This was a cave with great historical research value. Just looking at the stories recorded on those reddish-brown rock paintings, one could understand how ancient tribes conducted their production and daily life. If historians saw this, they would be overjoyed, thinking they had found treasure.
Yun Ye was not a historical scholar, so he didn’t care about these things. He only cared about whether he could gather more firewood and food before the rainstorm arrived.
Dead wood by the lake lay scattered across the beach. Every time Yun Ye collected a pile of firewood, he would bundle it with white vine and place it on Wang Cai’s back, then carry a bundle himself. Man and horse shuttled back and forth between the cave and the beach.
There were some fish in the puddles. Only a shallow layer of water remained, and they blew bubbles at each other, sustaining themselves through mutual moisture. If there was a rainstorm tonight, their perseverance would be rewarded, and they would return to the great river to live freely.
Unfortunately, Yun Ye saw them. A person constantly threatened by hunger wouldn’t grieve over spring or mourn over autumn. He jumped into the mud pit and began catching fish, tossing each one onto the beach as he caught it. Before long, the beach was full of fish struggling and wagging their tails. He loaded them one by one into a net bag, which became filled with fish of all sizes—he didn’t even spare those as long as a finger. This was truly fishing a pond dry.
After greedily surveying the area once more and confirming there were no fish that escaped the net, he finally left. Wang Cai loved eating dandelions most, whether old or tender. With the net bag hanging from his neck, every time Yun Ye dug up one, Wang Cai would secretly eat one from the bag. After digging for a long time, when Yun Ye looked back, there were still only two or three in the bag.
Unable to bear blaming Wang Cai, he had to dig again. This time the net bag hung from Yun Ye’s neck. The greatest pleasure of the wilderness was that there were always surprises. Just as he was happy about discovering a large patch of dandelions, the next moment he found many bamboo shoot tips under a clump of bamboo.
Finding a sturdy stick to push aside the sand, plump and tender bamboo shoots appeared before his eyes. Everyone loves this feeling of harvest—it’s in our bones, having nothing to do with character, wealth, or status.
Only when Wang Cai’s back was piled high with bamboo shoots did Yun Ye stop—he also had no choice but to stop. A forked lightning bolt tore through the oppressive dark clouds, and this fork even struck a large tree on the cliff. In an instant, that tree became a torch.
He quickly urged Wang Cai back to the cave. Yun Ye took white vine and firmly tied the bamboo raft to a large tree. For insurance, he wound it around seven or eight times.
The lightning gradually became denser. The thunder was much slower than the lightning—this wasn’t a good sign, indicating that this rain cloud was very large, and the heavy rain wouldn’t stop for quite a while.
Wang Cai stood at the cave entrance waiting for Yun Ye. The cave was too dark for him to dare enter. Following convention, Yun Ye still wound dense silk threads around the cave entrance to ensure nothing could crawl in. In Nanzhao, one simply couldn’t survive without sulfur. This place was a paradise for insects—bugs you’d seen and bugs you’d never seen were the true masters here. Fortunately, this area was all camphor trees, and mosquitoes didn’t dare come in. Even snakes were unwilling to approach camphor trees, just as people consciously or unconsciously stay away from poison.
Yun Ye still scattered large chunks of sulfur at the entrance and threw another piece into the fire pile, hoping it would drive out all the insects hiding in the crevices.
Sure enough, as expected, as yellow smoke billowed through the cave, many insects crawled out, fleeing in panic along the top of the cave. Among them, a foot-long red centipede was most conspicuous. Yun Ye struck it down with a bamboo stick. It fell to the ground and curled into a ball. This thing should be Sun Simiao’s favorite—he always said the centipedes in Guanzhong weren’t venomous enough.
There was also a fist-sized spider. Yun Ye didn’t dare touch it. The human face pattern on the spider’s back let Yun Ye know this was the legendary human-faced spider. If it bit him, Yun Ye would consider amputation.
After the yellow smoke cleared, Yun Ye and Wang Cai, who had been huddled at the cave entrance with wet hemp cloth wrapped around their mouths and noses, finally breathed a sigh of relief. From now on, this cave could truly be considered their home.
He wound white vine around stone walls at both ends. There were jagged stone pillars there, perfect for forcefully tying a hammock. He installed crossbars, laid down cut tree branches, and spread blankets on top—a comfortable large bed took shape.
Although the smell of sulfur was very pungent, Yun Ye was already quite satisfied. He planned to burn it at regular intervals. Thinking of that ferocious and terrifying spider, if it was a bit foul-smelling, so be it. In later generations, he had eaten countless sulfur-fumigated foods and wasn’t he fine? Where did he get so many particular concerns now? Being alive meant Heaven was looking out for him.
Yun Ye used tree branches to clean all the fish, threaded them together, and hung them above the fire pile to smoke and roast. He also roasted two for himself to eat some meat. The only seasoning was salt. Even with just this, Yun Ye once again thanked Tange and Heaven.
He gave Wang Cai crocodile eggs to nourish his body. Poor thing—in just a few months, his ribs were visible. Although he looked more like a fine horse now, Yun Ye still preferred the plump and round Wang Cai. Back then, Wang Cai had such a blessed appearance that everyone who saw him liked him.
Man and horse squeezed together at the cave entrance preparing to admire the rain scenery, but the rain was slow to fall. There was only endless thunder, and even the lightning didn’t have any fork shapes—it was all crooked and twisted with no good form.
This was typical of being well-fed with nothing to do. Once a person had no worries about food and clothing and stood on high ground, they liked to watch episodes of others’ misfortune. For example, a classic topic in Chang’an city—wondering whether the official who had half his lower body bitten off by a lion dog was in pain. Just seeing how he entertained the entire city, one knew how worthwhile it was that half his lower body got bitten off.
The heavy rain was slow to fall, and Yun Ye lost interest in watching the lightning. Just as he was about to return to the hammock to sleep, he heard a rumbling drum sound coming over. He hurriedly stuck his head out and only then discovered the rain had already started. In less than two seconds, Yun Ye’s protruding head was soaked. This wasn’t bloody rain—this was water being poured from the sky.
Visibility could penetrate at most two meters. Distant mountains and nearby trees disappeared without a trace—one could only imagine their appearance. The might of Heaven and Earth was truly like this.
Rain falling like a waterfall—was there anything normal about this place called Nanzhao? Viewing a waterfall from outside might be spectacular, but viewing a waterfall from inside wasn’t so poetic. Cold, damp water vapor kept pouring into the cave. Helplessly, Yun Ye had to block the cave entrance with some tree branches, which could at least isolate the water vapor somewhat.
When he woke up, outside was still pitch black. In the cave, only scattered embers remained, flickering dimly and emitting dark red light. Dawn hadn’t arrived yet? Judging from the degree of firewood burning, a long time had passed—perhaps a day and night. After all, wooden stakes as thick as human legs had burned without a trace, which required time. Plus his stomach was very hungry, so Yun Ye inclined toward the idea that he had slept for a day and night.
He lit a torch, illuminating the cave brightly. Wang Cai blinked his large eyes, seemingly somewhat unaccustomed to it. He relit the fire, and the cold air in the cave immediately dispersed.
Yun Ye had no pot and no bowl, only two sections of bamboo tube with bamboo joints, inside which was parched rice. Now one bamboo joint was already empty. Yun Ye caught a bamboo tube of water from the cave entrance, put the parched rice in it, and set it over the fire to roast, preparing to cook some porridge.
He peeled the outer skin from the bamboo shoots, exposing the fresh and tender parts, and fed them to Wang Cai. From the scattered bamboo shoot skins on the ground, Wang Cai had already eaten one meal. The dandelions had also disappeared without a trace.
He took a fish and roasted it over the fire. Before long, the entire cave was filled with the rich fragrance of roasted fish. The rice porridge in the bamboo tube bubbled. Wang Cai was crunching on bamboo shoots. If not for those concerns weighing on his mind, this kind of life actually wasn’t bad.
Li Er’s wariness, the hostility of those officials—he didn’t care. At worst, he just wouldn’t stick his neck out. Hiding as a great recluse at court would be fine. What dealt Yun Ye the heaviest blow was Ma Zhou. To achieve his goal, he would stop at nothing, not hesitating to cast aside teacher-student sentiment and fellow student friendship, handling matters with extreme ruthlessness.
He must have fallen into an environment of universal condemnation by now, right? That fool wanted to accomplish things. Whether Great Tang commoners had land or not was none of your damn business—was it worth not leaving yourself even a bit of a way out?
The fish was burnt? Looking at the fish in his hand, half scorched yellow, half charcoal black, he smiled bitterly. He didn’t dare waste food. The scorched yellow side could still be eaten. He hadn’t expected that porridge cooked from parched rice would be so fragrant and sweet. Eating it with dried fish, Yun Ye finished drinking a bamboo tube of rice porridge.
Outside the cave, the sound of rain could no longer be heard. The roar of the waterfall had also diminished. A ray of light drilled into the cave through the tree branches. Yun Ye stretched lazily and crawled out of the cave.
The rain had become a misty drizzle. The bamboo raft had disappeared. The camphor trees also lay toppled in all directions. The flash flood from two days ago had risen all the way to not far from the cave. By the lakeshore, many large trees lay scattered in disarray, some as thick as an armspan. The opposite side looked like it had been completely flooded—even on that platform, there was a stranded large fish jumping about.
Suddenly, Yun Ye heard a human voice. No mistake—it was indeed a human voice. An indignant and sorrowful voice was accusing Heaven: “Oh Heaven, what exactly did my Dou family do to make you hate us so? Why do you torment me like this, letting me see hope again and again, yet you make me return with resentment again and again? Why?”
The despairing voice was mixed with a trace of madness. This voice was so familiar. Except for Dou Yanshan, no one could emit such a lament.
There were countless scouts in the troops, yet Dou Yanshan could still escape alive to this place—this fellow’s life was truly tenacious. He didn’t know how Dou Yanshan had struggled against the flash flood. Yun Ye very much wanted to know.
A large tree floated down—a very large tree. Looking at its thick trunk, it couldn’t have grown to this size in less than several hundred years.
Dou Yanshan sat astride the tree trunk, holding a horizontal blade in his hand, randomly hacking at his surroundings. On the back half of the trunk lay another person, with two arrows still stuck in his shoulders and back. It was impossible to tell whether he was dead or alive.
Dou Yanshan discovered the waterfall. Dragging the injured person, he swam toward the opposite side. His water skills were very good—he quickly reached that beach. Without stopping, he carried the wounded person on his back and climbed onto the platform, then turned back to watch the large tree that had sheltered him plunge headfirst down the waterfall with the current.