Chapter 290: Parting the Clouds (I)

After saying all this to Le Wuya, the last spark of life left in Little Dumpling's chest slowly drifted away.

He lay on Le Wuya's back, his leaf-thin chest pressed against the older man's back, his breath coming in rapid, surging waves, like someone puffing on a hookah, with a gurgling, rattling wheeze.

Le Wuya trudged forward unsteadily, detouring around another torch, picking his way toward the vaguely located "cave on the mountain's south side."

Before long, Little Dumpling's breathing turned into thick, fitful snores.

About the time it takes to burn three incense sticks later, he began to shiver, his upper and lower teeth chattering audibly.

This young man, who had once snatched his life back from a bear's jaws, was now riding Le Wuya's back, with all the racket of a one-man band, heading noisily toward his end.

Relying on his keen eyesight, Le Wuya finally spotted some shallow, narrow footprints under the grudging moonlight, beside a pool scummed with rotting muck.

His heart dropped. He grabbed Little Dumpling's matchstick arm and gave it a couple of shakes, which drew a sleepy "Huh?" before saying softly, "We're almost there."

Little Dumpling held out the flatbread from his clothes with trembling hands: "For... for my ma... I'm so sleepy, I wanna sleep..."

Le Wuya dug his fingers into his arm: "Tell me your mother's name. That way she'll believe me."

"...My ma's called, called Sun Huizhen."

"And you? Your full name?"

"No name... truly no name." A smile spread over his homely face. "I'm just called Little Dumpling... Ever since that bear got me, my ma said she wouldn't give me a proper name. No name... King Yan won't take me."

"You dummy." Le Wuya wiped the sweat from his forehead. "You're about to kick the bucket, and you're hoping King Yan won't take you? Want to end up a wandering ghost instead?"

Chastised, Little Dumpling looked sheepish and tried to duck his head, but didn't have the strength. All he could do was stare blankly with his one good eye at the back of Le Wuya's neck.

"Give yourself a name, quick." Le Wuya's legs had turned to jelly, but he still mustered the strength to coax him, one sentence at a time. "When the time comes, I'll burn you some nice flowers, good food, and fun stuff so you can live it up down there."

Little Dumpling was immediately hooked, the last light in his eyes focusing: "Then... then call me Sun Dumpling. I don't want money—I don't, don't know how to spend it. Just give it to my ma... I wanna eat boiled noodles. Haven't had 'em in ages. Back in the day, at New Year's, the, the mine would hand out a few catties of flour, and my ma would make boiled noodles. Smelled so good..."

Le Wuya nodded gravely. "I'll remember."

Only then did Little Dumpling remember something important: "Big brother, what do you do for a living? Why'd you come here?"

Le Wuya said: "I'm a government man. I came here... to save you all."

"...'Government man'?" Little Dumpling said softly. "You're a good official."

Le Wuya said nothing, just kept his head down and kept walking.

Little Dumpling pressed his whole face against Le Wuya's shoulder, raising a hand to feel his features.

His hand smelled of mud and blood, but Le Wuya didn't flinch or pull away, letting him trace his nose and eyes, bit by bit.

Little Dumpling committed his face to memory, then called out softly: "Good official, good official big brother?"

"Hm?"

"Just put me down here, won't you... Don't tell my ma I'm dead, okay?"

Le Wuya froze in his tracks.

And as the words died out, that matchstick arm slid down, limp and lifeless.

Le Wuya easily circled both of his bony wrists with one hand, slipped his right hand under his thighs, hoisted him up a bit, steadied his breathing, and resumed walking forward.

After about two hundred feet, he came to a stop.

A small cave mouth appeared before him, but the opening was blocked by a stack of stones—clearly not natural.

Le Wuya set Little Dumpling down and took apart the crude stone wall, piece by piece.

A damp, rotting stench seeped out from inside.

Le Wuya stared into the darkness ahead, then crawled in on his hands and knees.

When he'd seen those footprints by the filthy pool, a bad feeling had already taken root in his gut.

He had done disaster relief before.

After disasters, the ones who died from drinking contaminated water piled up like cordwood.

And the faint hope in his heart was soon snuffed out.

A woman lay silent in the depths of the cave, wasted away to a thin sheet of skin and a rack of bones.

Little Dumpling had gone out foraging and never come back. She didn't dare leave, and hunger had nearly driven her mad. Unable to stand the torment of thirst any longer, she'd drunk deep of the filthy water, fallen sick, and died.

Before dying, she had summoned her last shred of strength to wall up her cave.

Such a flimsy cover-up could not fool a sharp-eyed person, but it could still deceive simple-minded Little Dumpling.

—When Little Dumpling returned from foraging, he might lose his bearings, might think this was not where his mother was, and go searching elsewhere.

Mother and son to the bone, neither willing to let the other see their death.

Fortunately, now they no longer had to worry for each other.

Le Wuya dragged the woman's corpse out of the sunless cave.

He found a sturdy branch, used Little Dumpling's mining knife to carve a groove at the front end, searched among the rubble, and picked out a thin, sharp stone flake. He bound the stick and stone together with vines and his own belt, fashioning a crude shovel. Taking advantage of the loose soil left by the mudslide, he quickly dug out two pits.

Then, on second thought, he merged the two side-by-side pits into one spacious grave.

Because they had starved for so long, their grave was easy to dig.

The thin mother and son were laid flat side by side, moonlight falling over them like a thin, light frost.

Le Wuya clasped their hands together and said softly: "You're home."

As the layers of earth piled on, the branch snapped cleanly in the middle from the strain.

Le Wuya tried to find another branch, but the binding was too tight—no matter how he pulled, he could not free the stone flake wrapped in vines and belt.

In the midst of his repeated tugging, he suddenly stopped. He dropped to the ground, slammed his fist hard into the earth, and let out a muffled, suppressed roar.

After that brief release, Le Wuya straightened up and returned to normal. He bit down on his belt buckle with his teeth and slowly worked the stone flake free from the branch.

Having finished this modest task, Le Wuya straightened his clothes, picked up the mining knife, and staggered down the mountain.

At the foot of the mountain, torchlight still flickered.

Le Wuya hid in the shadows, leaning against a dead tree. Taking advantage of the elevated terrain, he finally made out a figure—

Beside a makeshift thatched shed, a man in a blue robe and small cap, his boots splattered with mud, apparently found the shed too stuffy and close, so he stepped out. Holding a storm lantern in his hand, he frowned and studied a map in the moonlight.

The lantern's shade was clear and delicate, clearly a rare item—while others searched the mountain for people with torches, he alone stood out.

Add to that the barely concealed deference the clerks and constables showed as they passed him, and his identity wasn't hard to figure out:

The county magistrate everyone in Dansui County sang the praises of.

Zhou Wenchang, Zhou Yunxing.

Le Wuya ate the flatbread Little Dumpling had swiped from him and that had now found its way back to his hands, bite by bite, then raised his right hand, revealing the wrist-mounted crossbow bound to it, and lined up the man's forehead in his sights.

Zhou Wenchang was too absorbed in his map to notice that he was already in someone's crosshairs.

After a moment, though, Le Wuya lowered his hand, continued holding the flatbread, and took another bite as if nothing had happened.

No—too far away.

The wrist crossbow was only useful at close range.

He looked up, thinking—now he understood why Wang Su had sent him here.

As it turned out, a small-scale miners' riot had broken out at the Xiaolian Mountain coal mine.

The mining inspector sent by the emperor, Niu Sanqi, had been shorting the miners' rations, forcing them to work extra hours, and bleeding them dry of their meager savings to fill the imperial coffers and his own pockets.

So, he was surrounded by angry miners, and a miner surnamed Li killed him with one swing of a shovel.

This all happened before the "earthquake."

When an imperial envoy was killed in Dansui, a thorough investigation would inevitably uncover that the mine was nearly exhausted and that Inspector Niu had been trying to drain the miners dry for one last score.

At that point, the miners involved would face death, and even the local officials would be stripped of their positions and thrown in prison awaiting trial.

After all, failing to report the mine's depletion in time, which led to civil unrest, was a grave crime for the local officials.

So, blasting the mountain and burying the village became the most respectable fig leaf.

Who would question the will of Heaven?

After the authorities suppressed the riot, they separated the able-bodied young miners from the women, children, and elderly, confining them in separate locations.

To keep these people in line, they forced nimble children or youths like Sun Wei to strip off their clothes, exposing the mine shaft numbers tattooed on their shoulder blades.

Even if these brats were clever enough to escape, they would soon be recognized as runaway miners because they'd be half-naked.

They wouldn't get far.

Not that the miners had any intention of fleeing:

The killer was Foreman Li, and clearly, no one thought it had anything to do with them.

Moreover, with their parents and families kept under guard, they had no reason to run.

After trapping these oblivious miners, the authorities only needed to use the explosives they already had on hand to blast the mountain.

The first try didn't work.

The second time, a surging mudslide buried all three villages whole.

Only Zhou Wenchang could mobilize such manpower and resources in this little patch of ground.

And ever since entering Dansui County, those lurking traces, those omnipresent informants, had constantly made Le Wuya catch the scent of the Changmen Guard.

That wasn't surprising.

When Le Wuya was in Nanting, he had built ties with the local Beggar Head, Sheng Youde, using beggars as his eyes and ears—so why shouldn't others plant informants in their own territory?

What was unusual was that Dansui County had laid a trap wide open and was waiting for him here.

Le Wuya had traveled day and night, at breakneck speed, like an urgent courier riding four hundred li a day, to reach Dansui so quickly.

Yet he'd been made almost as soon as he entered the city.

Le Wuya flat-out refused to believe that no one had tipped off the magistrate in advance.

His mind naturally drifted back to Wang Su.

This assignment wasn't supposed to be his.

But Wang Su had sent him regardless.

Back when he was still going by Le Wuya, Wang Su had been ordered to set him up.

So, only this man who had framed him knew the truth of many things.

Wang Su had previously tested him over wine, clearly suspecting he was Le Wuya.

He knew Le Wuya abhorred evil, knew that killing that man named Liu wasn't out of malice or personal vendetta, but simply to seek justice for the wrongfully killed Miss Song.

So he'd dispatched him to Dansui.

Now, the disaster in Dansui was a case where the dead could tell no tales.

All three villages were buried by the mudslide; on the surface, it looked like a pure natural disaster.

The sole survivor, who'd been dug out of the mud, had his neck snapped by the constable A Shun.

The mother and son surnamed Sun, who had escaped captivity but couldn't leave Xiaolian Mountain, had also met their ends one after another in those mountains.

—Wang Su was forcing him to use his old methods, to physically destroy the man behind all this.

Once he made a move, with so many eyes on him, he would inevitably reveal himself.

Clearly, Wang Su didn't see Zhou Wenchang as human either.

What he was really gunning for was Le Wuya's burning sense of justice.

Suddenly, a torch flickered behind Le Wuya, and a sharp voice barked: "Who goes there?"

Le Wuya didn't look back. He sprang off the rock like a fox and took off at a run.

...He had long since laid his own soft, clean clothes over the bodies of the mother and son.

What he wore now was Little Dumpling's miner's garb, crusted with mud and faintly sour!