Eastward, the sky was growing pale. A faint crescent moon still hung in the vast expanse of the heavens. Across the desolate wilderness, wild grass stood half as tall as a man, shrouded in a dim, withered yellow, with a thin layer of frost clinging to it.
In the silent thicket, there came a sudden rustle, followed by the whisper of movement through the dry grass.
Soon, a tattered figure crawled out. He was small and thin, clad in ragged hemp garments that hung loosely on his frame. His dark, thin calves and arms were bare, and his tangled hair fell wildly about his face, obscuring his features. From his build and limbs, he was clearly young.
In his hand, he gripped a sharpened bamboo slip. Kneeling before a small mound of earth that rose from the clearing, he began to dig.
Looking around, one could see seven such mounds in this area. The soil was freshly turned, and atop each mound stood a bamboo slip.
The boy worked swiftly, scraping away the earth with his hands and feet. When he glimpsed a bit of clothing beneath the soil, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly, and his movements grew even faster. In no time, he had pulled from the ground a corpse wrapped in a mat – a man’s body.
The dead man’s face was smeared with dirt, its complexion pale and bluish, with no signs of decay yet. The boy’s heart leapt with joy. He reached out and patted the corpse’s chest and waist, and as expected, his fingers found a jade ring.
He turned it over in his palm, examining it in the faint light. The jade was of poor quality – not worth even a sheepskin – but perhaps it could fetch half a measure of millet. Tucking the ring into his bosom, he stripped the outer garment from the corpse, rewrapped the body in the mat, pushed it back into the pit, and covered it with earth. After knocking his head a few times in obeisance, he picked up his bamboo slip and began digging at the next mound.
Before long, a flash of red cloth came into view. The fabric shimmered with a lustrous sheen. The boy let out a surprised gap and vigorously rubbed his soil-caked hands against his own clothes before reaching out to touch the hem.
Smooth as silk – it was silk satin!
Overjoyed, the boy grew far more careful. Gently, he scraped away the earth with his bamboo slip, gradually revealing the entire body.
When he unrolled the mat, he found it was a woman’s corpse – much like the man’s, still undecayed, with a pale, bluish face and hair matted with dirt.
The boy’s full attention was fixed on the clothing the female corpse was wearing – a large, crimson silk wedding gown, embroidered with patterns in blue and gold thread. Among the floral designs hung small jade beads. Though tiny, they gave off a lustrous, glistening sheen – jade of the finest quality.
The boy carefully cleaned the dirt-stained hem, taking about a quarter of an hour to pick it clean with great care. Then, following the same method as before, he stripped the garments from the body.
This time, however, he felt something amiss. These corpses had been buried for a full day and should have long since grown stiff. When he had stripped the man’s body earlier, it had been no different from any other time. But this female corpse’s limbs were relatively more supple. Could it be that women’s bodies remained softer than men’s even after death?
As these thoughts crossed his mind, he had already gathered all the clothing into his arms. Through his disheveled hair, he stole a glance at the woman’s pale, bluish face. She was not ugly, but neither was she as beautiful as the courtesans he had seen. Her nose was too straight, her forehead too broad – perhaps because she was dead, her face lacked the softness one expected of a woman.
An autumn wind rustled through the grass, and the boy suddenly felt a chill. He quickly wrapped the wedding gown in the garments he had stripped from the male corpse, bundling them into a pack and slinging it over his back. Then he bent down to grasp the other end of the mat, intending to wrap the female corpse back up.
Suddenly, his ankle tightened.
The boy let out a startled cry and looked down in panic. To his horror, he saw that the female corpse’s pale, bluish hand had clamped firmly around his ankle – and her half-open eyes were fixed on him. Her pupils were starkly black and white, and in the flickering shadows of the grass, the sight was utterly terrifying.
His heart seized with fright. He reached down to pry her hand away, only to find that her grip was not particularly strong – he broke free with little effort.
Not daring to linger even for a single breath, he stumbled and scrambled back into the thicket.
The female corpse stared at the direction in which he had vanished, cursing inwardly: You little bastard – don’t you know the rule of taking payment and rendering service? Too damn clueless for your own good.
She lay sprawled on her back, gazing up at the vast, boundless dome of the sky, with a few withered stalks of grass partially obscuring her view. Then something struck her as wrong – she had clearly taken poison, and in her final moments, she had seen Min Chi.
At the time, she had cursed him through gritted teeth, but in truth, she was secretly regretting that she had taken the poison a bit too early. Had she waited another half a moment, she would have had the strength to drive a knife into Min Chi herself. Damn it – I really died with unfinished business.
Song Chuyi let out a sigh. She could feel the cold of the air against her body, and her confusion only grew. Could it be that Min Chi, angered by her parting insult to his old man, had left her body to rot in the wilderness?
Truly a beast in fine clothing.
After mentally cursing Min Chi’s ancestors for eighteen generations, she clutched the mat beneath her and began to seriously piece together what had happened.
She pondered for a long while. Finally, she tried to move again, attempting to sit up -but no matter how many times she tried, she simply could not muster the strength. Resigned, she lay back down, watching helplessly as the sky grew brighter by degrees. The thin frost on the withered grass glittered under the sunlight, gradually melting and coalescing into dewdrops.
Not until the sun’s rays fell upon her did Song Chuyi begin to feel the hollow, creeping cold within her – as though all warmth were plummeting into an abyss without end. Yet, drawing a trace of feeble warmth from the light, she managed to stir her limbs. They felt as heavy as if filled with lead, but at least she could sense that they were still there.
All around, there was only the whisper of wind brushing through the grass. Song Chuyi knew a thing or two about medicine, and she was well aware that she was likely burning with fever. Her situation was dire – if she simply lay here, it would be no different from waiting for death.
Summoning every ounce of strength she had, she still could not manage to stand. So instead, she grabbed hold of the grass and dragged herself forward, inch by inch. Unable to distinguish direction, she followed the path where the boy had fled the night before.
The boy had stripped her of her clothes – surely to trade them for food. Besides, under those circumstances, Song Chuyi doubted he would have dared to run deeper into the forest. The direction he took was most likely toward a village or a town; at the very least, it should not be far from a road.
Of course, there was also the possibility that the boy had fled in panic without thinking – in which case, she could only count herself unlucky.
She had no idea how long she had been crawling. Her entire body felt drained of strength, and before her eyes there was nothing but grass, endless and unbroken, enough to make one feel utterly despondent.
“Ephedra…” Song Chuyi, however, paid little heed to all that. Her gaze was fixed on a small shrub before her, and a smile suddenly broke across her face. “It seems Heaven does not intend to take me yet.”
She reached out, grabbed the ephedra plant, and stuffed it into her mouth. The distinctive pungent bitterness spread across her tongue.
The harvest season for ephedra was late autumn. Though this had not been processed in any way, its medicinal properties should still be decent. Song Chuyi would have liked to break the stalk elegantly before placing it in her mouth, but her body simply did not have a single ounce of strength to spare.
Song Chuyi was chewing vigorously on the ephedra stalk like a goat when her ears pricked up slightly – she caught the sound of hurried footsteps.
She paused, pressing her ear to the ground to listen for a moment. Judging by the noise, there were about six or seven people, and they were not far ahead of her.
Reaching out, she gently parted the grass in front of her a crack – and was surprised to find that there was a slope just ahead. She was lying in the grass on higher ground. A wave of relief washed over her.
Through the gap in the grass, she saw six burly men wielding thick cudgels, chasing after a scrawny figure. They were shouting in the accent of Zhao.
