Chapter Twenty-One: A New Life

Wildman Village was nestled in a mountain valley, unlike most of the plains across the Northeast. This was part of the Greater Khingan Range, surrounded on all sides by towering larch trees so thick that it would take several people to encircle their trunks. Two streams converged in the valley, and the village sat at the junction of these rivers. It was said that the area was originally inhabited by the Oroqen people, but after the founding of New China, many lumberjacks settled here, gradually transforming it into the village it had become.

It was early September, and the mountains still showed traces of green. Old Man Miao was one of the few in the village who had seen the world beyond, held in high esteem by the locals. He had a daughter named Miao Lan, a few months younger than me. When I first met her, she was busy drying mushrooms. Upon learning that we were young intellectuals sent from outside to learn here—and seeing Fatty’s injuries—she immediately began spreading the news throughout the village.

Glutinous rice was common in the south, but here in the north, deep in the mountains, finding it was nearly impossible. Fatty Stone’s luck truly was extraordinary, for there actually was a family in the village with glutinous rice. They had relatives in Huaiyuan County, Anhui, who had sent some specialty goods the previous year, including a small bag of glutinous rice.

As for snake medicine, this was the mountains; during the agricultural off-season, locals would forage for wild herbs to supplement their incomes. By noon, everything that Chen Wenbin asked Old Man Miao to prepare had been gathered.

By this time, Fatty’s lips had turned purple, and his body shivered uncontrollably. From his thigh down, the skin was blackened. His legs were already thick, now swollen to nearly the size of an elephant’s. In those days, the atmosphere was tense, and Old Man Miao dared not tell the villagers the truth, only claiming the boy had been bitten by some poisonous snake. If he’d said it was a zombie, who knows who might report it, and that would bring disaster.

He wasn’t put on the kang bed; instead, a layer of straw was laid out on the ground. Chen Wenbin asked Old Man Miao for a sharp knife and set it to roast over the fire. When the blade was red-hot, he sliced it across Fatty Stone’s wound. I heard a sizzling sound, accompanied by the acrid scent of scorched flesh, and thick black blood oozed out, twisting like earthworms.

Fatty Stone squinted, probably catching that smell. Despite his