As soon as a streak of black water appeared on the whetstone, Elder Shi pressed down on the back of the knife.
"Are you sharpening a knife, or trying to grind it into a needle?"
Chen Xiuyuan stopped and looked down at the narrow, bright edge. The nick was still there, but he had ground the metal beside it a layer thinner.
When he got up early that morning, he saw Elder Shi already boiling water beside the stove, so he carried the whetstone left from last night into the yard. He had meant to sharpen the knife before breakfast, but after working at it for ages, the more he ground, the less he dared to touch it.
Elder Shi brought over a low stool and hooked his foot around the board beneath the whetstone.
"The nick is deep. You won't grind it out today. Get rid of the burrs on both sides first. Hold the knife flatter. Watch."
The edge met the stone and went back and forth twice. Elder Shi turned the knife over and held it for him to look at against the morning light.
The edge that had been glittering with tiny flecks of white light was much smoother now.
Chen Xiuyuan took the knife and tried following that angle. This time, Elder Shi only tapped his wrist once.
After several tries, he finally knew what it felt like to have the bevel resting against the whetstone. When he lifted the knife again, his hand could find that angle without first knocking it against the stone.
Chen Xiuyuan raised the knife toward the light. The nick was still there, but the burrs Elder Shi had taught him to remove had been ground smooth. He committed the angle to memory and wiped the knife dry.
"That'll do. The knives in the meat shed are thicker than mine. Look first when you get there. Don't rush to start."
Elder Shi put away the whetstone, then checked his leg. The wound had stopped seeping blood, though walking fast still hurt. He changed Chen Xiuyuan's dressing and told him to judge how much strength he could use when moving things.
The meat shed was just east of the medicine shed.
Beast meat brought back yesterday hung beneath the roof. Thick wooden planks covered the ground, and bloody water ran through the gaps into a ditch. Shi Yuan stood before a worktable, lifting a large piece of leg meat in his left hand as his blade slid through a joint.
With a soft sound, the bone landed on the chopping board.
Before Chen Xiuyuan could make out how he had turned the knife, the whole piece of meat had already been set aside.
Shi Yuan pushed an empty basin toward him.
"Sit down to work if you can. Sort these first. Pick out the blood clots and bone fragments, and keep whatever can go into soup."
The basin was full of trimmings cut from large pieces of beast meat, some with sinew attached, others containing bone fragments. Several baskets stood nearby as well, waiting to go into the pot that afternoon.
Chen Xiuyuan dragged over a low stool and set the short knife within reach.
The first piece of meat was thin. He pinched its edge and cut along the bloodstained part, the blade landing steadily where he wanted it.
The second piece, however, was terribly slippery.
He made three cuts in succession. The meat curled up as he pushed it, while the white sinew remained attached. He added more force, and the blade suddenly caught, followed by a sharp clack against the chopping board.
Shi Yuan turned around.
"What's underneath?"
Chen Xiuyuan turned the meat over. A finger-sized bone fragment lay hidden beneath the membrane, and another white spot had appeared along the freshly sharpened edge.
He frowned and picked out the bone first.
"I didn't look closely enough."
"Then turn it over and look before you cut. Meat isn't a tree stump. If you chop it to bits, someone still has to clean it up."
With that, Shi Yuan turned back. More than half a beast leg still waited on his table.
Chen Xiuyuan did not rush to cut again. He spread the piece of meat out, wiped his hands clean, and tried distinguishing the soft flesh from the white sinew with his fingertips. It was still yesterday's knife, and his grip was steady too. Why had it worked when cutting vines, yet made more and more of a mess here?
Even with the meat spread out, he could not tell where bones lay hidden or where he should begin separating it.
He pinched the end of the sinew and tried again. The edge cut through the surface, only to reveal a tangled mass of fine strands beneath.
"You're pulling the wrong way."
Elder Shi came over leaning on his staff, two empty medicine pouches slung over his shoulder. He had come nearby to collect the beast gallbladders brought back yesterday and happened to see this as he passed the meat shed.
The old man sat down and lifted a slender strand of sinew from the piece of meat.
"Find the direction it grows in. Pull sideways, and all the meat underneath bunches up in front of the edge. How is the knife supposed to move?"
He took the short knife. Rather than cutting where Chen Xiuyuan had made a mess, he picked open a small gap from the side.
Only a short length of the tip went in.
As his left hand slowly lifted, a shallow opening appeared between the white sinew and the red flesh. The blade followed that opening with barely a sound, exposing a length of white sinew.
"Did you see how?"
"Separate them first, then cut where they're still joined."
"If you understand, try it yourself. Don't try to match my speed."
Elder Shi pushed the meat back, took the beast gallbladder Shi Yuan handed him, and wrapped it in dry leaves before putting it into a medicine pouch.
Following what he had just seen, Chen Xiuyuan tried another piece.
At first, he still cut too deep. A small strip of good meat peeled away with the sinew and remained in his hand. He stopped to examine the cut surface, then shifted his next cut a little closer to the white part.
On the second try, the sinew broke halfway through.
On the third, he no longer hurried to pull. He first let the knife tip find that narrow gap, then fed it forward little by little.
A whole strand of white sinew lifted free.
Only a thin scattering of meat scraps clung to it.
He set the intact white sinew beside the basin, separate from the two lengths he had cut through earlier. He followed the same method with the next piece.
He rested for a moment, then took another piece of meat.
The gap was still narrow, and the shape of the meat had changed, but the technique he had just practiced remained. As he tried to separate the membrane, he knew clearly when he had lifted too hastily and when he only needed to shift the knife a little to the side.
He still had to stop and puzzle over a few branching sinews he had never encountered before. But when he came to parts he had already worked on, his knife no longer strayed back into those mistakes.
A small pile of white sinews gradually grew beside the table.
Elder Shi finished packing his medicine pouches and took a look. He made no further corrections, only setting a fresh basin of meat by Chen Xiuyuan's feet.
"Rest when your hand gets tired. Don't let one hand start shaking and injure the other."
Toward noon, Chen Xiuyuan's palm grew hot, so he put down the short knife and washed the bloody froth off in clean water.
After trimming a basin of meat, he finally knew where to look for a gap when he encountered similar branching sinews. As for removing the bones from an entire leg the way Shi Yuan did, he had watched twice and still did not dare try it himself.
Shi Yuan came over and turned through the meat in the basin, then picked up two of the stripped sinews.
"These can be kept and twisted into thin cord. Don't throw them into the soup."
Chen Xiuyuan set the sinews aside.
His gaze fell on another narrow knife at Shi Yuan's waist.
Its handle was thicker, its blade a little shorter, and its edge had been sharpened until it gleamed white.
"Could I borrow that one to try?"
Shi Yuan glanced at the short knife beside his hand.
"Ruined the edge?"
"No. I want to see whether I can still do it with a different knife."
Shi Yuan drew it and handed it to him.
The new knife's balance was noticeably farther back. Chen Xiuyuan first tried two gentle cuts on a scrap of waste sinew, adjusted his fingers, then took a piece of meat from the basin similar to the one before.
Lift the sinew, find the gap, feed in the knife.
The edge was a little duller, and he had to make another pass, but the membrane still peeled away smoothly.
Chen Xiuyuan stared at the cut, the corners of his mouth slowly relaxing.
He picked up the next piece, examined the membrane first, then fed the narrow blade inside. This time, the blade no longer blocked that fine gap, making it easier to use than the borrowed short knife.
"Works well?" Shi Yuan asked.
"It does."
"Keep it for now, then. There's another basin over there."
Chen Xiuyuan answered, wiped the short knife dry and put it away, then continued working with the narrow knife.
As he worked through the last basin, Shi Lei came in from outside the shed, his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders and a piece of dark red leg meat in his hand.
He first looked at the cleanly stripped white sinews on the table, then at Chen Xiuyuan's hand, rubbed red by the knife handle.
"You did all these?"
Chen Xiuyuan nodded.
Shi Lei turned over the piece of meat in his hand. It was much thicker than the trimmings in the basin, with a mass of bluish-white sinew wrapped inside like a tightly twisted thick rope.
"What about this piece, then?"
He set the meat on the chopping board and pressed one end down with his palm.
"Dare to try again?"