22 Wow

It had rained only lightly the night before, yet the mushrooms in the mountains had already begun to emerge. Beneath dead branches and rotting leaves, they appeared sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes in dense clusters spread across whole patches of ground.

As the weather warmed, the mountains grew colder than the land below. This was the season when people began gathering mushrooms.

Every year at this time, whenever they had the chance, the villagers—adults and children alike—would head into the mountains.

The mountain belonging to Jiang Zhu’s family was naturally their first choice.

When Jiang Zhu’s father, Jiang Zhengshan, was still alive, he had never bothered to stop anyone. Whoever wanted to pick something could do so. At first, people would still mention it to him, but later they simply treated the place as either their own mountain or an unclaimed wilderness. Whatever they wanted, they picked; whatever they wanted, they gathered.

Yet just as Jiang Zhengshan could not bring himself to forbid fellow villagers from digging bamboo shoots, gathering wild greens, or picking mushrooms, the villagers, mindful that the mountain belonged to his family, would only take what they needed for themselves and would not sell it.

But after Jiang Zhengshan died, everyone in the village also learned that Jiang Zhu had been adopted. Then the question of whether the mountain should belong to Jiang Zhu or return to the clan became a matter of fierce argument.

Trying to seize an orphan’s property was simply too shameless. Jiang Denian was both the clan head and the village magistrate, and by seniority Jiang Zhu called him Grandfather. Fond of his own reputation, he never went to Jiang Zhu to “take back” the mountain belonging to the Jiang family.

Besides, strictly speaking, the mountain had never truly belonged to the Jiang family in the first place.

The mountains in the surrounding area with the best locations had been bought by wealthy families from the county many decades earlier. This one had never been planted with tea and had remained unused. Later, when Jiang Zhu’s parents married, it became the dowry of his mother, Shao Qiongyu.

After Shao Qiongyu died in childbirth, she was buried on the mountain. Jiang Zhu’s father was so grief-stricken that he refused to come down and stayed there beside her grave. Jiang Zhu’s uncles and grandfather saw this and never asked for the dowry back. In name, the mountain thus became Jiang Zhengshan’s.

Not everyone in the village knew the details, but the village magistrate understood them clearly. By both custom and law, when a daughter died without leaving a child, her family had the right to reclaim her dowry.

Although everyone tacitly regarded the mountain as Jiang Zhengshan’s, its true owners were still Shao Qiongyu’s family.

Her family had quarreled with the Jiangs before, shouting that they wanted the mountain returned. But anyone could see how deep the bond between Jiang Zhengshan and his wife had been. He had wasted away guarding her grave, and for those years he had lived scarcely better than a dead man. In the end, the matter had been left unresolved.

At the time, however, they had agreed that if he remarried, the dowry would have to be returned.

At first, some people thought he was merely putting on an act for the sake of the mountain and the house, and that once he had saved enough money, he would marry again and have children. No one had imagined that he would truly keep vigil beside that grave for more than a decade.

The Jiang family could not persuade him.

His late wife’s family eventually had nothing left to say. In the end, they could not bear to watch a young man live like a ghost of himself. They even urged him to let go. They told him they did not want the mountain or the dowry anymore, and advised him to find a good woman and settle down.

But Jiang Zhengshan never listened. He drifted through life in a daze until he found Jiang Zhu.

To raise a child only a few months old, frail and seemingly liable to die at any moment, he had to devote all his strength to the task. Little by little, the vitality returned to him.

The villagers watched him grow strong again and begin to smile once more. Sadly, the good days did not last. Jiang Zhu was only fourteen when his father died.

The dispute over the mountain began anew.

Since Shao Qiongyu’s family had said they did not want it, people argued that the mountain now bore the Jiang name. Besides, Jiang Zhu was not Jiang Zhengshan’s biological son, and the uncle who was supposedly his maternal uncle was hardly an uncle at all. Each year, he merely accompanied Jiang Zhengshan to the county a few times to deliver festival and New Year gifts. He was scarcely closer than a stranger. Even if Shao Qiongyu’s family wanted to reclaim their daughter’s dowry, there was no reason for them to stand up for Jiang Zhu.

Jiang Zhu became a helpless little orphan, with only his eldest uncle, eldest cousin, and eldest cousin’s wife taking his side. But even their household was not united. The family of his fourth uncle wanted a share of the property, insisting that the mountain should belong neither to Jiang Zhu alone nor to the clan. It should be divided among the brothers, together with Jiang Zhu and his mother’s family.

The whole matter descended into chaos once more.

Now that it had become a family affair, the village magistrate found it difficult to intervene. He could only summon Jiang Ershan, who was managing the tea gardens elsewhere, to return and discuss the matter.

Jiang Ershan had never considered taking advantage of his nephew. Whether Jiang Zhu was related to him by blood or not, his brother had raised the boy for fourteen years. The affection between father and son had been plain for all to see. Besides, before his death, the fifth brother had entered Jiang Zhu’s name into the clan register.

When Jiang Ershan returned, he gave Jiang Sishan a thorough scolding. Then, together with his elder brother and younger sister, he made the decision himself: the mountain belonged to Jiang Zhu. No one else was going to take advantage of him.

Jiang Sishan backed down. But his family had the most children and the worst circumstances. Watching such a mountain sit there while they could not take even a bite from it, they held a family discussion.

Who cared whom it belonged to? Could Jiang Zhu really stop his uncle, aunt, cousins, and their spouses from going up the mountain?

They began by gathering only what they needed, but soon they started selling mountain produce.

When they began secretly contacting buyers to sell bamboo, Lü Xiangmei lost her temper. She got into a furious argument with Jiang Sishan’s eldest daughter-in-law, and before long the quarrel turned physical.

The matter grew serious. Jiang Dashan beat Jiang Sishan, and Jiang Zheng, as the eldest of the four households, gave the three younger cousins from Jiang Sishan’s family a thorough thrashing.

From then on, the two families became enemies.

No one from Jiang Sishan’s household was permitted to set foot on Jiang Zhu’s mountain.

When the villagers saw this, they thought, Good heavens—even his own fourth uncle’s family is forbidden from going up there. What about the rest of us?

Jiang Sishan’s family had not been the only ones selling mountain goods. Once they had opened the breach, the entire village had begun selling bamboo shoots and other mountain produce every year.

This time, Jiang Sishan’s daughter-in-law and Lü Xiangmei found themselves standing on the same side.

Their family members were no longer going up the mountain to take advantage of Jiang Zhu, so naturally no one else should either.

Jiang Sishan’s household was merely being sarcastic and spiteful about it. Lü Xiangmei, on the other hand, was entirely righteous.

They were all fellow villagers. There was such a vast mountain, yet no one was allowed to take anything from it. The whole village came to resent Jiang Zhu.

Especially since they had been allowed to go up the mountain when his father was alive. Why, now that the adopted son was in charge, could they not even pluck a single blade of grass?

Still, whether it was stealing vegetables, bamboo shoots, or bamboo, or hunting in secret, there was no way to put a complete stop to it. Insisting on every detail would only lead to endless conflict.

Jiang Zhu knew it, and the villagers knew it too.

In the end, everything became a matter of morality.

Jiang Zhu simply stopped policing the lower, flatter section nearest the village. Most of the villagers did not usually venture farther into the mountains anyway.

They avoided one another and pretended not to see.

When it came time to gather mushrooms, Jiang Zhu did not head downhill either. He took his bow and slingshot and led the six little rascals toward the back mountain.

The mountain where Jiang Zhu’s family lived was very high. Bamboo forest covered the lower slopes, while woodland grew above. His house stood on the lower part of the mountainside. Even the most mischievous children in the village normally dared go no farther than the area below his home.

Beyond that, farther uphill and toward the back mountain, the forest became as dense as the depths of Screen Peak Ridge. Without someone to guide them, people could easily lose their way among the trees.

If they accidentally took the wrong direction and wandered into the depths of Screen Peak Ridge, they would be finished.

There were wolves, leopards, and tigers there, along with even more wild boars, badgers, foxes, and other beasts. No child could hope to contend with them. The adults in every household repeatedly warned the children never to play in the back mountain. Anyone caught doing so was sure to receive a severe beating.

But today was different. Jiang Zhu, the “adult,” was leading them, so this did not count as sneaking off to play in the back mountain.

With a grown-up who knew the paths guiding them, the children ran wild—while still worrying that they might actually encounter a tiger.

Excited all the way, they could not resist asking Jiang Zhu for confirmation.

“Are there really tigers in the mountains?”

Before Jiang Zhu could answer, Jiang Jiaye spoke first. “Of course there are! My great-uncle once killed one. Everyone in the village knows it, right, Uncle?”

Jiang Zhu nodded.

His father really had killed a tiger once, though Jiang Zhu had been too young to remember it. The only thing he knew was that his eldest sister-in-law had told him how his father had brought her the tiger hide and asked her to sew him a pair of little shoes. The huge hide had frightened her badly.

She said he had been an especially nervous child when he was little, but after he began wearing the tiger-hide shoes, he stopped crying so easily. Clearly, the local belief that tiger hide could ward off evil really did hold some truth.

Later, his eldest sister-in-law had lent those little shoes to Jiaye and Shisheng as well. They were still kept in a cabinet in her house.

Unfortunately, a piece of the hide had been cut away, which had greatly reduced the price when the rest of the hide was sold.

Part of the savings Jiang Zhu’s father left him had come from selling tiger hide and tiger bones.

Because he had killed a tiger once, his father had repeatedly warned him, right up until the day he died, that he should simply make a living as a bamboo craftsman. He was never to follow others into the deep mountains to hunt, much less become a professional hunter.

It was far too dangerous.

The children dreamed of seeing a tiger, but even finding a few mushrooms was enough to fill them with excitement.

Gathering mushrooms in the mountains depended partly on luck and partly on memory. No one could guarantee which places would yield many and which would yield few, but wherever mushrooms had grown the previous year, they were more likely to appear again the next.

This was Jiang Zhu’s own mountain, after all. He knew roughly what grew where in each season, so he led them directly to the places where the mushrooms were most plentiful.

He did not need to remind them. Children around ten years old all had experience following older children around and gathering mushrooms. If they did not recognize something, they left it alone. If they were uncertain, they left it alone. They picked the large ones first. Anything too small was left to live another day or two, when they could return for it.

The children scattered. There were not enough baskets, so they first gathered mushrooms into the folds of their clothing. Once they had collected a handful, they ran back to empty it into a basket before setting out again.

By late morning, they had gathered a splendid harvest.

They had even picked wild greens along the way whenever they paused between mushrooms.

Jiang Zhu glanced at the sky. It was noon. The sun stood high, and the heat had begun to build.

He called for them to head back.

The children were still reluctant to stop. Jiang Jiaye asked, “Uncle, are we gathering mushrooms again tomorrow?”

Jiang Zhu nodded.

The sky suggested that it would not rain today. If tomorrow remained dry as well, they would have to finish gathering as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the weather would become too dry, and many of the smaller mushrooms would wither before they had a chance to grow.

The children cheered. Their only disappointment was that they had not come across a rabbit or a pheasant.

Jiang Zhu carried the largest and heaviest bamboo basket on his back. The six children carried another basket between each pair of them. On the way home, they kept darting beneath the trees to pick up a few mushrooms that had escaped their notice.

Jiang Zhu led the way, glancing back from time to time. As long as the path was not too narrow and there was no danger of them falling down the mountain, he let them run wherever they pleased.

He walked silently at the front, with six chattering children trailing behind him. They were almost home, and the noise had begun to make his ears ache. He quickened his pace.

Just as he rounded a bend and his house came into view, he suddenly saw Shen Qingyue lying flat on the ground.

Jiang Zhu was startled, assuming that Shen Qingyue had fallen and injured himself. He was about to rush over when he suddenly noticed the small mirror-shaped magical artifact in Shen Qingyue’s hand.

Following Shen Qingyue’s line of sight, he looked ahead and saw a small puddle in front of the bamboo grove. It must have been rainwater left over from the previous night. Two bamboo pheasants and a mountain sparrow were standing beside it, drinking.

Jiang Zhu fell silent.

He had no idea what Shen Qingyue was doing. The only thought that flashed through his mind was Shen Qingyue’s remark about having meat once every ten days.

Without a second thought, he stopped, drew an arrow, and raised his bow.

Shen Qingyue was lying on the ground, trying to zoom in so he could capture the details of his avian model drinking water. He had only adjusted the image to one and a half times its original size when something suddenly whistled through the air from behind him.

With a sharp whoosh, the birds flew away—and his model bird died.

The spectacular moment of the bird being struck by an arrow, falling into the water, and sending up a spray had been captured perfectly on video.

Shen Qingyue was speechless.

What a pity there was no network. He could not post it to his social feed and show off.

He had not yet filmed the close-up of it drinking, either.

He turned around with profound grievance and saw Jiang Zhu standing in an elegant archer’s pose, the bowstring still trembling.

Shen Qingyue instantly changed his expression and whistled at him.

Jiang Zhu was speechless.

The accompanists behind him finally recovered and each let out a perfectly timed cry of admiration.

“Wow!”