CH 78

The next day, Mo Yan woke up and looked out of the window. The snow had stopped, and a heavy layer of it coated the ground. She started finagling with her hair as she ran outside.

Mo Ling asked from the kitchen, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to run by the pond.”

“Wear a bit more, it’s cold outside.”

Mo Yan swiftly shot out, leaving Mo Ling with only her footprints.

The entire path from her house to the pond was covered in heavy snow, and the tracks of Lu Junming’s horse were nowhere to be seen. As she ran to the pond, she saw that it had completely frozen over, and there was snow on top of it as well. However, there were billows of heat coming from the well.

Mo Yan suddenly thought of a short doggerel: Everything above the river surface looks the same, the well has a black opening. The yellow dog has turned white, and the white dog has grown fat. [1]

She had poked her head into the well out of curiosity when someone pulled her away, “Why are you looking into a well?”

Mo Yan escaped from Lu Junming’s grasp, “I was wondering why heat was billowing out of the well.”

He shook his head, “Don’t you know everything?”

She retorted, “I majored in classics, not the sciences.” [2]

“Majored? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing important, let’s go build snowmen!”

The two went to the Lu family, where Sir Lu had swept a circle of ground bare from snow and was doing his tai chi. Lu Junming grabbed two shovels and gave Mo Yan one before pulling her to the side of the courtyard to build snowmen.

Lu Junming wasn’t wearing his coat, and she was just wearing her clothes from yesterday. The two toiled for a long time before finally building a single snowman. He found an old straw hat to put on it, while she stepped back to inspect it, “Our snowman kind of looks like a beggar.”

“Then let’s give it something to eat!” Lu Junming grabbed a corn husk initially used for kindling from the kitchen and shoved it into the snowman’s mouth, “Doesn’t it look like it’s eating a carrot?”

Mo Yan scooped up a shovel’s worth of snow and flung it towards him, which he dodged, then he retaliated by doing the same. The two scuffled around for a bit. Mo Yan worked up a sweat even in this cold weather, which felt very satisfying.

When she returned home, Zhong Cheng had already left with his carriage, and Mo Ling was sweeping snow from the courtyard. Two ducks followed behind her, pecking at the snow. As the pond had frozen over, they couldn’t find any food and had nowhere to go, so the Mo family put them in the courtyard.

It was still early into the winter, so the weather wasn’t that cold. The thick blanket of snow dissipated within two days.

The siblings hadn’t gone to the store for a few days, nor had they checked up on the vegetable cellar, so they didn’t know if Ms. Hua had aired it out or not. If it wasn’t closed during the night, frost would grow on the vegetables, and if it wasn’t open during the day, the vegetables would rot. They, alongside the chinese foxgloves they wanted to grow next year, would all go to waste.

After two days, when the snow was mostly gone, they went to the market early in the morning. The road was still frozen over and wasn’t muddy.

When they arrived, they first went to Ms. Hua’s courtyard to check on the vegetable cellar. Mo Ling went down to inspect the vegetables and found they were all still fresh and juicy.

Ms. Hua heard the noise and came over, “Don’t worry! I let air in as soon as the sun comes up and close the vegetable cellar as soon as the sun goes down.”

Mo Yan thanked her as she waved it off embarrassedly. Zhao’er came out of the house and was about to go to the clinic when Ms. Hua told him, “Zhao’er, go check up on your master and see if he’s gotten better.”

“Is Mr. Cao ill?”

Zhao’er replied, “Master wasn’t feeling well yesterday and had a fever. I’m not sure if he’s coming to the clinic today.”

They all went over and found that the clinic door was locked. His brow furrowed, “By this time, he’s usually arrived long ago. He came yesterday, even though there was still a lot of snow, but he hasn’t come today.”

Mo Yan said, “Zhao’er, go back first! Don’t wait in the cold, I’ll go tell you if he’s arrived.” [3]

He looked at the road leading to Chenzhong Village for a few seconds before going back. After a while, Ms. Hua came over, holding his hand.

“Miss Yan’er, we’re afraid he’s really ill because he hasn’t come to the clinic today. We’re worried about him, do you know which way it is to his house?”

Mo Ling said, “Mr. Cao’s a doctor, he’ll be fine.”

“Doctors are still mortal, and they’ll still be uncomfortable when they’re sick! You told me that both his wife and his son aren’t at home, so who’ll take care of him while he’s ill?”

Mo Yan hadn’t gone to the Cao family in a long time, and didn’t know what the situation there was after Mrs. Cao and Cao Zhang left.

“I’ll go instead. Having outsiders looking for him so suddenly would be too eye-catching!”

Ms. Hua nodded, “Thank you, I’ll go help out at the storefront.”

Mo Yan hastily went back to Chenzhong Village, heading straight to the Cao family house. When she passed the school, she saw the governing official Uncle Pingshun sweeping snow off it.

“Uncle Pingshun, the school has already been abandoned, why are you still sweeping snow off it?”

He stopped sweeping and said, “It’s not abandoned. I’ve found a new teacher for the village, and he’ll come over after the new year. The children of the village still need to learn, after all! Where are you going?”

“We haven’t gone to the city these past few days, and today, we found out from Mr. Cao’s disciple that he had felt uncomfortable yesterday, and hadn’t showed up today. I wanted to go over and see whether or not he’s fine.”

When he heard that, Uncle Pingshun put down his broom, “I’ll go with you. If something had happened, you won’t be able to deal with it on your own.”

“Is there no one at Mr. Cao’s? Daqiang? Ms. Li?”

“He told both of them to go back home. Right now, he’s the only one living there.”

They had arrived at the Cao family home while they were speaking. He pushed on the door, and it was barred from the inside.

He banged on the door, and hollered Mr. Cao’s name, but there was no response. “That’s bad, something must’ve happened.”

“What do we do?”

“I’ll call someone over to take down the door!”

There were many idle people in winter, and Uncle Pingshun found two young men to help take down the door. However, it was too high-quality, and they tried to no avail.

They didn’t know who told Daqiang, but he breathlessly ran over, “It’s useless, it’d be better to go over the wall!” He walked along the wall, measuring his footsteps, “I remember there’s a cart here, the drop over the wall’s shorter here.”

Daqiang was too large and clumsy to get over, so Mo Yan said, “I’m light, can you lift me over the wall?”

He easily lifted her over and placed her on the wall, “Do you see the cart?”

She took a look at the courtyard and saw the cart. She was still a bit from the cart, so she slowly edged herself closer.

It was still an insignificant height from the wall to the cart, and Mo Yan didn’t dare to jump down. She held onto the wall with her hands and slowly lowered herself down. When her feet touched the cart, she let go. However, the sudden increase in weight made her and the cart fall over.

The people outside heard the noise and figured out that she must have fallen. Uncle Pingshun yelled from outside, “Yan’er, are you ok? Was the fall bad?”

Thankfully, she wore thick clothing due to the cold, and the distance of the fall wasn’t great. Aside from her arm being sore after using it to brace against the ground, Mo Yan was alright. She stood up and brushed off the dirt on her body, “I’m fine.”

“Open the door!”

Mo Yan ran to open the main door, and they could finally enter. Fortunately, the door to Mr. Cao’s room wasn’t locked, so Uncle Pingshun went in and saw him lying on his bed.

He went to call Mr. Cao’s name, but Mr. Cao furrowed his brow and asked, “Who is it?”

Post-translation notes: Have you noticed that each chapter is split into various activities instead of a single main focus?

[1] I’m sorry for the poor translation.

[2] An actual reference to Mo Yan’s previous life!

[3] If you’ve forgotten, Ms. Hua’s courtyard is really close to Mr. Cao’s clinic.