Chapter 10: Ximen Qing
Page (1/3)
Scenes from the past flashed through Li Heng’s mind. Deliberately roughening his voice, he called out, “Who’s stealing trees?”
“Huh?”
Startled by the sudden voice, Yang Yingwen cried out, her body stiffening. It took her a while to recover.
She looked around and saw a face wearing an enigmatic half-smile.
Instantly relieved, she patted her ample chest and complained, “So it’s you! What are you doing, pretending to be some ghost? You scared me half to death.”
Then she asked, “What’s a lazybones like you doing in the mountains?”
Li Heng immediately took offense. He raised an eyebrow. “Wait. Is that really how you see me? As someone who’s very lazy?”
“My heavens! You’re claiming you’re not lazy? How shameless can you be? Your skin is even fairer than a city person’s. Everyone says behind your back that you look like some pampered young lady who does nothing but embroidery.” Yang Yingwen shot back without mercy.
Li Heng leaned closer, curious. “What else do people say about me behind my back?”
Yang Yingwen tilted her head and studied him before answering seriously, “You’d better not ask. None of it is flattering.”
Li Heng was taken aback. “I thought I was always sincere and friendly toward people. How did my reputation become so terrible?”
Yang Yingwen gave a cold laugh and attacked him mercilessly. “Are you genuinely stupid, or are you pretending? After the disgraceful way you tricked Chen Zijing into bed, go ask around yourself. These days, whose family would dare let their daughter associate with you?”
With his past dragged into the open, Li Heng could no longer keep a straight face. He retorted angrily, “Stop talking nonsense. We were mutually willing.”
“What good does it do to glare at me? I’m not the one spreading rumors behind your back.”
Even after saying that, Yang Yingwen still felt dissatisfied and continued to needle him. “Besides, you had the nerve to do something like that, so why shouldn’t people be allowed to say a few words?”
Li Heng pointed at her, deeply aggrieved. “After all these years of friendship, you don’t trust me either?”
“You’re not exactly innocent. Back in your first year of middle school, you were a complete delinquent.”
Damn it! All she did was expose his shortcomings. There was no way to have a conversation with her.
Li Heng walked past her and prepared to drag the tung-oil tree she had felled back home.
Seeing this, Yang Yingwen grew anxious and hurried after him. “Hey! Li Heng, don’t be like that. It took me forever to find a dead tree. I was going to bring it home for kindling…”
Before she could finish, Li Heng turned around. “Just tell me—does this mountain belong to the Li family or not?”
At that, her mouth opened and closed. She knew she was in the wrong.
Li Heng exhausted himself dragging the tung-oil tree out of the mountains, only to find that the girl had followed him the entire way without saying a word.
So he teased her. “Beg me. Say something nice, and I’ll give you the tree.”
Yang Yingwen was as stubborn as ever. “Get lost. Don’t even think about it. At worst, I’ll find another one.”
“Then go find one. I’m going home. Thanks for helping me cut down the tree.”
With that, he hoisted the tree onto his shoulder and pretended to leave.
Unexpectedly, the girl remained unmoved, simply standing there and staring straight at him.
Li Heng turned back and studied her face for a while. In the end, he could not help asking, “Why are you just standing there? Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
Yang Yingwen did not appreciate the offer. “Don’t bother. I can’t afford it. I don’t want people gossiping about us behind our backs.”
Li Heng raised an eyebrow. “What exactly are you implying? Say that again. Do you think walking around with me is embarrassing?”
Having won the exchange, Yang Yingwen stopped while she was ahead. She gave him a rustic little grin, refrained from provoking him further, and turned toward the mountains.
They had known each other for many years, and Li Heng understood her temperament. She was not truly angry. He immediately set the tree down in a broad spot so it would not block the path, then followed her.
After crossing two more hills, their efforts finally paid off. They found another dead pine tree, though this patch of land no longer belonged to the Li family.
But who cared?
As the old saying went, stealing firewood did not count as stealing. If you managed to get it home, that was simply proof of your ability.
As long as no one caught you in the act and you did not go too far, everyone tacitly agreed to turn a blind eye. After all, living in the countryside, who had never done some shabby, underhanded thing?
Whose backside was truly clean?
The dead pine was enormous. After cutting it into four sections, they bundled it into three loads of firewood. Li Heng and Yang Yingwen had to make four trips before they finally carried everything out of the mountains.
By then, sweat poured from them. They were utterly exhausted, worn out like dogs, barely able to stand.
When they passed a mountain spring, they happily sprawled on the ground and gulped down water. After washing their hands and faces, they finally found time to sit and rest.
Yang Yingwen asked, “Granny Chun has passed away, but Zijing still didn’t come back. Are you two still in touch?”
Li Heng shook his head. “No. But her younger sister brought me a bag of study materials yesterday afternoon.”
Yang Yingwen stared at him in surprise. “Chen Zitong gave them to you? Who do you think you’re fooling? After what you did to her sister, shouldn’t she hate you to death?”
“All right, all right. Are you ever going to let this go? Can we turn the page?”
Seeing that he was genuinely upset, Yang Yingwen did not mention it again. After chatting for a while, they went their separate ways, each returning home.
The tung-oil tree was the best kindling, so Li Heng left it with her and intended to carry only one section of the dead pine himself.
But she refused and insisted on splitting the wood evenly, saying that she was already getting the better deal.
Li Heng tried several times to push the wood onto her, but he could not overcome her stubbornness. In the end, he had no choice but to agree.
Before they parted, he asked once more, “You really don’t want me to walk you home?”
Yang Yingwen rejected him without hesitation. “Please spare me. From now on, just pretend you don’t know me when we’re in the village. I still have to get married someday.”
Damn that ungrateful woman!
She turned against him faster than one could turn a page. Li Heng cursed under his breath, slung the wood over his right shoulder, picked up the rabbit with his left hand, and headed toward the crossroads.
…
Toward evening, his eldest sister came over to mooch another meal, her belly already hugely pregnant.
Li Yan had never understood the meaning of restraint when visiting her mother’s family. Before she had even entered the house, she was already calling loudly from outside:
“Little brother, I heard you got lucky and caught a wild rabbit. Is that true?”
Li Heng had just finished skinning the rabbit and was scalding it with hot water to remove the remaining hair. Seeing her rushing toward him, he hurriedly warned her, “Big Sister, slow down. Be careful not to fall.”
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
“No problem. I’m being careful.”
When Li Yan saw the rabbit, she was delighted. Her eyes lit up as she stroked it.
“There’s so much meat! It must weigh more than four pounds. This will make a wonderful dish. Little brother, cook extra rice. I’m eating dinner here tonight.”
“…”
Li Heng had expected exactly that. He nodded and agreed.
The two siblings squatted by the back door and plucked the rabbit together, one on each side. Before long, they had removed all the fur.
Later, his second eldest sister returned from cutting grass for the pigs, carrying four enormous baskets in one go. Two baskets contained grass for the cattle; the other two would be chopped up and boiled into pig feed.
While they worked, Li Lan asked him, “Did you cut down the dead pine tree lying in the yard outside?”
Li Heng was splitting open the rabbit’s belly with a kitchen knife. Without looking up, he said yes.
Li Lan asked again, “There’s only half of it. Where’s the other half? Why didn’t you bring it all back?”
His eldest sister suddenly cut in. “I know, I know! It’s at Yang Yingwen’s house. I saw it when I passed her doorway on the way back.”
Then Li Yan asked him with innocent confusion, “Little brother, that doesn’t seem right. How come Yang Yingwen has one more tung-oil tree than you?
“You’ve suffered a terrible loss. Should I go find her and bring half of that tree back?”
Li Heng: “…”
Li Lan: “…”
Good grief! What on earth was inside this eldest sister’s head?
Could it really be nothing but bean curd?
She always knew exactly which sore spot to poke, and she was utterly incapable of reading the room.
Li Heng hurriedly said, “Big Sister, there’s no need. I went after the wild rabbit myself and lost a lot of time.”
Li Lan was not so easily fooled. The moment she heard about the tung-oil tree, she remembered something. She stopped chopping the pig grass and went straight to the back mountain.
Before long, she found the tung-oil tree by following her memory. But the tree was gone. Only a stump as thick as a vegetable bowl remained.
Li Lan bent down to examine the cut. It was still fresh, and she immediately understood what had happened.
When she had been gathering pig grass the previous day, she had spotted the dead tree from a distance. But she had been too busy to go over and cut it down. She had never expected that, the moment she turned around, that wastrel would give it to a woman.
When she returned home, Li Lan said nothing about the tung-oil tree. Only when her eldest sister was out of earshot did she suddenly remark,
“I can understand Chen Zijing. She’s a very beautiful girl, after all. But how could you bring yourself to go after Yang Yingwen?”
It was not that Li Lan thought Yang Yingwen was ugly. It was simply that her appearance and temperament belonged to an entirely different world from Chen Zijing’s, and there was no comparison.
Among the beautiful women in the neighboring villages, Li Lan acknowledged Chen Zijing as the only one truly in the same league.
P.S. Please vote for this book! Please keep reading! Continued readership is very important!