Perhaps because of two nights spent sleeping outdoors and catching a chill, Shen Zhuxi felt her body was not quite right after she woke.

Her head was heavy and foggy, her temples dully aching. Her limbs felt leaden, and her legs in particular had no strength in them at all.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Li Wu’s concerned voice jolted Shen Zhuxi, who had been drifting in a haze since opening her eyes. She gave a start and quickly rallied herself: “It’s nothing — I got a little distracted for a moment.”

“What is there to be distracted about right now? Give me your hand, quickly.” Li Wu called down to her from where he stood at the fork in the tree trunk.

Shen Zhuxi climbed up beside him, and Li Wu made his way down from there, stopping at each foothold to help her down from above.

After Li Wu landed on the ground first, he reached up with both hands and lifted Shen Zhuxi down with ease.

Li Wu had already begun to grow familiar with the environment of the dense forest. He knew the way by now and took her along a path he was confident in, leading her to a small stream to wash their faces and rinse their mouths. While Shen Zhuxi went to relieve herself in the trees nearby, Li Wu somehow found a nest of bird eggs.

They divided the work between them: Shen Zhuxi gathered dry fallen branches, and Li Wu, with practiced ease, drilled wood against wood to make fire. A nest full of bird eggs was soon transformed into scorched little roasted eggs.

Once the eggs had cooled a little, Li Wu picked one up, cracked it against a smooth stone, peeled off the shell, and fed it into Shen Zhuxi’s mouth.

“How is it?” he asked.

Shen Zhuxi ate it in small bites, her expression shifting from initial wariness to relaxation.

“…A little like a chicken egg, but fresher.”

“Then have a couple more.” Li Wu said, and picked up another egg to crack open.

Shen Zhuxi quickly asked, “What about you?”

“I’ve been eating bird eggs down here for nearly a month. The sight of them makes me want to retch.” Li Wu said, and pushed the freshly peeled egg into Shen Zhuxi’s still-open mouth before she could say another word.

Seeing that his expression was perfectly genuine, Shen Zhuxi slowly chewed and swallowed what was in her mouth.

After they had eaten their morning meal, the two of them began to think through how to get out.

Li Wu took Shen Zhuxi’s experience to heart. Abandoning simple markers, he fell back on a distinctive style of duck-shaped doodles — so idiosyncratic that whoever had been following them in secret could not possibly imitate them. Even Shen Zhuxi herself could not make sense of what Li Wu’s scrawlings were supposed to be.

Li Wu chose a direction and set out again. Shen Zhuxi, not wanting to slow him down, pushed through her physical discomfort and forced herself to keep up with his pace.

The teeming forest blocked out the sky overhead; the only way to gauge time was by the light that filtered through the gaps between the leaves. By the time the sun had risen well into the sky, Shen Zhuxi felt her body growing heavier with every step, and her chest tightened until it became difficult to breathe.

She was still struggling with herself over whether to tell Li Wu and ask to stop and rest a while, when Li Wu noticed on his own that her footsteps were gradually falling behind.

He walked back to her and took hold of her right hand, which was damp with sweat.

“Can’t walk anymore?” His expression shifted at once. “Why is your palm this cold and wet?”

“I… I don’t know… when I woke up this morning I already felt a little dizzy…” Shen Zhuxi said, panting. “It might be… might be that I caught a chill last night…”

“What kind of chill brings on something this serious?” Li Wu dismissed her theory entirely. “Besides the dizziness, what other symptoms do you have?”

Shen Zhuxi ran through all the discomfort in her body, then paused and added one more thing: “For some reason, my legs feel very heavy…”

“Heavy?”

Li Wu immediately had her sit down at a tree nearby, then lifted the hem of her skirt to examine both legs. Even out in the wilderness, Shen Zhuxi still felt her face flush with embarrassment, and she tried to pull her feet free from Li Wu’s hands.

“Stop moving.” Li Wu said in a tone that brooked no argument.

He held her ankle and went over both her lower legs with painstaking care.

“What is this?” He suddenly stopped, his gaze fixing on one spot.

Shen Zhuxi looked closely: a tiny red dot was hidden two inches below the hollow at the back of her knee. Without careful examination, it would have been invisible entirely.

She herself could not figure out when or where or by what she had been given this red dot. She said uncertainly: “Maybe a mosquito bit me last night? It’ll fade in a couple of days…”

“Do you think the mosquitoes in a place like this are ordinary mosquitoes?” Li Wu’s voice took on a note of urgency. “Why didn’t you tell me about this until now?”

“I thought… there’d be no point in telling you. I didn’t want to cause you trouble…”

“Since when is your own woman’s trouble considered trouble!” Li Wu snapped, cutting her off.

He set Shen Zhuxi’s leg down, got up, and walked away for a moment. When he came back his hand was full of some kind of fluffy wild grass pulled from somewhere or other, and without a word he shoved it into his mouth and began to chew.

Shen Zhuxi was still trying to make sense of this when she saw him spit — several times over — a thoroughly chewed mash of green grass paste mixed with his own saliva directly onto her leg.

“Li Stinker!” Shen Zhuxi wailed.

Li Wu held down her struggling leg, gave her squirming thigh one light smack, and feigned annoyance: “Keep still — do you want to live or not?!”

Shen Zhuxi didn’t dare move. With tearful eyes she stared at the large, sticky, dark-green blob on her leg, feeling that life had nothing left to offer her.

“While I’ve been down here, whenever I got hurt I packed this herb on the wound. It stops bleeding and draws out poison. Put on a thick poultice first and let’s see how it does.” Li Wu said.

“Do you know what it is?” Shen Zhuxi asked, aggrieved.

“No.”

“And you still dare put unknown plants on a wound?” Shen Zhuxi was alarmed.

“I’m not that reckless!” Li Wu said. “Before I used it on myself, I tested it on birds and animals first. Put your little quail heart at ease — your husband is right here beside you now, so hand everything over to me!”

Hearing this, Shen Zhuxi relaxed. She truly felt that with Li Wu by her side, she had nothing left to worry about.

Besides, now that the cool herb paste was on her leg, her body did genuinely seem a little lighter.

Li Wu glanced at the light leaking through the tree canopy and said: “Perfect timing — the sun’s at its highest now. Let’s rest here a while and start moving again once it begins to descend.”

In a forest where direct sunlight couldn’t even penetrate, what did the heat of the sun matter?

Shen Zhuxi knew very well that Li Wu was saying this on her account. She felt touched and guilty at once, and said: “I’m fine now, let’s keep going…”

Li Wu ignored her. He folded both arms beneath his head and just tipped himself flat onto his back.

He lay on the ground, one leg lazily crossed, completely unconcerned that his tattered robe was hardly keeping anything covered.

“Keep going, my foot — I’m tired. Going to take a nap first.” He said with eyes closed, looking as though he had no intention of getting up anytime soon.

Seeing this, Shen Zhuxi gave up trying to argue. She had been forcing herself on through the entire morning, and her body was long past exhausted. Now that the chance had come, she leaned her back against the tree and immediately felt drowsiness wash over her.

“I’ll sleep for a little while then…” she murmured. “Remember to wake me up… you must wake me up…”

“I know.” Li Wu said.

With his assurance, Shen Zhuxi let herself sink willingly into the depths of sleep.

After a while, Li Wu opened his eyes and sat up. He guided her head, which had been drooping precariously where she leaned against the tree trunk, onto his own shoulder. He lifted the hem of her skirt and took another look at the bite, and only after confirming that the wound had not reddened or worsened did he allow himself to rest his own head against hers.

Lacking proper clothing and proper food, Li Wu still felt that this moment of mutual support between the two of them was perfectly peaceful and secure.

He was not the only one who had been tormented by longing through this month of separation. From the very moment he fell off the cliff, his mind had been full of nothing but Shen Zhuxi. He thought: if he simply died here, what would become of his little fool?

His little fool who could burn the house down trying to boil eggs.

His little fool who was so pretty she kept drawing loathsome creatures like moths to a flame.

His little fool whose kind heart made her easy prey for anyone with bad intentions.

His little fool who was so tender-hearted that tears could come at any moment.

Shen Zhuxi could not do without him, and he could not do without Shen Zhuxi.

He still owed her a magnificent wedding. He still had so many things he wanted to say to her. And then there was their child, soon to be born —

Wait.

Li Wu suddenly remembered something he had completely forgotten in the joy of their reunion.

Something extremely important.

He sat up straight, his gaze startled and questioning as it dropped to Shen Zhuxi’s flat abdomen.

Where was his child?

How many months had it been? There was no reasonable way that nothing would show yet.

Could it be that that number-one dog —

Li Wu did not dare let his thoughts go further. Fury surged straight to his head. Not caring that Shen Zhuxi was still asleep, the words burst out of him:

“Shen Zhuxi the little fool! Where is our child?!”

When she didn’t stir, he called again: “Shen Zhuxi! Wake up — I need to ask you something!”

Li Wu was in an agony of urgency on his side. Shen Zhuxi was fast asleep and gave no sign of it.

When Li Wu called for the third time, he finally sensed something was wrong.

“Shen little fool? You crazy woman? Shen Zhuxi?!”

He shook her shoulders forcefully, yet she showed no response at all, as though she neither felt nor heard anything.

Li Wu wiped away the herb paste from below her knee and looked at the red dot, which appeared no different from before. He could not be certain whether Shen Zhuxi’s unconsciousness was due to the bite or some miasma invisible in this forest. He called out to her several more times in growing panic, yet Shen Zhuxi remained completely unresponsive.

The feeling in Li Wu’s chest right now was not very different from the moment just after he had fallen off the cliff.

A helpless, powerless sensation roared inside him.

“Shen little fool… hold on. I’m taking you out of here right now…”

He took Shen Zhuxi’s two hands, hoisted her unconscious body onto his back, and strode forward with thunderous steps.

Every three hundred paces, he used a sharp stone to carve a doodle onto a tree trunk. The sun gradually sank, and the light in the dense forest grew dimmer and dimmer. Li Wu felt the breathing on his back growing fainter and fainter, and his own steps began to falter.

No matter how he called out, there was not a single sound from the person on his back.

His doodles became more and more hurried with each attempt, until finally they reverted to the simplest, quickest marks — vertical lines.

The stone, worn down from being pressed repeatedly and forcefully against rough bark, had lost its original sharpness. Li Wu held it in his hand and drove it hard against a tree trunk, leaving only a pale scratch. He scored out the vertical lines again and again, then, heart in disarray, tossed the stone aside and pressed on in the direction he had chosen.

Not long after Li Wu had gone, a faint rustling came from the undergrowth.

A person clothed only in a wolf skin around the waist stepped out. By his features he appeared only thirteen or fourteen years old. His wild, tangled hair hung down behind him like a long bird’s nest. His large, dark eyes were bright and sharp; they darted about twice to confirm there was no danger nearby before he stepped forward to the tree where Li Wu had left his mark.

The boy looked at the mark on the tree trunk, then drew a stone knife from inside his wolf-skin wrap, walked to a completely different tree in an entirely different direction, and carved an almost identical vertical line on that tree.

He looked with satisfaction at the mark he had made, and was just about to put the stone knife away when a sharp alarm suddenly rang out in his mind. Reflexes trained over long years sent him vaulting sideways, narrowly evading a fist swinging at him from behind.

The boy tumbled awkwardly to the ground. Before he could get up, a solid fist connected squarely with his face.

“You dodged the first one — do you think you can dodge forever?!”

Li Wu sat astride the boy, his furious fists raining down on the boy’s face one after another.

“Do you want to live or not?!”

Whether he couldn’t understand the words or had simply been beaten senseless by the blows, the boy’s nose and face were swollen and bruised, and he sat staring up at Li Wu with glazed, blank eyes.

“Do you want to live?!” Li Wu had no collar to grab, so he seized the tangled, messy nest of hair at the back of the boy’s head and snarled into his face: “If you can’t cure my woman, I’ll send you down to find out what the underworld looks like before she does!”