Chapter 2: The Distant Wolf’s Dig For Water
Langpao Water, also called Langpao Water Fortress, is a small village on the Gobi Desert at the east end of the Hexi Corridor. The black mountain on the left is called Black Tiger Mountain, and the red mountain on the right is called Furnace Ash Mountain.
One year, there was a great drought on the Northwest Plateau. A wolf pack ran from the distant Northern Territory Grassland. They kept running nonstop, and finally, the Wolf King stopped at this huge gorge in Langpao Water Village.
Due to extreme hunger and thirst, the wolf pack was restless. The Wolf King suddenly began digging soil at the foot of a red sandstone mountain, and the other wolves followed suit.
Although red sandstone is weathered rock and not too hard, it was a big challenge for the wolves’ keratin claws.
So, the Wolf King used his sharp teeth to gnaw and his sharp claws to dig. They dug day and night, digging pits. Their claws wore bald, their teeth broke, so they spat blood to moisten the red sandstone. When hungry, they ate dead companions; when thirsty, they sucked the blood of dead companions.
Finally, on a clear morning with a sky full of dawn glow, a stream of clear spring water gushed out from the red sandstone. The wolf pack opened their blood-filled mouths and howled to the sky along with the Wolf King.
The Gobi Desert is a magical land. As long as there is water, the barren land immediately grows green grass, forming an oasis in a very short time.
The first tree was a sand jujube tree, brought by a bird. It landed in the oasis to eat grass seeds and left a sand jujube pit during excretion. The sand jujube pit took root and sprouted on the moist grassland, eventually growing into a sand jujube tree.
After the sand jujube tree bore sand jujubes, more sand jujube trees grew up in the oasis.
A hundred or so years later, there was already a large Sand Jujube Forest growing along the stream here.
1 When the northwest wind carrying sand and soil passed through this Sand Jujube Forest, the sand jujube trees blocked some soil and left a thick layer of loess for the oasis.
1 As a result, the vegetation here became increasingly lush.
1 With trees, various wild beasts came to inhabit here, providing the wolf pack with a variety of food.
1 Many, many years passed. No one knows how many wolf packs came to the Langpao Water land or how many Wolf Kings died. Ultimately, the descendants of that wolf pack that dug out the clear spring with claws and teeth defended their territory.
1 Of course, this was related to the huge sunk cost the wolf pack paid for that clear spring. On this point, there is no difference between humans and wolves.
1 As long as the wolf pack has enough numbers, is united enough, and fierce enough, it can defeat other wolf packs. There’s nothing to say about that.
1 Until one day, an even more powerful clan came to Langpao Water Village. The wolves almost all fell in battle. The scarred Wolf King had to lead the pregnant she-wolves and cubs who did not participate in the battle in a hasty escape.
1 They completely lost the territory and hunting ground left by their ancestors.
1 What could drive away the wolves must naturally be more fierce, brave, cunning, and insidious than the wolves.
1 To survive on the Gobi Desert, it must endure more than camels, work harder than cattle, and be wiser than foxes.
2 Humans, this animal perfectly meets all the above conditions, especially the Yun Clan forced to wander everywhere after leaving Shaanxi due to the Shaan-Gan Hui Rebellion.
2 In the fight with the wolf pack, the Yun Clan could not be unscathed. After paying a heavy sunk cost, burying the clan members fallen in battle, they stayed in this oasis with water and fertile land to continue living.
2 Tyrannical government is fiercer than tigers!
2 This is why the Yun Clan would rather abandon the fertile Guanzhong land to make a living at the end of the sky.
2 There are no government officials here, only many people like them…
2 Thus, the battle shifted from human-beast conflict to battles between humans.
2 They fought with neighbors on the Gobi Desert coveting the oasis, with bandits and horse bandits as numerous as cows’ hairs, with caravans indistinguishable from bandits or merchants. At the worst times, they even had to fight with government officials coming to collect taxes.
2 For this oasis in Langpao Water, the Yun Clan descendants do not know how many died. Fortunately, they protected their women, children, grain, and land, and built tall rammed-earth city walls outside the oasis.
2 In the Langpao Water area, the Yun Clan’s fierce reputation spread far. Whether bandits, horse bandits, or government officials, all knew the Yun Clan could not be taken lightly. Provoking the Yun Clan meant a fight to the death.
2 Gradually, no one provoked the Yun Clan anymore and began to form marriage alliances and trade with them…
3 The Yun Family in Lantian, Guanzhong, was a famous family of farming and studying. Even during the hard times of fighting wolves, the Yun Clan descendants were all roughly literate.
3 After settling down, the Yun Clan Leader immediately opened a clan school. When the children in the clan school had learned enough, he spared no expense to send outstanding clan disciples outside to study.
3 The trouble came from sending outstanding disciples outside to study.
3 No one knows what they learned outside. Not only did they refuse to become officials to shelter the clan and bring benefits home, they even shouted about democracy and saving the country!
3 Old Clan Leader Yun Fang was the last Tong Jinshi Scholar in the last imperial exam of the Qing Dynasty, the Jia Chen division. He had his own views on reform, reform, democracy, and such things.
3 Before passing the Jinshi exam, Yun Fang was an admirer of Tan Sitong. At that time, not yet thirty, he, like the Wuxu Gentlemen, believed the Qing Dynasty needed comprehensive reform, and the Empress Dowager needed to fully return power to the Emperor.
3 For this, Yun Fang, then not yet Clan Leader but just an ordinary Juren Scholar, was willing to be a vanguard for the Six Gentlemen. After returning to Gansu, he actively ran around, calling friends to promote the reform.
3 Just as they rode horses to Xi’an to petition Shaan-Gan Governor Sheng Yun, claiming willingness to go through fire and water for the Qing Dynasty’s reform, Tan Sitong died.
3 That elegant noble son with strong personal charm was beheaded, leaving only the bold poem “I laugh at the sky with a horizontal knife, leaving my liver and gall to the two Kunluns,” and nothing else.
3 Tan Sitong’s life was gone, his Wuxu Reform was gone. From the day Yun Fang heard the news of Tan Sitong’s death, his spirit was gone.
4 Later, shortly after the previous Clan Leader spent a fortune to get him out of Xi’an prison, he took up opium.
4 Fortunately, his foundation of knowledge was solid. Five years later, he passed the Jia Chen division third place as the last Tong Jinshi Scholar.
4 Originally, he could have become the County Magistrate of Danyang County. He did not go, but returned to his hometown Langpao Water Fortress and became the Yun Clan’s new Clan Leader.
4 Over decades, with this ism and that ideology rampant across China, he turned a deaf ear to all of them, putting all his mind into strengthening the clan and educating his children, slowly tempering himself into the old Clan Leader.
4 In these decades, the Yun Clan grew from a local medium family into one of the few local tyrants in the Northwest.
4 The old Clan Leader was open-minded and genuinely loved the children in his clan.
4 After figuring out what democracy meant, he felt it was no big deal and could give democracy to the children.
4 At worst, after letting them have democracy, the adults with greater numbers could veto it. Anyway, they had democracy and experimented with it. If they still didn’t obey, then family law would apply.
4 Beat the disobedient ones, and they become good children. For the more rebellious ones with a few bullets, beat them twice.
4 They are all good children raised by him; they can’t be bad at root.
5 Is saving the country that easy?
5 That requires filling it with lives, all these foolish children’s lives.
5 Over the years, the old Clan Leader had seen many of this ism and that advocacy, all talking bullshit. Each one used the foolish children’s lives to save the country, making the country poorer and poorer, while they themselves ended up with wives, concubines, and full halls of children and grandchildren. None were good.
5 The children have been deceived. Outside the fortress, it’s all swindlers!!!
5 But outside the fortress, isms are rampant. Several isms even seemed very seductive to him, let alone those hot-blooded children.
5 After figuring this out, the old Clan Leader felt his children were very dangerous outside and should all be gathered back to his side. The Northwest is vast enough, with enough enemies for the family children to establish merits.
5 One telegram after another was sent from Lanzhou to Xi’an, Beiping, Shanghai, to every Yun Clan descendant studying outside, hoping they would drop everything and rush back immediately.
5 The reason was simple: he was dying of illness and wanted to see the children one last time.
5 They were all filial good children. Even if badly deceived outside, hearing his death news, they would definitely return. The old Clan Leader was very sure of this.
5 While waiting for the children to return, the old Clan Leader busied himself everywhere, seeking good girls to arrange marriages for the children. When these little bastards returned, he would seize the chance to finalize the marriages, then lock them up for a year or two until the little children were born.
6 See these little turtle bastards talk about democracy and saving the country again. Save your mother’s country—first feed your wife and kids before spouting such wild words.
6 As for pointless love, the old Clan Leader always sneered at it.
6 Watching these foolish children rushing back for the funeral being chattered into the bridal chamber one by one, the old Clan Leader was smug beyond measure, smoking two opium bubbles in one breath, floating to immortality.
6 Next year, the clan would have dozens more little children. Fifteen years later, the clan would have a group of strong laborers. Then, occupy all the land near Langpao Water.
6 Just as the old Clan Leader smugly arranged these good children, worse than death, into various clan industries to work and make money, a team came from the east side, said to be called Red Bandits, very powerful, beating the government officials screaming.
6 The government officials offered five silver dollars per head. The old Clan Leader felt it was promising. He heard from the government officials that this team had fled tens of thousands of li, already out of ammunition and food.
6 His own children were different from others’ fools. Several came from the military academy. Others had a few broken muskets; his had new foreign rifles and cannons bought by the children—oh, and seven or eight machine guns. The children said with this stuff, no matter how many horse bandits came, they would die.
6 Good stuff, plus in chaotic times, no mistake in the children buying them back—just too expensive, costing a full fifty thousand silver dollars, the clan’s five years’ profit.
6 Just right the Red Bandits came; kill some to recoup some capital.
6 Watching two hundred spirited good children carrying guns, lifting cannons, leading horses leave… the old Clan Leader smugly lit two more opium bubbles.
7 Unfortunately, the profit the old Clan Leader longed for, he never saw until death. Similarly, he did not see his good children return.
7 Because his good children also became Red Bandits, the most powerful ones. Along the way, they seized passes, slayed generals, killing Ma Laosan fleeing in panic.
7 Since hearing his own good children became Red Bandits, the old Clan Leader spat much blood, his body quickly collapsed. Before dying, he was still worried about his good children coaxed away by the Red Bandits.
7 And Langpao Water Fortress also became a target of the government officials because of this. Plus the best fighters all left, it quickly became something everyone bullied, even the majestic fortress walls were shaved down two meters by others.
7 The later Yun village leader in Langpao Water Village waited for those children to return.
7 However, what they waited for was one hundred thirty-seven wooden boxes. Some boxes contained a set of ragged clothes, some had broken books and broken fountain pens, some even had stomach bands sent by their wives when leaving, with many holes and stained with much blood.
7 Later, a new country was established.
7 The Yun Family had many children becoming officials, some even in the Capital City. But the once prosperous Langpao Water Village gradually decayed. The tall fortress walls were peeled layer by layer by the Gobi winds, finally collapsing with a crash after a heavy rain on the west wall.
7 From then on, the fortress walls could no longer shelter the Yun people staying here from wind and rain.
7 With the fortress walls collapsed, many Yun people migrated elsewhere, especially the families of those officials, who left the fastest and earliest.
8 The century-old fortress slowly became dilapidated and unattended. After all, this was originally wasteland—paradise for wild beasts, prison for humans.
8 Fortunately, there are many cemetery here. Every Qingming Festival, many still return to pay respects. But as the mourners age year by year, soon perhaps no one will come, and it will return to primitive state. Wolf packs may become masters here again.
8 Many years later, Langpao Water Village slowly got electricity, Yellow River water, and a flat wide asphalt road passing by the village side, bringing some vitality to this decaying wasteland village.
8 The earliest adobe houses were long gone, rebuilt by a wealthy Yun merchant into a garden-like place. But he left the few tiled houses by the cemetery untouched.
8 The chaotic graves by the village were resettled. A tall monument clearly states this became a martyrs’ cemetery—cemetery, no longer graves.
8 The village got internet, added solar streetlights, bright at night, but few people.
8 At this time, time had come to the 27th day of the sixth lunar month in 2024.
8 Auspicious for: marriage, priest, praying for blessings, fasting, breaking ground, burial, and long journeys…
