Chapter 84

Behind Liu’s house was a long strip of field winding to the edge of the cliff. Liu Wuyi and Zixiu had planted some medicinal herbs in the field in the spring and though they left them alone all summer, the herbs were growing well.

It was harvest season. One day, Liu Wuyi pulled his son out of bed in the early morning. After a brief breakfast, the two came into the field with their hoe and dustpan. Considering that Zixiu’s belly was so big that he couldn’t stand bending or squatting for too long, Liu Wuyi let him only do the simplest work—picking flowers!

They had finished picking sweet-scented osmanthus the month before and it was time to pick chrysanthemums this month. Holding a huge bamboo dustpan with his left hand, Zixiu kept on plucking the flowers with his right hand. In the midst of the chrysanthemums, he felt like a flower god!

Liu Wuyi was busy digging red ginseng when he saw his son in a trance again. He couldn’t help but shake his head helplessly. If he could do all the work by himself, he wouldn’t have asked his ‘pregnant’ son to come to help. It snows early in the mountains. The temperature had dropped sharply these days, so it might snow before the winter. Once the paths were blocked off by the heavy snow, they couldn’t go down the mountain in the following three months. Therefore, they had to prepare as many herbs as possible to get enough food for the winter.

For fear that his son might be too tired, Liu Wuyi stopped what he was doing and rose to his feet.  “Zixiu, rest for a while if you feel tired!” he said, looking at his son with loving eyes.

“Huh?” Hearing that, Zixiu came back to his senses. When he looked down, he found that the flowers he had just picked were not in the dustpan, but all on the ground! He was aware that these herbs would help them get food and clothes back, so he squatted down carefully and picked them up one by one.

Liu Wuyi revealed a gratified smile. It seemed his nagging in the past three years had finally worked, and now his son had realized what the herbs meant to them. However, he couldn’t help but grow tense when he saw his son crouch with difficulty. For fear that Zixiu might get injured, he stopped him in haste, “Come on, let me do it! You go take a rest…”

“Ah!!” Before he could finish his words, Zixiu suddenly let out a deafening scream.

Taken aback, Liu Wuyi threw the hoe away and rushed to his son, who almost fell back on the ground, and caught him in time. “What’s up?”

“Caterpillar! Dad, caterpillar! A big one! Ah— Dad, run…” Zixiu tugged at his father’s clothes in horror, as if the caterpillar were going to swallow him.

Since then, Zixiu never dared to go to the field again, and it wasn’t until one morning some days later when the ground was frozen with frost, and his father told him that the caterpillars had all been frozen to death that he came reluctantly to the back of their house, full of suspicion.

After more than half a month’s hard work, the two finally finished harvesting the medicinal herbs. On the 15th, Liu Wuyi went down the mountain in the early morning, carrying two huge baskets of herbs with a pole on his shoulder.

He walked very fast. Without his son by his side, he covered the distance that would take ordinary people a day in just four hours! That was one of the reasons why those soldiers had never run into him in the mountains.

Needless to say, in any case, he wouldn’t have arrived earlier than the villagers who lived around the town. At this point, the fair was crowded with people, and the street was already lined with all kinds of goods on both sides. However, Liu Wuyi was in no hurry. After all, he had been selling herbs here for about ten years, so though he wasn’t sociable, he still had a few fellow peddlers.

Sure enough, after walking a few steps through the crowd, he heard someone shout, “Hey, Wu! Come here! I’ve got a place for you!”

It was pock-faced Song from Song’s Village who was speaking. Just like Liu Wuyi, he was a medical herb collector as well. Though he was pock-faced and skinny, which made him look mean, he was indeed a warm-hearted person. Those peddlers next to them were all from the nearby villages who always picked herbs in Mount Windward. As they were acquaintances for long, they set up their stalls next to each other every time so that they could look out for each other. Because of the word ‘Wu’ in Liu Wuyi’s name, everyone called him ‘Wu’ over time.

Watching Liu Wuyi walk over with two huge baskets, a few peddlers rose to their feet to help him.

“Hey, Wu! These herbs must be a few hundred pounds, huh?” When Pock-faced Song tried to move the baskets, he found them extremely heavy.

“Wow! Did you carry them down the mountain on your own?” Someone said in response to Song’s words. “I really admire young people! When I was young…”

Liu Wuyi widened his eyes when he heard the praise of his youth. But it was indeed that he was the youngest among these people. Though his son was already sixteen years old, he was not yet forty. If Zixiu had married the Li girl months ago, he would have been a grandpa soon!

“I have no choice! I have to get enough food before it snows,” he said while placing the herbs on the ground.

Then the others started talking about snow and how to spend the winter. Instead of joining them, Liu Wuyi only listened in silence. Everyone knew that he didn’t like gossip, so no one tried to strike up a conversation with him.

At noon, most of the people who came to the fair had gone to lunch, so the street was suddenly empty. Just then, a few rent-collecting officers showed up.

Before the officers moved closer, Liu Wuyi saw a few peddlers run about carrying their goods. Feeling something wrong, he immediately broke in on the small talk of those around him and began to clear up his herbs in haste.

“Hey, stop! Stop…”

As soon as he had just put away the herbs, a few officers ran over in rage.

As Liu Wuyi had brought so many herbs this time, it took him quite a long time to put all the rest herbs back into the baskets. When he was about to run, the other peddlers who had been chatting around him were all gone.

“Stop! Didn’t you hear me? Hey, you!”

Those officers ran after him while yelling. Needless to say, they couldn’t possibly catch up with him.

After a while, Liu Wuyi got rid of those people and found himself in a long, deserted lane. He seldom hung about in the town, so he was only familiar with the main roads of this place and had never been the lane before. Thankfully, he wasn’t a direction idiot!

As he walked back along the road he had just come from, he saw a half-opened door on his left.

Instead of looking into the yard, he walked past the door quickly.

However, to his surprise, the door was opened from behind and someone stopped him. “Hey, are you selling these herbs?”