, only a ragged, bloodstained scrap remained.

Blackie’s mother wept until she nearly died; his father, a hot-tempered man, gathered his clan brothers and scoured the mountains for days and nights—yet found nothing.

Later, someone advised: after all, she was just a girl, and with the busy harvest season, the search was called off.

But Blackie could not forget. He asked Li Yan for help.

Li Yan also wished to eliminate this menace, and pondered carefully.

He suspected Xia Laosan was truly cunning—perhaps, like a military ambush, it avoided night and noon, striking instead just before dawn, when people slept deepest. So for days, he and Blackie rose two hours early to search—but found not a single strand of wolf hair.

This made Li Yan begin to doubt his own judgment.

As they spoke, the eastern horizon turned pale, casting the winding mountains in darkness; smoke rose from chimneys in Li Family Village.

“Let’s go.”

Li Yan gripped the hilt of his saber, shook his head. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Blackie, though disappointed, nodded.

Boys of Guanzhong have stubbornness in their bones; he had already decided: until Xia Laosan was dead, this matter was not done.

They did not take the main road, but followed the hillside toward the village.

Blackie had sneaked out; he needed to sneak back through the village’s rear wall before his parents noticed—otherwise, he’d never be allowed out again.

The closer they got to the village, the quieter and more downcast Blackie grew.

!.

Li Yan glanced at him. “What’s wrong?”

Blackie mumbled, “In a few days, Father’s taking me to work as a wheat cutter.”

Li Yan frowned. “Why leave your own fields unharvested?”

Blackie said, “Father says last year, factories opened in Jinmen and Jiangnan; many young men went to earn money, and now every plateau is short of labor.”

“This year, several big landowners have already announced generous wages—Father wants to take me on a trip to save up for a bride.”

Wheat cutter was an ancient profession.

Due to climatic differences across Guanzhong, wheat ripens gradually from south to north, west to east.

As the saying goes: “Three autumn harvests can’t match one wheat season’s labor; three wheat seasons can’t match one harvest’s frenzy.” When Mangzhong arrives and the sickles cut the wheat, it’s no less frantic than war.

Though drought, heat, and scarce rain are normal in Guanzhong, even the Dragon King might sneeze.

Wheat fears rain—if wet, it sprouts or molds.

Folk proverb: “Harvesting wheat is like fighting fire; snatch the grain from the Dragon’s mouth.”

Thus, every year at this time, countless men roam Guanzhong, cutting wheat for food and pay—these are the wheat cutters.

In the past, they earned little; if the landowner was kind, they’d be fed white flour buns—enough to make the cutters grateful.

In bad years, even coarse grain cakes were scarce, let alone wages.

Yet wheat cutters still came in droves.

The reason was simple: eating someone else’s food saved their own grain.

When life is hard, what’s a little hard labor?

Li Yan knew Blackie wasn’t afraid of exhaustion—he feared that after the summer harvest, Xia Laosan would vanish elsewhere or retreat into the Qinling, and the matter would be forgotten.

Thinking of this, he clapped Blackie on the shoulder, solemnly saying: “Don’t worry—I ate one of your chickens, that’s my deposit. I’ll settle Xia Laosan’s account.”

“Yan Ge, I believe you!”

Blackie nodded earnestly.

The eight hundred li of Guanzhong have long been steeped in the spirit of wandering knights.

Even now, Guanzhong swordsmen keep their word, worth a thousand gold.

Li Yan’s father was once a famed swordsmen of Guanzhong.

Many in the village believed Li Yan would follow his father’s path.

As if relieved, Blackie gazed again at the distant mountains, a flicker of longing in his eyes. “I heard last year, the lads who went out as apprentices all sent money home before the New Year…”

“Yan Ge, what do you think lies beyond those mountains?”

Li Yan scoffed. “What’s there to see? Just more mountains, more people.”

Before he finished speaking, his expression changed; he seized Blackie’s arm, sniffed the air, and whispered: “Blackie, do you smell anything?”

Blackie sniffed too. “No.”

Li Yan said nothing more, his face growing grim.

In the fields and at the field’s edge, strange tales circulated—“ghosts blind the eyes,” “spirit encounters,” “Tiger Auntie,” and the like.

The village had little entertainment; only during festivals or temple fairs would the clan invite a theater troupe from Chang’an, drawing villagers from miles around.

On ordinary days, the elders’ stories beneath the twilight trees became the children’s amusement, passed down from generation to generation.

Those tales included kings, marquises, generals, and ministers, but mostly they were absurd and bizarre.

Some firmly believed them, insisting such things had happened in certain villages, though none had seen them with their own eyes.

Others scoffed, dismissing them as jokes.

But Li Yan vaguely felt some of these things might be true.

The reason was simple: a year ago, his sense of smell began to change—becoming extraordinarily sharp, able to detect scents others could not.

For instance, at the village head’s Tudimiao, even without incense being burned, he could smell a faint odor of incense smoke…

For instance, at Widow Wang’s house, every time he passed by, he smelled incense—but with a stench of fishy decay…

Now, he smelled another odor.

Foul, cold, and tinged with blood.

And he had smelled this same stench before, when he found Erniu’s remains…

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(End of chapter)