Early the next morning, Ergouzi shouldered a hoe and a firewood knife and arrived at the foot of Snake Mouth Mountain.
Snake Mouth Mountain was covered in large, small, and fine rocks, with only a stray, twisted tree growing stubbornly out of the stone crevices.
Near the foot of the mountain stood a stone cave shaped like an open snake’s mouth. A clear spring gushed out from within, pouring down among the boulders to form a small stream.
Beside the stream ran a narrow path leading up the mountain.
The path was only a foot or two wide, and in some places less than a foot, forcing him to squeeze sideways through the rock clefts.
The mountain was steep and the path slippery, making it even harder to climb than the hill where he grew his crop seedlings. Stumbling and staggering, he finally reached the summit.
Looking down from the top, he spotted a few slightly flatter stone depressions scattered across the peak and slopes.
These hollows were enclosed by stone on all four sides with a pit in the middle that could catch rainwater and soil, known locally as stone hollows.
One of the larger hollows was surrounded by giant boulders and held a flat patch of land measuring about three mu. The single mu of newly reclaimed field left by Old Stubborn Donkey was located right here.
To come to such a stony mountain to open up wasteland showed that Old Stubborn Donkey was a man who dared to think and act, living up to his name.
It was a pity that this same Old Stubborn Donkey had worked tirelessly from dawn till dusk, forgetting sleep and meals, only to die after finishing barely a fraction of the work.
Stepping into the hollow, Ergouzi used his hoe to scrape away the thick layer of ice and snow, revealing the dark soil beneath.
The soil was remarkably fertile; no wonder Old Stubborn Donkey had taken a fancy to it.
Ergouzi first cleared the snow off the one-mu plot, scattered the rice seeds, and watered them.
Over the next few days, he traveled back and forth across Snake Mouth Mountain daily, hauling over his household goods, firewood, and straw.
Meanwhile, his crop seedlings down below were gradually maturing. Once that harvest was finished, he planned to pull up all the stubble and burn it to leave no trace.
After more than ten days of hard work, the seedlings on the other mountain were fully harvested, and even the wild vegetables had been transplanted.
The harvest yielded over ten dou of rice, filling three large sacks to the brim.
Ergouzi lay back on the sacks of grain, counting on his fingers: at a rate of one sheng per day, these grains would be enough to feed him for nearly half a year.
On top of that, the mu of land on Snake Mouth Mountain would soon be ready for harvest, yielding at least another four dan of rice.
As long as he did not squander it, his food supply for the entire year was completely secured.
With a full stomach came other, idle thoughts.
He glanced down at his trousers, which were now reduced to tattered rags. Not only did they let the wind whistle through from every direction, but they could no longer cover what they were meant to, and even tying several cords failed to hold them up.
He wanted to get a new pair of trousers.
He also wanted to buy an iron pot. Lacking a pot, he had been roasting rice grains over broken pottery shards every day, leaving his throat parched, his mouth blistered, and his bowels blocked.
Sometimes he felt he was being too fussy; back when he ate pig slop he never had such internal heat, yet now that he had food and drink, all these ailments had flared up.
A person really shouldn’t live too comfortably.
Since he would be staying here long-term, he also needed to build a thatched hut—and this time, a bigger one.
If he had any spare wealth, he would even like to buy a few wooden boards to make a proper bed. Sleeping directly on the ground over a thick layer of grass was cold and damp.
Ergouzi shook his head, banishing these unrealistic notions from his mind.
He had barely eaten two full meals before he forgot who he was, entertaining such wasteful thoughts as wanting meat with every single meal.
Five days later, the mu of rice in the stone hollow matured and was harvested, yielding over four dan.
Just as he was planning to head to town to sell the grain and buy trousers, however, a vexing problem arose.
Even if no one stole it, the mountain rats and sparrows would peck away a good portion of it.
He wondered if he could store the rice inside the gourd and carry it with him.
The gourd already held a vast amount of water; if he put rice inside, wouldn’t it get soaked and rot?
There was only one way to find out.
He tried putting in a small handful of rice and tested pouring it out the next day.
He discovered that sometimes water poured out, and sometimes rice came out; the two did not mix inside the gourd at all.
As long as he held the thought of rice in his mind, only rice would emerge, without a single drop of water.
If he thought of water, only water would come out, without a single grain of rice.
He spent three days expanding the gourd until it was taller than a man with a mouth as wide as a rice bowl, and transferred most of the rice inside.
He left only two hemp sacks behind, intending to take them to Sanchazi Town to sell for silver to sew a pair of trousers.
Three days later, after shrinking the gourd back to its original size, he shouldered the two sacks of grain and set off for Sanchazi Town.
Carrying a load of rice twenty li down the road left him as exhausted as a dead dog, forcing him to rest several times along the way.
When he finally staggered into the market, he dropped the carrying pole with a thud, pulled out the gourd, and gulped down a large mouthful of water.
Tucking the gourd back into his lined jacket, he looked around the market.
Perhaps because the New Year had just passed, most families had emptied their reserves and were reduced to selling whatever bottom-of-the-chest items they had left.
Human traffickers selling sons and daughters had also increased, picking and choosing through the crowds as if inspecting livestock.
Once he had money, he decided, he would buy a sturdy young girl to take home as a wife.
She could bear children at night and work the fields, wash clothes, and cook by day.
Next to his makeshift spot, an old man sat with a worried expression, displaying a few worn household items and an old hen.
Ergouzi picked up a shiny bamboo measuring tube from the stall.
“How much for this bamboo sheng?”
“One wen!”
Ergouzi fished a copper coin from his jacket and bought the measuring tube.
Such an item was simple to make with just bamboo and a saw, and the price was fair.
“Young man, would you trade your rice for this hen?” the old man asked eagerly, eyeing the hemp sacks.
Ergouzi glanced at the old hen the man was holding; its feathers were mostly bald, and it likely couldn’t lay many eggs, so he shook his head and refused on the spot.
Just then, someone approached wanting to buy grain seeds, and Ergouzi turned his attention back to selling his grain.
With the ice and snow melting, it was the busy spring plowing season, making seeds highly sought after.
Within half a day, both sacks of grain were completely sold out.
He cleared a total of two thousand six hundred wen, the copper coins weighing nearly twenty jin on his body.
The massive pile of loose coins bulged out from his tattered jacket, but the garment was so full of holes that he couldn’t keep them contained, and coins kept slipping through the gaps.
Having no other choice, he gathered some rice straw, squatted on the ground, and strung all the copper coins together before tying them securely around his waist and covering them with his clothes.
Stepping back out into the market, Ergouzi felt the heavy weight at his waist. Reaching down to touch it from time to time, he experienced the thrill of being loaded with wealth.
In all his years, this was the first time he had ever touched so much money with his own hands.
With money in his pocket, even though the crotch of his trousers let the wind blow through, he walked with a newfound confidence.
“Are you here to commission clothes?”
Ergouzi looked at the young woman before him. She was about his age, dressed in a faded flowered cotton padded jacket with neatly patched sleeves.
Comparing her to his own tattered state, a wave of low self-esteem washed over him. He involuntarily lowered his head, blushed, pulled his jacket down, and brought his legs closer together.
“Yes! I’d like to make a padded jacket and a pair of padded trousers. How much will it cost?”
“The labor fee is fifteen wen in total. The cotton is one hundred wen per jin, and we have several kinds of cloth for you to choose from.”
The woman then introduced the various fabrics available in the shop.
The cheapest were kudzu cloth and hemp cloth, priced at thirty wen per chi.
Slightly more expensive was cotton cloth at forty wen per chi.
These were plain, un-dyed fabrics; dyed materials cost an extra ten or twenty wen.
There was also a kind of silk fabric that gleamed with a lustrous sheen, looking extraordinary at first glance.
The woman did not state its price, and Ergouzi had the sense not to ask, opting straight for the cheapest option.
“I’ll use hemp cloth!”
With that, the woman took out a measuring tape and began taking his dimensions—shoulders, arms, legs, and waist—making Ergouzi blush furiously with embarrassment.
“You’ll need nine chi of cloth and three jin of cotton.”
“With the labor fee included, that comes to five hundred and eighty-five wen in total.”
“Right! Right!”
Blushing deeply, Ergouzi untied the heavy string of copper coins from his waist, counted out five hundred and eighty-five coins, and handed them to her.
“Could you count this, and tell me how long it will take?”
“Five hundred and eighty-five, exactly right. My mother, my sister, and I will work on it together, and it should be ready in about half a day.”
“Good, I’ll come back later!”
With that, Ergouzi clamped his legs together and hurried out of the tailor shop step by step.
Once on the street, he let out a breath, touched the coins at his waist, and strode toward the blacksmith’s shop.
He bought an iron pot for six hundred wen.
Then he spent another two hundred wen on a small knife.
Its blade was five cun long and one cun wide, sharpened on a single edge—handy for cutting small items and easily tucked away for self-defense.
Making money was hard, but spending it was like watching water flow, especially when it came to ironware and cloth.
The blacksmith trip cost him eight hundred wen, which, combined with the previous five hundred and eighty-five, left more than half of his newly acquired wealth gone.
Having purchased what he needed, he passed by the pork stall once more. After hesitating for a moment at the sight of the fatty pork, he steeled his heart and bought half a jin of fat meat.
As for the aroma of meat buns drifting from the stall next door, he managed to forcefully resist it.
He was merely a humble tenant farmer; even a wealthy landlord wouldn’t dare be so extravagant.
Since the clothes would take half a day, he had nothing else to do and wandered down the street carrying his string of pork.
Having visited Sanchazi Town only a handful of times in his life, everything he saw felt new and wondrous.