The post station office was thick with the scent of charcoal smoke and the heavy stench of blood.
Xie Yunjing tore open half of his padded coat, revealing three claw marks on his shoulder blade so deep the bone was visible. As the Jinchuang medicinal powder was sprinkled onto the wounds, his molars ground together with an audible grit, yet he turned his head to look out the window.
At the relay station, Shen Taotao was like a sparrow returning to its nest, chirping excitedly as she rushed toward the wooden hut blanketed in fresh snow.
The wind and snow were firmly locked outside.
Shen Taotao ran her fingertips over the pinewood walls, the crisp, clean scent of the wood seeping into her lungs.
The square hall, built from logs, was spacious and open. Shen Fu, hunched over, repeatedly rubbed the smooth Tuo tou tenon with his rough hands: “Incredible… truly incredible…”
His voice trembled, “Last night, when I looked at the drawings Taotao gave me, I thought it was just child’s scribbles. But now that the pillars are up, I understand…” His withered finger pointed toward the clearly partitioned doorways. “The east side for your mother and me, the west for the eldest, the south for the second son and his wife, the north for Taotao… It fits together perfectly. Even the gods couldn’t have calculated it so precisely.”
“This is just the beginning!” Shen Taotao pulled Shen Fu to stand in the center of the main hall. “Watch closely, Father!”
She drew a neat square on the earthen floor with her foot. “Every room will have a large Huokang!” She spread her arms wide dramatically. “The kang tunnels connect to the stove. Once the firewood is lit, the kang will be hot enough to bake flatbreads! The rooms will be as warm as a spring sunspot!”
“Huokang…?” He Shi murmured, clutching the hem of her clothes, her gaze fixed on the empty space in the room as if she could already see flames leaping. “Lighting a fire… can it really warm the entire room?”
“More than that!” Shen Taotao raised her eyebrows proudly. “The head of the kang will toast your backside, the foot will warm your soles. Sleep through the night, and your bedding will be damp with sweat!”
Shen Xiaochuan rubbed his chapped, frostbitten hands excitedly. “Good heavens! This is even better than the warm stoves in the capital!” He suddenly nudged the grinning Shen Dashan beside him, and the two brothers laughed, revealing their big teeth.
Shen Ersao leaned against the doorframe, her pale hand instinctively covering her lower abdomen. A trace of hopeful smile crept onto her lips. Perhaps, in this snowy hole of Ningguta, she could truly give birth to a child who would never go hungry or cold.
“Clang—clang—clang!”
The guards’ shouts abruptly shattered the warmth: “Everyone, get out here! Meat stars have fallen from the sky!”
The hovels erupted into chaos.
Men clutched chipped earthen jars, women held ceramic basins tightly, and even an old man who could barely walk shuffled out, leaning on a wooden stick.
In the open space beside the stables, a charred wild bear lay gutted, its crimson innards splattered across the snow, steaming.
The guards cursed as they chopped the meat and tossed it into a large pot of boiling water. The greasy, bloody scent, mixed with snowflakes, assaulted everyone’s nostrils.
“Meat… it’s really meat!” An old woman’s shriveled lips trembled, her eyes glued to the bones rolling in the pot. Her husband had starved to death in a snowdrift three years ago, never having tasted meat until his last breath.
The iron ladle haphazardly distributed the meat. There were more bone fragments than lean meat, boiled until pale, but to the exiled convicts, it was no different from Qiongzhi jade paste.
Some swallowed it whole, hissing from the heat. Others tore off their last undergarments to wrap the meat bones, enduring the scalding broth that seeped through the fabric and burned their skin, clutching it tightly—it was life-saving grease.
Xie Yunjing stood at the entrance of the relay station, wrapped in a heavy cloak. The sharp pain in his shoulder, aggravated by the cold wind, made his vision blur.
His gaze passed through the frantic figures scooping broth by the pot and settled on a corner. There, Shen Taotao held a coarse ceramic bowl her family had brought, carefully picking out a piece of lean bear meat and feeding it into He Shi’s mouth.
He Shi shrank back from the heat, her tongue tingling, but she laughed heartily.
Shen Taotao took a bite herself, but her delicate brows furrowed. The bear meat was dry, tough, and sour—far less delicious than she had imagined.
Suddenly, wailing erupted by the pot. The thirteen-year-old Li boy was shoved to the ground, his broken bowl of bone and meat soup spilling entirely into the snowy mud.
Crippled Li held his sobbing son, his clouded old eyes reflecting the glaring oil stains in the snow, like a shattered fate.
Xie Yunjing rapped his knuckles against the rotten wooden railing.
“Listen up!” His voice, cold as iron, cut through the clamor. “The bear was hunted by Shen Girl, and it was her decision to share it with everyone.”
The crowd knelt and kowtowed toward Shen Taotao, shouting “Fairy!” and “Living Bodhisattva!”
Shen Taotao sidestepped to avoid them. After the well incident last time, she felt nothing toward these people who would kneel and worship one moment, then watch coldly from the sidelines the next.
Xie Yunjing’s gaze swept over the exiled crowd and fixed on the distant, pitch-black mountains. “Starting tomorrow, each family must send one able-bodied man to Lao Xiong Ling to dig three hundred jin of ‘Heiyan.’ You have one month.”
Whispers spread through the crowd like poison gas.
Lao Xiong Ling—a place where snow pits buried the dead.
Some shrank back in terror, others clutched the arms of their menfolk. Better to starve than go.
Xie Yunjing’s voice remained icy, each word a hammer blow to the exiles’ hearts. “Those who bring back the stone…” He suddenly pointed toward the Shen family’s wooden house, standing like a fortress in the wind and snow. “…I will have a house like the Shen family’s built for their household.”
The wind and snow whipped across frozen faces.
Crippled Li stared fixedly at the wooden house, then looked down at his son in his arms. A terrifying light burst in his eyes.
“I’ll go!” His hand shot high, his torn sleeve revealing a frostbitten, festering arm. “I’ll earn a wooden house for Dazhuang!”
“Count… count me in!”
“Me and my father too!”
Low roars merged into a tidal wave of determination.
Countless chapped hands pierced the wind and snow, reaching toward the sky.
At the relay station entrance, Xie Yunjing watched the suddenly “excited” crowd, vaguely recalling years ago when he first arrived at Ningguta and poured strong liquor for each of his guards—those blazing eyes.
Zhang Xun approached quietly. “Master, Shen Girl is watching us… her gaze is a bit unsettling.”
Xie Yunjing glanced sideways.
Under the eaves of the wooden house, Shen Taotao stood in the snow holding an empty clay bowl.
She quietly watched the boiling crowd of volunteers, then turned her gaze to Xie Yunjing. The firelight danced on her face, her eyes swirling with anger like a bristling kitten.
He wanted people to dig coal, but why should he freeload her house blueprints?