I didn't use my hands. I used my foot.

Shen Wangjing had woken up at some point too.

He stood in the doorway of the main room, his gaze lingering briefly on the cleaver in Jiang Xun's hand.

Then he walked straight toward Jiang Xun.

"I'll handle this."

His voice was low, his tone flat.

Jiang Xun didn't move aside. "Handle what? All you'd do is scare him off. He'd dare come back tomorrow, and the day after that, his whole family would come. You have to deal with people like him properly, once and for all. Teach him a lesson he won't forget."

He turned toward the director. "Doesn't your production crew have a car? Take him to the police station in town."

"Unlawful entry into someone else's home, attempted theft, and throw in picking quarrels and provoking trouble-he already came here causing trouble once today. You have footage as evidence. You won't even need to shoot anything extra for the edit."

The director opened his mouth.

"What, aren't you a legitimate production crew?" Jiang Xun tilted his head, his tone utterly innocent. "Isn't it a citizen's duty to cooperate with the police in cracking down on crime?"

The director: "..."

How was he supposed to argue with that?

"Go get the car." He turned toward a production assistant, looking utterly defeated.

The production crew's taillights disappeared at the end of the dirt road, and the courtyard finally fell quiet.

Shen Wangjing bent down to herd the hen back into the coop, then moved a wooden board over to block its entrance securely.

As usual, he didn't say a word while doing any of this, but when he straightened up, his gaze rested on the courtyard gate for a moment.

The young master from the city was walking back, dusting off his hands and humming an off-key tune.

"You shouldn't have gotten physical just now." Shen Wangjing's brow creased slightly.

Jiang Xun kept walking. "I didn't use my hands. I used my foot."

Shen Wangjing fell silent for a moment.

"Let me deal with people like that from now on. Just keep your distance." He paused, as though weighing his words. "Scoundrels like them are hard to shake off. You can easily come off worse if you fight them."

"Does your way of silently putting up with everything work? With people like that, if you're not more ruthless than they are, they'll keep climbing onto your head to shit on you."

Jiang Xun yawned and turned toward the house. "All right, I'm dead tired. Time for bed."

The next day, before it was fully light, a rough hand patted Jiang Xun's shoulder.

"Get up."

The instant he was jolted awake, Jiang Xun's morning temper shot through the roof.

His body reacted before his mind did-he seized the wrist and yanked it down, his other hand already curled into a fist. His eyes were still murderous when they opened.

He was met by a face outlined in the morning light.

Deep-set brows, a straight nose, thin lips pressed lightly together, and a rare trace of surprise in those eyes that were usually as still as a deep pool.

Shen Wangjing's wrist was clasped in his palm, its pulse beating steadily and strongly against his fingertips.

Jiang Xun stopped his fist short in midair.

Fine.

Good-looking people really did have the right to pat him awake.

But his mouth was still merciless. "You'd better have a good reason, or I'll shove every piece of firewood you chopped back into the trees."

Shen Wangjing straightened and slung his army coat over his shoulders, turning a deaf ear to the threat.

"I'm taking you to eat."

"Where?" Jiang Xun looked thoroughly suspicious. "I was so hungry I couldn't sleep last night. I checked that pot on your stove several times already. You've even scraped the soot off the bottom."

Shen Wangjing had already reached the courtyard gate, the morning light gilding his outline with a cool golden edge.

He didn't stop, only saying flatly, "School."

Shiban Village Middle School stood at the eastern end of the village. It was called a school, but it was really just three adjoining adobe rooms, with "Education comes first" painted across the wall in four large whitewashed characters.

The playground was a patch of packed yellow earth, with a crooked flagpole standing on it. At its top, a red flag snapped in the mountain wind.

Shen Wangjing led Jiang Xun to an even more dilapidated thatched hut behind the school.

The hut was so low that Shen Wangjing had to bend far over to enter. All four walls were plastered with yellow mud mixed with chopped straw, and years of wear had left them webbed with cracks through which the mountain wind whistled.

Inside were several tables with crooked legs and two long benches worn smooth and shiny.

A large masonry stove stood in the corner, with a blackened iron pot on top. A piece was missing from the rim, and iron wire barely held it together.

"This is the cafeteria," Shen Wangjing said.

Before Jiang Xun could comment on this almost primitive cafeteria, a middle-aged woman in a gray cloth apron came out from behind the stove.

"Wangjing? What brings you here?" She soon noticed Jiang Xun. "Is this the boy from the city?"

"Yes." Shen Wangjing gently nudged Jiang Xun into the cafeteria. "He's taking my younger brother's place for school meals."

The middle-aged woman readily nodded. "All right. There are still some cornmeal buns in the pot. I'll heat them up."

Shen Wangjing ladled a bowl of vegetable gruel from the blackened iron pot and handed it to Jiang Xun.

The vegetable gruel certainly didn't look like much. A few yellowed, boiled leaves floated on the gray-green paste. Taking the view that he was already here anyway, Jiang Xun put a mouthful into his mouth.

The leaves had a faint, natural bitterness, while the gruel itself tasted of very little. But at least it was hot, flowing down his throat into his empty stomach and gradually soothing its cramping walls.

He finished the gruel in two gulps, then accepted the two cornmeal buns the middle-aged woman handed him.

The buns were steamed from cornmeal mixed with chopped wild greens. Fist-sized and dull gray, they sat as heavy as stones in his hand.

One bite was hard enough to chip a tooth. The coarse cornmeal scraped down his throat, choking him until his eyes rolled.

But at least it was solid food, and filling.

Once Shen Wangjing saw that he had a firm hold on the food, he turned to leave.

Jiang Xun reacted quickly, catching his arm. "Where are you going? Aren't you eating?"

Shen Wangjing paused without turning around.

"There's only a place for one person." He was silent for two seconds. "Another person costs extra."

He pulled free of Jiang Xun's hand and strode away with long, quick steps, his old canvas army shoes kicking up a little trail of dust from the yellow earth.

Holding the empty coarse porcelain bowl, Jiang Xun stood in the cafeteria doorway and watched that retreating figure grow farther and farther away.

Morning light slanted down from the eastern mountaintops, stretching Shen Wangjing's shadow long, long across the gray-yellow dirt road like a stroke of dark ink.

Jiang Xun slowed as he brought the cornmeal bun to his mouth. His throat tightened, and that mouthful of coarse cornmeal suddenly became difficult to swallow.

The man was only twenty or so, not much different in age from Jiang Yanchu.

Most young men that age were holed up in their dorms playing games, arguing red-faced with their friends over the outcome of some match.

Or sneaking out their phones during a break from studying for finals to send a long-deliberated message to the girl they liked.

But Shen Wangjing's life at twenty had none of that.

What he carried on his shoulders wasn't a schoolbag or a basketball, but a hoe, a paralyzed grandfather, a younger brother still in school, and this desperately poor household.

Shen Wangjing's figure had already rounded the crooked flagpole, his steps never faltering.

Like a slowly moving mountain ridge, he walked silently toward the not-yet-bright sky beyond the mountains.