"Captain, you're finally back! If you'd stayed away any longer, we brothers wouldn't have been able to go on... Oh, my kind, dear old captain..."
"We want meat..."
As soon as he returned to the Logging Camp, Wu Kui and the others swarmed over as though they had spotted their savior.
When they first arrived, they had shouted in accents from every corner of the country. Now they all spoke thick, corn-grits-flavored Northeastern dialect. Even Wu Kui, their little scholar, spoke in a rough, booming voice, as though his voice had broken all over again.
Between the journey there and back and the few days he had spent recuperating in between, Lian Youming had been delayed for nearly half a month. The group had gone quite a few days without so much as a trace of meat or fat.
He hurriedly dealt with them, then hid the things he had brought back in the coffin in the secret chamber.
The tiger bones could be steeped in liquor, or made into medicine when he went south to find Yan Lingyun later. As for the Eastern Pearls, he planned to exchange them for cash in the capital when he returned to the city. But since they were burial goods, and treasures reserved for the imperial family at that, they would probably be difficult to sell.
If that doesn't work, why not write and ask Yan Lingyun?
Lian Youming had not forgotten Third Brother Xie's granddaughter, either. Whatever he had promised, he had to see it through properly. If necessary, he could take a trip to Cangzhou, Hebei, on his way back.
Since it was a renowned home of martial arts, there might well be crouching tigers and hidden dragons there.
Logging work at the Logging Camp was largely finished. Just as they had when they first arrived the previous year, the educated youths holed up in the dormitory, boasting and shooting the breeze, their conversations in full swing.
Seeing him return, Platoon Leader Yang brought over several letters, all sent by Yan Lingyun.
Amid everyone's teasing, Lian Youming lifted the dormitory's padded cotton curtain and went to a corner of the Logging Camp, where he found a stump to sit on.
The letters contained a great deal-a thick stack of nearly twenty pages. Besides amusing stories from her daily life, she had also written about certain practices harmful to martial training that she had learned from old masters of the southern martial arts community. For instance, one should neither smoke nor drink white liquor. Those two things damaged the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines, but more importantly, they ruined one's spirit. Alcohol could also send one's blood Qi surging out of control, making it especially harmful to martial artists with abundant essence and Qi.
Until one's skills had matured, these were all grave taboos.
But although white liquor was off-limits, a few small cups of yellow wine could be enjoyed in moderation. It could also be combined with various medicinal herbs to make medicinal wine, which could disperse bruising and reduce swelling when applied externally, and relax the sinews and unblock the channels when taken internally.
She also wrote that martial artists in the old days mostly drank yellow wine. Terms such as rice wine and aged wine also generally referred to yellow wine. Ordinary people could drink white liquor without trouble precisely because their Qi and blood had not grown strong.
Lian Youming quietly committed all of this to memory, along with the medicinal ingredients used to prepare the wines.
The rest concerned Yan Lingyun's views on the Witnessing Art.
The girl truly lived up to being an heir to a family of traditional Chinese physicians. Not only were her insights particularly distinctive, she had also found several Daoist eye-training methods for nourishing health and compared them against it.
The reason his eyes had stung and watered that day was that he had chosen the wrong time. He needed to train his eyes with the "Qi" present at the transition between yin and yang, just before the rising sun appeared. At that moment, the "Qi" mingled yin and yang, balancing hardness with softness. Though Yang Qi had arrived, it was not yet fierce, and the rosy-cloud Qi filtered it, making it naturally harmless to look straight at the sun. But if he was late, it would be like fierce flames burning his eyes, unbearably painful.
As for the visualization method, Yan Lingyun stated clearly in her letter that since it trained the eyes, the objects visualized must be the sun and moon. She told him to imagine them as two divine blades, treating the morning radiance and moonlight as peerless Sword Qi, contemplating the tangible through the intangible, blending in killing intent to temper his spirit.
Lian Youming was filled with emotion. His precious darling really was a treasure, always bringing him surprises.
Of course, she had not forgotten food at the end of the letters. She asked Lian Youming to send her some Harbin red sausage and cured pork, saying she had been craving them for days.
The weather turned cold, and before they knew it, most of the work on the mountain was done.
With winter approaching, and remembering the string of frightening incidents the previous year that had left his heart pounding, Platoon Leader Yang planned to send everyone down the mountain early this year, back to the villages where they had been assigned.
But before they went down, he still organized the educated youths to put together a show.
Everyone understood that once they left the mountain, they might never see one another again.
News always traveled fastest. These educated youths were all young people from big cities, and with reports constantly arriving from various places of educated youths receiving approval for household registration documents and permission to return to the cities, everyone had realized something.
Once the arrangements were settled, Lian Youming took advantage of a break to venture into the mountains again and catch two roe deer. He also went to the supply and marketing cooperative for roasted peanuts, sunflower seeds, and other snacks, giving everyone something extra to eat and livening things up.
Two days later, everyone had their performances ready. They sat around the dining hall. The rough fellows who had previously been grimy and reeking of sweat had all washed themselves from head to toe with soap, while the female educated youths had changed into bright, pretty clothes.
Wu Kui finally showed off his skills, playing "Katyusha" on the accordion under the gazes of a group of female educated youths.
Watching these young men and women, some of whose names he did not even know, Lian Youming sat in the audience eating and drinking, doing nothing but clapping and cheering.
Some danced, some sang, and others performed comic dialogues, clapper routines, and poetry recitations...
"Oh, a military dance?"
When a long-legged female educated youth with a high waist began dancing smartly to Wu Kui's accompaniment, brimming with martial vigor, the atmosphere instantly heated up.
Lian Youming cracked sunflower seeds. He remembered that the girl seemed to be called Zhao Xiaozhi. She was the one who had been issued a hunting rifle and gone into the mountains with him, and was most likely from a military family, too. Back in Kaoshan Village, she had tried to counsel him over the matter with Qin Yuhu, only to end up crying in anger.
He had never noticed before, but looking closely now, he realized how talented everyone in the group was. Even their faces seemed more endearing.
His mother had come from a military arts troupe. Unfortunately, she had injured her lower back and legs on the battlefield years earlier, leaving her with a lingering ailment. Whenever it rained, the pain was miserable, though she could still occasionally make a couple of turns around the courtyard.
"Captain, give us a performance, too."
He was still applauding when those two fellows, Yu Wen and Yu Wu, started egging him on beside him.
Lian Youming's expression stiffened. What artistic talents had he ever had growing up? Unlike his younger brother and sister, who had been taught by their mother, he had endured miserable days of drills under his own father, doing nothing but practicing punches and kicks and getting lashed with a belt. Surely he could not get up there and perform breaking a boulder on his chest.
Once one person spoke up, everyone joined in.
Seeing no way out, Lian Youming was just about to sing a military reclamation song when Liu Dabiao deliberately put on a northern Shaanxi accent and said with a perfectly straight face, "Captain, not that I'm criticizing you, but don't keep singing those military songs of yours. We've listened to them all year, and we're sick of them. Give us a song from your hometown, something fresh. I want to hear 'Lan Huahua.' How about it?"
"I don't know how to sing 'Lan Huahua.'" With everyone staring at him, Lian Youming's weathered face reddened. Knowing he could not spoil everyone's fun, he could only steel himself and raise a hand to quiet them. Then he cleared his throat, thought for a moment, and began to sing slowly in a desolate, deep northern Shaanxi accent, husky and weathered: "Mountains cannot stop... cannot stop... the clouds. Trees cannot stop... oh, heavens, cannot stop... one heart longing for another..."
His breath now lasted far longer than an ordinary person's. With air filling his lungs, his voice had ample support even while seated. Its striking tone carried a fierce masculinity, seeming to possess an intangible, peculiar texture.
"One is up on that mountain... ah... one is down in that gully... we cannot speak our words to each other... so let us wave, oh, wave our hands..."
Lian Youming opened his throat and sang at the top of his voice.
Some applauded and cheered as they listened, some grew red-eyed, and others fell silent.
"It's snowing."
Someone spoke amid the singing.
Lian Youming turned to look and saw that the world beyond the window had suddenly turned white, flakes of snow drifting down on the wind.
Coming back to himself in a daze, he realized that four seasons had already passed, and it was late autumn once again.
It was time to go down the mountain.
(End of chapter)
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