Taking a Dump in the Wooden Box

Zhou Fuyu nodded. "I'll go talk to Mother in a bit. We'd better play it safe. I can't shake the feeling that something's not right."

He returned to Old Madam Zhou's room, where they plotted together for quite a while. The Zhou household was quite lively that night.

Things were different at Zhou Wanwan's home. Zhou Qingyan, Zhou Qinghe, and Zhou Qingchen were diligently practicing their characters on a sand tray.

Zhou Wanwan looked at them and said, "Eldest Brother, Second Brother, Third Brother, why don't you stop writing for today? The kerosene lamp is too dim at night. You'll ruin your eyes."

Zhou Qingyan looked up at her and said:

"Wanwan, you don't know this, but the three of us always wanted to study.

Back then, we used to sneak over to the schoolhouse, but the teacher chased us away every time."

Zhou Qinghe sighed and said:

"Zhou Qingyuan from Second Uncle's family did teach me a few characters, but there were conditions.

I had to be his servant, and even then, I didn't learn more than a few characters."

Zhou Qingchen burst out laughing:

"Second Brother, don't you know what kind of person Zhou Qingyuan is by now?

He only went to school for a few days. It's impressive enough that he can write a few characters."

Zhou Wanwan looked at them and said, "All right, let's stop here for today! We're using up a lot of kerosene, and we still have to go into the mountains tomorrow morning..."

"All right, then we'll all go to bed."

Only after her three brothers had returned to their rooms did Zhou Wanwan slowly walk over to the corner by the wall, where the lilac bush was.

Zhou Wanwan sighed. "I wonder if Shen Dalu next door has any money hidden away. I just don't know which side of the pomegranate tree he hid it on."

The lilac shook its petals. "Should I tell her that the hiding place is right next to our side?"

Zhou Wanwan chuckled. The lilac was so innocent. Plants were like that: they had no devious thoughts, so dealing with them took little brainpower.

Of course, only lower plants were like that. Some higher plants were smarter than people and might just lead you around in circles.

Zhou Wanwan had suffered for it before. She took out her Flying Claw and sent it flying straight toward the pomegranate tree next door.

Zhou Wanwan used the Flying Claw to get over the wall into the neighboring courtyard, then took out her herb hoe.

She began digging in the ground. After digging for the time it took an incense stick to burn, she unearthed a wooden box.

It was an ordinary wooden box and looked unremarkable. When she pried it open, she found a smaller, more delicate box hidden inside.

The box was completely different from the rough wooden shell around it. Though not luxurious, it had been polished smooth.

She didn't look at it closely, just tucked it into her cloth pouch. Her gaze swept to the side, where a small silver ingot lay beside a hundred or so scattered copper coins. The hemp cord that had strung the coins together was worn and frayed.

She swept the silver ingot and copper coins into her bosom. Once she was done, her eyes flicked around. She undid her waistband and took a dump in the wooden box.

Then she scraped back the damp soil she had just dug up and carefully packed it down, until it looked no different from the ground around it.

She pulled the Flying Claw from her waist and tossed the end of the rope toward a branch of the old locust tree by the courtyard wall. The iron claws caught on the branch with a click.

She tugged the rope to make sure it was secure, pushed off from the base of the wall, and used the momentum to climb. In the blink of an eye, she had vaulted back into her own courtyard.

Zhou Wanwan hadn't meant to go so far, but Shen Dalu had stolen her family's rabbit!

She had to teach him a lesson. Zhou Wanwan returned to her room, lit the kerosene lamp, and opened the wooden box. Inside lay a silver hairpin, with a little plum blossom engraved on its head. Though not particularly exquisite, it had been polished smooth.

Beside it was a folded, partly worn blue cloth handkerchief. At the very bottom lay a silver bracelet, with a blurry character for "Lan" engraved on the inside.

There were also several strings of copper coins threaded onto hemp cords. She counted them and found over three hundred coins.

She had no idea where Shen Dalu had stolen them.

The silver and copper coins were important to Zhou Wanwan. She planned to use them to buy cotton-padded clothes and charcoal.

This was the northeast, after all, and winters could be terribly cold. Charcoal was still quite cheap at the moment, and she intended to buy silver frost charcoal.

She was indeed fussy, but ordinary charcoal contained many impurities. It smelled awful when burned and was very harmful to the body.

She couldn't stand it at all. Now that the family had some thirty sacks of grain, she felt a little more at ease.

She planned to head into the mountains that day and see if she could find some more medicinal herbs.

Zhou Fusheng's leg could be treated, but the treatment required far too many precious medicinal herbs.

The more medicinal herbs they had, the faster he would recover.

Zhou Wanwan soon drifted off to sleep. Early the next morning, she hid the wooden box.

Liu Su'e smiled and said, "I made wild vegetable pancakes this morning. Take a few with you, so you can eat them if you get hungry in the mountains."

Zhou Wanwan nodded and bent her head to drink her porridge. Rice in ancient times wasn't as plump as modern rice, but the porridge had a rich rice fragrance. Perhaps it was because the rice hadn't been contaminated by chemical fertilizers and the like.

Zhou Wanwan drank a full bowl, shouldered her basket, and picked up her dagger.

Each of her brothers now had a dagger and an herb hoe.

They had just reached the gate when they heard Shen Dalu shouting, "Who stole my wooden box? Mother, the wooden box I hid under the pomegranate tree is gone! Did you see it?"

Old Madam Shen hurried out. "You hid something under the pomegranate tree? How would I know what you hid there? How could it have disappeared?"

Shen Dalu grew anxious. "There was silver in it! Which bastard stole my things? If I catch him, I'll skin him alive."

When he saw the Zhou brothers, he cursed, "What are you looking at? Keep staring and I'll gouge your eyeballs out and stomp on them like bubbles."

Zhou Wanwan looked at him and said, "Oh my! You smell awful! Brothers, let's hurry and run..."

With that, she ran off in a flash. Shen Dalu cursed, "What the hell is it to you if I stink? Don't let me catch sight of you. Believe it or not, I'll beat you up!"

Old Madam Shen muttered, "Could the people next door have done it?"

"Ha! That cripple? You think he could climb over here?

And those little brats, how could they possibly know where I hid my things?

Who on earth did it?" Shen Dalu couldn't figure it out, no matter how hard he thought.

Old Madam Shen said softly, "Could it have been one of your enemies outside? Dalu, don't go offending people for no reason. If someone sets their sights on you, it'll be bad."

Zhou Wanwan hummed a song all the way up the mountain, walking with a spring in her step. She sang a snatch of a tune with neither a beginning nor an end:

"The sun shines in the sky, the flowers smile at me. The little bird says, 'Morning, morning, morning! Why are you carrying your little schoolbag?'

I'm going to blow up the school, and the teacher doesn't know. I pull the fuse and run, and boom! The school goes flying!"

Zhou Qingyan blinked. "Wanwan, what tune are you singing? How come I've never heard it before?"

Zhou Qinghe frowned too. "What's a school?"