Chapter 4 - Ancient Grave in the Mountains (1/2)
Chapter 4 - Ancient Grave in the Mountains
Part 1
Even though it was called Inner Mongolia, it actually wasn’t too far away from the Hei Long River. It was pretty close to the border of Mongolia. Most of the civilians here were Han people, and there were very few Mongolians. If you haven’t been to Gang Gang Camp, then you’d never understand the hards.h.i.+p of living there. There was a total of six Educated Youths that had been a.s.signed there. Four boys and two girls. When we arrived, we were all dumbfounded. All around us were long stretches of land. There wasn’t a single tree in sight. If you walk out of the village, you won’t see another person for a hundred miles.
To top it off, this place didn’t even have a decent highway. Much less any electricity. Even oil lamps were considered a privilege reserved for the government officials. Using a flashlight there was equivalent to living in the presidential suite. Those were luxuries we would have never imagined living without back in the city. At the time, we had thought that everywhere in the motherland had buildings with electricity and phone lines.
Back then, everything was a new experience for us. None of us had seen such a vast mountain before. It was also our first time feasting on the many different varieties of food grown there. The mountain nearby was rich and abundant with wild fruits and vegetables and we could fish in the river nearby, so filling our stomachs was never an issue. After we returned to the city, we heard that those who went to Shanxi province to cut in line complained about how truly miserable they were without a whiff of proper food for years.
The lives of the Educated Youths were not too difficult. As the place heavily depended on the mountain for resources, we didn’t have problems with growing many crops. Every summer night, we would take turns to go out to the field, and check up on the crops in fear of them being eaten by the wild animals. There wasn’t a night where we didn’t require a few people to sleep in the fields.
The amount of the crops grown in the mountain were unlike the wide green curtains found in the Northern China plains. Instead, they were planted all over the place. As long as there was a flat area of land available, there would be crops planted there. Because of this, we had to frequently roam large areas of land at night in order to guard the crops. Tonight happened to be the night where Fatty and I were partnered together. Fatty ended up sleeping in the hut so I went out to survey the area. There didn’t seem to any trouble stirring so I decided to go back to sleep.
Near the hut, I noticed a big round white figure close by. I had to rub my eyes a few times, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Unfortunately, it was too dark so I couldn’t focus my eyes on the figure. During the time, I didn’t believe in ghosts and thought it was some random animal so I picked up a stick, as I planned on chasing it away.
In the complete darkness, the glaringly white pile swayed slightly. Just what was it? It didn’t look like an animal at all, but if it wasn’t one, then why was it moving? The sky was pitch black and I didn’t have a kerosene lamp to light up my surroundings, making it difficult to tell what it was.
Although ghosts and monsters don’t frighten me, the very thought of facing an unknown being still struck fear in my heart. The stick I held in my hand was actually a tree branch I had picked up from the ground. I didn’t dare to whirl the stick at it. Instead, I gently poked it. It was very soft and squishy…. Suddenly, I heard Fatty let out a loud cry in the darkness, “Ah…….What the h.e.l.l? Hu Ba Yi! What are you doing, poking my a.s.s with a tree branch?”
False alarm. Apparently, Fatty had eaten some rotten fruits during the day giving him a stomachache later at night. He squatted to take a dump but his big white b.u.t.t looked very conspicuous in the dark.
The next morning, Fatty mercilessly dogged me to compensate for scaring him to death. He even proclaimed that I managed to kill off over one million of his brain cells. So I shot back, “Are you even certain that you have that many brain cells in that big head of yours? We are poor bachelors who received the highest order to come to the countryside to be re-educated by the poor and lower-middle cla.s.s peasants. How, pray I ask, do you want me to compensate you? As your closest and most intimate war brother, I am informing you in advance that the pair of pants I’m wearing now is what’s left of my entire family fortune. Are you implying that you want me to give it up?”
Fatty gave a wide grin and said that I didn’t need to go that far. He had found a large hive in an old forest on Tuan Hill and suggested that we break it open and make some honey drinks from it. Not only that, we could even exchange it for rabbit meat from Swallow’s father.
Swallow was a girl whose father was a famous old hunter in the village. At the time, Fatty and I both stayed at her house, the Educated Youth Settlement. Both the father and the daughter frequent the mountains to hunt and would occasionally invite us to feast on game they had caught that day. Being constantly treated by them did make us feel bad, but we were too poor and we didn’t have anything of value to pay them back.
Fatty had discovered a hornet’s nest so we agreed to extract the honey and give them to Swallow as a gift. Both of us had impulsive personalities and we were well known as the King of Mischiefs in the entire military. Poking a nest wasn’t that much of an issue. We had done deals that were ten times worse than this.
In fear of getting lost, I borrowed Swallow’s hunting dog. It was almost fully grown and raised by Swallow herself. She named it Yellow Chestnut, and couldn’t even bear the thought of bringing it hunting. The moment she saw that we wanted to go Tuan Hill to play, she lent her dog to us.
At a glance, our village wasn’t far from Tuan Hill, but since there weren’t any roads leading there, we had to walk half a day through uneven terrain to get there. This part of the forest was enormous. The villagers had warned us not to go there in fear of the brown bears that we might encounter. In the village, a man who only had half a face left told us the tale of how he ran into a brown bear once when he was young. Luckily, Swallow and her father arrived in the nick of time, lit a fire and frightened the bear away, saving his life. However, the bear had already taken a huge lick out of the child’s face. The bear’s tongue was covered with sharp tiny barbs, removing a large portion of his flesh with that lick. There wasn’t an eye or an ear to be found on the left side of his face. Even his nose and mouth were askew. He was already forty years old and couldn’t even find a decent wife. Whenever the old people of the village talked of him, they would always shed a few tears.
Although we were bold, we didn’t dare to rashly venture into the primeval forest. When Fatty went out to extract the pine seed oil with the villagers, he found out that the nest was located near the edge of the forest, on a large tree near the small stream.
But what we didn’t expect to see was how huge the nest was. The size of the nest was even bigger than all the ones we had poked combined together. From afar, it looked like a calf without legs hanging from the tree, with a dark swarm of giant hornets surrounding it, buzzing loud enough to deafen the ears.
So I said, “F*ck Fatty, you’re cheating me aren’t you, is this seriously a nest? This is a downright hornet atomic bomb. What if it explodes into pieces?” Fatty replied, “Exactly, would I have called you over if it was a normal nest? If it was one, I could have easily taken care of it myself. So what do you think, are you up for it?”
I said, “This isn’t a big deal. Our team is pretty much unbeatable. We weren’t afraid of the American aircrafts and tanks, much less a couple of small bees! They are all just a bunch of paper tigers! F*ck it, we’re definitely feasting on honey today.”
Even though we joked about that, we still didn’t dare act recklessly. If we made even a tiny mistake, the hornets would rain down and sting us to death. These hornets were huge and without a doubt, poisonous. Just a couple of stings and we’d be as good as dead. Fortunately, as if help had arrived from heaven, there was a river right beside it. I first broke a biscuit in half and fed Yellow Chestnut with one piece and let it run as far as it could. Then, we quickly donned military coats we brought along, put on the hat, tied a scarf around our necks, and slipped on gloves. We also covered the front of our hat with a silk towel that we borrowed from one of the female Educated Youths. After making sure none of our flesh was exposed in the open, Fatty went around and found two hollow reeds in which he gave one to me and kept another for himself. It was so that we could use it for breathing underwater when we jumped into the river to protect ourselves from the hornets’ attack later.
Once we were done, we looked like two bloated bears and we staggered to the base of the tree. In my hands, I held a pile of winter gra.s.s and matches to be well-prepared for the situation. Fatty held onto a long pole and counted, “One, two, three.” The moment he counted to three, he aggressively poked the area where the nest and the tree bark met. He managed to poke it for about four to five times before the giant nest dropped to the ground with a loud thud. Countless hornets inside immediately fled the nest and formed a dark buzzing ma.s.s shrouding the sky over our heads.
We were adequately prepared and did not need to worry about the hornets attacking. I quickly used the match to light the winter gra.s.s on fire, and placed it next to the gap in the nest. The giant hornets fled from the hive and flew around aimlessly the moment the smoke enveloped them. They couldn’t make heads or tails of where they were flying. Using soil, Fatty and I built a wall around the dried leaves, to prevent the fire from spreading further.