She had accepted their kindness, so she ought to repay them somehow.
Besides, she had many tricks up her sleeve and knew medicine, while her husband was a man among men. Even if he had fallen on hard times, he was not someone to be underestimated.
People like them were not to be offended.
With that thought in mind, Li Liming went to dig out half a jar of coarse rock salt and handed it to her.
When Zhang Dapeng tried to stop him, Li Liming said, “You can have the salt, or you can have the pork. Choose one.”
Before Zhang Dapeng could say anything, several of his colleagues chorused that they wanted the pork. He had no choice but to keep quiet.
Cheng Yao thanked him. After walking halfway back with the jar of salt, she squatted down in the grass, took a bag of salt from her space, and filled the jar to the brim.
The modern salt was snow-white, and mixing it with the brownish ancient salt looked rather strange.
But that little amount of coarse salt would not be enough for one and a half sides of pork.
Never mind. Only Xiao Fu would see the salt, and he was utterly loyal. There was no need to hide it from him.
Meanwhile, Xiao Fu chopped the concealed wild boar meat into pieces, then cut it into strips of suitable sizes. His movements were quick and practiced.
He poured out the salt and began curing the pork.
Looking at the two different grades of salt mixed together, he did not need to guess. His mistress had tampered with it again.
That fine salt was white and delicate—something that absolutely should not exist in this world!
How had Madam obtained it? Could it be that she was an immortal?
Xiao Fu could not figure it out. He sighed and let the matter go. He would return and report it to his master.
A man’s woman was his responsibility to worry about.
Xiao Fu stopped thinking about it. He evenly rubbed the salt over every piece of meat, kneading it vigorously so that the salt would penetrate thoroughly.
After a while, Cheng Yao came over.
“I’ll hide the meat here first. Uncle Xiao, go cure that half a carcass of pork.”
“How will you hide it?”
The question slipped out of Xiao Fu before he could stop himself. He glanced around.
This place was far from any village or shop. Could she be planning to bury it in the ground?
Cheng Yao smiled. “I have my own way.”
Xiao Fu’s expression tightened. He lowered his head and admitted his mistake. “This old servant overstepped.”
Madam’s affairs were to be kept secret, yet he had actually questioned her in front of everyone. He truly was getting senile.
“It’s all right.” Cheng Yao’s smile did not change. “You were only concerned for me.”
“Thank you for your understanding, Madam.”
Xiao Fu made a hand signal before bowing and retreating.
Cheng Yao raised an eyebrow. Was he telling the hidden guards to withdraw from her side?
Sure enough, she saw the branches on either side of her move almost imperceptibly. Two shadows flashed past, so quickly that anyone might have thought it was merely a trick of the eye.
The ancient people’s qinggong was truly astonishing!
Cheng Yao secretly marveled at it. Her eyesight was already excellent; an ordinary person would never have been able to catch even a glimpse of them.
She crouched down and looked around, extending her senses to make certain there was no one else nearby. Then she lightly swept her hand over the wild boar meat piled on the grass, and every piece vanished.
Xiao Fu was handling the other half of the carcass. But since he was cutting it in front of everyone, his movements appeared much clumsier. The knife went back and forth, sawing away until he finally managed to cut off a piece of meat.
His gestures and movements matched perfectly with his identity as an ordinary old man past fifty.
Zhan Haochen stepped forward. “Uncle Xiao, let me do it.”
Xiao Fu did not stand on ceremony. He gave up his place and went to find some large, clean leaves. Later, he would wrap the cured meat in them and bind the bundles with vines.
Madam Zhan also came over to help, rubbing salt into the pork.
The others could only watch enviously.
“The Haoting family came through without a scratch and even caught a wild boar!”
“They’re eating meat while we can only chew on tree roots.”
“Be satisfied. If it weren’t for Haoting’s wife, we wouldn’t even have tree roots to chew on. We’d have starved to death.”
Listening to the discussions, the older members of the clan began to think more actively.
Everyone had said that Zhan Haoting was down on his luck, but judging by the current situation, his family was actually doing the best out of the entire group.
Not only were his injuries gradually improving, but when everyone had been attacked by the wild boars, his family had stayed far away and even managed to capture one. The rest of them, meanwhile, had suffered deaths and injuries, and barely eaten any pork before getting themselves into trouble.
And then there was Cheng Yao, who possessed so many abilities that everyone now trusted her and regarded her as their backbone.
Clearly, Zhan Haoting’s luck had not run out. In fact, it was steadily improving. It was not impossible that he would rise again in the future!
They could no longer treat him as a cripple, nor could they continue to waste away in despair.
They had to do something to prove their worth to Haoting. Only then might he help them rise with him in the future!
With these thoughts in mind, several of the more shrewd elders summoned the younger members of their families and spoke to them in low voices.
But those younger ones were simple-minded and could not help glancing toward Cheng Yao and Zhan Haoting. It was hard for anyone not to notice.
Cheng Yao focused slightly, and immediately heard every word they said.
They had concluded that Zhan Haoting would make a comeback. The entire clan had to protect him and his family, doing everything in their power to help him regain his footing and soar ninety thousand li into the heavens.
At last, these clan members had come to their senses and learned to read the situation.
That was also a good thing for Zhan Haoting.
…
This time, Constable Wang did not need to struggle to persuade the county magistrate to send soldiers to arrest the villagers. He merely had to report the wild-boar attack, and the county magistrate sent people to investigate.
In less than half an hour, he returned with officers from the county office.
The coroner examined the bodies, the officers questioned everyone, and the clerk recorded the case. Finally, everyone signed and pressed their fingerprints.
Once the procedure was complete, the officers returned to report.
Constable Wang commandeered several crude farming tools from the abandoned village and arranged for people to bury the dead.
By then, night had fallen. Torches were planted all around the clearing, illuminating this small corner of the world.
The wind whimpered through the bare branches, while the cries of crows sounded harsh and eerie.
Everyone was like a puppet whose soul had been torn away. Numbly, they picked up farming tools and stones and began digging pits.
The iron shovels and hoes struck against the earth with dull, heavy thuds.
Again and again, each blow seemed to fall upon everyone’s heart.
The pits were neither deep nor large, merely holes in the earth barely big enough to hold a body.
In the past, when a clan member died, they would have been given a grand funeral. Now, even a coffin, a mat, or a raised burial mound had become an unattainable luxury.
When the first battered corpse was carried over, the oppressive silence was finally broken.
It was an elderly woman. A wild boar’s tusk had pierced straight through her chest, and the terror and agony of her final moment remained frozen on her face.
Her daughter’s hair was disheveled and her eyes swollen and red. She suddenly threw herself upon the body, clutching her mother’s cold, rigid leg as tightly as she could. From her throat came a howl that sounded less like a human cry than the wail of a wounded beast.
“Mother… Mother! Open your eyes and look at me! Look at me!”
Her sobs tore through the night. Her shoulders heaved violently, as though she meant to weep out her very heart and entrails.
The people around her turned their faces away, their eyes reddening, yet no tears came. The successive waves of hardship and terror had already wrung them dry.
The one-armed man leaned against a tree, watching helplessly as his young son’s body was placed into an earthen pit.
The child was no more than five or six years old. His small body lay limp, his face still bearing the innocence of childhood, while a huge, bloody wound gaped at his neck.
The man opened his mouth. A hoarse, rattling sound came from his throat, but he could not form a single complete word. Only large tears rolled from his clouded eyes.
“Bury them… bury them… Let them rest in the earth…”
Fifth Grandfather’s aged voice murmured the words. It was impossible to tell whether he was comforting the others or merely trying to numb himself.
There were no coffins, no gravestones—not even enough left to tell whose remains were whose. They could only make out the bodies roughly and place them in a pit.
Someone tossed a handful of dried grass into the pit and rasped, “At least… they’ll have a patch of earth over them.”
