The flickering candlelight cast a warm glow over the dilapidated room. The man lay quietly, his face now clean of blood, pale yet handsome, strikingly good-looking.
He appeared quite young, with a slender but not frail build. Perhaps due to excessive blood loss, he had fallen asleep again. His long eyelashes rested on his eyelids, casting fan-shaped shadows in the lamplight. His nose was straight, and even in his unconscious state, his thin, chapped lips were tightly pressed together, suggesting a rather stubborn personality.
Such a face, paired with his battered body, resembled a pine tree with frost-broken branches yet still standing tall and proud, or a rough jade stone chiseled with countless holes but still wrapped in its stony skin. It evoked a sense of pity in onlookers.
Whether disturbed by the lamplight or from being stared at for too long, the man’s long lashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his eyes.
His eyes were as black as ink, devoid of any emotion. The slightly upturned corners gave him a naturally aloof appearance.
Fan Changyu, not at all embarrassed at being caught staring, calmly asked, “You’re awake?”
The man didn’t respond.
Noticing his severely chapped lips and assuming his injuries were severe, making it difficult for him to speak, Fan Changyu asked, “Would you like some water?”
He nodded slowly and finally spoke: “Did you save me?”
His voice was as hoarse as gravel scraping against a broken gong, ill-fitting his face that resembled the clear moon and fresh snow.
Fan Changyu went to the table to pour him a cup of water and handed it over. “I saw you collapsed in the snowy wilderness and carried you back, but it was Uncle Zhao who truly pulled you back from the brink of death.”
She paused, then added, “You’re currently staying at his house. He used to be a physician.”
Although he was a veterinarian.
The man struggled to sit up. The hand that took the chipped earthenware cup was covered in various abrasions, with hardly a patch of uninjured skin visible. After a few sips of water, he covered his mouth and began to cough softly. His disheveled hair fell forward, revealing an even paler jawline.
Fan Changyu said, “Drink slowly. I can see you’re not from around here. Since I didn’t know your name or where you lived before, I didn’t report this to the authorities. Were you attacked by mountain bandits at Huchako?”
He stopped coughing and lowered his eyes, half of his face hidden in shadows beyond the candlelight’s reach. “My surname is Yan, with the single given name Zheng. There’s fighting in the north, and I fled here from Chongzhou.”
Linan Town was just a small town under Jizhou Prefecture. Fan Changyu, having never left Jizhou in her life, wasn’t very clear about the current political situation. However, the government had collected grain in autumn, presumably for the war effort.
Her eyelid twitched. A war refugee, alone – his family had likely met with misfortune.
She asked, “Do you have any family left?”
Hearing this, the man’s fingers gripping the earthenware cup turned white from the pressure. After a long silence, he hoarsely uttered a few words: “They’re all gone.”
Indeed, his family had perished.
Fan Changyu, having recently experienced the pain of losing both parents, understood his current state of mind. She pressed her lips together and said, “I’m sorry.”
The man said, “It’s nothing,” but somehow began coughing again as if blood had caught in his throat. His coughing grew more severe, and he couldn’t hold onto the cup, which shattered on the ground. It seemed as if he might cough up his very lungs.
Fan Changyu was momentarily at a loss but quickly reacted by calling for Madam Zhao and moving forward to pat his back and help him breathe.
He had many sword and knife wounds on his body, with bandages wrapped from his shoulder blades to his chest. To avoid constricting the wounds, he wore only a loose, large inner garment.
Now, with this heart-wrenching cough, his clothes loosened, revealing the bandaged torso. In the dim candlelight, his abdominal muscles were clearly defined beneath the bandages. But the violent coughing had reopened his wounds, and blood slowly seeped through the bandages.
Fan Changyu called out louder towards the outside, “Auntie, please hurry and ask Uncle Zhao to come back and take a look!”
Madam Zhao responded from outside and hurriedly left to find her husband.
The man continued coughing violently, his originally pale face now flushed red. Finally, he leaned over the bed and coughed up a mouthful of congested blood.
Fan Changyu was startled, fearing he might collapse to the floor. She quickly supported his shoulder, asking, “How are you feeling?”
His forehead was covered in cold sweat, and his neck and chest were soaked through. He looked as if he had been pulled from the water, with a strong smell of blood emanating from him. His disheveled hair fell messily across his forehead, presenting a wretched and tragic sight. “Better now, thank you,” he managed.
He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned back against the bedpost, gasping for breath. His vulnerable neck exposed, he looked like a wild beast giving up its struggle in its dying moments.
His current condition certainly didn’t seem “better” as he claimed.
Fan Changyu looked at the man, instinctively recalling the moment she had first found him. In his semi-conscious state, he had forced his eyes open to look at her – like a dying wolf.
By the time Carpenter Zhao finally rushed back from outside, the man had already passed out from exhaustion, his breath as thin as a thread.
Fan Changyu sat at the doorway with a worried expression, like a farmer who had suffered a famine, pondering: if this man died, should she, as a good Samaritan, see things through to the end and buy him a thin coffin for burial, or simply dig a hole and bury him?
Feeling the few copper coins left in her pocket, she thought the latter option might be better. She and her younger sister still needed to eat, and digging a hole to bury him should be enough.
After a while, Carpenter Zhao emerged from the room with a grave expression. Without saying a word, he went to the main hall and poured himself a cup of cold tea.
Fan Changyu, assuming the man couldn’t be saved, said, “Uncle Zhao, don’t blame yourself. If he can’t be saved, it’s his fate. Once he passes, I’ll carry him up the mountain and find a place with good feng shui to bury him.”
Carpenter Zhao choked on his tea and coughed for a good while before catching his breath. “What nonsense are you talking about? He’s still very much alive!”
Fan Changyu was stunned and then scratched her head in embarrassment. “He was coughing up blood earlier, and you came out with such a serious face, I thought he wasn’t going to make it.”
Carpenter Zhao explained, “That young man has a strong constitution. Coughing up that congested blood saved his life. But that’s all – just saved his life. Whether he can fully recover in the future will depend on careful nursing and his luck.”
The implication was that he might become an invalid, unable to lift or carry anything.
He asked Fan Changyu, “Do you know where he’s from? Does he have any relatives?”
Fan Changyu recalled the man’s background and sat back down on the doorstep like a disaster-stricken farmer. “He said he fled from the north as a refugee. His family is all dead. He escaped here only to encounter mountain bandits. I’m afraid he has nowhere to go now.”
The elderly Zhao couple exchanged a glance, and opened their mouths, but remained silent.
Saving someone temporarily was one thing, but continuously caring for an invalid was another matter entirely. With such severe injuries, not only would medicine be expensive, but an extra bowl and pair of chopsticks meant another mouth to feed.
After a moment of silence, Carpenter Zhao asked her, “What do you think we should do?”
Fan Changyu picked up a stick and drew two circles on the ground before responding, “I already carried him back from the snowy wilderness. We can’t just turn him away now.”
Madam Zhao worried for her, “Your parents have passed away, and Ning is in poor health, always needing medicine. How will you manage with another idle person to care for?”
Fan Changyu also felt she had brought home a troublesome situation, but saw no other option. She said, “Let him recover from his injuries for now. When he’s better, we’ll see what plans he has for himself.”
Inside the room, the man who had just regained consciousness after Carpenter Zhao’s acupuncture treatment overheard this conversation. His ink-black eyes turned slightly towards the door.
In the darkening sky, heavy snow began to fall again. The warm glow from the candle inside the room seemed to make it less cold.
The young woman, wearing an old apricot-colored jacket, crouched on the doorstep. Her elbow rested on her knee, one hand supporting her snow-white cheek, the other holding a small stick, aimlessly poking and prodding the ground. Her delicate brows were slightly furrowed as if she had made a difficult decision.
The elderly couple sighed.
The man’s gaze lingered on the young woman’s face for a moment before he withdrew it, slowly closing his eyes and forcibly suppressing the urge to cough that rose in his throat.
That evening, after returning home and waiting for her younger sister to fall asleep, Fan Changyu retrieved a wooden box hidden in the rafters.
Opening the box revealed several stamped land deeds and a handful of copper coins.
The deeds were left by her parents after their passing, and the copper coins were Fan Changyu’s earnings from pig slaughtering.
Her family had once been quite well-off. Their current financial struggles stemmed from her father’s decision to invest a large sum of money in building a pigsty the previous year.
Her father had been a renowned butcher in town and felt it would be more cost-effective to raise his pigs rather than buying them from pig traders. He planned to set up a pigsty in the countryside and hire people to help raise the pigs. Unfortunately, before the pigsty could be built, both he and his wife met with an accident.
The funeral expenses nearly depleted all the family’s available funds. With no income, Fan Changyu had no choice but to take up pig slaughtering to make ends meet.
She had considered selling a few mu of land for emergency funds, but according to the current dynasty’s laws, upon the death of parents, daughters could not inherit family property without a written will from their parents. If the deceased had no sons, the property would go to the parents’ siblings.
As a daughter, Fan Changyu couldn’t transfer ownership of the house and land left by her parents, nor could she use them as collateral to exchange for silver.
Her uncle was a gambler who had accumulated a mountain of debt. He was eager to get his hands on their family’s property to pay off his gambling debts and would occasionally come to make trouble, trying to force her to hand over the house deed.
Fan Changyu refused, of course. Not only was the house where she had lived with her parents for over a decade, with every blade of grass and tree holding sentimental value but if they lost their shelter, where would she and her younger sister go? Would they end up on the streets?
Fearing that her young sister might be tricked into revealing information, Fan Changyu hadn’t even told her where the deeds were hidden.
She poured out the copper coins from the box and counted them – a total of 370 wen, all saved from her pig slaughtering work after deducting daily expenses.
Even if they hadn’t taken in that man, her family would soon be unable to make ends meet.
Relying on pig slaughtering for income wasn’t a long-term solution. Business was good during the twelfth lunar month when many families slaughtered pigs for the New Year, but after that, there was hardly any business. Fan Changyu calculated that she needed to reopen their family’s pork shop.
She did some mental accounting: in the twelfth lunar month, a live pig cost 15 wen per jin. Buying an 80-jin pig would cost 1 guan and 200 wen.
After slaughter, there would be about 60 jin of meat. If sold at the fresh meat price of 30 wen per jin, a single pig could net a profit of 600 wen.
If the pig’s head and offal were braised and sold as prepared dishes, the price would be even higher.
During the New Year period, every household needed to entertain guests, but ordinary families rarely had a complete set of seasonings and couldn’t prepare impressive dishes. Most would buy some prepared food from the streets, and braised meat was quite popular during this season.
The idea was good, but the difficulty lay in not having enough silver to buy even one pig at present.
Fan Changyu let out a soft sigh, put the copper coins into her sleeve pocket, and returned only the land deeds to the box, placing it back in the rafters.
She needed to find a way to gather enough money to buy a pig first.