Pan Long drove a carriage along Nine Provinces Avenue at an unhurried pace. The snow in the fields on either side of the road had yet to melt completely, but green shoots were already visible beneath it.
"With this much snow, the spring drought shouldn't be too severe this year."
He muttered to himself, looking around as he went.
Before long, a village appeared ahead.
Villages along the Dragon River were much better off than those elsewhere in Yong Province, especially in the north. Even so, bodies of people who had frozen or starved to death could be seen by the roadside. There was one not far away, picked clean by wild beasts until only bones remained. Pan Long could tell the remains were human, but not whether the person had been a man or a woman, young or old.
He could see yin and yang. If the dead person's resentment had lingered and become a wronged spirit clinging to the bones, he would have seen it. But the bones were clean, without a trace of resentment. The dead person's lingering thoughts had likely dispersed long ago.
Had they given up all hope in life? Or had they been dead so long that their spirit could no longer endure the sun beating down day after day?
Pan Long sighed and flicked his whip. The frozen ground beside the bones lifted in a great clod, as though dug up by a shovel. The bones moved into the hollow, and the earth fell back over them.
"No matter how hard life was, the dead ought to rest beneath the earth," he said softly. "This is all I can do for you."
Things in Yong Province were worse than they had been eight years ago, when he and Han Feng had first entered