“Woo-hoo-hoo…”
As the rooster crowed for the second time and the sky began to grow pale, Ergouzi climbed out of bed.
He glanced at the three pairs of new straw sandals hanging on the wall, took down one pair with a twinge of reluctance, and slipped them onto his feet.
Though the materials for making straw sandals were inexpensive, the process took a great deal of time.
Those three pairs on the wall were the fruits of his staying up late to weave, intended for the town market whenever he had a spare moment.
He was already thirteen years old, and living under another’s roof was no long-term solution. Every day, he lived more humbly than a dog, worked harder than an ox, and ate worse than a pig.
His greatest ambition over the years was to scrape together a bit of capital so he could rent a few poor mu of land and work for himself.
Yet even tenant farming required a starting outlay: first, farming implements and seeds had to be acquired, both of which cost a tidy sum.
Second, one needed to stay on good terms with the landlord’s family; otherwise, with so many poor wretches in the world, there was no guarantee they would let you rent their land.
Ergouzi finished putting on his shoes, then reached into the bedding, grabbed a handful of straw, and stuffed it inside his tunic. When clothes fell short, straw had to fill the gap.
“Eh?”
Just then, a flash of green caught his eye amidst the dry straw.
Peering closely in the dim light, he saw that a shriveled grain hidden in the straw had actually sprouted, pushing out a tender shoot two or three fen long.
What was going on here?
In the dead of winter, every green leaf had long since withered and frozen, let alone seeds germinating.
When his fingers brushed the straw, it felt slightly damp.
Ergouzi pondered this for a long time. Last night, while holding the small gourd to drink water, he had accidentally spilled a few drops, though he had paid little heed at the time.
Could it be that once creek water was put into the gourd, it acquired some miraculous property?
At this thought, he tucked the sprouted grain away in an obscure corner behind his bed and sprinkled a few drops of water from the gourd over it.
Next, he rummaged through the straw again, hoping to find a few more seeds to test.
Alas, any seed worth eating had long since vanished into his stomach. In the end, he turned up only three shriveled grains of unhulled rice.
He placed those three grains behind the bed as well and moistened them with a bit of water.
“Ergouzi! The sun is already beating down on your backside and you’re still lying there like a corpse!”
Before Ergouzi could linger another moment in his room, his aunt’s shrill abuse rang out from outside.
He could only shove the Yellow-Skinned Gourd into his padded jacket and hurry out the door, though the sky outside had barely begun to lighten.
Every day, Ergouzi had to rise early to boil the pig feed and heat wash-water for his younger cousin.
His uncle’s household numbered five in all: two adults and three children.
The older cousin, Zhang Youliang, was older than him and had spent years training in martial arts at Zhengwu Hall in the county town. He could dispatch ten catties of meat in a single meal, kill an ox with one punch, and leap five or six chi high.
The younger cousin, Zhang Youxin, was slightly younger than him and studied the classics under a private tutor.
Though he couldn’t recognize a basketful of characters, he had picked up all the foul habits of scholars. Even in freezing weather, he insisted on washing his face every morning—what was even the point of washing a face?
The sun was already high, yet the boy refused to crawl out of bed, daily putting Ergouzi through the wringer just to heat water for his face.
Since childhood, those two brothers had found their chief amusement in beating and cursing Ergouzi.
Zhang Youxin’s favorite game was to make Ergouzi crawl on the floor while he rode piggyback, shouting orders as if he were a grand general.
There was also a younger female cousin of seven, the sole soul in his uncle’s household who retained a shred of human warmth. Every day, the half-bowl of cold porridge left on the table was what she saved for him.
Yet, being a girl, her standing in the household was low, and her mother frequently reviled her as a worthless money-loser.
Ergouzi sat by the earthen stove, stoking the fire, cooking the pig feed, and heating the wash-water.
He took the opportunity to hold his chilblain-scarred hands and feet near the flames. Once the raw sores warmed, it felt as though thousands of tiny worms were wriggling beneath the skin.
He rubbed his hands relentlessly over the swollen flesh; the itch went clear to the marrow, yet it brought a strange, intense relief.
” dawdling again? Why aren’t you out feeding the hogs? Burning my firewood all this extra time—do you know how much is wasted?”
His aunt bustled over to begin breakfast, cursing as she drove Ergouzi away.
“Eating my food, drinking my water, and wasting my firewood…”
Amidst her tirade, Ergouzi lugged the tub of pig feed toward the pen.
To keep him from pilfering, his aunt personally cooked both daily meals morning and evening, leaving him zero opportunity to dip into the pot.
Thus, Ergouzi had no choice but to cast his thieving hands toward the trough. Reaching the pen and glancing around to ensure no one was watching, he snatched a great clump of the mash and shoved it straight into his mouth, the scalding heat making his eyes bulge.
He also fished out a lump rich in broken rice grains, squeezed it into a ball, and stuffed it into his padded jacket.
The pig feed consisted mostly of dried pigweed, which had to be soaked and softened over the fire before serving.
The large black hog in the pen had been raised for two years and weighed at least seventy or eighty catties—somewhat plumper than Ergouzi himself.
His uncle intended to slaughter the beast for the upcoming New Year, and had recently instructed that extra rice mash and bran be added to its trough.
Naturally, the lion’s share of that added grain wound up in Ergouzi’s belly.
Right up to its final moments, the black hog never suspected that after two years of eating grass, its very last meal before the butcher’s knife was being filched by a human.
Guard against the world as one might, domestic thieves were the hardest to prevent.
Once the pigs were fed and he had swallowed his meager scraps, he still had to climb the mountain to gather firewood.
Ever since the autumn harvest, he had roamed the slopes daily, his labor never-ending.
So long as he exerted himself a bit more, his older cousin’s bowl gained another slice of meat, and his younger cousin’s satchel gained another brush.
Yet the acquisition of the Yellow-Skinned Gourd, coupled with that morning’s discovery, lent a new dimension of possibility to his future.
Previously, his sole ambition had been to save enough for rent and scrape by as a tenant farmer. If he could manage to marry a stout-waisted, broad-hipped wife along the way, he would consider his life well spent.
Now, however, mere tenant farming could no longer contain his appetite; he felt quite certain he was destined to become a landlord.
Just like Old Moneybags Huang, the wealthiest man in the village, who owned hundreds of mu of land, kept five wives, fathered ten sons, and dined on meat every few days.
Lost in these grandiose daydreams, Ergouzi found his stride quickening unconsciously, and the bitter wind lost a fraction of its bite.
Over the next few days, four thriving rice stalks shot up in the tiny room where Ergouzi slept.
Such a crop belonged properly in flooded paddy fields beneath the spring sun.
Yet here they defied reason, alive and flourishing.
Within a few days, they stood nearly a chi high.
He roughly calculated their growth rate at some tenfold that of ordinary seedlings.
To keep his aunt’s family from stumbling upon the plants, he put on a great show of diligence, scouring the lanes daily for dog manure until even Old Moneybags Huang’s hounds could hardly keep up the supply.
The chore inevitably left him smelling foul, coating both his person and his sleeping quarters in a wretched stench.
Nowadays, whenever his aunt shouted at him, she kept her distance and wouldn’t dream of poking her head into his reeking room.
Watching the sturdy growth of those few stalks, he began to wonder whether he should expand the operation.
If he sowed more now, given their astonishing rate of development, he might harvest enough capital by the coming spring.
The previous day, while his aunt set him to hulling rice, he had slipped a handful of unhusked grains away behind her back.
Such a quantity could never be hidden within his room.
Since the gourd could coax sprouts from the dark and freezing air indoors, he decided to test them out on the mountain this time.
The surrounding hills lay buried in deep snow, and few souls ventured up there during the winter months.
Ergouzi scouted the upper slopes until he found a secluded nook, where he cleared away a patch of ground.
The spot was remote indeed; once the drifted snow was swept aside, nothing remained save broken shingle and hard, barren earth.
Doubting whether anything could possibly thrive there, he planted the grains regardless and watered them with liquid from the gourd, praying for a miracle.
Early the next morning, he climbed back up to inspect the plot.
To his astonishment, the rice grains had actually sprouted amidst the ice, snow, and jagged stones.
For the days that followed, Ergouzi made a daily trek up the mountain to wet the shoots with water from the gourd.
In less than a week, they had reached a height of over one chi.
Amidst the frozen wilderness, a patch of vibrant green stood defiant—the gourd was truly capable of miracles.
Meanwhile, the four stalks inside his room were beginning to push forth heavy, thick ears.
At this pace, another two days would bring them to harvest.
Everything was trending in a favorable direction.
Once the New Year celebrations had passed, he resolved to find a way to rent a few poor mu of land.
Buoyed by the sight of the flourishing crop, Ergouzi hardened his resolve.
At the same time, though he poured water into the Yellow-Skinned Gourd at every spare moment, the vessel never seemed to fill, leaving him entirely ignorant of its true capacity.
No matter how much liquid he poured inside, the weight of the gourd remained unchanged.
He had also discovered through trial that by sheer will he could alter the gourd’s size.
At its smallest, he could shrink the Yellow-Skinned Gourd down to the thickness of a hair; its maximum limit, however, remained untested.
Though a single thought sufficed to shift its dimensions, the mental strain was immense. Three consecutive transformations left him so drained he required a full day or two to recover.
Shrinking it was handy enough, but if it grew too vast to reclaim, concealment would become impossible.