Chapter 40: The Homecoming Of Life
In the past, when Han Gaozu Liu Bang fled, he liked to randomly abandon his daughters, sons, wives, and so on, scattering them everywhere.
This branch of Great Han people seems to have inherited this habit of Liu Bang’s as well.
The people who fled last night were actually not few; there were at least dozens of sheep carts. Calculating at five people per sheep cart, several hundred people had fled.
If they fled slowly, those fat and strong sheep could at least carry them to the next stop, Sheyang City. With their wealth, they could naturally survive in that city.
The problem was that they fled desperately. The result of fleeing like that was that the sheep pulling the carts were exhausted to death.
Once the sheep died of exhaustion, there were no livestock to pull the carts, so they could only walk on foot. Yun Ce had just looked at the map obtained from the pavilion: from Pingyuan City to the next stop Sheyang City, there was a distance of nine hundred li in between.
Not everyone could walk nine hundred li, especially for wealthy families. Without food or drink, traversing six hundred li of wasteland full of poisonous insects and wild beasts was simply an impossible task.
There always has to be a choice, and in this regard, human habits are very similar to those of wolves.
Everyone focuses on different things: those who value nurturing kindness abandon their children; those who value blood ties abandon the elderly; those with strong marital bonds abandon other relatives; as for those who value strength and want to survive this nightmarish journey, they abandon those who hold them back.
This was Yun Ce’s first reaction after seeing the big horn sheep that had collapsed dead on the road.
1 An abandoned big horn sheep lay on the road, breathing heavily. From its belly suddenly bulging and then quickly collapsing, as well as the blood constantly flowing from its mouth and nose, it was clear that this sheep’s lungs had burst from running.
1 Yun Ce slit the sheep’s throat, ending its excessively painful struggles. Once the blood had drained sufficiently, he hung the sheep on a tree branch and skinned it.
1 His skinning skills were poor, and it took quite some time to peel off a skin full of holes. He started the knife at the base of the big horn sheep’s tail, making a light cut, and the sharp blade sliced open the plump sheep belly. A pile of sheep offal slid out from the split belly.
1 Sheep offal is a good thing. If there were water here, Yun Ce wouldn’t want to miss out on such food as sheep offal. Unfortunately, the area was covered in wild grass with no rivers or canals in sight, so the good stuff could only be discarded.
1 Without the sheepskin, sheep head, and offal, the big horn sheep was left with just a carcass. Yun Ce didn’t continue but placed the carcass in the dry wind to air-dry.
1 Mutton that has lost some moisture can be stored for an extra three to five days without refrigeration.
1 E Ji was very worried about putting this large sheep carcass on the horse carriage; many of the things she had brought from the guesthouse would have to be discarded, and everything on the cart was stuff they must use after starting their family together.
1 She hesitated to discard this one, then hesitated to discard that one. Finally, E Ji steeled herself, closed her eyes, and let Yun Ce discard them.
1 When E Ji opened her eyes, the things from the horse carriage had already been thrown far away. Seeing that screen with the pattern hanging tattered on the tree, she wanted to cry.
1 Yun Ce hugged the slender E Ji and said softly, “I’ll buy you better ones later. These things are all old and unworthy of you.”
2 E Ji’s eyes welled up with tears. She nodded heavily, but after being quiet for just a moment, she grabbed Yun Ce’s hand and pressed it to her heart, saying, “It hurts here.”
2 The only thing that could cheer E Ji up again was food.
2 Yun Ce looked around and then took out a shovel to start digging a pit on a half-slope: one pit above, one below, with a smoke channel in between, and some stones piled in the upper pit.
2 Then, he lit firewood in the lower pit. The flames burned fiercely, and soon after the black smoke disappeared, only red charcoal fire remained. Yun Ce coated the removed lamb chops with green salt, hung some sheep fat on them, placed them in the upper pit on hard wood, and sealed the opening with stone slices.
2 Lamb chops roasted over open flame aren’t tasty; those made in a stewing oven with golden-brown color are the finest. This was a habit Yun Ce developed during his time living and working in Gansu.
2 He didn’t like eating mutton roasted showily over open flame; he always felt that doing so removed more than half of the mutton’s aroma. Plus, with a thick layer of seasoning, it was unclear whether they were eating the seasoning or the mutton.
2 The moment he removed the stone slices, the sizzling, golden-brown roasted lamb chops came out. Without waiting for the mutton to cool, Yun Ce grabbed a lamb rib in one hand and wrapped the meat with garlic-scented broadleaf grass in the other, giving it a gentle stroke. The meat immediately fell off the bone into the wooden plate E Ji had prepared.
2 When eating this mutton, aside from salt, just wrap the meat in garlic-scented broadleaf grass and put it in the mouth together. The garlic aroma envelops the meat fragrance, with various flavors bursting in the mouth—this way, it lives up to the name of mutton.
2 The big horn sheep’s flavor was exceptionally good, giving Yun Ce new cognition of this animal with its triangular face and grayish-white pupils. He decided that once he achieved success and fame, he would find a place to raise these sheep specifically.
2 After comforting E Ji, Yun Ce continued driving the sheep cart on the road. Along the way, more and more big horn sheep lay dead, but this time Yun Ce didn’t touch these dead big horn sheep.
3 Sheep that die without being slaughtered cannot be eaten. This isn’t due to any religious reason but a northwest man’s obsessive love for meat quality.
3 Sheep that die without bleeding out are just a pile of stinking meat with no edible value.
3 Seeing the dead big horn sheep, Yun Ce was somewhat puzzled. He didn’t eat dead mutton, but did all those people hastily fleeing Pingyuan City have this habit too?
3 To reach Sheyang City was nine hundred li away, and with long daylight hours here, even if a sheep cart could travel two hundred li per day at maximum, it would take five days to arrive.
3 Yun Ce looked back at the mutton carcass on the sheep cart and felt that the remaining mutton could provide enough travel supplies for the two of them.
3 E Ji drove the sheep cart slowly along the ancient road, while Yun Ce eagerly examined the various silk manuscripts taken from the public office in Pingyuan City.
3 Things written on silk manuscripts are generally important news, mostly government orders of the Great Han Dynasty. From these silk manuscripts, Yun Ce discovered that this current Great Han Dynasty still followed the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers System. Multiple silk manuscripts were addressed to corresponding departments in Pingyuan City, with subordinates reporting to direct superiors, and subordinate feedback going as high as the Nine Ministers, then forwarded by the Nine Ministers to the Prime Minister.
3 Alongside the Prime Minister as one of the Three Excellencies was the Grand Commandant of the Censorate, responsible for supervision and corrections. The Supreme Commander appeared to be the highest military leader, but actually held no military authority; he was the Emperor’s highest military advisor. The one truly controlling the world’s troops was the Emperor himself, with the Emperor’s military affairs managed by the Commandant of the Guards and the Commander of the Attendant Gentlemen among the Nine Ministers.
3 After figuring out the general government officials structure, Yun Ce finally understood one thing: over half of the Great Han Dynasty’s army was either in the capital Chang’an or the secondary capital Luoyang, with the remaining soldiers called garrison soldiers, controlled by local commanders.
3 This was the standard characteristic of a feudal dynasty—the strong trunk and weak branches policy. In fact, even the Great Han on Earth used this system, and used it for several thousand years.
4 The sheep cart swayed along the wasteland, and at this moment Yun Ce’s heart was as desolate as this wasteland. From the time markers on the silk manuscripts, this Great Han had been using this outdated Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers System for as long as two thousand years. As for even more ancient times, the silk manuscripts had no mention.
4 After rolling up and storing the read silk manuscripts, Yun Ce looked up to see E Ji’s face looking abnormal, clearly up to no good, as if hiding something from him.
4 Yun Ce had been deep in thought earlier and hadn’t observed things around him in time, but the doggy on his wrist gave no alert, meaning it wasn’t anything major.
4 “Speak quickly, don’t make me say it twice.” Yun Ce said with a stern face.
4 E Ji backed away with her hands behind her, shifting her buttocks. Yun Ce grabbed her arm and lifted her, revealing a teary-eyed little girl behind her.
4 This girl looked less than five years old. The moment she emerged from behind E Ji, she burst into loud cries. Hearing the crying, E Ji, who had been bowing her head ready to be scolded, immediately toughened up. She hugged the little girl, comforting her while shouting at Yun Ce, “Her mother died. She was guarding her mother and nearly got carried off by a doggy.”
4 Yun Ce was stunned for a moment and said, “The doggy was biting people? Why didn’t you call me?”
4 “You were reading the silk manuscripts intently. I called you, but you didn’t respond, so I chased away the doggy with a fork and saved this little girl.”
4 Yun Ce looked at the frightened little girl, sighed, and said, “Has it gone far? If not far, let’s go back and bury her mother.”
4 E Ji widened her eyes and said, “Why bury her? I pushed the corpse into a ditch. That way, the doggies will go eat in the ditch and won’t chase us.”
5 Yun Ce looked back at the large pack of doggies following behind. Though not as powerful as wild boars or wild bears, their numbers were extremely large.
5 Many times, they preferred to eat carrion rather than hunt themselves. Of course, if they encountered the dying, weak, or solitary, they would swarm.
5 Yun Ce naturally wasn’t afraid of these things and didn’t even take them seriously. They weren’t good either, because from eating carrion, their meat couldn’t be eaten, and as for their hides, they were yellowish and ugly, with the fur patchy from parasitic insects.
5 Yun Ce recalled that E Ji’s three views differed from his; she was indifferent to birth, aging, illness, and death, thinking that the living do the things of the living, and the dead do the things of the dead—being gnawed by maggots or dragged off by wild beasts to fill their bellies.
5 Such three views were forged by the harsh life on the wasteland. Getting her to change probably wouldn’t happen in a short time.
5 Actually, what she said made sense: if alive, live well; if dead, whatever happens, happens—it was a kind of detachment.
5 “Since you’ve decided to pick her up, raise her properly. Otherwise, don’t pick her up from the start.”
5 “Mm!” E Ji nodded heavily, and the sly look in her eyes went unseen by Yun Ce.
5 Picking up things is addictive. In the next two days, E Ji actually picked up eleven people: men, women, no elderly, only young.
5 However, they all had one thing in common: they were a group of unimportant people, also victims of the war.
