“Dad, it’s Zhou Yang. I’m back.”
A tall, thin jujube tree stretched out from the fenced yard, and several dry branches rested over the straw gate roof.
Under the gate, a tall, gaunt man with a yellow, wax-smeared face was wedging a hoe head against the ground. He gripped the hoe handle with both hands and braced the hoe against the hard earth for “hoe-wedging.”
Hoe-wedging meant driving the hoe handle more firmly into the socket so that it would not wobble or loosen, making it more durable.
Zhou Yang looked at the man, who was so thin he seemed to be nothing but a sheet of skin, and called out a greeting.
His nominal father did this every day at this hour.
The part wedged into the socket had already been worn round and loose, yet the man kept at it tirelessly.
Hearing Zhou Yang’s greeting, Zhou Laogou, his nominal father, turned his face sideways and stared fixedly at Zhou Yang. The yellowed whites of his eyes were unusually large, making his irises seem extremely small.
After a long moment, Zhou Laogou grinned. “You’re Zhou Yang—Zhou Yang is my son, you’re my son.
“Go inside. Huang Shaohzi has almost finished cooking.”
Huang Shaohzi was Zhou Laogou’s wife and Zhou Yang’s nominal mother.
Whistle, Old Dog, Sheep—all that was missing was a shepherd.
Zhou Yang did not mind Zhou Laogou’s strikingly strange words. He nodded and passed under the gate.
“Mother, Zhou Yang is back!
“Bring supper to my room!”
After entering the yard, he shouted several times, then turned and ducked into the west room that belonged to him.
Zhou Yang had given himself the persona of a young man who was emotionally detached and spoke little.
Because when he had first appeared in Guancun, he had seized a chance at the dinner table to deliberately pick a quarrel with his two nominal brothers, Zhou Baigou and Zhou Heigou, even coming to blows. The fight had been so fierce that afterward he was spared the trouble of eating with the family.
Huang Shaohzi brought food into his room.
For that reason, Huang Shaohzi disliked him all the more, and the meals she brought him were leftovers and scraps.
Yet these two daily meals of scraps were often still barely palatable to him, while the seemingly sumptuous dishes on the family table he could not swallow a single bite of.
“Go back to your room and die!”
Huang Shaohzi’s voice, sharp as a whistle, pierced into the west room.
Zhou Yang sat on the wooden bed and sighed. He pulled out the Knife-Credit Ledger and the small blade tucked at his lower back, opened it to the first page, and stared blankly at the personal record listed there.
“Name: Zhou Yang.
“Right Thought: 5.
“Identity: knife-credit man.
“Ability: blacksmithing... (rubbing).
“Good Deeds: none.”
He still had not extended the knife-credit.
Only after dinner, when everyone had settled onto their beds, could he make an attempt.
Even then, a slight disturbance would not alarm the household too much.
Zhou Yang’s gaze gathered on the words Right Thought. The two characters suddenly turned into ink blots, then spread out again into a longer line of writing: “Right Thought is the awakened will born in ordinary people amid all kinds of hardship and setbacks—the heroic will that still walks on alone even when affected by terror, rage, loathing, and dejection.
“An ordinary person’s Right Thought ranges from 1 to 9.”
The Knife-Credit Ledger’s explanation of Right Thought was too metaphysical. According to Zhou Yang’s own understanding, Right Thought could roughly be seen as the strength of one’s willpower.
His willpower was in the normal range, only 5.
When he had first come to Guancun, his Right Thought had been even lower, only 2.
As for what would happen after this Right Thought exceeded the range of ordinary people?
Zhou Yang did not know.
As for so-called Good Deeds: sow a good cause, and one could create Good Deeds.
He felt that this time, if he extended the knife-credit and resolved Ding Ling’s predicament, he might perhaps gain some Good Deeds.
While Zhou Yang was lost in thought, Huang Shaohzi shouldered the door open.
She carried in a small wooden table, her figure like a water vat, completely mismatched with her whistle-like voice.
She slammed the small wooden table onto the open floor, then whipped her head around. Her slightly curly hair flew wildly, and her fat, pale face, with its mung-bean eyes, fixed on Zhou Yang. “What a young master’s fate you have!
“Supper has to be brought to your room by me!
“Why don’t you go die? We’re just waiting for you to die in half a month!”
Half a month later was the date of the Opening Rite.
Huang Shaohzi, Zhou Laogou, and the others seemed to be Zhou Yang’s nominal parents in Guancun, but in truth they were only dogs to herd the sheep and whistles to raise the alarm. The sheep they guarded, from beginning to end, had only ever been Zhou Yang alone.
Only Zhou Yang’s two other nominal brothers—Zhou Baigou and Zhou Heigou—were truly family with Huang Shaohzi and the others.
And Zhou Yang, the sheep that had slipped into the dog pack, was to be slaughtered at the Opening Rite for everyone to eat.
At this moment, Zhou Yang became more keenly aware of his situation.
He let his brows droop, looked at the food on the small wooden table, and said nothing.
“Can’t even speak!
“Go die sooner or later—sooner or later, you’ll die!”
Huang Shaohzi bit hard on the word “die.” She turned, the fat on her ghastly pale face trembling, and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Outside, she spoke again to Zhou Baigou and Zhou Heigou.
Now her tone had grown much gentler. “Baigou, tell your father to come back for supper. Heigou, bring me a bowl.”
Baigou did not answer but hurried out. Even through the wall, Zhou Yang could hear his heavy footsteps.
Heigou’s voice was sinister. “What about Third Brother? Isn’t he coming out to eat with us?”
“Let him die by himself!” Huang Shaohzi’s voice abruptly turned sharp again, full of irritation. “If you want your third brother to share your good food, then call him to eat with you!”
“Let me see what he’s eating—” As Zhou Heigou spoke, he suddenly pushed open Zhou Yang’s door.
He stuck his head inside, stared at the food on the small wooden table for a while, then turned and looked at Zhou Yang with a smile. But he did not greet Zhou Yang and simply pulled his head back.
“Third Brother won’t behave. We can’t give him too much food.
“Keep him hungry, and he’ll have no strength. Even if he has dishonest thoughts, he won’t be able to do anything dishonest.”
Outside, Zhou Heigou’s voice rose again with a plan.
The only response was Huang Shaohzi’s cold “Bring me a bowl!”
The voices outside faded.
Zhou Yang jumped off the bed, crouched by the low table, and looked at today’s food.
A dish of pork-fat scraps, a small bowl of brown rice, and a soup of pig brain boiled with salt.
From the food on his table, he could guess what the Zhou family’s main dishes were that night—they would certainly include lard and raw pig brain.
The people of Guancun often used grease, animal brains, and bone marrow as their main foods.
Having seen Afu turn into a human skin that day, Zhou Yang guessed that eating grease directly might be the best way for this village’s people to preserve their human skins.
As for rice and other grain foods, Zhou Yang felt that the villagers of Guancun did not like to eat them.
They probably merely thought that normal people had to eat rice, so they kept up the habit of eating rice themselves.
In fact, Zhou Yang had once secretly seen Zhou Laogou eat a large bowl of rice, then go outside and dig the rice grains out of his throat.
Tonight’s food was passable.
After Zhou Yang finished supper, he waited until the sounds outside gradually died away, then went out to wash and put away the bowls and chopsticks.
In the dim twilight, as he went from the woodshed back to his room, he kept feeling that someone was watching him from behind.
He suddenly turned and saw Zhou Baigou standing in a corner by the wall, his skin tone seeming to blend into the mud wall.
It seemed like a dog guarding the house, its pitch-black eyes fixed on Zhou Yang’s every move.
Zhou Yang bolted the door and lay back down on the bed.
He opened the Knife-Credit Ledger to the second page and saw those lines again:
“When the knife-credit is entered into the ledger, retribution is established.
“You will extend the knife-credit to Ding Ling to break him from a situation hanging by a thread.
“Ding Ling will become your retribution body.
“Will you extend the knife-credit?”
Zhou Yang pinched the blade. Only one thought turned in his mind: “Knife-credit!”
Without even speaking, he saw the blade in his hand turn into a streak of white light and plunge straight into the ink boiling across the paper!
Chapter 3