Chapter 21

Chapter 21: A Misstep
After lunch, Qin Hui Yin led Li Tao Hua and the Tang siblings back to work—grinding peas, straining them, and setting the slurry to thicken.

On the stove, the pot simmered with pig head meat, offal, pig tails, and scraps. While she cleaned, Qin Hui Yin spotted the leftover bird eggs and tossed them in to braise as well.

By the time they finished grinding the peas into a smooth slurry, it was around four or five in the afternoon. Their arms shook with exhaustion. No one wanted to move.

But the bamboo bucket-bowls still needed shaving and trimming, and that was heavy work.

“Mom, I really can’t do it anymore,” Qin Hui Yin said, pressing a hand to her sore shoulder. “Why don’t we hire people? One wen for 10 bamboo buckets. The bamboo’s from the mountain anyway, so it doesn’t cost them anything. They just put in effort and earn money. Plenty of villagers will want the work. If it’s only us, we’ll work ourselves to death and still won’t finish.”

Li Tao Hua barely hesitated. With Tang Da Fu still stuck in bed and the rest of the household made up of women and children, how were they supposed to handle that kind of labor?

So Tang Yi Xiao took the sample bucket-bowl and went out to arrange it. He came back quickly.

Tang Lu Wu leaned forward. “How did it go?”

“As long as we’re paying, why wouldn’t anyone work?” Tang Yi Xiao said. Then he grabbed a water bucket. “I’m going to carry water. You rest first. Don’t tire yourself out. You worked the hardest grinding the slurry.”

“I’m not tired.” Tang Lu Wu snatched the bucket from his hands. “I’m your sister. I should do this kind of work. You stay home and help. Yin Yin can’t manage everything alone.”

Qin Hui Yin came back through the gate and found them tugging the bucket back and forth.

“Stop pulling,” she said, amused. “You’ll break it.”

Both of them froze.

“Everyone’s tired.” Qin Hui Yin set her basket down. “I hired Uncle Tan and Auntie Yu. Uncle Tan will carry water—two wen per full load. Auntie Yu will carry firewood—one wen per bundle. Today, you all rest. When you’re not so exhausted, you can fight over chores again.”

Tang Yi Xiao had been right. Pay people, and work appeared.

In less than an hour, the woodshed was stacked full, the water jar was brimming, and they had gathered the 200 bamboo bucket-bowls they needed.

Qin Hui Yin understood something very clearly: no matter how capable she was, she was still only one person. Strength ran out. Only by using other hands could she multiply what the family could do.

From the bed, Tang Da Fu listened to the voices outside and felt his chest tighten. He pounded his good leg, furious at his own helplessness.

He was grateful—truly grateful—that his wife no longer talked about leaving. From the way she acted now, it even seemed like she no longer hated Lu Wu and Xiao Er.

In that, he was luckier than Song Yi.

When Song Yi was alive, everyone had known how much Li Tao Hua despised Song Rui Ze. She never accepted that Coffin Wretch—not even at the end.

Qin Hui Yin had used three jin of pea flour today. Roughly, it could make about 20 jin of chilled jelly noodles. She had promised tomorrow’s portions would be bigger, so she estimated they’d serve around 150 bowls.

She went to the vegetable patch and pulled two cabbages, shredding them into fine threads. She washed the strands again and again until they came out perfectly clean. Tomorrow, adding shredded cabbage would bulk up the bowl and improve the bite.

Once the cabbage was set aside, she decided to try her luck on the mountain again.

The mountains were full of treasures. People simply didn’t recognize them, and so they never discovered their value. Some wild fruits looked sour and astringent, but their juice could be squeezed out and used as seasoning.

She wandered deeper, eyes searching. Then she spotted a pit trap. Inside it, a rabbit lay tangled and struggling.

Qin Hui Yin crouched, staring at it, her eyes practically burning.

“Rabbit, oh rabbit,” she muttered, “if you can jump out, I’ll take you home. What’s the point of lying there? If you want to change your fate, you have to work for it yourself.”

She wagged a finger at it as if she were scolding a child. “Don’t tell me you’re waiting for me to pull you out of a tiger’s den. No, no. Someone dug this trap. Even if you gave me 10 times the courage, I wouldn’t dare steal that lord’s prey.”

She had caught a bad case of rabbit-craving and ended up lecturing a dying rabbit for far too long. Unfortunately, this one was the kind that had already given up. No matter how she tried to provoke it, it only lay there, resigned.

After a while, when it was clear it wasn’t going to hop into her basket on its own, she sighed and walked away.

The moment she left, a figure dropped soundlessly from the branches above.

Song Rui Ze had hunted a wild sheep deep in the mountains earlier. After hauling it home, he had come back up again. Maybe because his injuries hadn’t fully healed, exhaustion hit him all at once. He climbed a tree to rest.

Who would’ve thought he’d run into her again?

She had changed.

Before, whenever she saw him, she spoke with forced sarcasm or trembled in fear. He had never seen her like this—relaxed, playful, with a streak of childishness.

Hah.

Of course. He was the Coffin Wretch everyone despised.

Still, last time she had actually dared to get close to him. She’d even helped him find herbs to detoxify his poison.

He hadn’t expected that.

“Help… help…”

A cry floated up from not far away.

Song Rui Ze’s eyes sharpened at the familiar voice.

“Is anyone there? Help…”

At the bottom of a deep pit, Qin Hui Yin craned her neck toward the small circle of sky above. Loose mountain soil had formed a deceptively solid crust, hollow underneath. One wrong step, and you fell straight in.

Today, she had stepped wrong.

“This is deep in the mountains,” she muttered, brushing dirt from her sleeves. “No villagers come here. Only one person might…”

Even if he happened to be nearby, the chance he would save her was maybe one percent.

And that one percent only existed because she’d helped him before. Maybe, out of sheer mercy, he’d toss her the scrap of goodwill she’d earned.

“I didn’t tell them I was coming,” she continued, staring at the walls as if they might answer. “If I’d told them, and they noticed I’d been gone too long, they’d come looking. But now…”

A chill crawled up her spine.

“There are wolves in these mountains, right? I’m not going to get dragged off by a wolf, am I?”

She swallowed hard, then forced herself to keep talking, as if sound alone could hold fear away.

“The scariest thing in the world is dying and then living, living and then dying… and in the end you still don’t know whether you’ll live or die. You just wait. And wait. For an outcome you can’t see.”

Song Rui Ze stood above, looking down at the noisy girl trapped in the pit.

He didn’t even know why he had come over.

That mother and daughter were cold and ungrateful. They didn’t deserve the old man’s sincere care. He hadn’t killed them himself only because he didn’t want the old man climbing out of the ground…

But that didn’t mean he owed them kindness.

He turned to leave.

Then stopped.

In his mind rose the image of her crouching in the dirt, gathering detoxifying herbs for him.

She had lifted her head, eyes clear—filled with worry and pain for him.

Tch.

That mother and daughter were born actors.

Down in the pit, Qin Hui Yin was already thinking about drilling wood for fire. She hated the dark. She feared venomous insects and snakes. If she had a flame, she’d be safer.

A shadow shifted.

A vine dropped from above.

It landed at her feet. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around it.