In the Northeast, especially in regions rich in water resources, the annual winter fishing around the turn of the year was a major affair, usually lasting for two to three months.
In an era of scarcity, and during a harsh winter marked by food shortages, a grand winter catch could resolve hunger by yielding vast amounts of fish while also rallying the people's spirits and enthusiasm, making it an exceptionally grand occasion.
Tahe bordered Huma County to the east and Mohe to the west, separated from the Ruskies only by the Heilongjiang River. Naturally, with its exceptionally rich waters, it was no exception. In the spirit of communal sharing, the heads and chiefs of nearby farms, hamlets, and fisheries jointly spearheaded the effort, organized under the district committee with all parties cooperating, beginning the preparations for fishing and hunting right around the lunar new year.
Since it was a grand occasion, it was bound to be bustling with excitement.
Early in the morning, many outlying farms and hamlets sent out lines of mule and donkey carts carrying the able-bodied youths of each production brigade along with the educated youth sent down to the countryside. Braving the wind and snow and shouting slogans about braving the bitter cold, they headed into town to stock up on New Year goods and scout river sections to drill ice holes for the winter catch.
As director of the forest farm, Qin Yuhu had geared up and left the house before daybreak.
Only when his uncle got up so early did Lian Youming close his exhausted eyes in sweet relief.
The two of them had squeezed onto a single bed the night before, and the snoring was no different from being in an enemy bombardment zone—a deafening rumble so loud Lian Youming had no idea how Shen Qinghong and her daughter had endured it all these years.
Yet he had barely pulled the quilt over his head to sleep for a bit when he felt someone yank it off him.
Luckily it was freezing here, so he slept wearing padded pants and a sweater, but looking at Qin Hongxiu standing by the bed still gave him a massive headache. "Why are you so reckless? Can you just yank someone's quilt off like that?"
Qin Hongxiu replied nonchalantly, "What's the big deal? It's not like I haven't seen you with your bare butt."
Lian Youming's face darkened. "I was only five or six years old back then."
"Oh, please. I already have someone in my heart."
Qin Hongxiu rolled her eyes, then flaunted the wristwatch on her wrist.
This was the watch Lian Youming had gifted to Shen Qinghong the previous night, but before Aunt Shen could even warm it in her hands, this chubby girl had wheedled and nagged until she handed it over.
"Still sleeping? My mom said we should go to the post and telecommunications office to call Aunt Zhao and Uncle Lian. Don't you miss home with the New Year just around the corner?"
Hearing this, Lian Youming lost any desire to linger in bed. He got dressed briskly and washed up before heading out the door amid Shen Qinghong's reminders.
Lian Youming rode the bicycle with Qin Hongxiu perched on the back, heading toward the post and telecommunications office amid the lively neighborhood chatter, the drifting woodsmoke, and the bursts of laughter.
Unlike in later generations, making a phone call was extraordinarily difficult. Kaoshan Hamlet did have a hand-crank telephone, but its range was limited; calling out of province required going to the post and telecommunications office.
With the New Year approaching, the streets were bustling. Beneath the azure sky stood mostly rows of adobe and brick houses, while the town's only two multi-story buildings towered like cranes among a flock of chickens, standing solitary in the cold wind.
The two of them took their time on the way, eating breakfast along the road. When they finally arrived at the postal building, they found a long line of people waiting, the vast majority of them educated youth wanting to call home.
By the time Lian Youming got his ticket, it was already number fifty-six.
Coincidentally, Wu Kui was also in the crowd, and he immediately came over when he spotted Lian Youming.
Not having seen him for over a month, Lian Youming noticed he had grown dark and thin, with cheeks flushed red from the cold, but his disposition had become much livelier. Likely from staying in Tahe for a while, his speech now carried a bit of a Northeastern accent. He complained that in his village, he spent every day feeding livestock, even sleeping in the pens.
Lian Youming found it amusing. He introduced Qin Hongxiu and grabbed a handful of roasted melon seeds from his pocket to shove into his friend's hand.
The three of them huddled together, chatting aimlessly while waiting for their numbers to be called.
As they talked, Lian Youming glanced over and saw a female educated youth emerge from the telephone booth. With a mournful face, wiping away tears without a word, she turned around and quietly rejoined the very back of the line.
As it turned out, long-distance calls not only required manual switchboard connection, but if the signal was poor, the call might not go through at all, requiring one to get back in line for a new number.
Lian Youming found her somewhat familiar, yet could not immediately recall where he had seen her. Only when she lowered her muffler and took a fierce, resentful bite of the meat bun in her hand—cheeks bulging as she ate—did he suddenly remember.
Wasn't this the female educated youth who had been secretly eating roasted corn with soot smudged across her face on their way here?
Wu Kui craned his neck and asked her, "Lingyun, didn't get through again?"
The girl looked up, then shook her head dejectedly. "No."
Lian Youming asked, "You know her?"
Wu Kui beamed excitedly. "Same hamlet as me. Like us, she came down from the mountain to sit out the winter. She's from Wuzhou, Guangxi. Don't let her quiet nature fool you—she's a genuine successor of a traditional Chinese medicine family. When it comes to treating illnesses, she knows an awful lot. She's the prized treasure of our hamlet."
Lian Youming raised his brows. "A TCM family? Is she really that good?"
"Extremely," Wu Kui nodded vigorously. "Ailments the local barefoot doctor couldn't handle, this girl cured all of them. Her acupuncture is especially remarkable. Not only is she pretty and kindhearted, she's clever too—she just really loves food."
Lian Youming whispered a sudden reminder, "Quick, you're drooling. Wipe your mouth."
Hearing that, Wu Kui instinctively reached to wipe his mouth, only realizing halfway through the motion, "Get outta here!"
Wu Kui then sighed, "She just has rotten luck. She came to wait in line yesterday too—queued up nine times, but didn't manage to connect once. In the end, she only went back when the post office closed."
Qin Hongxiu chimed in with sympathy, "That really is bad luck. Her home's down south and she's up north—the distance is just too great."
Wu Kui grunted in agreement. "When someone asked why she came all this way to be sent down to the countryside, guess what she said? She said she believed an old saying: 'Hit a roe deer with a club, scoop up fish with a ladle, and pheasants fly straight into the cooking pot.' Look at that ideological awareness."
Lian Youming wore an odd expression. Looking at the girl's pitiful demeanor, he found it both amusing and admirable. For a young girl to travel thousands of miles across mountains and rivers from Guangxi to this corner of the Northeast was truly extraordinary. Moreover, she hailed from a TCM lineage. Nowadays, anyone with a specialized skill hoped to be recruited for urban factory jobs to secure an iron rice bowl, yet she...
'Wait, a TCM family? Then she must be familiar with all the human meridians and muscles.'
A thought struck him, and he began quietly calculating.
Coincidentally, the girl was also stealing glances in their direction. At first she looked puzzled, but soon her large eyes lit up, as if she had recognized Lian Youming too.
"My name's Yan Lingyun. Classmate, what's yours?"
Just as he was pondering, Lian Youming heard a voice beside him, speaking with an authentic Northeastern accent that left him utterly dumbfounded.
Turning his head, he saw it was indeed her.
"Didn't you say she was from Guangxi? How come her accent changed?" Lian Youming instinctively glanced at Wu Kui.
To his surprise, the girl's ears flushed red, and she defended herself somewhat sheepishly, "What's wrong with being from Guangxi? Can't someone from Guangxi speak Northeastern dialect? I think this accent is cute."
Lian Youming sized her up carefully and realized she was genuinely tall—at least one meter seventy. Standing there, she even made Wu Kui look half a head shorter.
"You two know each other?" Now it was Wu Kui's turn to be flabbergasted.
Lian Youming replied, "Of course we do. We took the same train here."
"Number forty-two!"
Just then, someone inside the telephone room called Wu Kui's number.
The boy darted inside cheerfully.
"Hello, classmate. I'm Lian Youming."
Lian Youming responded with a smile, but before he could say more, the girl suddenly caught him off guard: "You're injured."
Lian Youming's eyes narrowed slightly. "How do you know?"
The girl who called herself Yan Lingyun wore a dogskin hat and a mink scarf. Her large, watery eyes shone brightly, but her disposition seemed rather timid and shy as she said cautiously, "Your breathing is shallow and short, your complexion is poor, and your steps are unsteady. You clearly suffered internal injuries that damaged your heart and lungs. Yet there is a strange lingering scent of medicine on you—you must have used some kind of aged medicine."
As she spoke, her voice grew quieter and quieter, and her head sank lower and lower.
Now Lian Youming was genuinely astonished. "You even know about aged medicine?"
The night before last and last night, following Gong Wu'er's instructions, he had dissolved the aged medicine in strong liquor and massaged it into his chest; his complexion had indeed visibly improved.
Yan Lingyun hesitated for a long while before whispering, "I once saw a recipe for aged medicine in a medical book and secretly prepared it."
"What? You know how to compound aged medicine?"
Good grief—hearing this, Lian Youming nearly popped his eyes out of his head.
Yan Lingyun seemed startled and quickly shrank behind Qin Hongxiu.
Qin Hongxiu had been listening in utter bewilderment. Seeing the girl hide behind her, she spread her arms instinctively like a mother hen protecting a chick, shouting at Lian Youming, "What's with that look? You trying to eat someone alive?"
Yan Lingyun poked her head out and whispered, "I tried making it a few times, but lacked two essential ingredients, so the effects were bizarre. I didn't actually come to the Northeast for food—I wanted to look for them. I heard there are many rare medicinal herbs in these mountains."
Qin Hongxiu was thoroughly dazed. "Herbs? Aged medicine? What are you two doing, refining immortality pills? Take some advice from your big sister—feudal superstition is unacceptable."
Lian Youming took a deep breath to steady his thoughts. Only after a while did he soften his tone and ask gently, "Classmate, do you still have that recipe?"
Yan Lingyun shook her head. "They were all burned."
Lian Youming fell silent.
Just as he was inwardly sighing, the girl changed tack: "But I remember it all."
Lian Youming's eyelid twitched. After a pause, he asked, "Isn't aged medicine supposed to become more potent the longer it's stored? What efficacy could a freshly made batch have?"
The girl shook her head. "Not entirely. For these aged medicines, often only the recipes were passed down. Many who compounded them didn't even understand the pharmacology, so they simply took the elders' oral traditions as truth. Some aged medicines may carry certain toxicity when freshly made; storing them for years was meant to dissipate the toxicity and activate the medicinal properties. But this is a new era. I've studied Western medical methods—by sacrificing a small fraction of the potency, one can completely eliminate the toxicity."
The more Lian Youming listened, the stranger his expression became. 'Turns out she's an unorthodox practitioner combining Chinese and Western methods!'
Yan Lingyun seemed to read his thoughts. "Those aged medicines appear precious, but they often require years, decades, or generations of storage before they can be used. If I formulate it, though a small portion of efficacy is lost, there is no time constraint."
Lian Youming fell into thought. Just as he was about to ask further, another female educated youth came running toward them, panting heavily.
"Lingyun, hurry! Your brother's here to see you! The branch secretary says you have to get back to the village right away!"
"I was sent down to Qingshan Forest Farm. If there's anything else you want to know, you can come find me."
Learning that family had arrived, Yan Lingyun hastily threw out those parting words, turned around, and dashed off.
Watching the girl's receding figure, Lian Youming's eyes shone brightly.
Wu Kui hadn't been exaggerating—she truly was a prized treasure.
If figures like Gong Wu'er knew someone could compound aged medicine without any time restriction, would they fight tooth and nail for her?
He had already experienced the efficacy of the aged medicine firsthand. Not to mention his own injuries, even Qin Yuhu had tried it, and some of his old wounds had improved. Its effects were truly miraculous.
For her to reveal this so straightforwardly, was she naive or ignorant?
Yet when he recalled Wu Kui saying she had come to the Northeast for food, that was clearly just an excuse she had made up.
'Tsk, looks like she was baiting me. Does she need my help with something?'
Qin Hongxiu sidled up with a grin. "What, fallen for her already?"
Lian Youming curled his lip. "Give me a break. You'd better worry about yourself first. Dating behind Uncle Qin's back—don't expect me to hold him back when the time comes."
Inside the post office, Wu Kui finished his call and came jogging out cheerfully.
"Hey, why'd she leave? Not making her call?"
After a brief chat among the three, number fifty-six was finally called in the telephone hall.
Even with the experience of two lifetimes, when Lian Youming picked up the receiver and heard his parents' voices on the other end, his eyes grew warm and red.
The elders had likely jogged over to the neighborhood subdistrict office, slightly out of breath, accompanied by the noisy chatter of his younger sister and brother.
There was no idle chit-chat, only his parents' repeated exhortations. Throughout the entire call, Lian Youming could barely do more than murmur assent, unable to get a word in.
Just as he finally parted his lips to say something, his mother spoke at lightning speed: "Everything at home is fine! Take good care of yourself over there, remember to eat well, and go to your Uncle Qin if anything happens. It's almost two minutes—if we go one second over, they'll charge us for three! Mom's hanging up now, bye!"
Lian Youming stood with mouth open, listening to the dial tone with a wry smile.
Not a second more, not a second less—exactly two minutes, two yuan and forty fen.
Leaving the phone booth, Lian Youming bade farewell to Wu Kui, then rode his bicycle with Qin Hongxiu on the back, taking a couple of turns around Tahe.
On the frozen river, people were already chiseling holes for the winter catch. Scattered figures tugged at glistening drop lines, dragging nets through smaller openings; from afar, their taut fingers looked red and swollen like carrots.
In the distance, the thumping cadence of drums resonated.
...
In the blink of an eye, a few more days slipped by.
Late one night, silence enveloped the world.
With the winter catch imminent, Qin Yuhu was busy managing affairs and had not returned home to sleep, granting Lian Youming a rare moment of peace and quiet.
Beyond the window, silver moonlight flooded the earth.
Under the moonlight, Lian Youming poured a cup of Maotai liquor, then took out an aged medicinal pill from a small blue-and-white porcelain bottle.
Unlike typical round medicinal pills, this aged medicine looked like dried longan flesh—uneven, shriveled, and wrinkled on the surface, sealed in a layer of wax.
Once the liquor had been warmed, Lian Youming dropped the aged medicine into it.
As the wax melted, an indescribable herbal scent drifted out alongside the aroma of the liquor, turning the liquid in the cup reddish-brown.
Lian Youming felt a pang of regret; this was the last one.
Over the past few days, aside from fooling around outside with Qin Hongxiu, he had spent the rest of his time studying under Shen Qinghong's supervision, gradually finding peace and stability in his mind.
As for the injuries on his body, they improved day by day under the treatment of the aged medicine, giving him a refreshed and healthy complexion.
Sitting cross-legged in the moonlight with his upper body bare, Lian Youming rubbed his palms together, coated them with the medicinal liquor, and pressed them against his chest.
When Xie Laosan had kicked him, he had thought it was just a casual strike, never imagining it contained internal force. The resulting bruises lay deep beneath the flesh, completely invisible to the naked eye.
"That old bastard. Sooner or later, I'll make him pay."
Lian Youming ground his teeth in vexation.
Silently channeling force through his palms, he slowly massaged the medicinal liquor into his flesh. Wherever the force passed, his chest first felt an icy chill, which then transformed into blazing warmth. Once his vitality recovered, and when spring arrived—as the earth qi rose and the mountains warmed—it would be time to prepare those nourishing dietary recipes.
Before that, however, Lian Youming felt he needed to pay a visit to Yan Lingyun.
Since she came from a lineage of traditional Chinese medicine, she might recognize some of the exotic herbs listed in the recipes. Once he understood the recipes thoroughly, everything else would fall into place.
"Since no one will guide my way, I'll carve it myself..."
Chapter 17