Of Mountains and Rivers 27
Chapter 27 – I’m Also An Outsider, So Why Am I Still Standing Here?
“You have many old wounds on you,” Nanshan put down the medicine bowl, “this is medicine the Elder decocted for you. You’ll feel a bit better after drinking it.”
Chu Huan stretched his neck and took a look at this so-called ‘medicine’ – if one called it swill, perhaps even the pigs would rise up in rebellion.
He wrinkled his nose and smelt it; there were definitely some shady cooking skills circulating within the Liyi Clan’s veins.
Oh… Except for Sister Spring.
Before drinking it, Chu Huan evened out his breathing and fully adjusted his mental state, but he underestimated the Elder’s killing power; due to such an unbearable and inhuman abuse, his entire tongue went on a strike. Chu Huan hurriedly reached for the bowl of water beside his pillow and gulped it down to suppress his churning stomach. He weakly asked, “I… Did I seduce your Elder’s wife?”
Nanshan solemnly answered, “No. The Elder’s wife passed away fifteen years ago.”
After he answered, probably thinking there was something wrong, he pondered for a few seconds before coming back to it. “Were you joking?”
Chu Huan: “…”
Nanshan meticulously went over it; he carefully analysed the context and searched through his memories. “I understand now. What you meant was (1) ‘the hatred of one whose father was killed and wife stolen’, right?”
After a series of complicated comprehensions, he finally revealed a knowing smile.
His smile carried the taste of passing time and changing circumstances.
Chu Huan was completely powerless.
After resting for an entire day and night, he felt his strength had pretty much recovered so he climbed up.
Because the clothes on his body at that time were in bad shape, the clans-people helped take them off. After repairing and washing them, they folded and placed them beside his pillow – he was essentially naked. Chu Huan hesitated for a moment and quickly assessed his body figure. Feeling it was alright, he lifted the blanket confidently; not evading from Nanshan even the slightest, he pulled over his clothes and slowly put them on.
‘How to wear clothes using the most handsome pose’ was one of Chu Huan’s major research topics during his youth.
When Nanshan cleaned him and applied medicine on him, he hadn’t thought too much; now, he suddenly felt he couldn’t look directly at the other. After two more glances, he narrowed his line of sight away.
“Since I’ve returned the child, it’s time for me to go.” Chu Huan buttoned his shirt as he continued, “Your, um… What are they called? Deluyi?”
Nanshan’s eyes lowered. “Mutayi.”
“En, yes, what does the name mean?”
“It means ‘Wind Monster’.”
Chu Huan: “‘Wind Monster’? Wild dogs? Ai, whatever they are, they’re almost becoming a calamity – why is it so severe? Where are they from? Do they have any natural enemies? Do they cause casualties?”
“Yes,” Nanshan replied, “there will be people dead every year.”
Chu Huan’s movements paused. “Why don’t you ask the local government or garrisons for assistance?”
Nanshan: “We can’t.”
Chu Huan: “Why not?”
Nanshan seemed to be sitting there organising his next words to try and explain everything; in the end, he failed, so he stood up and said to Chu Huan, “Follow me.”
•·················•·················•
Nanshan brought Chu Huan to a cave away from the settlement.
The vest-wearing Elder stood by the entrance, sizing up Chu Huan with a scrutinising expression.
His eyes were unpleasantly prying. Chu Huan’s brows furrowed slightly, but he’d received the teachings to ‘respect the old and cherish the young’ so he limited his standards; he also felt it unnecessary to act savvy before this old thing who already had more than one foot in the grave, so he politely nodded and greeted him. “Elder.”
The Elder ignored him; he just looked towards Nanshan, the corners of his lips curled down and his movements slow. The pocket above his chest made him look like a turtle carrying its shell at the front.
“You’re the Patriarch – I cannot control you. You decide alone,” he said. He removed a torch from the cave entrance and entered first.
Nanshan pulled Chu Huan and dragged him in, following the Elder. The jumping flames illuminated the cave. Chu Huan’s heedless eyes scanned the area before they suddenly concentrated – hanging on the cave’s entrance wall was a rifle.
It was a rifle covered with traces of time.
Nanshan took down the rifle with both hands and handed it to Chu Huan, who carefully examined it for a while. Then, he whispered, “(2) Type-56.”
Elder: “This is a weapon that can kill beasts from a distance.”
Although he’d never listened to Chu Huan’s lessons, he could speak in a weirdly accented but fluent Chinese.
Chu Huan politely corrected him, “We generally call this a gun – a rifle. If it’s convenient, may I ask where this is from?”
The Elder took out a small section of unknown grass; he stuffed it in his mouth and began to ‘bada bada’ chew it, like an old mountain goat with a bad temper. “At that time, Nanshan wasn’t born yet; even his A-ma had just grown up a few years. That day, the dense fog covered the entire land. It was the first night of the Shaking Phase-”
This old mountain goat’s words were incomprehensible; Chu Huan could only interrupt. “Sorry, what phase?”
Was he talking about the earthquake-prone season?
The Elder cast a sidelong glance at him, appearing dissatisfied by his ignorance, but because the Patriarch Nanshan was present he swallowed back the words that’d already reached his lips.
“Yesterday was the first day of the Shaking Phase,” Nanshan explained, “Elder, it was I who didn’t have time to explain this to him – the first fog every winter is our warning; after a few days, we’ll enter the Shaking Phase. Once we enter the Shaking Phase, the passage connecting our clan to the outside world will disconnect.”
Chu Huan was baffled. “Disconnected… In a literal sense?”
Nanshan couldn’t quite understand the difference between ‘literal sense’ and other senses. He thought about it, then explained with poorly expressed wording, “The meaning of ‘disconnected’… ‘Disconnected’, meaning the outside world doesn’t exist anymore, do you understand?”
Chu Huan shook his head – absolutely not.
The Elder raised two fists. “On this side of the river is one world; on the other side of the river is another world. We live here; you live there. Before the Shaking Phase, the two sides of the river are connected; once the Shaking Phase begins, the passage breaks off. Right now, nobody can exit that river because the other side is no longer your hometown, but ‘nothing’.”
Was he speaking human?
Nanshan said, “You entered back into the river just before the Shaking Phase began, so even though you almost got lost you still managed to return in the end. If you entered the river after the Shaking Phase began, you would’ve discovered you could travel across the river very quickly; however, you might’ve only seen a wild, mountainous country. You would’ve had no way of returning to us.”
Chu Huan: “…”
Nanshan patiently asked, “Do you understand now?”
Beside them, the Elder was frustrated, impatient by how slowly Chu Huan was reacting.
Chu Huan looked at the Elder’s overwhelmingly stenchful mountain-goat face. He nodded with a slight smile. “I’ve understood a little. Please continue.”
At the same time, he thought: Understood my ass! What is all this nonsense?
The Elder continued, “The night before the Shaking Phase, several individuals from that side of the river strayed into the river and got lost. At that time, some of our clanspeople happened to be standing guard in the river and brought them in – our ancestors had records on people from that side of the river but they were always spoken as legends; it wasn’t until then did our generation truly come in contact with them.”
Chu Huan managed to understand this. Judging from Nanshan’s age, his mother was probably born in the 50’s or 60’s. If it’s as the Elder said and these people came when she was still young, carrying rifles on them… Could they be soldiers who got lost during a self-defence counterattack?
“Anyone who arrives at our Liyi Clan are considered guests; since they were visitors from distant lands, we should’ve let them stay in our clan for a period of time. However, the Shaking Phase was approaching and it was inconvenient for guests to stay in the Liyi Clan, so the Patriarch at that time – Nanshan’s A-ma – prepared gifts and decided to send them away the next day.” The Elder narrowed his eyes, which were gazing out to the distance. “But unexpectedly, the ‘shake’ came too quickly. The same thing happened this time, as if every time an outsider enters, the time for us to prepare for the Shaking Period shortens.
“The clanspeople hadn’t awoken from their hangovers before they were forced to confront the enemy. Groups of Mutayi came on land. At first, the guests were very shocked, then they used the thing you’re holding to drive them away.” The Elder sighed. “Every ‘winter’, many Mountain Keeper warriors would die; it was the first time any of us saw such powerful weapons. However…”
As the Elder spoke, he led Chu Huan deeper into the cave.
The firelight illuminated the cave. Chu Huan was taken aback as a chill travelled up his spine – there were several men in the cave, either standing or sitting, their forms all different. They were wearing old military uniforms that could already be sent to a military museum. On their faces were lifelike expressions, appearing like finely-made wax figures.
Chu Huan examined these people with indefinite bewilderment before carefully raising his hands to open one’s clothes. Sewed on it were that person’s military unit number, name, and such. He was right; they were definitely veterans from that year.
Chu Huan couldn’t help but stretch out his hand to check the man’s breathing. Decades had passed; they weren’t breathing, had no heartbeat, hadn’t decayed, yet their skins were still soft and their bodies still held temperature… As if time had stopped in that one moment and the air around them turned into invisible amber.
“In the thick fog, their movements became increasingly slower, to the point it was unnatural, but they couldn’t seem to feel it. I called out to them, alarmed.” The Elder pointed to one of the soldiers. His head was still turned back, the expression on his face appearing lost. “The clanspeople could only watch as they then slowly solidified.”
Chu Huan’s voice turned hoarse. “What do you mean by ‘solidified’? These people… Are they dead or alive?”
“They’re not dead nor alive,” Nanshan said. “Think, when the Shaking Phase begins, the world at that side of the river is essentially non-existent. That means the people who came from that side of the river are also ‘non-existent’. Since they don’t actually exist, then how can we distinguish them from dead or alive?”
Goosebumps instantly raised from under Chu Huan’s skin.
A long while passed before he could find his voice. “What you’re saying is, these people’s ‘existence’ was erased.”
The Elder nodded. “We’ve tried many methods. When that year’s ‘winter’ passed and the two shores from each side of the river were connected again, we pulled their bodies with our horses, wanting to send them across the river, but the moment they crossed the river these people suddenly vanished from horseback. The clanspeople leading the horses were scared to death and hurried back to report, but saw these people again back where they first ‘solidified’.
Maintaining the same state at the same place.
They’d never be able to leave.
It was silent within the cave; Chu Huan’s brows were tightly furrowed. After a while, he said, “I’m also an outsider, so why am I still standing here?”
(1) The hatred of one whose father was killed and wife stolen – the original phrase is ‘夺妻之恨以及杀父之仇’, which translates to ‘the hatred of one whose wife was stolen and the enmity of one whose father was killed’. A summarised meaning of this is, having one’s wife stolen could initiate greater hatred than having one’s father killed.
(2) Type-56 – refers to the Type-56 Semi Automatic Rifle or the AK56.
