Chapter 39: Returning Home (Part 1)

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By the time Dongmen Bao returned to Dongmen Neighborhood, night had already fallen. Fortunately, the neighborhood gatekeeper had not yet closed the ward gate. Dongmen Bao hurriedly squeezed through and, amid the gatekeeper's curses, groped his way homeward in the dark.

Dongmen Neighborhood lay inside the county seat's eastern gate, so its roads were straight, houses stood side by side, and dwellings lined the lanes in neat, orderly rows. The houses on the left, however, were mostly crude and shabby, home to hired laborers and tenant farmers known as "Left of the Ward" — people who owned no land and lived solely by tilling for others. The right side was somewhat better, even boasting a grand residence with pinkwashed walls and vermilion tiles, the home of a certain county clerk.

Dongmen Bao's family also lived on the Right of the Ward, but their house could hardly be called imposing — it was merely ordinary. Although its original framework was decent, with the foundation of a two-courtyard compound, one could see the walls had not been whitewashed in years, and the lacquer on the door had all peeled away, presenting an air of decay.

Fortunately, the area before the door and behind the house was swept perfectly clean. Fallen leaves were gathered in the corner of the wall, held down by stones. Firewood was hard to come by in the city, so sometimes cooking meals depended on these dead branches and withered leaves.

Dongmen Bao took out the guanyue from his bosom — that is, the key — and fumbled to open the door.

At that moment, the door suddenly opened from within. A thin, small woman around twenty years old, wearing a thornwood hairpin and coarse cloth skirt, stood inside and said in delighted surprise, "My husband has returned?"

This was the wife Dongmen Bao had married just last year. Her family lived north of the city; she was the daughter of a hired farming household. Her looks were ordinary, but her temperament was gentle. She wore not a single ornament, and her clothes were old, washed so pale they were nearly white, the cuffs almost frayed to tatters.

Dongmen Bao gave a lukewarm grunt of acknowledgment, then lowered his voice and asked, "Have you eaten? Has Mother retired?"

Although he appeared a fierce, ill-tempered man, he was known throughout the neighborhood as a devoted son. After his father fell drunk into a river and drowned, his mother had endured every hardship to raise Dongmen Bao single-handedly.

The new wife said timidly, "Mother ate her meal and then lay down, but she has not yet slept. She said today was the day your labor service ended and insisted on waiting up for you. I will heat the leftover millet with some bean-leaf stew, and we can eat together..."

"I ate my fill at the eating house with my comrades from the same squad. Eat it yourself."

Dongmen Bao stripped off his dirty clothes, covered in mud, and changed into a clean short hemp tunic. Then he handed a heavy pouch of coins to his new wife, raising his brows as he said, "Tomorrow, go to the market and buy some silk cloth to make new clothes for you and Mother!"

The new wife hefted the cloth pouch and found at least four or five hundred coins inside, which gave her a terrible fright. Although a year of living together had taught her that her husband was a man with a fierce face but a kind heart, his pugnacious, combative temper also filled her with constant worry. Now, seeing so much money, she assumed Dongmen Bao had stolen or robbed it. Her face turned ashen, and her lips trembled as she said:

"Where did this come from! Husband, surely you haven't done something unlawful..."

"Don't let your imagination run wild. This was given to me by the squad leader..."

Just then, an old woman's voice came from the neighboring room: "Is that Ah Bao back?"

"Mother, it is your son, returned from his service!"

Dongmen Bao hastily answered, then instructed his wife, "I will explain it all to you slowly later. I must go pay my respects to Mother now — there is also a matter I need to discuss with her."

With that, he headed toward his mother's room. Before he even entered, he seemed to become a different person: his movements grew gentle, and his voice softened. "Mother, Ah Bao has returned late and caused you worry..."

Then came the sound of him prostrating in greeting.

The new wife hurriedly ate two mouthfuls of cold rice, then heated a basin of water and carried it in. Though she had not seen her husband for over a month and had much to say to him, she would first attend to Mother's rest.

Unexpectedly, inside the room, as the new wife washed Mother's feet, she listened to Dongmen Bao recount the events of these past days and his plans for the future. The more excitedly Dongmen Bao spoke, the paler the new wife's face grew...

"Thank you, Mother. With your permission, your son will have no more misgivings!"

A while later, after finishing his account, Dongmen Bao withdrew, his expression relaxed. He had just told his mother about Hei Fu's invitation to enlist for the Thief-Seeker post at Huyang Station. His mother was very magnanimous and, seeing how set her son's heart was on going, had agreed to the matter.

But the new wife wore a somewhat resentful look.

"Husband, you said yourself that Huyang Station is more than half a day's journey from the county seat, and you could return at most three or four times a month. Once you go, only Mother and I will be left at home..."

As she tidied the bedding, she said in a low voice, "Furthermore, I have heard that Huyang Station is extremely dangerous, with murderers and bandits frequently appearing. Is it proper to go just because of one word from that conscript squad leader?"

"A woman's shallow view!"

Dongmen Bao flared up, the birthmark on his face turning bright red. He slapped the low table, silencing the new wife, but fearing he would disturb his mother next door, he had to lower his voice and scold:

"A true man gives his word and then carries it out — how could he betray trust and abandon righteousness? Besides, I am at least a Gongshi rank-holder. As a Thief-Seeker, I can receive one dou and five sheng of rations every day, which is over four dan a month — enough for the whole family to eat and drink. I will never let you or Mother go hungry. As for danger? Ha, compared to bandits, we are the dangerous ones in Anlu County. And you don't know this, but these five hundred coins were obtained entirely thanks to Hei Fu. If I follow him from now on, I may yet have a chance to earn merit. Isn't that better than being hired to haul hemp sacks at the docks?"

As Dongmen Bao spoke, he glared at his new wife, his eyes seeming about to spit fire. In the end, brooking no argument, he scooped up his thin, small wife in one motion and placed her on the bed. While undoing his own waist sash, he muttered, "My mind is made up. Tomorrow I will go enlist for the Thief-Seeker post. From now on, you will cease your clacking about this matter!"

Elsewhere, the next day — the afternoon of the first day of the eleventh month — Ji Ying, Hei Fu, and Xiao Tao said their farewells at a fork in the road, and Ji Ying returned to his home in Yunshui Township.

Like Dongmen Bao, he also lived within a ward settlement, except his was located beyond the township seat, among mountain forests and field marshes. Because the land there was mostly rice paddies, it was called "Rice Blossom Ward."

When Ji Ying arrived before the ward gate, two men in brown clothes were squatting by the ward wall sunning themselves. Spotting Ji Ying approaching from afar, the two called out.

"Isn't that Ji Ying! You're back?"

Ji Ying recognized them — these two were common conscripts of the ward, and also his former cronies and fair-weather friends. With no farm work in winter, they liked to loaf about idly, cracking lice and gossiping. Had it not been for his labor service, Ji Ying would still be one of their number.

The two came up to greet him, their faces full of mockery. One laughed and said, "Back from labor service, are you? Last month, some clerks from the county came to check your household registration. We all thought you'd committed a crime and been arrested."

The other added with feigned secrecy, "Those county clerks even asked whether you'd ever committed a crime. We made sure to conceal that business when you were ten and got the two of us to climb the wall and steal your own family's chicken..."

"Get lost, get lost, get lost!"

Ji Ying was furious. For that one scrawny chicken, his old father had nearly broken his leg. The incident had become known throughout the entire ward. Fortunately, his father had not, in a moment of folly, report the matter to the authorities — otherwise, Ji Ying and the other two, though minors at the time, would still have faced a lawsuit.

But Ji Ying had still been chased by his old father all the way into their own freshly fertilized rice paddy. To dodge the club, he had dived headfirst into it...

From then on, Ji Ying, his head covered in mud and his face smeared with dung, had become the butt of the ward folk's jokes and mockery — the comic relief of Rice Blossom Ward.

But on this return, Ji Ying believed he was no longer the same.

He cleared his throat and said to the two, "What you don't know is that the county clerks came to check my household registration not to punish me, but to reward me!"

With that, he suddenly threw open his tightly wrapped winter coat — and there, hanging inside, were string after string of copper coins, covering his entire chest and belly so densely that there were more than a dozen strings in all! No wonder he had been jingling like a wind chime the whole way here.

The sight was shocking at first glance. The two ward men were greatly startled. One sucked in a cold breath and said, "That must be one or two thousand coins! Ji Ying, be honest — which wealthy family's door did you pry open, or did you steal pigs and sheep to sell?"

The other's imagination was even richer: "Could it be he sold himself as a bondservant? I hear that at the people market in the county seat, an adult male bondservant is worth over four thousand coins. Ji Ying is probably too skinny, so he only fetched this much..."

"Your insight is as shallow as a sparrow's! This is clearly reward money I earned!"

Ji Ying was so angry he yelped. Seeing that the young cronies of the ward were gradually gathering around after hearing the news, he sat down by the wall corner, assumed the posture he used when cracking lice and holding forth, and recounted everything — how he had captured bandits and received a reward these past days, how he had won first place in the ten-day military drill, and all the rest.

He was good for little else, but his eloquence was decent. During his telling, at every thrilling juncture, the young men of the ward burst out in repeated exclamations of astonishment. Ji Ying would deliberately pause and sweep his gaze over the crowd with smug satisfaction.

After he finished his halting, start-and-stop account, the crowd said in disbelief, "So it was you who caught the bandits and got rewarded together with that stalwart fellow! We never imagined — truly never imagined."

"Naturally!" Ji Ying lifted his chin. "Brother Hei Fu fought three men alone, while I held off another bandit for him. Afterward, I received two liang of gold as a reward, and when the ten-day drill came, I got another three hundred coins. That is where all this money came from."

Someone else asked curiously, "This Hei Fu — just who is he? I've heard people say he's nine chi and five cun tall, with a tiger's back and a bear's waist, boundless in strength, able to tear a door off with one arm and rip a man apart with his bare hands..."

"Not only that — Brother Hei Fu's abilities are far greater than that!"

Ji Ying began to boast about Hei Fu in an endless torrent, finally saying, "My Brother Hei Fu is now not only famous throughout the entire county, but has also gained the esteem of the official temple. He has been summoned by the County Magistrate and County Commandant to be appointed a Station Chief, and will take up his post next month!"

"He knows my abilities, so he invited me to enlist as a station conscript. Though I refused him repeatedly, he pleaded bitterly, and in the end I had no choice but to agree to assist him. Together we shall govern the ten-li territory of Huyang Station, and in the future we will achieve even greater merit!"

Having finished, Ji Ying swept a smug look over these cronies, who were now sighing with a mix of envy and admiration, as if he already had official backing and stood a cut above them.

Who could have known that extreme joy would beget sorrow — a cold voice sounded from beside him.

"Ji Ying, you just said you were going to be a pavilion guard — where?"

Turning his head, Ji Ying was stunned to find his own father standing off to the side, carrying farm tools, his face dark with anger…

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(End of chapter)