The clouds were pale, the sky high, and wild geese flew south;
The water mirrored green hills, the sun bathed in crimson glow.
Amidst the green hills and clear waters, the red came in two forms: the winding reddish-brown of the surging Chishui River, and the vast fiery red of the sorghum fields covering the mountains.
“Time to harvest the red grain, hurry up now!” A resonant Sichuan accent echoed through the mountains, heralding the autumn harvest of the sixteenth year of the Hongzhi era.
This was the busiest time of the year. Even young boys took up sickles to help the adults hurriedly gather the sorghum.
Su Lu was no exception. He had been harvesting sorghum for three days straight and was only just getting the hang of it… The sorghum stalks were tall, hard, and slippery, not as easy to handle as rice or wheat straw. You had to be steady and precise, with a bit of force—that’s why they called it “killing” the sorghum.
To do it neatly, you had to first tightly wrap your left arm around the sorghum stalks to keep them from swaying. Then, gripping the sickle in your right hand, you extended it forward, pressed close to the ridge, and pulled back hard, letting the stalks fall naturally into your arms.
This work required strength and even more endurance, and for a thirteen-year-old boy, it was still quite taxing. After several days, Su Lu was sore all over, his back aching and legs feeling like lead. Every swing of the sickle sent a tearing pain through his right arm.
He forced himself to finish one furrow, then slumped against a pile of stalks to catch his breath. He was drenched as if pulled from water, his face and arms stinging with a burning pain.
Su Lu glanced at his sun-darkened arms, covered in tiny cuts from the sorghum leaves. The sweat kept flowing, and the entire skin surface throbbed with pain. Combined with the muscle soreness, the sensation made him curse the damned heavens…
The damned heavens indeed deserved the curse. Without any warning, they had tossed him, a perfectly fine urban white-collar worker, not just into rural farming but back five hundred years to the Ming Dynasty!
And dumped him in the remote southwest, at the border of Sichuan and Guizhou!
What a calamity!
~~
Su Lu had once yearned for an idyllic pastoral life, often dreaming of escaping the suffocating concrete jungle to return to the countryside, farm, raise chickens, and live freely.
But now that he was truly back in the countryside, he realized he was like Lord Ye who claimed to love dragons but feared the real thing—he simply couldn’t endure the daily toil of “feet steaming in the summer soil, back scorched under the blazing sky”…
The original owner of this body had succumbed to heatstroke while weeding in the sorghum fields during midsummer, fainting away, which allowed Su Lu to take over.
Since waking up, Su Lu had been cautious in speech and action, afraid of giving himself away. But he found he had worried too much; his mother had long passed away, and his father and brother were rather oblivious, so no one noticed any change in him.
Instead, it was he himself who was overwhelmed by the heavy farm work. Yet, in these vast southwestern mountains, there was nowhere to escape. He could only grit his teeth and persevere…
Ah, when would this life ever end?
Just as Su Lu was sighing deeply, another figure emerged from the sorghum field, staggering over to plop down beside him. The man took off his straw hat, fanning himself while panting heavily.
It was his father in this life, named Su Youcai. He had a fair complexion and a refined, scholarly appearance, looking much younger than his actual age.
Having been here for over a month, Su Lu had already figured out his family’s situation. He knew his father was an old student who had repeatedly failed the imperial exams and had been teaching at the local family school since the previous year. During the busy farming season, even students had to return home to work, and not even the teacher could escape the labor.
Su Youcai fanned himself a few times before turning to Su Lu with a pained expression. “Quick, rub your old man’s arm for him—it’s aching like mad.”
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Since he was playing the role of the son, he had to obey dutifully. Su Lu began kneading the muscles of his father’s right arm with his left hand.
“Ooh, aah…” Su Youcai immediately grimaced and let out a series of groans.
“Son, your arm must be sore too? Let your old man rub it for you.” He grabbed his son’s right arm and began pressing and kneading with his thumb. “We share hardships and should share comforts too.”
“Ooh, aah…” Su Lu winced from the intense soreness, his face contorting as he unconsciously applied more pressure. Soon, the two were taking turns groaning in a chorus of discomfort.
Amid their moans, a shadow suddenly fell over them as a burly man blocked the sunlight.
He had thick eyebrows, large eyes, broad shoulders, and a stout waist. Spreading his large, fan-like hands, he offered a wild melon vine with two small sweet melons dangling from it.
“Eat these—grown in the field,” the man said with a simple, honest smile. He was Su Lu’s own elder brother, named Su Tai. When Su Lu had suffered from heatstroke and fallen ill earlier, it was Su Tai who had taken care of him.
“You two eat them,” Su Youcai waved a hand, finally acting somewhat like a father.
“I’ve already eaten,” Su Tai chuckled, tossing the melon vine to the two of them before turning to leave.
“Brother, where are you going?” Su Lu hurriedly asked. “Sit down and rest a while.”
“Not tired. I’ll harvest one more row,” Su Tai shook his head, picked up his sickle, and headed back into the sorghum field. With a few sweeps of his sturdy arms, he felled over a dozen sorghum stalks. Pressing his knee against the base of the stalks, he wrapped them tightly with straw rope, bundling them into a neat sheaf.
In no time, he had cleared half a row.
The two slackers, Su Lu and Su Youcai combined, hadn’t accomplished as much as Su Tai alone…
“Thank goodness for Second Brother…” Su Lu gazed gratefully at Su Tai’s retreating figure.
“Indeed, or we’d be getting an earful from your aunt again,” Su Youcai wiped the two melons with his sleeve, broke the larger one in half, and handed one piece to Su Lu.
The father and son began munching on the melons with crisp bites. Though not particularly sweet, Su Lu found his mouth watering, his heart and senses refreshed, feeling utterly content.
Su Youcai, swaying his head, even burst into poetic praise: “Sweet as lychee, yet without its dryness; fresh as snow pear, surpassing its crispness. Not the peaches of immortality from the Jade Pool, yet it quenches mortal thirst; not the celestial fruits of the Lang Garden, it soothes the toil of farming…”
Su Lu was deeply impressed, thinking to himself, ‘All I can say is, damn, this is delicious…’
“Second Brother, stop being so sentimental! Third Brother’s been beaten up!” Just then, Su Lu’s aunt came running along the riverbank, shouting urgently as soon as she spotted Su Youcai.
“What? I wondered where he’d disappeared to!” Su Youcai leaped to his feet in shock. “Which bastard did it?!”
“It was the Cheng family! I saw it on my way to deliver lunch!” Su Lu’s aunt was drenched in sweat, her lunch basket nowhere to be seen.
“Quick, take me there!” Su Youcai threw down his melon rind and followed his sister to rescue his son.
Seeing Su Tai thunderously close behind, Su Lu had no choice but to grab a carrying pole and follow.
~~
“There are a lot of them. You have to reason with them, don’t start a fight,” the aunt cautioned as they ran, worried about her second brother.
“Don’t worry, scholars use words, not fists,” Su Youcai nodded.
“That’s good,” she sighed in slight relief.
As they spoke, angry shouts, agonized cries, and the thuds of fists and kicks landing on flesh could be heard from up ahead.
Su Youcai quickened his pace, rounding a sorghum field, only to see six or seven members of the Cheng family ganging up on his third brother in a harvested clearing. They had beaten him until his face was bruised and swollen, covered in blood.
“Damn your ancestors!” Su Youcai’s vision turned red with rage at the sight of his brother’s miserable state. He charged forward in long strides, delivering a flying kick that sent one of the Cheng family members tumbling to the ground, though he himself landed heavily as well.
The other Cheng family members grew furious at this, stomping down on him like whack-a-moles. But then came another roar: “Who dares hit my old man?!”
Su Tai crouched low, shoulders sinking, and executed a ‘wild bull crashing into the mountain’ move, sending several opponents flying.
“Second Brother, I’m here to help…” Su Lu sighed helplessly before joining the fray, swinging a carrying pole. The Su father and sons thus plunged into a chaotic brawl with the Cheng family amidst the sorghum fields!
“Stop fighting, stop fighting!” a shrill cry pierced the fields—their aunt’s voice: “Help! The Cheng family is beating people!”
Soon, members of both the Su and Cheng clans working nearby rushed to join the fight, and the situation spiraled completely out of control…