Chapter 120: Extra 4
In the seventeenth year of the Great Zhou, the Central Plains hadn’t seen rain for an entire year.
First came the famine, and the famine left entire swathes of people starving to death. Then, alongside the scattered corpses of the hungry, plague began to spread.
The following year, finally, the rain came.
And then war began.
In the second year of the war, the town’s militia captain’s family had a son. Sadly, the boy died after only a few months in the battles between Zhao and Chu. His widow remarried a wealthy farmer in the town and sent the baby back to be raised by his elderly grandparents.
The grandparents were uneducated and gave him a simple name: “Yan Yi.”
Yan Yi’s grandparents lived by the river outside the village, on what had once been abandoned farmland. It wasn’t until the year before Yan Yi was born that a torrential rain transformed the low-lying land into a small lake and marsh.
It became a good place for raising water ducks and geese.
His grandparents made a living from it. Each spring, they planted lotus roots and raised a dozen ducks and two geese, then in autumn they sold the plump lotus roots and duck eggs at the market in exchange for wheat and rice.
His grandfather, already very old, hoped Yan Yi would inherit their business of raising ducks and planting lotus roots. He planned that when Yan Yi reached his early twenties, he would use the twenty copper coins the family had saved to introduce him to a dark-skinned but diligent girl from the village as a wife.
Zhao was a small country, with only two cities within its borders. But though small and poor, it was mostly peaceful, with only occasional friction with neighboring states. Compared to nations perpetually at war, Zhao fared relatively quietly.
There were no schools in the village, not even in the nearest town.
From the age of six, Yan Yi helped with the household chores: planting lotus roots in the lake, herding the ducks, and other daily tasks.
By the time he was eighteen, winter had grown harsh. First, Yan Yi’s grandfather fell gravely ill, and then his grandmother, with an incurable sickness. The couple never imagined that the twenty copper coins they had saved would be used by Yan Yi to buy two coffins and bury them.
Without money, Yan Yi couldn’t marry. The girl his grandfather had wanted for him—the dark-skinned but hardworking one—had married the village butcher instead.
Yan Yi didn’t mind. His sharp eyes scanned what little remained of the family’s property.
Over the years, battles had become more frequent. In just a few more years, Zhao would likely be swallowed by the neighboring Qi kingdom.
This presented an opportunity. Yan Yi carefully chose the timing: by spring of the next year, he would go to the city to enlist and fight in the war.
But first, Yan Yi had to deal with the nearly twenty ducks his family had raised.
Every morning by the lakeside outside the village, a lined-up group of ducks waddled past: mottled ducks, speckled ones, and a few with plumage resembling reed flowers.
At the end of the line was a rare white duck. Small and round, it waddled slowly and always seemed a little dim compared to the others. Whenever Yan Yi came to herd it back to its pen, the foolish duck would tilt its head and stare at him with round black eyes, waiting for him to pick it up by the wings and return it.
If anyone tried to steal a duck for soup, it was obvious this white one would be the easiest to catch.
Yan Yi cared the most for this duck because it had hatched from an egg he had found last spring by the grassy lake mound.
Based on its coloring and birth order, the duck even had a name: Bai Shijiu—White Nineteen.
Yan Yi had once thought it might be a swan egg, so he kept it, planning to hatch it and sell it for a good price. It did hatch—but let alone being a swan, it was even a size smaller than an ordinary large duck. It was probably just a hen that would lay eggs, so he kept it to fatten it up and wait for eggs.
Now a year had passed. Bai Shijiu still hadn’t laid a single egg, though it had grown noticeably plumper.
Winters in Zhao were bitterly cold. During the cold months, Yan Yi would hold it in his arms while he slept. Ducks grew down by autumn, and Yan Yi’s house was drafty on all sides. Even stuffed with straw, it was still freezing.
Bai Shijiu’s belly was warm. It might have been a little slow-witted, but it was clean and didn’t carry the musky smell of other waterfowl. Once Yan Yi held it, it stayed perfectly still—an ideal little self-heating stove. Because of this special treatment, Bai Shijiu gained quite a bit of weight that winter.
When winter passed and spring returned, the weather grew warm.
Bai Shijiu, who knew it was actually smarter than the other ducks, began to sense that something bad was about to happen.
This was its second year surviving under Yan Yi’s care, and lately Yan Yi’s gaze toward it had grown increasingly unsettling. The reason was simple:
A whole year had gone by, and Bai Shijiu still hadn’t laid an egg.
And it looked very suitable for soup.
Bai Shijiu felt wronged—after all, it was a drake.
Several more months passed. Yan Yi had originally planned to fatten the duck and live off the eggs, but since Bai Shijiu neither grew much bigger nor laid eggs, he finally realized it was male.
Before he could even finish fattening the ducks to trade for grain, the flames of war reached Zhao half a year earlier than he had anticipated.
Enlisting was no longer an option. The most practical solution was to conceal his identity and flee as a refugee into Chu. If he were lucky enough, he might even be recruited into the border army there.
The escape was hurried. Yan Yi only had time to grab Bai Shijiu from his bedding.
The duck was noisy and ate a lot. Afraid of being discovered by patrolling soldiers, Yan Yi fled into the mountains. It was early summer, and heavy rains fell often. He found an abandoned temple and, in the deserted back courtyard, discovered a stove. There was half a sack of sprouted wheat and another half sack of unsprouted potatoes.
Yan Yi was starving. He planned to pluck Bai Shijiu’s feathers and stew it with the potatoes.
When Bai Shijiu saw him sharpening a knife, it knew it was about to be slaughtered.
Tears welled at the corners of its eyes, but trapped in Yan Yi’s grip, it couldn’t escape.
As a duck, Bai Shijiu’s favorite pastime had been curling up at the feet of the village storyteller, listening to tales. But as a duck, it didn’t understand the difference between men and women, humans and spirits, or what love truly meant.
Dangling by its wings, Bai Shijiu shrieked, “Heartless brute! How can you be so cruel? When you held me to sleep before, you didn’t care whether I could lay eggs. You even said I was warm… sob, sob.”
Hearing the duck speak human words, Yan Yi was startled and threw it to the ground. But once he understood what it was saying, veins bulged on his forehead.
“You must want to kill me because I can’t lay eggs. Can you blame me? You’re supposed to be the father—if you don’t do any work, how can I do it alone? I’ve been trying so hard to lay them!”
The more Bai Shijiu spoke, the smoother the words came. Slowly, it transformed into a completely naked, beautiful young man. He was so fair he hardly seemed human—like the noble ladies Yan Yi had once overheard adults describing. His skin was luminous rather than pale, cheeks flushed pink, lips like lotus blossoms at their peak in July, eyes dark as lacquer, features enchanting. He stood sideways to Yan Yi, his bare back almost magically drawing the eye downward…
Yan Yi forcibly shifted his gaze away, as if guilty, and snapped sharply, “Go put on some clothes.”
When Bai Shijiu realized he had turned human, his tears fell even harder. He was upset. “Faithless man—I’ve slept with you for so long!”
Before, Yan Yi hadn’t cared whether he wore clothes or not. Now that he had none, Yan Yi was suddenly rejecting him.
Yan Yi’s expression became indescribable. “……”
Seeing a slight softening in his expression, Bai Shijiu thought his nonsense might be working. He wiped his tears and said pitifully, “If you admit you’re wrong and don’t eat me now, I’ll willingly keep sleeping with you from now on.”
Yan Yi gritted his teeth. “Don’t go around misusing idioms just because you picked up a few.”
Author’s Note:
Yan Jingqiu = Yan Yi
Bai Chunsheng = Bai Shijiu = the nineteenth white duck
Mm…
Poor Yan Jingqiu, and his poor little pet Bai Chunsheng.
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp~!
Huge shoutout to @_nyanmaru_ on Discord for commissioning this! The chapter will be posted regularly, show your support for Ciacia at Kofi.
