By late August, the knife wound on her back had gradually healed. Aside from the wound often feeling itchy, she could now manage walking about and eating without much difficulty.
The clinic where she’d been placed sat in a relatively secluded corner of western Chengdu; the Huaxia Army called it a “health clinic,” and according to Aunty Gu, it might eventually be “reorganized” out of existence. Perhaps because of its location, few patients came through each day, and whenever she was able to move about, Qu Longjun had taken to quietly peeking around the place.
The small courtyard where she was housed accommodated only female patients; the two rooms next door occasionally saw patients come to rest and take their medicine, but none as severely wounded as she had been. Some local residents, too, weren’t accustomed to leaving the women of their households to recover in such an unfamiliar place, and so usually just took their medicine and went home.
Qu Longjun no longer had such concerns to worry about.
Over the month she’d spent here, Qu Longjun had first felt lost and afraid, but gradually her heart had settled into calm. Though she still had no idea how the Huaxia Army ultimately meant to deal with her, a month had been enough for her to sense that the people at the clinic bore her no ill will.
For most of that time, she’d really only interacted with two people.
Aunty Gu, who managed the clinic, was plump and kindly in appearance, but from the way she spoke, Qu Longjun could tell she carried a composed, formidable air about her—and from certain subtle traces in her words, Qu Longjun could even guess that the woman had once been a sword-wielding heroine on some battlefield, the kind of figure Qu Longjun had previously only ever heard of in operas.
Besides Aunty Gu, who looked after her more often since they were both women, the other person she interacted with was that ever cold-faced young doctor, Long Aotian. This highly skilled young physician, despite having killed men without number, tended to keep a stern, unsmiling face most days—but having spent time around him, once her initial fear had faded, she could sense a certain goodwill in him. At the very least, she’d come to understand before long that it was this young doctor who had saved her during the massacre in the pre-dawn hours of the twenty-first of the seventh month, and who had apparently taken on some responsibility for her afterward, coming by every day since to bring her meals and check whether her condition was improving.
The book Women Hold Up Half the Sky seemed to have been one he’d given her as well; later, a few more books appeared on topics like weaving, needlework, and running a small business.
Having been raised from a young age to be a “thin horse”—a girl trained and groomed to be sold—she had, privately, entertained a few anxious guesses of her own: given they were close in age, might this young killing god have taken a liking to her? Though he was cold and rather frightening, he was, in fact, quite good-looking—she just didn’t know whether it might come with the occasional beating…
As for the other possibility, it was that the Huaxia Army meant to wait until her wounds healed before forcing her to serve as a spy elsewhere. If that were the case, it would also explain why the young doctor came by every day to check on her condition.
She kept both thoughts buried in her heart, unable for the moment to decide which was true, only occasionally recalling them with a flicker of unease.
On the twenty-fourth of the eighth month, he came for his final examination. In their last exchange, he mentioned that his elder brother was getting married.
After leaving the room, the young doctor, walking through the courtyard, glanced back toward the doorway a couple of times. At his age, he still couldn’t quite put a name to certain vague, unformed feelings. The girl in the room, naturally, hadn’t noticed any of this—to her, it had simply been an ordinary afternoon.
On the twenty-fifth of the eighth month, the young doctor didn’t come.
It wasn’t until the twenty-sixth that Aunty Gu brought a small parcel into the room.
“There’s something here that needs to be passed along to you.”
Aunty Gu said this, then took out from the parcel some banknotes and land deeds—some of which Qu Longjun recognized as having belonged to Wen Shoubin. Her own bond of servitude was tucked in among these documents; Aunty Gu pulled it out and, without ceremony, tore it up.
“That foster father of yours, Wen Shoubin—coming into Chengdu with treasonous intentions was, plainly speaking, wrong of him. Still, we looked into it, and in the end he never actually managed to do anything truly evil—he meant to, but didn’t get the chance, and then he died. The things he brought to Chengdu were originally meant to be confiscated by the state, but young Long put in an appeal on your behalf—even though he’s dead, in name you’re still his daughter, and these assets should rightfully pass to you as his heir… The appeal took some doing, and young Long’s been running back and forth these past few days to sort it out. Here, it’s all yours now.”
Wen Shoubin, though no great magnate outside these circles, had spent years dealing with wealthy households and trading in women, and had built up a rather sizable fortune over the years. Setting aside the land deeds in the parcel, the banknotes and silver certificates alone, worth several hundred taels, would have counted as a fortune sufficient to sustain an ordinary family for half a lifetime. Qu Longjun’s mind buzzed with a sudden ringing; she reached out her hand, yet found the whole matter truly hard to comprehend.
“This is…” Qu Longjun reached out. “From Doctor Long?”
“It’s your foster father’s inheritance,” Aunty Gu said.
“But…”
Her mind was a tangled mess; she couldn’t understand the reason behind any of this. She had already braced herself for the possibility that various people might have designs on her—the best outcome being that this young Doctor Long had taken a liking to her, the worst being that she’d be forced into becoming a spy, and beyond that lay other, still worse outcomes she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on too closely. But handing over all of this to her—why?
Her thoughts churned in confusion for a moment before she finally looked up. “…Where’s Doctor Long? Why didn’t he bring it himself? I… I wanted to thank him…”
“Little Long?” Aunty Gu’s expression turned into something of a sigh. “He left yesterday already. Didn’t he say goodbye to you the day before, in the afternoon?”
“…He said his brother was getting married.”
“Right, that’s exactly it—the wedding. He rushed back yesterday for it. And after the wedding, he still has to go back to school and study—he’s still young, after all, and his family won’t let him run around out here. So he asked me to pass all this along to you. He probably won’t be coming back to Chengdu for a good while.”
“Studying…” Qu Longjun repeated the word, then, after a moment, “But… why?”
“Why what?”
“You people… the Huaxia Army… what exactly do you mean to do with me? After all, I came here following Wen Shoubin, meaning to cause trouble. This… this is…”
Her words tumbled out in a jumble, tears falling without her even realizing it. All this past month, she’d kept everything bottled up inside, and only now could it finally spill out. Aunty Gu sat down beside her and patted her hand.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. At your age, who could really have had a say in their own fate? What’s happening now is actually a good thing—from here on, you’re free. Don’t cry.”
“But then, when I leave in the future…”
“Leave—go wherever you like, it’s entirely up to you to decide,” Aunty Gu said with a smile. “Your wounds haven’t fully healed yet, so there’s time to think things through carefully. Whether you decide to stay in Chengdu or go somewhere else afterward, it’s entirely your own choice to make—no one’s ever going to control you the way Wen Shoubin did again…”
Qu Longjun sat there, tears falling one after another without pause. Aunty Gu comforted her a while longer before finally leaving the room.
It felt as though an unfamiliar sea were surging in from every direction, engulfing her.
As for that word Aunty Gu had used—”free”—she found it utterly foreign, weightless, something she couldn’t quite get a grip on. Though she was only sixteen, for as long as she could remember, she had always lived under someone else’s control—first her father and mother, and after their deaths, Wen Shoubin. Along the path her life had followed, if she’d one day been sold off, whoever bought her would simply have become the one controlling the rest of her life, and further down the road, perhaps she’d have gone on living dependent on her own children instead—that was simply how everyone lived, and there was nothing so terrible about it, really.
When Wen Shoubin died, she’d first felt afraid, but what followed was, after all, only falling into the hands of the Black Banner Army instead. Once a person truly understands there’s little room left to resist, even fear itself begins to fade—whether the Huaxia Army had taken a liking to her and meant to do something with her, or meant to use her for some purpose, she could see it all clearly enough, and in truth, there would have been little she could do to resist either way.
And yet… free?
She thought of that cold-faced young Doctor Long—how, in the pre-dawn hours of the twenty-first, he had saved her, treated her wounds… In the month since, they’d barely exchanged more than a few words, and now he’d already… left…
…why?
On the cabinet in her sickroom sat a few books, along with that bundle of deeds and money—some invisible weight that had been placed upon her had, without her even noticing when, quietly lifted away. She found herself unable to make sense of this whole world around her.
She thought of her dead father and mother.
Sometimes she thought, too, of certain fragments from that night of the twenty-first, of what she vaguely recalled Doctor Long saying.
“…Little shameless dog, you look like a dead fish…”
Have we met before? Why am I a “little shameless dog”?
We’ve never met, have we? Why did he curse me like that…
These confused questions stayed buried in her heart, layer upon layer settling in. And more unfamiliar emotions kept welling up alongside them—she would touch the bed, touch the table, and sometimes, stepping out of the room, touch the doorframe, feeling everything around her strange and sharply vivid; thinking of the past and of the future, both felt equally foreign to her now…
That night, she cried in her room more times than she could count, only gradually drifting off to sleep as dawn approached. Two more days passed in this way—Aunty Gu only called her at mealtimes, and the young doctor never came at all. Recalling what Aunty Gu had said, she supposed she’d likely never see him again.
By the twenty-ninth of the eighth month, perhaps noticing that she’d been cooped up too long feeling stifled, Aunty Gu took her out for a walk through the streets, and Qu Longjun agreed to go along.
Ever since arriving in Chengdu, Qu Longjun had been confined to that small courtyard, with only a handful of occasions to venture outside. Now, walking about and taking it all in slowly, she could finally feel the sheer vitality pulsing through the streets of the southwest. This region hadn’t suffered much from the fighting, and the Huaxia Army had once already defeated the fiercely advancing Jurchen invaders; in the seventh month, a great wave of outsiders had poured into the city, meaning to give the Huaxia Army a show of force right out of the gate, only to be handled with such calm, unhurried ease by the Huaxia Army that they’d been left utterly cowed—all of this had unfolded in plain view of everyone.
By the eighth month, the trial and execution of Jurchen prisoners at the military review had left countless onlookers with their blood pounding; after that, the Huaxia Army had convened its first representative assembly, proclaiming the founding of the Huaxia People’s Government, and the martial tournament held within the city had reached its climax as well. Following that came the opening of recruitment, drawing countless passionate young men to enlist, and word had it that numerous business deals with the outside world had also been settled by now… By the end of the eighth month, this vibrant, thriving energy still hadn’t let up—a sight Qu Longjun had never before witnessed anywhere in the outside world.
Yet at this particular moment, she found she had little heart left to take in any of it.
“Aunty Gu.” Passing through a certain stretch of street, Qu Longjun turned to ask her, “Doctor Long… he’s actually the son of some prominent, powerful family within the Huaxia Army, isn’t he?”
Aunty Gu looked at her with a smile. “What’s this about? Have you taken a liking to Little Long?”
Qu Longjun laughed, embarrassed. “No, it’s just—thinking it over carefully these past couple of days, someone capable of accomplishing so much surely can’t just be an ordinary army medic within the Huaxia Army.”
In the days before, she’d resolved simply to accept whatever came her way without complaint, and so hadn’t looked too closely into the finer details of things. But these past two days her mind had grown more active, and looking back now, she could see all sorts of things that didn’t quite add up—after all, whatever way you looked at it, she herself was one of the wrongdoers who’d come here following Wen Shoubin to stir up trouble, yet how could an ordinary army medic simply decide not to pursue the matter against her? And those land deeds and banknotes, simple as they might have seemed, added up to an enormous fortune—even granting that the Huaxia Army was reasonable about such things, it seemed unlikely they’d so readily let her, a mere “foster daughter,” inherit all of it.
Aunty Gu only smiled. “His family background really does need to stay confidential.”
“Then I won’t ask.” Qu Longjun broke into a smile and nodded.
The eighth month passed, and the ninth month arrived.
Qu Longjun began learning to help out around the clinic.
Once the initial confusion in her heart had passed, more concrete matters began pressing themselves before her.
She occasionally thought of her dead father.
Her father had died at the hands of the Huaxia Army.
Though, in the time before, she had always been guided forward by Wen Shoubin’s arrangements, and once she’d fallen into the Huaxia Army’s hands, she’d been nothing more than the frailest of girls, with no need to think too deeply about her father’s death—now, at this point, the fact of his death was something she could no longer avoid confronting on her own.
Aunty Gu at the clinic treated her well, patiently teaching her, hand by hand, all the many things she didn’t yet understand, and she had by now more or less come to accept that the Huaxia Army wasn’t made up of bad people—she had even begun to feel a quiet wish to settle permanently in this peaceful corner of Chengdu. And yet, whenever she considered the matter seriously, her father’s death would surface before her with all the more stark clarity.
She found herself puzzling over it for a long while.
She also occasionally read—reading through the accounts in Women Hold Up Half the Sky, and the practical skills described in the other few books. None of it was something she could master in any short span of time. Whenever she read these books, she would think of that cold-faced young doctor—why had he left these behind for her? What was he trying to say? And why, among the things he’d reclaimed of Wen Shoubin’s, were there even land deeds down in the south of the river?
She thought again of the young doctor’s family background—surely he was the son of some great and powerful household within the Huaxia Army?
…Perhaps they would never meet again.
And so the days of the ninth month gradually passed, and when the tenth month arrived, Qu Longjun finally worked up the courage to tell Aunty Gu she meant to take her leave, and confessed openly what weighed on her heart—if she were still the “thin horse” of before, controlled entirely by others, she could have simply lived out her days wherever she happened to be left. But now that she was no longer under anyone’s control, she found she couldn’t bring herself, in good conscience, to go on staying here—after all, her father had died at Xiaocang River. However unworthy a man he’d been, driven as he was by the Jurchens’ command, he was, in the end, still her father.
Having heard all this, Aunty Gu tried several times to talk her out of it, and when she found she couldn’t be persuaded, could only suggest that Qu Longjun stay a while longer yet. Though the Jurchens had retreated for now and no fighting would break out anywhere for the time being, the lands beyond Sword Gate Pass were by no means peaceful either—as a woman traveling alone, she really ought to learn a bit more before setting out.
And so Qu Longjun stayed on in Chengdu another half month, and on the sixteenth day of the tenth month, after a great tearful farewell with Aunty Gu, prepared to set out with a merchant caravan that had been arranged for her. Aunty Gu, her face crumpling into tears at the last, scolded her: “You foolish girl—once our Huaxia Army marches out beyond these borders, are you going to run off again then too? Do you mean to be some foolish martyr who won’t eat the grain of a conquering state?”
Qu Longjun drew out that copy of Women Hold Up Half the Sky from inside her robe. “If I stay here now, then from beginning to end I’ll have lived entirely on your charity. But if someday, out there on my own, I can truly stand on my own two feet and hold up half the sky by my own strength, then that strength will have been mine alone to earn—and perhaps then my father might finally forgive me.”
Aunty Gu scolded her a bit more after that, then made her promise to come back and visit someday.
At that moment, the wind outside Chengdu’s walls was already kicking up the dust of a long journey ahead. Plump Aunty Gu, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain even to herself, found it striking that this seemingly frail girl, so long accustomed to bowing to whatever came her way, should show such stubbornness the very moment she was freed from bondage. But thinking it over more carefully, that same stubbornness bore more than a passing resemblance to that of the young man who had once gone by the name “Long Aotian.”
Drawing on whatever skills she’d once learned, she dressed herself plainly, even somewhat unappealingly, and set out with the departing merchant caravan. She could read, write, and do sums, and had already arranged with the caravan’s manager to help with small tasks along the way as she was able. Perhaps Aunty Gu had put in a quiet word on her behalf behind the scenes as well, but however it had come about, once she left the Huaxia Army’s territory, she would at least have some small skill to fall back on.
The cart rattled along, rolling toward the distant mountains beneath the morning sun. Qu Longjun stood atop the cart, laden with goods, waving back toward the city; little by little, plump Aunty Gu, standing outside the city gate, faded from view, and she finally sat herself down on the shaft of the cart.
The caravan pressed onward.
Little shameless dog…
At some point, that coarse voice seemed to echo in her ears once more. She turned to look back; in the distance, Chengdu had already shrunk to a thin black line against the horizon in her vision. Her tears fell again, suddenly, and it was a long while before she turned back around—ahead of her now lay nothing but an unknown road, and beyond it, a world savage and pitiless. She was afraid, truly afraid.
She rubbed at her eyes.
“You’re the little shameless dog…”
The words, faintly choked with tears, scattered into the wind.
…
At the end of October, Aunty Gu made her way to Zhang Village and told Ning Ji, still away at school, about Qu Longjun’s departure. Ning Ji stared blankly for a moment, then leapt up from his seat. “Why didn’t you stop her! Why didn’t you stop her! She’s going to die out there! She’s going to die out there—!”
The whole realm remained in the grip of chaos and upheaval; how could a delicate girl like that possibly survive out there alone? Even to Ning Ji, this much was painfully, plainly obvious.
…
At that very same hour, far to the north, across a land howling with wind and snow, in the frigid city of Shangjing, a complex and sprawling power struggle was at last approaching its resolution.