Chapter Seventy: The Moon's Dark Crown

Han Li wandered along the riverbank, flashlight in hand, expecting the experience to be quite pleasant. Yet, as soon as he stepped outside, he realized he was mistaken. Tonight was the twenty-second day of the lunar month—there was no moon in the sky. In the North, people call this the “black-headed moon,” a stretch of nights each month when darkness is at its deepest.

At this hour, describing the night as pitch black was no exaggeration. Alone, with only his flashlight for company, Han Li walked by the river. But even if he drained every bit of power from the batteries, he wouldn’t be able to catch half a bucket of eels. With no other choice, Han Li decided to use his special abilities. He extended his mental senses out to a radius of ten meters. Whenever he detected an eel, he would separate its innards from its body in an instant, tossing the entrails straight into the river. Before long, the guts would be devoured by fish, shrimp, loaches, and even other eels.

After glancing at his collection of eels in the decomposition space, Han Li decided to call it a night and head home.

The next day, when everyone gathered for work, they were still dragging their feet. However, thanks to two sparrows, Han Li learned about Zhang San’s current situation: at that very moment, Zhang San was pushing a wheelbarrow, begging for manure at the commune.

Cough, cough... It seemed his attitude had improved, but Han Li resolved to keep watching him for a while longer.

At noon, Tiedan actually brought him more than a dozen sparrows, all lively and energetic. With so many new eyes and ears, Han Li’s perception became sharper, though his head began to ache a bit. He quickly realized the cause: his mental strength was insufficient. Since he had no way to increase it, Han Li had no choice but to kill off some of the sparrows. Only when he reduced their number to six did the swelling in his head subside.

That afternoon, as the work bell rang, Han Li thought he could continue idling about. But before he had even left the village, the brigade leader called him over. Standing beside the leader was a group of strong young men.

“Han Li, this afternoon you’ll join the others to repair the shelters in the fields.”

These field shelters, called “horse rack huts,” were simple windbreaks and rain shelters that villagers in the Northeast built from tree trunks, straw, branches, and brush when guarding their crops. Their design resembled a horse rack, hence the name. Small and uninsulated, these huts could barely house a few people. Their main function now was to provide some protection for the night patrols during the autumn harvest.

The earliest houses in the Northeast were earth lodges—half-underground dwellings, said to be the kind where the Song emperors Huizong and Qinzong once sought refuge. These lodges later became a favorite among the Manchu people. They would dig a semi-underground cave into a hillside, then build a roof over it, using the slope for support. The roofs were tightly layered with rolls of birch bark as both roofing and waterproofing, then covered with thick layers of earth. After being trampled firm, the roof blended seamlessly with the hillside. Even in torrential rain, water would flow down the slope and the interior would remain dry. Inside, a heated kang bed made the lodge warm in winter and cool in summer. Wooden fences coated with thick mud on both sides completed the unique local architecture. Even into the 1990s, there were still people living in such earth lodges, claiming they were more comfortable than ordinary houses.

Further north, the Hezhe, Oroqen, and Manchu peoples preferred pure wooden cabins called “log huts.” During the great migration eastward, the pioneers who arrived here began, given scarce resources, to build shelters: the underground ones were called earth lodges, the above-ground ones horse rack huts. Deep in the mountains, one could still find the occasional hunter’s or ginseng gatherer’s hut or log cabin.

Han Li helped load straw, branches, and thorny brambles onto carts, then they used them to reinforce the horse rack huts, making them resistant to wind and rain and, if needed, somewhat defendable against wolves or wild boars. The work wasn’t hard, just dirty. Carrying the straw made Han Li itch all over as soon as he began to sweat. The huts were scattered along the edges of the fields, and most of their time was spent traveling from one to the next. As soon as work was over, Han Li went straight for a bath—otherwise the itching was unbearable. He changed into clean clothes and headed for the hills.

He wasn’t alone; plenty of village women and elders made their way up the mountain as well. The men went to tend their private plots. In these times, who among the villagers could truly afford to rest? Even if they returned empty-handed, the women could always bring back a couple of bundles of firewood to make family life a little more comfortable during the long winter. Unless someone was truly unlucky, it was rare to come away from the mountains empty-handed.

Han Li was now thoroughly accustomed to the mountain paths—his robust physique allowed him to move as if walking on level ground. His goals were clear: first, to return to the wild grape patch he’d found before and harvest all the ripe fruit for making more wine; second, to collect other edible wild fruits to enjoy during the winter months.

As he gathered grapes, his sparrow guides led him to a spot thick with round wild kiwifruit—also known as soft dates, vine melons, or wild kiwi. Wild kiwi is often called the king of wild fruits, famed as one of the world’s rarest delicacies. Its flesh is delicate and sweet, with reputed benefits for strength, fever reduction, and astringency. The only drawback is that eating too much can cause diarrhea. Finding a fruiting vine in the mountains was rare, since they often rested for several years between harvests. Han Li took care to keep a small section of each vine, then stored the rest in his decomposition space.

He checked his watch and took inventory of his day’s gains. Combined with the mushrooms and medicinal herbs he’d gathered along the way, it was another day of bountiful harvest.

Using his sparrows as scouts, Han Li rarely took the same path in and out of the mountains, increasing his chances of stumbling upon something good. As he hurried home, he mused: with six scouts, why hadn’t he come across a single wild pheasant or duck? Back when he watched survival shows, he realized there was a reason why survival experts often went hungry for days or resorted to eating insects. Though the deep mountains were rich with resources, the outskirts had long been picked clean.

When Han Li reached the village entrance, he was greeted by a quintessential rural scene: the sun setting in the west, the sky aglow with clouds, and smoke curling from every chimney, filling the air with the warmth of daily life.