Chapter 2

His eyes were as black as ink, yet devoid of any emotion. The slight upward tilt at the corners of his eyes lent him a natural air of cold indifference. When he opened them, Fan Changyu was once again struck by how striking he looked. She cleared her throat and asked, “You’re awake?”

The man didn’t respond.

Noticing how dry and cracked his lips were, she thought it must be due to his severe injuries and dehydration, making him reluctant to speak. So she asked, “Do you want some water?”

He slowly nodded and finally spoke, “You saved me?”

His voice was hoarse, like gravel scraping against a broken gong, completely at odds with his face, which was as serene and pale as fresh snow under the moonlight.

Fan Changyu walked over to the table, poured him a cup of water, and handed it to him. “I saw you collapsed in the snowy wilderness, so I carried you back. It was Uncle Zhao who truly pulled you back from death’s door.”

She paused, then added, “You’re staying at his house for now. He used to be a doctor.”

Though he was actually a veterinarian.

The man struggled to sit up, accepting the roughly-made ceramic cup with a chipped edge. His hand was covered in scrapes, the skin barely intact. After taking a few sips of water, he began coughing softly, his disheveled hair falling forward and revealing his even paler jawline.

Fan Changyu said, “Drink slowly. I can tell you’re not from around here. I didn’t know your name or where you’re from, so I didn’t report this to the authorities. Were you attacked by bandits at Huchakou?”

He stopped coughing and lowered his eyes, most of his face now hidden in the shadows beyond the reach of the candlelight. “My surname is Yan, and my given name is Zheng. There’s been a war up north, and I fled from Chongzhou.”

Lin’an Town was just a small town under the jurisdiction of Jizhou Prefecture. Fan Changyu, having never left Jizhou her entire life, wasn’t very familiar with the current state of affairs. However, the government had collected a grain levy in the fall, likely for the war effort.

Her eyelid twitched. If he was a refugee from the war and traveling alone, it probably meant his family had met a tragic end. She asked, “Do you have any family left?”

Upon hearing this, the man’s grip on the rough ceramic cup tightened, his knuckles turning white from the pressure. After a long silence, he hoarsely replied, “No.”

As expected, his family was gone.

Having recently experienced the loss of her own parents, Fan Changyu understood what he must be feeling in this moment. Pressing her lips together, she quietly said, “I’m sorry.”

The man muttered, “It’s nothing,” but suddenly began coughing again, as if blood had clogged his throat. His coughing grew more severe, and he could no longer hold onto the cup, which fell to the ground and shattered. It looked as though he was about to cough his lungs out.

Fan Changyu was momentarily at a loss, but soon regained her composure and called for Aunt Zhao, while stepping forward to pat his back and help him catch his breath.

His body was covered in sword and knife wounds, with bandages wrapped from his shoulder blades to his chest. To avoid irritating the wounds, he wore a loosely draped robe. With each painful cough, his robe loosened further, revealing his bandaged waist and abdomen muscles under the dim candlelight. However, the violent coughing tore open his wounds, and blood began seeping through the bandages again.

Fan Changyu shouted more urgently toward the door, “Auntie, call Uncle Zhao quickly!”

Aunt Zhao responded from outside and rushed off to find her husband.

The man’s relentless, gut-wrenching coughs turned his once pale face bright red. In the end, he collapsed onto the bed’s edge, spitting out a mouthful of clotted blood. Startled, Fan Changyu quickly grabbed his shoulders to keep him from falling to the ground. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice filled with concern.

Sweat was already dripping down his forehead, and his neck and chest were soaked, as if he had been pulled out of water. The strong smell of blood emanated from his body, his messy hair falling over his forehead, making him look both pitiful and tragic. “I’m feeling better, thank you,” he rasped.

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned back against the bedpost, exposing his vulnerable neck like a wild animal that had given up struggling in its dying moments. His condition, however, was far from “better,” despite what he claimed.

As Fan Changyu looked at him, she subconsciously recalled the moment she found him, half-conscious, forcing his eyes open to look at her—just like a dying wolf.

At this moment, his entire demeanor was clouded with darkness. Strangely, though, she felt a trace of sadness from him, as if he were filled with resentment and unwillingness to accept his fate.

By the time Zhao the carpenter finally rushed back, the man had already passed out from exhaustion, his breath shallow and faint.

Fan Changyu, sitting at the doorway with a troubled expression like a farmer facing a disaster, began to wonder. If this man dies, should I do the right thing and go all the way—buying a simple coffin to bury him properly? Or should I just dig a random pit and bury him there?

Fan Changyu touched the few remaining copper coins in her pocket and decided on the latter option. She and her younger sister still needed to eat, so digging a hole to bury him would suffice.

After a while, Zhao the carpenter finally came out of the room with a heavy expression. Without saying a word, he went straight to the main hall and poured himself a cup of cold tea.

Fan Changyu figured the man likely wasn’t going to make it and said, “Uncle Zhao, don’t blame yourself. If he really can’t be saved, it’s just his fate. Once he breathes his last, I’ll carry him to the mountain and bury him somewhere with decent feng shui.”

Zhao the carpenter choked on his tea, coughing for a good while before catching his breath. “What nonsense are you talking about? He’s still alive and well!”

Fan Changyu’s face froze, and then she awkwardly scratched her head. “He coughed up blood earlier, and you looked so serious when you were checking his pulse, I thought he was a goner.”

Zhao the carpenter said, “That young man’s body is strong. Coughing up that clotted blood saved his life. But it’s only his life that’s been spared. Whether he can fully recover will depend on careful nurturing and, ultimately, his luck.”

In other words, there was a good chance he would become a weakened man who could no longer lift or carry anything.

Zhao then asked Fan Changyu, “Do you know where he’s from? Does he have any family left?”

Fan Changyu thought of the story she had heard from the man and sat back down on the doorstep, much like a farmer facing disaster. “He said he fled from the north, lost his entire family, and after escaping here, he ran into bandits. He likely has nowhere to go now.”

Zhao the carpenter and his wife exchanged a glance, their mouths opening but no words coming out. Helping someone temporarily was one thing, but keeping a sick person indefinitely was another. The man’s injuries were severe, and besides the cost of medicine, having another person to feed was no small burden.

After a moment of silence, Zhao the carpenter asked, “What do you think you should do?”

Fan Changyu picked up a stick and absentmindedly drew two circles in the dirt before answering, “I already carried him back from the snowy wilderness. I can’t very well kick him out now.”

Aunt Zhao, worried, added, “Your parents are gone, and Ningning isn’t in good health—she’s always taking medicine. If you take in another mouth to feed, how hard will that be for you?”

Fan Changyu, too, felt like she had brought back a burden, but there was no other choice at the moment. She replied, “Let him recover for now. Once he’s better, we’ll see what he plans to do.”

Inside the house, the man, who had just woken up after being treated by Zhao the carpenter’s acupuncture, overheard their conversation. His jet-black eyes flickered as he glanced toward the door.

In the darkening sky, snow began to fall heavily once again. The warm glow from the candlelight inside the house softened the cold, making it seem not quite as frigid.

The young woman, wearing an old apricot-colored jacket, squatted at the doorstep with her elbows resting on her knees. One hand propped up her snow-kissed cheek, while the other held a small stick, randomly poking and drawing in the dirt. Her delicate brows furrowed slightly, as if she had just made a difficult decision.

The elderly couple nearby let out quiet sighs.

The man’s gaze lingered on the young woman’s face for a moment before he looked away and slowly closed his eyes, suppressing the cough that threatened to rise in his throat.

–

That evening, after her younger sister had fallen asleep, Fan Changyu quietly retrieved a wooden box hidden in the rafters. She opened it, revealing a few land deeds stamped with official seals and a handful of copper coins.

The land deeds had been left behind by her parents after they passed away, and the copper coins were what Fan Changyu had earned from slaughtering pigs.

Her family had once been relatively well-off, but their current struggles stemmed from the large sum of silver her father had spent before the new year on building a pigsty. Her father had been a well-known butcher in town and felt it was too costly to keep buying pigs from middlemen, so he planned to build a pigsty in the countryside and hire workers to raise pigs himself. However, before the pigsty could even be built, both her parents had met their tragic end.

The expenses for their funerals had nearly drained the family of all its money, and with no other income, Fan Changyu had no choice but to start slaughtering pigs herself to make a living.

She had thought about selling a few acres of land to tide them over, but under the laws of this dynasty, if parents passed away without leaving any documented contracts or agreements, daughters were not entitled to inherit property. If the deceased had no sons, the property would go to the parents’ siblings.

As a daughter, Fan Changyu could not legally inherit her parents’ land or house, nor could she mortgage or sell it for silver.

Her uncle was a gambling addict who had racked up enormous debts and was fixated on taking her family’s land and house to settle them. He would come around from time to time, causing a scene and trying to force her to hand over the property deeds.

Naturally, Fan Changyu refused. Aside from the fact that the house had been her home with her parents for over a decade, every tree and blade of grass within it carried emotional significance for her. If she lost the house, would she and her younger sister be left to wander the streets? Fearing that her young sister might be tricked into revealing the location of the deeds, Fan Changyu hadn’t even told her where they were hidden.

She poured out the copper coins from the box and counted them—370 coins in total, all saved from her pig-slaughtering work after covering daily expenses.

In truth, even if she hadn’t taken in the injured man, they were still close to running out of food. Relying on slaughtering pigs wasn’t a sustainable livelihood. The only reason business was good recently was because many households were slaughtering pigs for the New Year in the twelfth lunar month. Once the new year passed, business would dry up.

Fan Changyu calculated in her mind: in the twelfth month, live pigs cost 15 copper coins per jin (about 500 grams). To buy an 80-jin pig, the upfront cost would be 1,200 copper coins (one guan and 200 wen).

She realized she needed to reopen the family’s butcher shop to have a more stable income.

After slaughtering, there would be about 60 jin of meat left, which could be sold at 30 copper coins per jin, making a profit of 600 coins per pig. If she were to braise the pig head and offal and sell them as ready-to-eat food, the price would increase even more.

During the holiday season, every household needed to host guests, but most common families didn’t have all the necessary seasonings to make decent dishes. As a result, many would go to the street to buy prepared foods, and braised meats were especially popular during this time.

The idea was sound, but the difficulty lay in the fact that she didn’t even have enough money to buy one pig.

Fan Changyu let out a long sigh, gathered the copper coins and put them into her sleeve pouch, leaving only the land deeds in the box, which she returned to its hiding spot in the rafters.

I need to come up with a way to scrape together enough money to buy a pig, she thought.