It was easy to fall into a rhythm of life. Get up, carry water, make breakfast, tend the garden, explore the woods, chop firewood, make dinner, sit in the tiny courtyard helping Grandma process whatever leaves, seeds, stems, or mushrooms had been collected. Rinse, repeat.
Actually, not everything was routine. A couple days ago I entered the kitchen to make breakfast and stumbled over a lump of something on the floor. Closer inspection revealed it to be a rabbit. Glancing around, I saw the little fox grooming her front paw, studiously ignoring me.
“Did you do this?” I asked, surprised. In the days since she turned up, I had gotten in the habit of talking to the fluffy little guy. To be honest, she was more expressive than some humans I had met, and possibly more intelligent too. She stopped licking her paw and, assuming a prim posture, tilted her head to give me a look as if to say, “Of course it was me.” It was hard to believe that such a cute, tiny body could radiate so much superciliousness. I chuckled and ruffled the fur on her head. Superciliousness quickly turned to indignation.
Rabbit is very lean, even more than chicken breast, and it’s not very meaty. I mulled it over while cleaning and preparing the meat. Grilled rabbit seemed like a lot of trouble for a little payoff. And I didn’t have much in the way of seasonings. My mouth watered at the thought of rabbit paella, but we didn’t have any rice. I settled on a rabbit stew.
First things first, I took the rabbit hide and stretched it out in the sun to air dry. Grandma only had a few clothes and didn’t have much in the way of footwear. Maybe I could make her something warm for winter. As I worked, the little fox trotted along behind me, supervising my actions. It was nice to have the company. It distracted me from some of the gloomier thoughts that had been creeping up on me.
I didn’t have many memories of this world’s OG-me, but the ones I had, though very fuzzy, were gruesome. OG-me had killed several guards the night I transmigrated. When I used to read isekai novels back in my old life, the memories seemed like a cheat code, like a secret how-to manual for the world. But the the pleading fingers spastically clutching my arm as my own hands tightened the wire; eyes that went from inattentive ease to disbelief to terror, the sound of bones splintering with a sound like a breaking tree branch, the agonized scream of a dying man… seeing that all in the first person was haunting.
I shook myself and picked up the fox, cuddling her as I walked to the garden. There was no old life for me to return to in this world, but I hadn’t thought much about what kind of new life I wanted. Somewhere in my vague memories was a sense of a map to Star River City which seemed to be a pretty big city. I definitely needed to go to a market, but couldn’t bring myself to return to Shang Cheng City. But any big city should have some kind of market. It just made sense.
Rabbit stew, like any stew, is a big deliciousness payoff for very little effort. I sauteed some garlic and onion in a dollop of duck fat and added some small potatoes. Next, in went the chopped rabbit. Little fox was yowling demandingly at my feet, so I strategically dropped a tiny piece of meat for her. She looked at me in disgust until I presented a new bit of meat on a plate, which she gobbled it up before resuming the yowling. I got the impression that she wanted some stew, but if dogs can’t eat garlic or potatoes, can foxes? I wasn’t sure. Better safe than sorry. I was 99% sure she didn’t agree with me on that front, though.
Usually, you would add rosemary to rabbit stew. This being an ancient China-xianxia-type world, there wasn’t any to be had. Instead, I got some tender pine needles. I tied them together with a stem of grass and dropped them in the wok with the rest of the stew ingredients, then lidded it and left it to simmer for a while. Ahhh, it already smelled amazing.
It had been a pretty hot day. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. Iced tea would be perfect right now. Unfortunately, that was another casualty of the lack of cold hard cash. Fortunately, every square inch of the mountain seemed to have some useful plant or another. The other day, Grandma and I had picked and dried a nice pile of mint. There might not be any ice or tea, but peppermint tea with honey made a refreshing substitute. Since there weren’t any cups, I filled two bowls and went to find Grandma.
Grandma was sitting in the not-very-big courtyard. Apart from the well, there was a center area that was paved with very worn stones. Over to the side, making the whole space cramped, was an ancient-looking tree with a thick, distorted trunk. It was so enormous that I couldn’t even get my arms halfway around it. Most of the branches were dead, and had broken off leaving blunt stumps behind. But one a few green leaves fluttered from one tiny twig near the top, making the whole thing look lopsided. When it rained, water dripped off one of the dead branches onto the paving stone below, where it had worn a hole.
There was a stone table next to the tree. It was surrounded by several cylindrical stone stools in various states of disintegration. Grandma liked to sit at the table in the afternoons. She just sat quietly, looking at the trees, listening to the birds, and tracing her fingers over the worn-out carvings on the table. It was pretty obvious the table used to have elaborate carvings, but, like everything else in the courtyard, it was in disrepair. You could see patches of blurry-looking animals, leaves, or flowers on parts of the table, but on Grandma’s side the carvings seemed to have been finger-painted on.
I set one bowl in front of Grandma and sat myself down cross-legged on the ground, leaning my back against the old tree. Grandma, tiny and frail as she was, might be able to sit on one of those stools. I wasn’t going to risk my luck. As I sat down, the little fox leapt gracefully up to Grandma’s lap. Grandma lifted her head up as if waking from a dream. Like usual, she looked confused, then pleasantly startled as she said, “Ah-Zhou!”
“Grandma!” I smiled back. Grandma’s lower eyelids crinkled deeply in a smile. She lifted her bowl and took a deep drink, smacking her lips at the sweetness. Her fingers, which had been stroking the table’s surface, moved to petting the little fox who nestled blissfully on her lap.
“Grandma, we need some supplies. I’m thinking of heading to Star River City tomorrow,” For some reason, I had a complicated feeling. Clearly Grandma had been doing fine before I got here, but I was worried something might happen to her. Well, it made perfect sense. I hadn’t seen another living soul in the past two months. Grandma was spry for her age, but that didn’t mean it was necessarily a good idea to live all alone on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. In my old life, for years before I grew up, I’d tried to dull the wish for someone to adopt me. Somehow, in my new life, it had taken me less than one day to adopt a grandma.
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“Oh,” she looked at her bowl abstractedly. “Star River….” Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. There was a slightly confused expression in her bleary eyes, like she was trying to remember something.
“There’s got to be a market in Star River City, right?” I asked. Grandma looked thoughtful, then nodded. I let out my breath in a whoosh of relief.
“I’ll go away tomorrow morning. I’m not sure how long it will take to get there, but I’ll try to come back before two weeks pass.”
Suddenly, Grandma’s hand shot out and grasped my arm. She fixed her pale eyes on me with an intense expression, “Ah-Zhou, you’re going away again? Will you come back?” There was something desperate in her tone that made me feel slightly sad. I covered her hand with mine and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze. “Yes, I promise I will come back.”
The next morning I donned my outfit with its too-short sleeves and pant legs. The fabric might seem coarse, but it was actually perfect for the hot weather. I had no way of guessing what month it was. It felt like late summer. I packed up the honey, ginseng, and rabbit skins. Since I expected to get more at the market, I had thrown caution to the wind and used a generous portion of salt, along with honey and some of those pine needles (which had given an amazing flavor to the rabbit stew) to make duck jerky.
While I went through my preparations, I reminded the little fox to watch out for grandma, keep her company, make sure she ate dinner, and so on. I’d discovered that apart from seeming intelligent, she really was very intelligent. I should have guessed as much from an animal in xianxia-world. It felt weird to notice how my mindset had been shifting. At first, everything seemed like fiction, like some kind of crazy RPG with vivid interactive elements. Now, everything seemed normal and I was half surprised that I hadn’t seen any flying swords carrying people or magical Immortals running around.
By the time I had everything packed up, the sun had risen and was climbing in the sky. I turned back to wave goodbye. Grandma, standing at the gate, waved back. The little fox sat on the gatepost with her tails twitching. She winked both her eyes tightly, with an expression that I could have sworn was meant to say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” It was unexpectedly reassuring, I thought as I headed down the mountain. Star River City, here I come.
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After more than half a day of travel, Dou-Jin felt hot, sore, and grimy. For the first stretch, he had been very lucky to hitch a ride on an ox-cart heading from Shang Cheng City back to its home village. This made the first leg of the journey a lot faster. Travel was supposed to be edifying, and Scholar Wu, who had given him lessons, liked to say, “Traveling a thousand miles is better than reading a thousand books.” Among the new things Dou-Jin had learned were that ox-carts, though picturesque, were extremely bumpy, and that they also made a reasonably efficient delivery mechanism for ox farts.
Still, when they reached the crossroads to the village, Dou-Jin sincerely thanked the ox-cart driver, and finally succeeded in pressing a couple broken coins into his unwilling hands. Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, the ox-cart driver rattled up the hill towards his home. If Dou-Jin had walked, he would probably have sheltered overnight in that village. Luckily, he was making pretty good time. Dou-Jin started walking in the direction of Star River City with a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach. Soon, the nervousness was displaced by thirst.
To his left there was a slope, so maybe there would be a stream somewhere to his right. Dou-Jin slipped off the road and followed a shallow ravine, feeling hopeful. The forest was completely silent, with none of the familiar buzz and chatter of the city. A strange cry broke out. Dou-Jin froze.
A high-pitched, desperate voice, “That’s all the money I have, but let me go and I’ll give you more. I’m an official, I can give you anything from the treasury-” A roar sounded and cut the voice off suddenly.
“You think we’re stupid? You’re right. We’re too stupid to know anything. What official, what emperor, what heaven, what hell! Laozi isn’t stupid enough to put a knife in your hand and hold it to my own neck. Robes!”
As the clothes rustled, Dou-Jin silently crept closer, hiding behind a tree. Screened from the road by some tall bushes, a plump figure was scrambling out of some expensive looking robes. Three men in rough, dirty looking clothes stood around him. Two of the men had clubs, while one was playing with a dirty knife and running his finger over the blade’s edge. One of the bandits was tall and muscular, with extremely hairy arms and a fierce expression. The second one, though not tall, was very lanky, with prominent bones and deeply sunken cheeks. He looked frantic with hunger and was emitting a constant breathless giggle.
After handing over his outer robes, the official hesitated, and looked appealingly at the bandit with the knife.
“Keep going,” The tall, muscular bandit said, raising his fist. When the official cowered and continued disrobing, the tall one chuckled brutally and glanced at his two companions for approval. The third bandit had his back to Dou-Jin, but Dou-Jin saw his ears move as if he had smiled.
When the official handed over his fine linen inner robes, the third bandit shifted his hand to grip the knife’s handle steadily. With a pulse of restrained excitement in his voice, he instructed the tall bandit, “Go put them away, we can’t sell them if they get blood on them.”
The muscular bandit walked away and obediently started folding the robes to put into a bag on the other side of the clearing. Dou-Jin’s eyes widened suddenly. On the other side of the clearing, the tall bandit stepped gingerly over several bodies that had been dragged and thrown into a pile. Intermingled with the limp figures of several servants were the bodies of two guards. Their uniform and armor were almost identical to his father’s.
The third bandit grabbed the official by the neck, struggling to hold the bare body still as he raised the knife. The official let out a horrified cry and tried to dart away. As the two struggled, the skinny bandit’s giggling got more and more hysterical and high-pitched until he sounded like a monkey screeching.
“Why-why-why are you doing this?” The official’s voice was strained by the arm around his throat. The third bandit paused, smiling like a snake, clearly relishing the official’s fear and his own domination “Because I can.”
Dou-Jin didn’t remember when the branch had gotten into his hand. He wasn’t a good fighter, and he had no chances against three. But some part of him whispered, You don’t have to win, you just have to make room to run. Sometimes, his father and the other guards used to teach him martial arts basics. There were famous martial artists in the city, but neither Dou-Jin nor his father were talented enough to join a sect for proper training. But his father made sure to teach him the basics he learned as a guard, and, what he said was more important, how to fight dirty.
But somehow, in a real situation, his mind blanked out anything he had learned. In a frenzy of fear and anger, Dou-Jin ran out, flailing the branch. By sheer luck, he hit the hand holding the knife, which went spinning through the bushes. The snake-like bandit cursed viciously, dropping the official who scrabbled away on his hands and knees. Dou-Jin swung the stick at the bandits, but kept missing. Adrenaline made his breath grate in his chest. He tried to shout, but was only able to gasp, “Run!” before he felt a heavy thud on top of his head. Stunned, he staggered, distantly noticing something sticky running into his eyes before everything went black.