Chapter 5: You Have Great Courage
With something to look forward to, Jian Xingxia felt a sudden surge of energy for her chores. Even if she couldn’t upgrade the manor just yet, having a “temporary worker” keep her company every day meant she wouldn’t be completely isolated.
By the time she finished sorting through a few things, it was already past four o’clock. Although the sun still hung in the sky, Jian Xingxia knew darkness would fall within two hours.
She quickly cleared the weeds closest to the house and hauled her grandmother’s bedding out into the courtyard, taking advantage of the remaining summer sun to give it a good airing.
Once the quilts were draped outside, she raced against time to check the water well in the back courtyard. The old house had no electricity, which meant the electric water pump was useless. Fortunately, the well cover wasn’t completely airtight. Jian Xingxia pried away the stone slab resting on top, lifted two wooden planks, and inspected the water source.
To her relief, pollution was scarce in the deep mountains, and the well water remained crystal clear and cool. Jian Xingxia washed a wooden bucket, drew a fresh load of water, and splashed it across the floors, using a broom from behind the door to sweep away the accumulated dust. Then she drew a second bucket to wipe down the grimy furniture.
Before the sun dipped below the opposite ridge, Jian Xingxia brought the bedding back inside and replaced the sheets with her own university set, which she had refused to part with. Upon graduation, many of her classmates had thrown theirs away, but Jian Xingxia didn’t dare drop that kind of money. When you have nowhere to live, every basic amenity counts as a major expense if you have to rent a place. Now that they were proving useful, she felt a quiet wave of happiness.
…
As the sun sank completely, the water in the wooden basin outside had grown warm from the day’s heat. The washroom and kitchen were both in the back courtyard, currently choked by dense weeds that made entry impossible. Jian Xingxia took a quick, simple sponge bath in the small parlor, locked both the front and back doors, and prepared to call it a night.
She ate the remaining slices from the half-bag of sandwich bread. The big hen squeezed its way in through the gap beneath the old double-leaf wooden door, meticulously pecking up the breadcrumbs Jian Xingxia dropped. Then, without standing on ceremony, it found a comfortable spot on top of a wooden chest at the foot of the bed and settled into a cozy roost.
Jian Xingxia brushed her teeth and lay down on her grandmother’s small bed, entirely devoid of fear. She had slept right here as a child, back when her grandmother would use a cattail leaf fan to cool her down and chase away the mosquitoes.
Just as Jian Xingxia was lost in thought, the big hen suddenly leaped into the air and perched on the window sill. Immediately afterward, voices drifted in from outside.
“Xiaxia—”
“Is Xiaxia home?”
“Xiaxia, it’s Auntie Lu!”
Jian Xingxia jumped out of bed, threw open her bedroom door, and unlocked the front entrance. In the dimming twilight, she made out the figures at the gate.
“Oh, thank goodness! Xiaxia, you are home.” Auntie Lu let out a massive sigh of relief. “You silly child! Staying all by yourself deep in the mountains without a care in the world!”
Fangfang hopped up and down, waving frantically at Jian Xingxia. “Sister Xiaxia! It’s me! I only just heard from Uncle Lu that you were back!”
The two village officials accompanying them finally let their hearts drop back into their chests as well.
Jian Xingxia opened the courtyard gate, and Auntie Lu couldn’t resist delivering a firm swat to her back. “How do you have such great courage! Standing around pitch-black without even lighting a candle.”
Jian Xingxia scratched her head awkwardly. “The old house is out of power.”
Hu Da took a flashlight to inspect the utility box, returning shortly to report, “The wiring was gnawed through by rats. I’ll bring some men over tomorrow to fix it.”
Uncle Lu chided Jian Xingxia, “Your phone wouldn’t go through either. We wanted to ask where your father and the others had reached, but we couldn’t get ahold of you at all.”
A pang of shame hit Jian Xingxia. Biting the bullet, she lied, “My dad can’t make it. My younger brother and sister are still small, so he can’t get away.”
A look of deep sympathy crossed Auntie Lu’s face. Once a biological father remarried, he essentially became a stepfather. Auntie Lu urged Jian Xingxia to come down the mountain with them and stay in the village.
Jian Xingxia shook her head. “I’ll have to live in these mountains sooner or later anyway. I’ve already cleared out a bedroom today, so once Brother Hu helps me fix the wiring tomorrow, I’ll be fully settled in.”
The adults were highly reluctant to leave her, but Fangfang and Hu Ming were ecstatic. “I want to live in the mountains too! We can go foraging for wild mushrooms tomorrow!”
The two western wing rooms of the old house had frequently hosted guests in the past. Jian Xingxia smiled. “Not today. I haven’t cleared out the wing rooms yet.”
Fangfang grinned cheekily. “I’ll just sleep right next to you.”
Hu Ming chimed in, edging closer, “I can sleep on the floor.”
Jian Xingxia pointed to the damp, freshly washed floorboards. “You can’t sleep on that.”
“Then let’s head down the mountain.”
Despite all their coaxing and pulling, Jian Xingxia remained unyielding. Auntie Lu huffed, “You are truly every bit as stubborn as your grandmother!”
Fangfang and Hu Ming realized they couldn’t stay. They put on miserable, weeping faces, but Jian Xingxia remained unmoved. Ultimately, it was Hu Da who decided to leave his dog behind.
“Forget it. Xiaxia has her own ideas; if she wants to stay, let her stay. Fortunately, there’s only one path into this mountain, and there are no bad people around here.”
He also left her a spare mobile phone and two flashlights. “The spare phone is used for village patrols. Hold onto it for now, and call us if anything happens. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, so to guard against flash floods, the village keeps people on patrol duty through the night.”
The patrol route extended as far as the end of the yellow-mud path. Hu Da had already coordinated with Wei Liang; one would take the first half of the night and the other the second, and they would walk an extra few hundred meters to check on the old house.
Seeing that the village official Hu Da had put it that way, Auntie Lu could only abandon her attempts to persuade her. She handed over a basket filled with several lidded bowls. “You haven’t sorted anything out, so you probably haven’t eaten either, right? I brought you some flatbread, half a roasted chicken, and a few salted duck eggs. Just make do with this.”
Jian Xingxia accepted it gratefully. “This isn’t making do at all; I’m absolutely starving.”
Auntie Lu felt both exasperated and amused. “We told you to come down the mountain and you refused!”
Jian Xingxia uncovered a bowl, picked up a piece of flatbread directly with her hand, took a massive bite, and said with puffed cheeks, “If I don’t stay today, I’ll still have to stay tomorrow. It’s best to get used to it early.”
Auntie Lu fell silent. With Jian Xingxia’s mother missing, her grandmother deceased, and her father remarried… a suffering child forced to mature early. Jian Xingxia’s boldness looked like an act of sheer desperation in the eyes of others.
Only Hu Ming was weeping uncontrollably. “I want to live in the mountains too!”
Hu Da pinched his mouth shut. “Stop wailing, or a spirit will come drag you away!”
The mountains were always steeped in legends of spirits and monsters, and the villagers were used to scaring disobedient children this way. But this time it was rather awkward; Hu Da only realized his slip of the tongue after the words left his mouth. He turned around and said quickly, “Xiaxia, I’m just talking nonsense. There are no spirits in these mountains; I was only scaring Hu Ming.”
Jian Xingxia laughed. “Hu Ming is still a child, but look how old I am.”
He might be afraid, but I’ve already seen them with my own eyes.
Seeing that Jian Xingxia was truly fearless and entirely beyond persuasion, Auntie Lu dragged Fangfang away.
After seeing off Auntie Lu and her group, Jian Xingxia locked the doors securely once more, praised the big hen for its vigilance, and went back to bed. The big black dog did a routine patrol around the house before finally settling down right behind the main entrance, its snout poking out through the gap beneath the door.
After a long day of hard labor, coupled with having a space that truly belonged to her, Jian Xingxia no longer suffered from the nightly anxiety she felt at school, where she constantly worried about where to go after graduation.
Lying in her grandmother’s bed, she felt as if she had drifted straight back to her childhood. Her grandmother hadn’t been an exceptionally meticulous caregiver; she would frequently send her down the mountain to play in the village by herself, letting her eat lunch at Uncle Lu’s or another villager’s home. Her grandmother would arrange everything beforehand, and all she had to do was return before dark.
Back then, Jian Xingxia felt nothing but pure joy, entirely free of fear or deeper questions. It was only on a handful of occasions when she returned early that she caught glimpses of strange “guests” inside the old house. Her grandmother would always hurriedly usher those “guests” away.
Looking back now, Jian Xingxia felt it was highly probable that her grandmother had also possessed this [Manor Management System], and she must have hired many “temporary workers” summoned from unknown places.
The moment she realized she shared the exact same extraordinary secret as her grandmother, the last trace of fear vanished from her heart. Her grandmother had lived alone in these mountains for decades; she could certainly do the same.
Exhausted from the day’s toil, Jian Xingxia fell into a deep sleep.
In her dreams, she seemed to see her grandmother.
