Chapter 576: Toward That Remote, Rural Backwater (8)

Qing opens her eyes to a pitch-dark tent, breath showing white in the air with a bite of cold.

Just before dawn is always the coldest.

If it feels chilly even to Qing, the weather is no ordinary weather.

She had wintered at Divine Lady’s Gate with nothing but a thin face veil that let the river wind—and people’s gazes—cut through like knives.

Granted, Hubei’s climate is warm—there’s not a single day of the year when water freezes—so though the wind cut like blades and made the perceived cold harsh, the temperature itself was never that low.

Qinghai, however, frosts every night save a single season—Sixth through Eighth Month.

So Qing squirms inside the sleeping bag and blinks, her face unusually stung by the cold.

Wow. We blocked all the wind and still this chill.

Feels like we crawled into a freezer.

That thought brings to mind Peng Daesan, a man who, for all he’s a man, is unusually sensitive to cold.

Qing rises with care and studies his sleeping face with a pre-dawn–piercing, beyond-human sight.

It’s too dark to see color true, but even so his lips look badly drained—no doubt gone blue.

Are Hee-mae and Gunyeong alright? Hm. They seem fine.

One gently sawing logs, the other purring, both faces calm with a faint smile—though isn’t Gunyeong’s face somehow more expressive when she’s asleep?

Anyway, after all that stubbornness last night, he looks exactly the sort to wake with a cold. We can’t very well leave him now.

So. No help for it.

Qing rises without sound or sign, sliding up like a ghost. If she couldn’t manage this much, she’d be unfit even as an initiate to war.

She needs to warm Peng Daesan’s chilled body.

How?

Qing knows the method.

You light a fire.

She takes a handful of hay and lays it down, props two flat cakes of dried yak dung in a triangle, and teases a spark from the fire strike.

Soon a gentle crackle rises, the flames come up, and with one more dung-cake stacked, a tender heat fills the space—it works like a charm. For heating, well—what to call it—direct fire-grill is the best.

Direct fire-grill is unbeatable.

It’s delicious for meat.

Not just meat. Have you seen Central Plains chefs with a great wok, flinging the contents high with sweeping shakes? That’s not merely showing off.

It’s to put the food in direct touch with flame, adding fire-flavor—also a form of direct fire-grill.

Direct fire-grill isn’t only supreme in cookery.

For punishing the wicked, nothing matches it. That’s why every civilization on earth has used burning at the stake. No matter the god, priests favor direct fire-grill most.

And now direct fire-grill even for heating?

How much farther will it go in being the strongest?

Mm. Staring at the flames like this makes me crave roast chicken. The kind stuffed with sticky rice. The wings charred almost to charcoal—just so.

Her friends sleep well—must be fatigue.

Warriors don’t pop wide-eyed at every world noise; if they did, every warrior would be an insomniac with hollowed eyes.

Qing’s spatial sense catches a figure sliding up to sit quietly at her side.

She leans in, naturally.

Then suddenly lifts an arm behind the neck and slips white, long, slender fingers—wickedly—right down the front.

The tent blushes red with firelight, billowing.

Crackle-crackle, the flames pat and pop; embers sometimes leap.

And in her palm and through her fingers spill soft skin, overflowing—springy, plush—the most pleasant flesh in the world.

Watching fire while kneading Hee-mae’s chest—what luxury is this.

No wonder Daoists say, “Touch a bosom at dawn and be content to die at dusk.” (They do not.)

Qing’s naughty hand kneads and kneads.

When she closes her fist just a little, fullness escapes between her fingers and her hand buries itself. Hee-mae’s—mine.

Hee-mae smiles and whispers.

“Hee-mae really loves breasts. Since you’ve lit the fire, shall I cook porridge?”

“No. If porridge smells, they’ll all wake. Later. It’s too cold outside to get going early anyway.”

“Mm. A bit cold.”

“Cold? Aren’t my hands cold?”

“M-m, it’s fine.”

So they lean and murmur for a long while.

That seasoned leaf-mustard here was really good. Meat—meat is always good. Ah, what was that—water-boiled beef, and also mixed-offal soup...

After a long stretch of food talk, it drifts to Qinghai’s curious sights.

This is cow dung and yet strangely it doesn’t smell and the heat is strong. Isn’t a yak a kind of cow? Did you see the five-colored cloth tied to the line? Doesn’t that sort of thing feel exotic? What do you even call this, originally—plateau? Stone mountains? I must have liked this kind of thing. It has a vibe.

Mostly Qing talks and Gyeon Pohee answers with soft mm-hm, mm-hm.

Her feelings transparent as a child’s, Gyeon Pohee smiles and smiles.

So from dawn to morning—quite a span.

“Time to get up. Shall I make porridge?”

“Mm. I’ll do it. Hee-mae, rest.”

Porridge while sleeping rough isn’t anything grand.

Toss a few bricks of dry rations into a pot, pour in yak’s milk, set it over the fire—done.

A gentle nutty-sweet aroma of warming milk rises; the dry ration is already seasoned, so no need to add anything.

They say one of the gentlest ways to wake a person is with a delicious smell.

As the tent fills with the sweet, rich scent, the other two open their eyes and sit up naturally.

Compared to the smell, milk porridge is a bit of a letdown.

Call it the fragrance swindle.

How tasty can travel food be? You can’t just add a master chef to the party; and even if you had one, would you pack ingredients, fuel, and utensils to the mountains?

With carriages you might. Crossing a peopleless plateau range? Out of the question.

“San, how’s your body?”

“Fine. Not particularly cold.”

Well, we lit a fire, of course it’s warm.

Step outside later—see how that goes.

Still, the body heat that fell in the night rises with direct-fire heating, and with bowls of simmering porridge, warmth returns in full.

Goodness—Gunyeong is even sweating.

“Hee-mae, close your eyes.”

Gyeon Pohee lightly °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° wets a handkerchief and gently wipes Qing’s face.

Careful hands, lest she chafe her anywhere.

“Iri, come here.”

“No.”

“No my foot. Get over here, now.”

Qing hauls Seol Iri in and scrubs her face briskly.

Rough enough to peel off a layer of dead skin while she’s at it.

Gunyeong likes the bath but somehow hates washing, you know.

She’ll sweat like a summer storm as she eats porridge and not feel sticky?

Seol Iri might protest.

In the North Sea, if water touches the body, it freezes at once.

Then sleeping bags rolled, ground sheet folded, utensils stowed, and at last the tent.

The instant the tent comes down—whoosh—the harsh wind whips the warmth away.

As if the warmth was a mirage, gone in a breath; a brutal morning on Qinghai’s empty winter range in Twelfth Month: a freezer-cold wave near fifteen degrees below freezing in Qing’s homeland measure.

“Mm.”

Peng Daesan silently pulls his thick yak coat tight.

Qing snickers—serves you right; that’s what you get for lacking realm. At the Flower Realm it isn’t cold at all—and off they go.

Following the hoary-white ground where frost crusts, keeping to the less-tamped line, they come upon a cliff’s edge that looks far more than twenty jang straight down.

By the lay of the land, if they had gone straight at yesterday’s fork, they’d have met this natural wall.

“Did I not say—there was a reason the path bent. Had we done as someone suggested, we’d be in trouble.”

Peng Daesan sneers, as if to pay back the earlier slight—but his voice shakes with cold, so it lands without force.

They keep to the ridge up and up, another half double-hour; at the crest the path runs down along the ridge—but—

“Wow. What is that.”

At the far end of the Anima Border Range, the massive Rangilapcheong mass rears up sheer, enough to blot the sky.

Even standing at the ridge’s top, the perpetual snow glitters far above, dazzling.

Thankfully the way isn’t blocked.

A faint track is tamped along the gentler ridge to the left.

“Alright. It’s cold, and our supplies aren’t endless—let’s open it up and move. Haven’t you been itching to stretch your legs?”

A firm, rolling downslope underfoot and a clear open view—Qing finally suggests a warrior’s pace.

The inn servant said even tribesfolk without martial skill cross here, so it “wouldn’t be that rough.”

If this is “not rough,” then on a rough pass you’d break every leg.

But once they skirt the high snow mountain, the frozen riverbed leads onto a long sweep of level ground.

It’s only a small river frozen for winter; on both sides there are obvious traces of fields.

And sure enough, a small brick house appears far ahead.

No sign of people, dust lying thick—clearly a seasonal dwelling for farmers who work the summer and leave after harvest.

The time is now the first of the Rooster double-hour—just after the fifth hour by Qing’s homeland clocks.

Since they’ve reached a brick-built place, they decide to stop here for the night.

By the hearth, dried yak dung is piled to the waist.

Words painted on the wall catch the eye.

—Please use as needed, but do not carry away, as other travelers may come through in winter. If you leave payment for what you burn, we will be doubly grateful.

So in the off-season, they leave it for travelers who may pass through.

No wonder the door wasn’t locked.

One keeps feeling it—people here have generous hearts. The hamlets and tent-villages on the way were the same.

The clay bowl is heaped with coins—the users aren’t stingy either.

Qing slips two silver pieces deep beneath the coins out of sight.

No matter how kind folk are, silver tempts; better to hide it.

Having paid well, they stoke the fire for the frail San who chills easily.

In the cozy brick house they lounge and chatter, and thanks to a farmer they’ll never know, they rest a day in comfort.

So passes the third night sleeping rough.

Mm. It said “do not take.”

That means don’t haul it off to fill your own storehouse, and don’t leave it completely empty in case someone else comes.

It can’t mean you can’t take a little after paying, can it.

That’s not forcing the text; it’s a common-sense reading in context.

Still, since it pricks the conscience, Qing buries two more silvers among the coins, then loads a generous store of yak dung and steps into the morning chill.

The inn servant had said: once you cross Rangilapcheong, you can just follow the river.

Go along the little stream running west; you’ll see, to the north, a gorge-slope that looks easy to cross—take that.

Then you’ll find, in a scooped-out wilderness, another formidable river—follow that straight and you’ll reach Hainan County.

Of course, that’s just what I heard from river-tribe peddlers—can’t swear to it.

If not, then not.

He lost much credibility in the wrap-up, but thankfully he seems to have heard rightly.

With plenty of yak dung, they wake through the night to feed the fire and bolster the tent’s warmth.

On the fourth day they even find a road—unmaintained, but a road—so they should arrive soon.

Following that road, evening gathers; they scout a good spot to pitch—and then—across the way, a thread of smoke.

Well-dried yak dung, unlike firewood, makes almost no smoke.

If a single plume rises, it means there’s a chimney venting it from one hearth.

Qing’s face blooms.

Blooms rather a lot—springs into full-full bloom.

“Oh. There must be a hut there. Or a home. Iri—what does that mean?”

“Sleeping indoors.”

“Tsk, tsk. Iri. You’ve not yet learned the way of sleeping rough. It means—”

“It means—”

“Real food that isn’t that accursed dry-ration porridge!”

“No. Dry-ration porridge is delicious.”

She had been guzzling the boiling pot so her tongue would learn the heat, sweating buckets as she gobbled. Suited her taste, did it?

“Mm. There’ll be other guests—will that be alright? They say those you meet on the road are seldom welcome.”

“Eh, perhaps because there are so few people, everyone’s been kind. And silver makes anyone courteous.”

“Mm.”

Playing at caution but with a faintly bright face—Peng Daesan.

No matter how warm a simple tent feels, it’s no match for walls.

It must be truly, deeply cold.

But the most excited is Qing.

Rice! Food that isn’t porridge!

Broth that’s a real soup, not a barley sludge!

Meat that drips juice, not dried strips!

Giddy, Qing darts off in fast lightness steps—Thousand-League Flight.

Beyond the curving river’s screened rise—ahead—a hidden meal. Therefore: feast incoming.

So Qing pops up over the ridge—ta-da!

Sadly—not a house but a campfire.

She locks eyes with a man long at his roasting—and her face sours hard.

It isn’t meat dripping with juices.

He’s roasting a human.