Perhaps it was because she had been away from Lingxi for too long — this homecoming stirred in Xiao Nanhui many memories that had lain sleeping in the depths of her mind.
She dreamed a very long, very long dream.
The first half of her life in the dream was spent struggling in a haze of sand and murk, made up mostly of scattered fragments from her childhood.
As the dream went on, her vision finally cleared a little — yet she found she didn’t know where she was. Looking at the courtyard and its arrangement, it was clearly the courtyard that had been hers during her time at the Quecheng Marquis Mansion. She was terribly hungry, and her mouth was dry and bitter. She picked up the teapot from the table, but when she poured it, out came sand. So she walked out of the courtyard.
Uncle Chen, Dujuan, Bolao, Xiao Zhun — not a single one was there. Not one answered her in that vast courtyard. She passed through one moon gate after another until she suddenly came upon an isolated rice vat standing in one of the courtyards ahead. She walked up and looked inside — and found it held not a single grain of rice.
At that moment, a throng of people came pouring out from all sides, surrounding her. She looked closely and saw, at their head, none other than Sun Taishou himself.
Sun Taishou stood steady and composed, his voice thundering like a great bell: “You wretched little thief — you’ve come to steal from my home! Beat her to death!”
Xiao Nanhui desperately wanted to explain that she had not stolen his rice. But just as she was about to speak, she found she had no voice. The people around her raised their clubs and closed in. She tried to fight back, but when she stretched out her fists, she saw they were a child’s hands.
A pair of small hands, thin and yellowed, covered in filthy mud.
The figures around her towered enormous in comparison. A great club was about to come crashing down on her head — when suddenly, a flash of moonlit white swept across.
She looked up in a daze and saw a figure radiating a luminous glow, robes of immaculate white, eyes gentle and smiling — like a celestial being descended from the nine heavens above.
The celestial being smiled at her, flicked a sleeve, and all the surrounding figures vanished.
Xiao Nanhui wanted to open her mouth and ask whether they had met somewhere before. But when she tried to speak, she still had no voice — she could only open and close her mouth soundlessly.
Seeing the celestial being about to turn and leave, she panicked and reached out, grabbing hold of his clothing.
The celestial being slowly turned back and suddenly spoke — but the voice was a man’s.
“Xiao Nanhui. Stop grabbing. Get your hand off.”
Xiao Nanhui was startled — and suddenly she had a voice again.
She heard herself give a faint, soft sound, and then she woke.
What met her eyes was a simple ceiling of high, slender Chinese poplar beams. The sparse thatch hadn’t managed to block the sunlight, and a few slanted beams fell directly onto her legs. That one glance took her attention away entirely, and the dreamscape just now receded at speed — she couldn’t hold onto any of it. Only a strange, lingering feeling remained.
She tried to move her ankles. Two lumps bound up like rice dumplings in white cloth swayed in response, each topped with a bow.
What kind of quack doctor did this handiwork? Absolutely dreadful—
Before she could finish the thought, sounds came from the direction of the door. Her hand moved instinctively toward her back, but found nothing there. She hastily lay back down.
Her eyes had only just closed when the person’s feet stepped into the room. Apparently it wasn’t just one person — there was a faint background noise too, like a wooden barrel rolling across the ground.
A voice familiar enough to deserve a slap rang out at the doorway: “Done?”
“Yes — finished just this morning, I’m delivering it fresh. Has she woken?”
No one replied. Xiao Nanhui could only hear those footsteps moving closer to the bed. She struggled to keep her eyelids from twitching, and slowed her breathing.
The person seemed to have stopped beside the bed. After a rustling sound, Xiao Nanhui felt her hand being pulled out from under the covers. She was still wondering at this when a sharp, sudden pain shot through her finger.
“Ah!” She let out a cry and shot upright on the bed, unable to hold herself back.
What greeted her eyes was Wu Xiaoliu’s pudgy face — foolish-looking yet sharp beneath the surface. Those small eyes were glinting with a gleam of delight, like a groundhog that had spotted a turnip.
“You’re awake!”
Xiao Nanhui raised her hand and looked at it. There, standing upright in her thumb, was a thick sewing needle. She felt a surge of righteous fury.
“Why were you stabbing me?! Checking whether I was dead yet?”
“The doctor said to do it. He said to stab once every day to know whether the person has woken up or not.”
She hurriedly stretched out all ten fingers to examine them. Sure enough, three or four needle marks were already there. She pulled the needle out and tossed it aside: “Where did you find this doctor? Are his previous patients still alive?”
“Alive, alive — they’re all waiting outside for you right now!”
And without even glancing at Xiao Nanhui’s expression, Wu Xiaoliu threw back his head and called out in a loud voice: “Heaven be praised! The gods have shown their mercy! Fortress Chief Pan has awoken!”
Before Xiao Nanhui could react, the door was kicked open from outside with a bang, and an enormous crowd of men and women, young and old, stood massed beyond it.
Three or four Southern Qiang men with thick, unkempt beards wore complex expressions as they dropped to one knee in unison, calling out in the Southern Qiang tongue.
“Heaven be praised!”
The crowd followed — a wave of them falling to their knees — and voices of every pitch and every regional dialect mixed together in a thunderous, chaotic din.
Xiao Nanhui was startled by this spectacle. She gave Wu Xiaoliu a shove and lowered her voice: “Hey — explain yourself. Who is the Fortress Chief?”
Wu Xiaoliu didn’t look up: “You.”
She was momentarily dumbfounded. “Where is this?”
Wu Xiaoliu raised his pudgy face halfway and winked at her with exaggerated, meaningful expression: “Fortress Chief Pan, how can you be so confused? This is your stronghold.”
Ah, right. She had nearly forgotten — she had originally set out to come to this stronghold of Pan Mei’er’s.
Xiao Nanhui’s throat felt slightly tight. She switched to the eastern Lingdong official dialect and said: “You told them I was Pan Mei’er?”
Wu Xiaoliu stood back up, his stout frame blocking the curious gazes peering in from outside the door.
“How could I say that? I said you were Pan Yao’er — Pan Mei’er’s own younger sister.” He paused, then added one more remark for good measure, as if he had a death wish: “Isn’t that what you said yourself?”
Xiao Nanhui nearly choked and fell back onto the bed. Wu Xiaoliu paid her no mind, got up smartly, walked to one side, and pushed over a wooden chair fitted with wooden wheels.
“The people of the stronghold are all waiting for you to speak.”