For an entire snow season, Huo Ling and Yan Qi were busy shuttling back and forth between the village and the town.

Although the shop had a place to look after children, in reality, they rarely took the child there. It was bitterly cold outside, and the child was too young; even though they could catch a ride right outside the door—with thick cotton curtains hanging in the carriage and a heater set up inside—they were still afraid he would catch a chill from the wind.

When a child gets sick, it’s more troublesome—and more life-threatening—than when an adult does.

Most of the time, Ye Suping stayed home to look after them. As she put it, “One child or two—it’s the same effort; it’s no trouble at all.”

She had plenty of breast milk, and Xiaoqi would occasionally sneak a few sips; he wasn’t a picky eater and would eat heartily no matter what.

During this time, Huo Ling took Zhao Yinsheng and Zhao Chensheng up the mountain three times. In addition to the usual mountain produce found on snowy days, they also brought back quite a haul from hunting.

Unlike in previous years, Huo Ling had two apprentices to help him this year. Heidou, who was just over a year old, had been nothing more than a puppy this time last year, but now he could hold his own.

The three men and three dogs set traps and dug pits, all while roaming the mountains with slingshots in hand, looking for ways to shoot badgers and weasels.

Weasels are agile and small; unlike wild rabbits and hazel grouse, they don’t fall into traps easily and are hard to hit. Last year, Huo Ling had planned to save a few weasel pelts for Yan Qi, but he didn’t succeed—he ended up with only a few rabbit and badger pelts.

By the time the cold weather sets in next year, both Lin’er and Xiaoqi’er will be running about freely, so they’ll definitely need new fur coats—the ones they have now probably won’t be enough.

So Huo Ling decided that if he bagged any of these animals, he wouldn’t sell them; but if he came up empty-handed and only had sheepskin and roe deer hides, he’d trade them for cash.

On each of his three trips into the mountains, he never returned empty-handed, bagging a total of five blue sheep, three roe deer, one elk, and six badgers.

There were even more wild rabbits and hazel grouse—a dozen or so each time—not counting the ones the three dogs cornered, caught, and shared among themselves.

There were also martens, though the fewest in number—only two, both sable martens.

In Yan Qi’s words, he couldn’t bear to use them; in his view, all furs provided the same warmth, though sable fur felt the softest to the touch.

Logically, they’d be best for the children, but kids grow so fast that no matter what was made from them, they’d outgrow it before long, so he temporarily stored them in a trunk to see if they might come in handy in the future.

At the very least, if he ever really needed cash, he could just trade them for cash—beyond the Great Wall, furs are actually accepted as silver and are considered absolute hard currency.

Aside from these two sable pelts that he wasn’t selling, from the rest of the game, Huo Ling set aside half a mutton shoulder, a deer leg, two badger pelts, five rabbits, and five hazel grouse. He also had the Zhao brothers take back a sheepskin, a mutton leg, a pair of rabbits, and a pair of hazel grouse.

The brothers used the sheepskin to make two pairs of boots for wearing in the mountains, and with the remaining material, they made a back brace for their father and a small blanket for their mother to cover her legs while doing needlework on the kang. They spent a warm New Year without ever going without meat.

Lin Changshui also took his cash to see Huo Ling, bought a sheepskin and a badger pelt, and had them made into warm clothes, shoes, and hats for his entire family before the New Year.

The Huo family had long since had no shortage of hides, so Huo Ling sold all the furs and meat, earning a little over nineteen taels. Combined with the proceeds from mountain produce and the sale of stuffed buns, the silver savings held by him and Yan Qi suddenly rose to nearly seventy taels.

Huo Ling began to appreciate the benefits of moonlighting as a hunter. On days when he wasn’t in the mountains, he, Zhao Yinsheng, and Zhao Chensheng practiced slingshot shooting at the target in the courtyard and worked out the mechanisms for traps and snares.

These skills were what others relied on to make a living. Ask any veteran hunter, and no one would tell you these secrets—he could only figure them out and hone his skills on his own. Fortunately, even if his techniques were a bit clumsy, it didn’t matter; as long as they were good enough, that was all that mattered. If he managed to bag game, it was a pleasant surprise; if not, there were always other sources of income to fall back on.

Day after day, the strings of copper coins in his money box gradually increased, and just as the snow that had lingered by the roadside all winter began to show signs of melting, Huo Xiaoqi had grown from a tiny baby who could only babble into a chubby toddler crawling all over the heated brick bed, drooling and trying to say “Daddy.” Huo Lin, who was a few months older than him, was already wobbling around on his feet.

On the earthen bed, Huo Lin held a little cloth dog and moved it back and forth in front of him, coaxing the ger to crawl toward him, occasionally letting out a couple of “woofs.”

Huo Xiaoqi, who had been sitting in Yan Qi’s lap sucking his thumb, saw something moving over there. He broke into a wide grin and reached out, lunging forward.

He fell face-first onto the quilt but didn’t cry; instead, he kept crawling straight toward the little dog. Once he reached it, he grabbed it, pinned it under his body, and opened his mouth to bite the cloth dog’s tail.

Babies start teething around six months old, and after that, they become increasingly fond of chewing on things. All of his toys were covered in drool stains and had to be washed every so often.

Of all his toys, the two little dogs Yan Qi made for him were his favorites; he had to hold them while sleeping at night, and if they were taken away, he immediately became unhappy.

It wasn’t just the stuffed dogs—he loved real dogs, too.

Whenever he cried uncontrollably and was hard to soothe, all it took was to bring the family dog over to offer its back; the moment his little feet stepped into the dog’s fur, the crying would stop instantly, and he’d even break into a smile.

Since Lin-ger can already walk, you can often see Huo Feng supporting him as he wobbles around the yard chasing the dog. When he catches up, the dog obediently lies down and rolls over to show its belly for him to pet.

However, only Heidou and Mantou would do this; Dager and Huangyae would never act so affectionately.

Thinking back to Huo Ying’s childhood, Dager was already part of the family, and she, too, had grown up alongside him.

It could be said that despite the large number of dogs in the household, they were truly useful when needed—from guarding the home and yard to herding livestock and hunting, and even watching over and entertaining the children. Though they were dogs, they were really no different from family members.

Huo Ling and Yan Qi both joked that Xiaoqi should call Dager and Huangyae “Dog Uncle,” while Heidou and Mantou, being a generation younger, should call them “Dog Brother.”

After the snow melted, the great river broke through the ice and rushed downstream.

Along the field paths and beneath the mountain forests, vegetation flourished; as the warm breeze swept by, the landscape was a sea of lush greenery.

Frozen pears and candied hawthorn on a stick were no longer available at the market; instead, the first shoots of wild greens had begun to emerge from the soil.

Every household is busy heading out to the fields to till the soil and plant vegetables and grain.

In previous years, Huo Feng and Ye Suping had always bought chicks from outside, but this year they decided to raise their own spring chicks. Out of a batch of fifty eggs, forty-two hatched, and after seven days, forty were still alive.

Ten of these forty were roosters; if raised as broilers, they could be sold after three months.

In the family’s chicken coop, there were also the five hens that Huo Ling and Yan Qi had originally bought, which were still diligently laying eggs.

The eggs they use for making buns do not come from these hens, so the eggs laid by these five hens are sufficient for their needs, and they have no plans to add more for the time being.

If they wanted to add more, they’d be better off waiting until they’d built a new house and had a new yard—as it was, they were already visibly running out of space.

Since they had enough cash on hand, the young couple decided to put this project on the agenda this year, but before that, there was another important matter they needed to take care of first.

In the sweltering heat of July, Huo Xiaoqi—son of Huo Yuanshan of Daming—turned one year old. At his first-birthday ceremony, he reached for a small abacus and a deer-bone whistle.

The deer-bone whistle wasn’t one Huo Ling had used in the past; rather, he had specially crafted it anew. The bone was pure white with no impurities, and it was strung on a beautiful red cord.

He had intended to teach the child how to use it when they went into the mountains together in the future, but he hadn’t expected it to be placed among the items for the “grabbing ceremony”—and yet, the child had actually grabbed it.

Huo Ling was overjoyed and scooped up Xiaoqi, exclaiming, “You really are my flesh and blood.”

Xiaoqi didn’t know what his father meant; he just thought it was great fun to be lifted high in the air. After being set down, he tugged at him again, with lots of energy to burn that he didn’t know what to do with it. Eventually, the ger got so carried away with excitement that he started coughing from laughing too hard, so Huo Ling quickly set him down and patted his back—for which he was scolded a bit by his husband.

But in the end, these were all just harmless little incidents.

Raising a child is no easy task; to see him reach his first birthday, still lively and free from illness, was cause for celebration.

After organizing the child’s first-birthday banquet, Huo Ling and Yan Qi made a special trip to see the feng shui master who set up a stall in town year-round when they went into the city the next day.

Upon learning that they planned to erect symbolic graves for Yan Qi’s deceased parents on Bailong Mountain, the master consulted the almanac and advised them to avoid the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, suggesting they choose a date in late July instead.

“On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the gates of the underworld swing wide open, and the balance between the living and the dead is disrupted. It is suitable for offerings but not for breaking ground or burials.”

He also asked whom they planned to hire to dig the grave. There were people who specialized in this line of work, and if they wanted to hire them, the feng shui master could make the introduction. However, most villagers simply asked some local men to lend a hand; they wouldn’t spend extra cash on that.

Huo Ling and Yan Qi indeed had the same plan in mind; they weren’t from wealthy families, so there was no need to hire professionals.

The graves in the village didn’t even have headstones; descendants relied entirely on their memory of the directions. Even if they couldn’t remember after two generations, it didn’t matter—after all, the entire area was filled with their family’s ancestral graves, so paying respects to each one in turn was sure to be the right thing to do.

The feng shui master said no more, merely instructing them on what to prepare and setting a date to go to the village to select an auspicious burial site.

The twenty-third day of the seventh month—an auspicious day for funeral rites and burial.

At dawn, Huo Ling and Huo Feng led a group of familiar villagers into the mountains and began digging a grave at a spot not far from the Huo family’s ancestral burial ground.

Since it was a symbolic grave, it did not need to be as deep as an ordinary grave, so seven or eight men had the job nearly finished in half an hour.

As the auspicious time selected by the feng shui master drew near, Huo Ling descended the mountain. He returned home to change his clothes, then accompanied Yan Qi as they carried the wooden box to the burial site.

Inside the wooden box lay the garment Yan Qi had worn all the way from the region inside the Pass to the region outside the Pass—a garment altered from her father’s old clothes and then hand-sewn by her mother. Also included were a cloth bundle containing soil from her hometown and a scroll of consecrated sutras obtained from the temple.

Huo Ling and Yan Qi didn’t understand the significance of these items; they had simply heard from the feng shui master that they were essential for guiding the deceased to the Pure Land.

In any case, by this point, everything that could be done had been done.

The wooden coffin was lowered into the grave, and the earth was piled up and backfilled.

The earthen pit was leveled, and a mound was immediately raised.

Yan Qi knelt and banged his head on the ground three times in succession; by the time he straightened up, he was sobbing uncontrollably.

Huo Ling silently placed a hand on his shoulder, letting him lean against him.

After the ger had cried himself out, he took Huo Ling’s hand, and the two bowed once more.

He had so much he wanted to say, but when the words reached his lips, he didn’t know where to begin; in the end, it all boiled down to just one sentence: “Father, Mother, I’m doing very well now.”

Before leaving, he took out a small packet of seeds and scattered them in a circle around the grave mound.

These were flower seeds he’d separated from vegetable seeds; he didn’t know if they’d sprout here, nor what they’d look like when they grew, but he figured that whatever they became, his father and mother would surely like them.

Yan Qi wiped away his tears and made his way down the mountain. As he neared home, he saw Xiao Mingming waiting for him by the roadside, holding Xiaoqi in his arms, with Dager sitting beside her. When he saw them approaching, Dager stood up and wagged his tail.

Xiaoqi was squirming with growing impatience, clearly wanting to get down and walk on his own.

Huo Ling hurried forward two steps, took the child, and settled him securely in his arms.

With the child out of his arms, Xiao Mingming breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s only been the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, but he just couldn’t sit still inside anymore. He kept insisting on coming out to look for you. You two came back just in time.”

Huo Ling thanked him, then squeezed the ger’s little hand. Yan Qi’s tear-stained face had just dried, but he too broke into a relieved smile.

Seeing this, Xiao Mingming’s lips curled into a smile as well. Without a word to disturb them, he turned and left silently.

Yan Qi was clearly still heartbroken; it was best to leave the comforting to those closest to him.

“Xiaoqi, go give Daddy a kiss.”

Huo Ling was thinking the same thing.

He leaned down gently, guiding the little ger forward, and Xiaoqi seemed to understand what he was saying; giggling, he reached out and pressed his cheek against Yan Qi’s.

A moment later, Yan Qi released his grip on the child and once again wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

The worry that had weighed on his heart for over two years was finally laid to rest in that moment.

Graves may lie hidden among the green mountains, but people must still look ahead.

Huo Ling raised his arm slightly to help the child sit more securely, letting one hand hang by his side as he interlaced his fingers with Yan Qi’s.

Together, they walked toward home.

For this journey, Yan Qi had walked over a thousand li, and Huo Ling had waited for many years.

Fortunately, thanks to the workings of fate, they were finally reunited.

—End of Main Text—