The crimson setting sun resembled a savage beast plunging into a raging sea, magnificent beyond measure. Across the earth, the shadows of the peaks were strange and uncanny, as though some sorrow of love remained unresolved.
Windblown sand swept past in occasional gusts. Not a blade of grass grew here; as far as the eye could see, desolation rose and fell in endless folds.
In a mountain hollow, a band of miners worked without pause, hauling out earth and stone excavated deep underground and filling one nearby ravine after another.
Dusk fell, the light steadily dimming, and the scorching heat gradually softened. Lookouts concealed around the worksite in the valley began poking their heads out to survey their surroundings.
Two men carried a crude reclining chair cobbled together from scraps of wood to the mountaintop and set it down. The lean, middle-aged man lying in it had a cold, forbidding face and had aged before his time. Facing the sunset, he narrowed his eyes and waved away his attendants before allowing a melancholy expression to show. The wind brushed his graying hair and beard. He looked sickly and weary, yet his clothes were the most presentable here.
They were merely an ordinary person's set of clothes. As for the others-the miners, the guards around them, and even the men who had just carried him up-it would be no exaggeration to say they were too poor to afford trousers. Most covered their private parts with a few scraps of rag or the like. Their filthy bodies were thin and shriveled, their hair disheveled and their faces grimy. There were no fat people here.
Apart from the weapons in their hands, the guards were distinguished from the miners by woven grass masks over their faces and strips of black cloth tied around their arms. Tearing a whole piece of black cloth into strips was already a luxury in this land of exile, where supplies were desperately scarce.
After dumping their loads of earth and stone into the ravines, the miners returned to the mine with carrying poles over their shoulders. Bronze was the lightest shade of skin among them; none were as pale or as clean as the middle-aged man in the reclining chair. Most were barefoot. Some truly had no shoes, while others hung their straw sandals at their waists. Unless the ground was particularly painful to walk on, they would rather wear down the skin of their feet than wear out their shoes. Fortunately, they were accustomed to it, and the soles of their feet were thick.
Among them, two men, one tall and one short, seemed somewhat out of place.
Tall and short were only relative. The shorter man was not short compared with the others; the taller one was simply a good deal taller than an ordinary man.
The intermittent gusts of sand struck their faces, occasionally blowing aside the tangled hair hanging over them. Even the grime on their exposed features and their long-untended stubble could not conceal the youthfulness of their faces.
The other miners wore expressions numbed by exhaustion, but these two unusual men had fixed their attention on the middle-aged man atop the mountain, studying him from afar. So absorbed were they that when they reached the mine entrance, they failed to notice someone coming out toward them. The other miners had already moved aside of their own accord to make way, but the pair nearly collided with him.
The newcomer strode out briskly, his wide sleeves swinging. He was a man with a brutish face, named Shen Youkun. Although his upper and lower garments did not match and bore quite a few patches, he was one of only two people here with a full set of clothes.
Shen Youkun was in charge of this excavation. His temper was poor, and he resorted to blows and curses at the slightest provocation. The miners summoned here were all somewhat afraid of him, but he had the means to give them two solid meals a day and had even promised payment afterward: a supply of grain!
Shen Youkun had been the leading figure here until the middle-aged man in the reclining chair arrived a short while ago. Then he seemed to bend at the waist at once, becoming an obedient subordinate. That was why the two young men, one tall and one short, had paid particular attention to the middle-aged man.
They did not know the middle-aged man and had never seen him in this land of exile. They and Shen Youkun, however, knew one another, and had even had their share of grievances.
Coming face-to-face with him, the two could not help growing nervous. They truly had not expected to run straight into him like this. They hurriedly lowered their heads, letting their tangled hair cover their faces. The tall fellow even nodded and bowed, taking the opportunity to bend his knees in an attempt to disguise some of his height. At least he knew his own limitations.
Fortunately, Shen Youkun's attention was not on them at all. As soon as he reached the entrance, he scanned the surroundings, his gaze quickly locking onto the middle-aged man on the mountaintop to one side. He impatiently shoved the pair apart and snapped, "Get out of the way," before passing straight between them and striding quickly toward his target.
The numbed miners merely glanced back once more without delaying their progress. Dawdling might be taken for shirking, and the overseers' whips showed no mercy.
Following behind, the tall and short pair exchanged a glance and silently breathed sighs of relief. The tall fellow, carrying his pole, even patted his chest instinctively. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. He looked thoroughly relieved.
Without vegetation, the mountain's slopes were unstable.
Sand and stones rattled down beneath Shen Youkun's feet as he climbed. By the time he reached the solitary reclining chair, he was panting. "Uncle, why did you come up to the mountaintop to sit in the wind? Your cultivation has only just been destroyed, and your body is still very weak. Harmful winds can easily get inside you. You should be resting and taking care of yourself."
Was he not panting for the same reason? His cultivation, too, had been destroyed before he was banished to this land of exile to fend for himself. He had merely arrived a few years earlier than the uncle he addressed.
His uncle's name was Qi Ziru. Gazing at the last splendor on the horizon as though lost in thought, he spoke almost as if murmuring in a dream. "You said we could only proceed after you cleared everyone out of the Eastern Nine Plains. Have they all been cleared out?"
Shen Youkun was about to offer an unqualified assurance out of instinct when he suddenly sensed a deeper meaning in his uncle's words. He glanced down the mountain, where work had already been underway for quite a few days, and swallowed the words on his tongue. "More or less," he said in a low voice.
Qi Ziru appeared unmoved. "You said before that the people of the Eastern Nine Plains were difficult to deal with, and that without clearing them out, it would be hard to conduct this in secret. You said you needed enough supplies to clear the area. You should know how difficult it is to get anything into this land of exile. Even a sheet of paper is hard to bring in. Yet I still did everything I could to smuggle those supplies in for you. Now you've already begun digging, but you tell me the area is cleared more or less. Just how much less is that?"
Shen Youkun lowered his head and said hesitantly, "It's essentially been cleared. There are only two left." Then he raised his head again. "A mere two people. Nothing to worry about."
Qi Ziru still gazed at the horizon, looking as though nothing interested him. "Mere? With so many men under your control, these mere two people have still kept you from clearing the area. I'd like to know just what sort of 'mere two people' they are."
Shen Youkun was somewhat embarrassed. With the conversation having reached this point, he dared not conceal anything and explained honestly, "One is Shi Chun, the chief of the Eastern Nine Plains, and the other is his diehard follower, Wu Jinliang. All hundred-odd of their men here in the Eastern Nine Plains have been sent into the city, exactly as I anticipated and planned. Now those two are the only ones left in the entire Eastern Nine Plains. Without eyes and ears, they won't discover the secret activity here, not across such a vast area."
Qi Ziru slowly turned his head and fixed him with a cold stare. "In other words, the two who haven't been cleared out happen to be the two biggest leaders of the Eastern Nine Plains. What are their backgrounds?"
Shen Youkun gave a disdainful snort. "Local natives. Whatever their ancestors were is long beyond tracing. Their parents all died fighting over water sources. The two grew up in the Eastern Nine Plains eating handouts from a hundred households. A pair of filthy beggar whelps. They're lucky they didn't starve to death."
His tone seemed filled with a hatred that longed to trample them into mud.
Qi Ziru lifted his eyelids slightly, realizing that after his nephew's banishment here, something he was unwilling to speak of might have happened between him and that chief.
His nephew did not want to speak of it, and with his present energy, he had no desire to press him. He could form his own judgment from what had already been explained.
Although this was his first time in the land of exile, he had long possessed a general understanding of its conditions and knew what these so-called local natives were.
Those who struggled to survive here were either exiles or the descendants of exiles.
Among those banished here for their crimes, there were inevitably men and women. With both sexes present, nature took its course, and offspring were inevitable as well. Those new generations were the so-called local natives.
Supplies were desperately scarce here. Whether for exiles or local natives, the greatest problem was survival. For a mouthful of food or drink-for water sources, for instance-bloody conflict between people was often unavoidable. Sometimes they would even fight over a single tree.
Anything that could be taken into the city and exchanged for "money" could easily provoke a scramble.
Reckless logging, digging, and extraction had severely damaged the environment. As a result, most necessities of life had lost the capacity to replenish themselves, creating a vicious cycle in the struggle for survival.
This so-called "money" did not circulate in the land of exile, only in cities at designated locations, where it could be used to purchase survival supplies. This "money" was also called "merit." Once someone accumulated "merit" up to a certain threshold, they could leave this land of exile through the city and gain their freedom.
The so-called "city" was actually the gate of this enormous open-air prison, as well as a point of passage between the two realms.
There were several such cities in the land of exile, scattered across its regions.
Punished exiles like him could not escape directly even after accumulating enough "merit." For instance, he had been sentenced to ten years. Without a pardon, he could not leave on the strength of sufficient "merit" before his sentence was complete.
Moreover, almost everyone banished here was a cultivator. Before being thrown in, they all had to undergo a cruel punishment: their cultivation was destroyed without exception, essentially cutting off any chance of cultivating again, at least during their exile. They became no different from ordinary mortals. The punishment could hardly be called anything but brutal.
Without cultivation, surviving in this harsh environment was extremely difficult. Most people could hardly endure until the end of their sentences.
Apart from the clothes on their backs, those thrown in for punishment were not permitted to bring even a scrap of paper.
Their crimes did not extend to their newborn descendants. The offspring of exiles could leave this place directly once they had enough "merit," but accumulating the required amount was far from easy.
With a couple of snorts, Shen Youkun continued, "That Shi Chun originally had no surname. His parents didn't know their own origins either, or what surname their ancestors had borne. Supposedly, he was born in spring, so they called the boy 'Chun'-spring. That's how the lowborn rabble in this land of exile usually name their children. To them, a name is just something to call a person. They don't put much thought into it.
"When Shi Chun was half-grown, an exiled woman wandered into the Eastern Nine Plains. They say she was very beautiful. Because she'd done the locals a kindness by giving them some guidance, they allowed her to settle there. Whether to repay them or simply because she had nothing to do, the woman supposedly saw how ignorant the people of the plains were and taught a few boys to read during her stay. Shi Chun was one of them.
"After staying for about three years, that woman left. No one knew where she went, or whether she'd completed her sentence and gained her freedom. No one even knew her name. Probably only the officials in charge at the city gate knew her background.
"Shi Chun regarded that woman as his teacher. Out of gratitude, he took 'Shi,' the word for teacher, as his surname. But because he only recognized a few characters and had never studied books, he made his name into a joke. People often mocked him by calling him 'sichun'-yearning for love. Once it caught on, it was too late for regrets, even after he understood what it meant. He's come to blows with people over it time and again."