Dou Yanshan was severely injured. The wounds bitten open by leeches were not easy to stop bleeding—it generally took a full day. More than ten wounds would cause him to lose a large amount of blood within a day’s time.
His high fever wouldn’t subside. He had probably been invaded by something filthy. When Yun Ye went to see him, his consciousness was still relatively clear. With his pig-head swelling, he could still squeeze out an ugly smile. Even Yun Ye had to say, “Good fellow!”
He cleaned Dou Yanshan’s wounds and had the old steward use what little strong liquor they had to wipe his armpits and behind his ears. He boiled willow branch water to clean his wounds, hoping this thing would be useful.
Anyone who spent extended time outdoors knew some common knowledge—that if bitten by a leech, one immediately needed to pound wild peony leaves into a paste and apply it to the wound, which would quickly stop the bleeding.
Yun Ye was very hungry. The wound on Wang Cai’s back hadn’t yet healed. Although there was a large clump of wild peonies right below Dou Yanshan’s building, Yun Ye pretended not to see it and busily helped Dou Yanshan use alcohol to reduce his fever.
“Why does Marquis Yun care so much about me, his enemy?”
Even at this time, he didn’t give up on befriending Yun Ye. Seeing Yun Ye bustling about, his heart felt touched, so he specifically asked this question.
“I actually very much hope you’d die, but thinking about your character, I don’t dare let you die, because before you die, you would certainly drag me down with you for burial, so you wouldn’t feel lonely on the road to the Yellow Springs.”
Dou Yanshan wanted to laugh, but his skin was stretched too tight. He clapped his hands with difficulty, saying, “My parents gave me life, but Marquis Yun knows me. If I live well, you won’t die. But if my grand ambitions all turn to ashes, Marquis Yun, even if you don’t want to accompany me on a trip to hell, it won’t be possible.”
“Then you’d better live well. Put in some effort and get that fever down first. If we were in Chang’an, I’d have countless ways to lower your temperature, but in this godforsaken place, it depends on whether your willpower is strong enough. At this time you need quiet rest. By the way, you also need a large amount of gold to appease your anxious subordinates. I won’t keep you company—I’m going to get gold. Not for you, but for those innocent women and children in your household who’ve been implicated.”
“In my life, Dou Yanshan, what I hate most is filth, followed by fools. Filthy fools—whenever I see them, I have an impulse to strangle them. Marquis Yun, do you know that talking with you is very comfortable, drinking wine with you is very comfortable? Tell me one truth—if the Dou family hadn’t done that human candle business, would you still have participated in Li’er’s plan?”
“No, absolutely not. Your family growing powerful—what’s that to me? That’s the Emperor’s business. Taking in Pei Ying was forced on me by the Emperor. When you were going in and out of the Academy gates, the old eunuch Wu She was at the Academy. You wouldn’t be unaware of who Wu She is, would you?”
“I see. With that poisonous snake Wu She watching you, you couldn’t let things slide even if you wanted to.” Dou Yanshan lay weakly on the bed. The old steward held up his head. The clean linen wrapped around his neck seemed to be soaked through again, bright red all over.
It was best to use one’s own people for gold panning. Dou Yanshan didn’t allow the tribespeople to learn this craft, so he specifically arranged seven or eight of the Dou family’s most loyal servants for Yun Ye to command. As long as he didn’t escape, these people all had to listen to him.
Gold panning was very simple. All that was needed was a sluice, a sluice board, and a gold pan, and everything would be ready. What the jungle had most of was wood. The sluice was covered with many small steps. As long as linen was laid out and pressed tight on both sides with trim strips, the advantage of this was that gold ore, which had a much greater specific gravity than rocks and mud, would remain on each small step. Large pebbles would be scraped down from above by rakes. After repeated washing with water flow, the linen would be gathered up, the gold ore on it collected and poured into the gold pan. Finally, holding the gold pan against the water surface and shaking it constantly, centrifugal force would wash out the light waste materials. In the end, the small gold particles would be collected from the very small amount of concentrate. Unfortunately, mercury was too expensive in the Great Tang—it had all been bought at high prices by people who loved immortality and refined into elixirs to consume. So this pauper Dou Yanshan didn’t have any. Otherwise, Yun Ye wouldn’t waste even the last bit of gold.
The tribe’s gold came from the river. A winding small river flowed out from a cavern. There were even traces of past floods on both banks. Looking at the cavern, Yun Ye knew that inside this mountain was a gold mine with abundant reserves. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be so much gold in the river sand. The tribespeople were very patient when panning for gold—grabbing a handful of sand and picking through it by hand. Good heavens, no wonder it took them at least one generation’s accumulation to cast one set of gold implements.
There would certainly be more gold in the cave, but Yun Ye didn’t plan to tell Dou Yanshan. Ancient people had a natural fear of caverns, especially this kind that produced gold. They believed gold was a gift from Heaven—one should pan as much gold as one’s ability allowed. If one blindly pursued the source, it would provoke Heaven’s wrath and bring down strange calamities.
Yun Ye loved this ancient custom to death. Even Li’er held a broken bowl to eat from, because he thought his bowl was too perfect, so he deliberately knocked a small notch in it, meaning that only ritual vessels dedicated to Heaven could be absolutely perfect—he didn’t dare compare himself to Heaven, so a broken bowl was fine.
The Yun family wouldn’t do business anymore in the future. They were already showing off enough to attract hatred. In the future, when there was nothing to do, they could just find one or two gold mines and pan some gold. The place where he appeared in the Great Tang was called Silver City in later generations. From the name alone, one knew it was a place full of gold and silver everywhere. Although there was most copper, anyone with a bit of common knowledge knew that gold and copper went together—where there was copper, there would certainly be gold. If idle with nothing to do, he could go there to look for gold.
After setting up the sluice, the Dou family servants began piling sand and gravel onto the sluice. At that end, someone poured water down bucket by bucket. Although one only needed to build a small dam to raise the water level to the sluice’s position, allowing the water to wash the sluice by itself, Yun Ye decided not to do this. Using the Dou family people as beasts of burden—there was nothing wrong with that. Moreover, the fellow in charge of pouring water had just actually wanted to make Wang Cai carry those heavy tools for him. Bastard, you can pour water for a lifetime. Later, he’d need to specifically praise this fellow in front of Dou Yanshan, saying this guy poured water the best—the others weren’t good enough.
Who would have thought the gold ore grade here was so high! After only four washings, the sluice’s small platforms were already filled with gold ore. He halted the servants’ actions and ordered two servants to pour the gold ore from the linen into the gold pan. Just looking with the naked eye, Yun Ye discovered quite a bit of gold sand.
He personally removed his shoes and went into the water, standing in the water shaking the gold pan. In less than half an hour, basically only gold sand remained at the bottom of the gold pan. He poured out the water and carefully used a small brush made of pig bristles to pour the gold onto a wooden block. After the moisture evaporated and dried, he gathered it up. Weighing it in his hand, it was a full tael. Yun Ye was so astonished his mouth hung open, while those servants’ eyes turned red. Without urging, they began laboring frantically on their own. That small packet of gold had given them infinite strength.
Wang Cai stayed far from the big trees, looking around for tender grass to eat. Yun Ye himself lay on a newly made lounge chair, basking in the sun that rarely appeared in this place.
There was a type of green grass that tasted very good, but there wasn’t much of it. One needed to walk a bit further into the grass. After taking just two steps, an arm-thick snake coiled around Wang Cai’s foreleg, writhing its body and constricting tightly. Wang Cai was greatly alarmed. Lifting one foreleg, he ran toward Yun Ye.
Hearing Wang Cai’s neighing, Yun Ye sprang up at once, loudly calling for the Dou family servants to come forward and help, thinking a fierce beast had appeared.
Upon reaching him and looking, Wang Cai’s foreleg was actually coiled by a snake. Its forked tongue extended as it was about to wrap around Wang Cai’s neck. Yun Ye picked up a hoe from the ground and swung it in a full circle, smashing it on the python’s head. The python’s head drooped down, but its body still didn’t move—it remained firmly coiled around Wang Cai’s foreleg, causing Wang Cai such pain he kept crying out.
Those Dou family servants all split their mouths in wide grins, watching the excitement with smiles. Not one came up to help. Yun Ye forcibly calmed himself down, pulled out his small knife, grabbed the snake’s head and viciously stabbed it several times. Then, along the punctured opening, he cut off the snake’s head. Severing the snake’s head, Yun Ye clearly saw the python’s crystalline white muscles rapidly expand. Its thin body also thickened in an instant, slowly sliding down from Wang Cai’s leg. The tail still twitched incessantly.
He kicked the python aside and carefully examined Wang Cai, who was hiding behind him. Aside from several circular bloody marks on his leg, there were no other injuries. Fortunately, it was a python, not a venomous snake—otherwise, Yun Ye wouldn’t even have tears to cry right now.
Looking with disgust at those bastards gloating over misfortune, Yun Ye in this moment very much wanted to kill someone. Having been a marquis for a long time, he had also developed some imposing authority. Those servants all lowered their heads and continued working, as if nothing had just happened.
He pulled out a piece of pastry—this was taken from Dou Yanshan when visiting him. Although very crude, it was still pastry. He stuffed it into Wang Cai’s mouth to calm him down. Even now, he was still trembling all over.
In the jungle, one absolutely couldn’t miss any opportunity to replenish calories. He nailed the python’s corpse to a tree trunk without leeches using wooden wedges. Starting from where the head was cut off, the small knife began skinning.
The skinning went very smoothly. The snake, nearly two meters long, weighed more than ten catties. Wild snakes were actually very dirty. Under the snake skin were many parasites. This was the reason Yun Ye never liked eating wild game. Wild things generally had parasites. That great plague in later generations that took many people’s lives was caused by the disease of not controlling one’s mouth.
He didn’t plan to let this snake go to waste. Dou Yanshan’s body was weak and needed some high-calorie things to nourish him. Using this snake to supplement his nutrition could also be considered fulfilling a friend’s responsibility.
Old Dou liked to eat kuai—raw meat—and had a special fondness for raw things. Perhaps he would like to eat snake kuai. He’d heard that Chen Deng, the famous strategist from the Three Kingdoms, died because he liked eating kuai, ending up with a belly full of parasites. In the final stage, his abdomen was swollen like a drum, his body emaciated, his entire belly full of worms. Yun Ye watched the parasites on the snake meat continuously squirming, slowly burrowing into the snake meat under the sun’s scorching rays. He nodded with satisfaction. This was indeed an excellent tonic.