Opening the nearby vegetable cellar, the putrid air inside stung the eyes.
Half the cellar’s cabbages hung limp and wilted, their green outer leaves covered in slimy mold spots, while rotten leaves underfoot oozed dark, sour-smelling water when crushed.
Shen Taotao rummaged through the baskets and lifted one cabbage, its rotten leaves tearing from core to base with a squelch: “What a sin! Over a third of our lifeline for surviving the winter in Bei Jing has rotted!”
The withered yellow leaves stuck to her hands as Xie Yunjing remarked, “They can be used to feed the horses.”
“What a waste!” Shen Taotao grabbed a rotten cabbage. “I have a solution—I can turn these cabbages into pickled sour cabbage. That way they’ll last until spring.”
“Sour cabbage?” Zhang Xun looked puzzled, having never heard of such a thing.
“It’s just another way to prepare cabbage. Pickled sour cabbage is wonderfully crisp and refreshing,” Shen Taotao said with a nostalgic expression. “When the time comes, we’ll stew it with pork bones—it’ll be so delicious your tongues will fall out.”
The nineteen guards, hearing there would be more delicious food, stomped their feet in unison and roared with earth-shaking enthusiasm: “Great!”
The roar startled an ice cone on the cellar roof, causing it to snap and fall with a crack.
Xie Yunjing clenched his fingertips. Since when had the weather in Ningguta started taking orders from the Shen family?
Early in the morning, twenty large vats were set up in the relay station’s courtyard.
On cleared patches of snow lay old door panels that had just been removed. The wives of exiled convicts wielded chipped kitchen knives, their fingers frozen purple and shiny, yet the dull thuds of blades chopping on the boards carried a raw, vibrant energy.
“Thump, thump, thump, thump…”
Shen Taotao stood on a stool, directing with authority: “Trim off all the rotten leaves, split them down the middle, then rub them with coarse salt grains and layer them tightly into the vats.”
The women chopped with vigor, and soon a small mountain of cabbage stumps piled up beside the cutting boards.
“Don’t be stingy with the salt,” Shen Taotao warned, taking the salt basin from He Shi and pouring half of it in with a splash. “If there’s not enough salt, the cabbage will rot. Don’t skimp!”
Dozens of frostbitten hands reached out, pressing the chopped cabbage firmly into the vats. Each time a layer was filled, Shen Taotao sprinkled another layer of salt grains from the basin.
The pale yellow salt grains danced between the emerald-green cabbage crevices, sparkling like tiny gems.
“Place heavy stones on top—press them down until the brine overflows the rim. Only then is it done,” Shen Taotao declared, patting the full vat of emerald-like cabbage with eyes shining brightly.
The exiled convicts brought scattered stones used for pressing pickle jars, piling them haphazardly on top of the vats. Stubborn yellow-green cabbage tips still peeked out from between the rocks.
Shen Taotao wiped juice that had splashed onto the corner of her lips and looked up to meet Xie Yunjing’s gaze.
He stood at the entrance of the relay station, watching Shen Taotao’s bustling activity with an indescribable, searing intensity in his eyes.
Zhang Xun quietly approached from behind: “Master, our lady is working for the public good. You should show some appreciation—at least send her a gift.”
Xie Yunjing frowned. “A gift?”
“Indeed, no young lady dislikes jewels and gems. There’s that chest in the relay station’s cellar…” Zhang Xun hinted subtly before retreating silently, leaving his master to ponder.
No sooner had the crowd dispersed from the sour cabbage vats than Shen Taotao was escorted back to the wooden cabin.
Inside, the heated kang was warm, and on the table lay a large piece of snow-white mutton-fat jade carving.
The jade material stood half a person’s height, translucent like frozen river ice, carved with a pattern of cranes soaring through clouds. A hint of caramel-colored staining on the wing tips resembled a sunset sinking into a sea of clouds.
“A whole piece of jade material tribute from the North Sea,” Xie Yunjing said, his fingertips brushing the cold cloud patterns. “My grandfather’s treasure for safeguarding his residence when he established his estate.”
The warm glow of the mutton-fat jade reflected off Shen Taotao’s grimy cheeks.
Her eyes fixated on that caramel-colored sunset stain before she suddenly slapped her thigh and exclaimed: “Perfect!”
Xie Yunjing’s lips curled into a smug arc.
“Mother—” Shen Taotao let out an earth-shattering wail, “Quick, remove the stone weighing down the pickled cabbage jar!”
Shen Taotao shot toward the door like a cannonball, her voice cracking with excitement: “We’ve struck gold! This thing can press vegetables so well the brine will last till next spring!”
The howling wind outside the window abruptly fell silent.
Zhang Xun clawed at the doorframe, nearly breaking his nails.
The shadow of the humble crushed stones atop the jar filled with emerald cabbages seemed to stare across the room at the mutton-fat jade carving that reflected mountains and rivers.
Xie Yunjing froze, his smile solidifying into an icy crack at the corner of his mouth.
The warmth from caressing the jade still lingered on his fingertips, but now it felt like touching a frozen tombstone.
“Disaster!”
A mournful cry erupted.
Xie Yunjing and Shen Taotao rushed over to find guards dragging several exiled convicts writhing in pain from the stove. They were vomiting, their abdomens clenched as if slashed by knives, foaming at the mouth, curled up like frozen shrimp.
“It’s poisoning.” Lu Taiyi trembled as he picked apart potato chunks from the vomit, his frost-white hair bristling. “Sprouted potatoes produce toxins that cause abdominal pain when ingested.”
The potato basket clattered to the ground.
Zhao Laosi was thrown onto the frozen black earth by the guards. “Have mercy, sir! I wouldn’t dare poison anyone even with eight hundred lives!”
“Useless fool.” Xie Yunjing crushed a half-muddy potato under his boot, its greenish-black poisonous sprouts twisting like little snakes in the snowy light. “The roads are blocked by heavy snow, supplies are scarce, and the food wasn’t stored properly… These potatoes are all ruined…”
Everyone turned pale, the terror of starvation creeping back.
The wind and snow cut like knives across Ningguta’s frozen ground.
Hunger was a more vicious predator than Di Rong.
Someone remembered the great snowstorm thirty years ago, when icicles hung like dying men from barren branches.
By the third month of the severed grain route, “firewood bundles” thinly coated in frost began piling beneath the relay station’s earthen walls—stacks of human bones, frozen fingers curled like eagle claws, ribs picked clean and gleaming white.
When the last bit of bran burned out in the firebox, the relay station chief’s young son went missing.
The next day, the broken pot used to boil horse feed bubbled away, a half-fingernail-sized piece of red cloth embroidered with a crooked tiger head floating in the grease.
The storm swallowed both screams and human forms. The living became the last rations on the icy plain.
“Panicking won’t help!” Shen Taotao picked up a rotten potato, swiftly carving out the toxic sprouts with her dagger, taking a small chunk of milky-white flesh with it. “Dig half an inch deeper around the sprout pits, and you’ll remove all the poison roots.”
To ensure everyone saw clearly, she demonstrated again—pressing the blade against the toxic hollows to clean out the green sprouts. The muddy potato was instantly transformed into a white jade spinning top, clattering into the bamboo basket. “Why stand there gawking? Anyone who doesn’t want to starve, grab your knives!”
Pine torches suddenly illuminated the pitch-black vegetable cellar.
Cracked pottery basins piled on wooden stools as hundreds of chapped hands gripped notched blades, the scraping sounds like urgent snow tapping against frozen windows.
No one wanted to die. Survival itself was victory.