Rebirth in a Courtyard: I Am a Little Hunter

Jia Zhangshi's mean and ungrateful old face instantly twisted and deformed, and her triangular eyes burst forth with unbelievable, burning anger and a bone-chilling resentment!

Like a monkey with its tail on fire, she sprang up from the kang (a heated brick bed), not even bothering to put on her shoes. Barefoot, she rushed to the door, flung it open with a bang, and pointed towards the tightly closed, dark door of Wei Chen's house in the east courtyard. Her sharp, biting curses, like poisoned ice picks, shot out with chilling force:

"What utter bullshit! Is Wei Chen out of his mind or has he been kicked in the head by a donkey?! Hunting for those poor country bumpkins who have nothing to do with us and no one even buries them when they die? And he says it's good for their health?! I spit! Spit, spit, spit!" She spat several mouthfuls of thick phlegm onto the ground, as if she was trying to spit out something filthy.

"What a bastard! Are your eyes in your ass?! Our precious grandson! How long has it been since he smelled meat?! Huh?! His face is ashen from hunger, he's even staggering! Is Wei Chen blind or deaf?! Can't he see or hear?! What are you pretending to be, you hypocrite!"

"If he has that ability and that free time, why doesn't he think of helping out his neighbor in the same courtyard, someone he sees all the time?! He's siding with outsiders! He's stuffing meat into the mouths of strangers! Is his brain filled with swill or shit?! I think he's deliberately trying to starve my precious grandson to death! That heartless, rotten bastard!" Jia Zhangshi pounded on the door frame, jumping up and down as she cursed, spittle flying everywhere in the dim light.

Jia Dongxu sat at the table with a gloomy face, his enamel mug creaking in his hand, his knuckles turning white. He listened to the lavish praise for Wei Chen outside, and then thought about his own family's dire poverty, struggling to find enough to eat, and how they cried themselves to sleep from hunger. A strong sense of humiliation and imbalance gnawed at his heart like a venomous snake.

He gritted his teeth, forcing out a chilling voice: "Exactly! Hypocritical! Using things from our courtyard (he subconsciously assumed Wei Chen's belongings should belong to the courtyard house) to pretend to be a good person outside! To gain fame for himself! What a piece of trash! A petty person who has gotten his way!"

Qin Huairu was silently squatting by the stove, washing the family's dishes. The icy water stung her fingers, making them turn red. The sound of the running water couldn't drown out her mother-in-law's piercing curses and her husband's resentful growls.

She kept her head down, her long bangs obscuring most of her face, making her expression unreadable. The news of Wei Chen going hunting in the mountains initially surprised her, but then a complex mix of emotions welled up inside her. There was surprise, yet also a sense of something she had expected.

Thinking of his calm yet cold, unyielding gaze when he refused her request for grain last time, and then of how he risked his life for complete strangers and unrelated disaster victims… she felt a pang of bitterness, a sense of emptiness, and a faint hint of… admiration?—a feeling she herself was ashamed to admit and unwilling to delve into. But this faint, inappropriate feeling was instantly shattered by her mother-in-law's next words, vanishing without a trace.

Jia Zhangshi, her mouth dry from cursing, suddenly turned around, her triangular eyes, like those of a venomous snake, fixed on Qin Huairu, who was squatting by the stove. Her voice was shrill and piercing, carrying an unquestionable command and naked greed: "Qin Huairu! You dead woman! Are you deaf?! Are you mute?! Did you hear me?! That jinx surnamed Wei has gone into the mountains! When he comes back! No matter what he catches, whether it's a pheasant, a rabbit, a roe deer, or a wild boar! You! You must be the first to block his door and demand it! Do you hear me?! Block his door shut! Don't let any of that broth go to someone else's field!"

Qin Huairu's hand suddenly trembled, and the oil-stained bowl in her hand fell into the enamel basin with a "clatter," splashing icy water all over her face and body.

She trembled, raised her head, and her pale face was filled with distress, fear and deep humiliation: "Mom... this... how can this be? They called the shelter... it's a government matter... we..." Her voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz, pleading.

"Bullshit!" Jia Zhangshi rushed over, her finger almost poking into Qin Huairu's eye, spitting all over her face. "What rescue station?! What government?! Government stuff, what difference does it make who gets it? Aren't we poor?! Aren't Banggeng kids?! If Wei Chen can get it, that's his skill!"

What he brought back, our courtyard gets a share of! Why should those starving bastards who crawled out of some backwater get a piece of it?! Don't try to act all high and mighty here! Don't pretend to be a saint!

She became more and more agitated as she spoke, her chest heaving violently. "When he comes back, you go there right away! Cry! Kneel! Go with a stick! Let him see how hungry his own nephew is! I don't believe he can be so hard-hearted and cruel in front of his own nephew!"

"If that old bastard in the backyard or that scoundrel Xu Damao gets there first and takes a piece of flesh, I...I'll tear you apart alive!" Jia Zhangshi's roar was like a chilling wind from hell, carrying bone-chilling malice and threat, making Qin Huairu's eardrums ring and her head spin.

Looking at her mother-in-law's face, twisted and distorted by greed and anger, like a demon, she felt a chill run from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, freezing her limbs and bones.

Go and ask for it? Go and block the door demanding the game Wei Chen hunted for the rescue station? This… how is this any different from outright robbery? How is this any different from begging? What will Wei Chen think of her? That cold gaze… what will the people in the shelter say? Her spine will be broken!

But if she didn't listen... her mother-in-law's curses that could lift the roof, her husband's gloomy and resentful gaze, and Banggeng's longing yet aggrieved eyes... were like an invisible net, suffocating her.

Her vision blurred, and her body swayed, as if she were standing on a narrow bridge over a bottomless abyss, where whether she moved forward or backward, she would be shattered to pieces.

"Are you deaf?! Are you mute?! Can't you hear me?! Huh?!" Jia Zhangshi's screams tore through the air in the room again, filled with hysterical madness.

Qin Huairu trembled violently, her face turned as pale as a sheet of paper used to cover a window, her lips trembled, and there was not a trace of blood in them.

Under that suffocating pressure, enough to destroy all dignity, she resignedly and very slowly and heavily lowered her head, her long eyelashes obscuring the last glimmer of light in her eyes. She nodded almost imperceptibly, squeezing out a broken, bloody syllable from deep in her throat: "...Mmm." This one word seemed to drain all the strength from her body.

Outside the window, the night in the courtyard was so thick it seemed to solidify, like solidified ink. The news of Wei Chen's entry into the mountains and the letter of praise, which was as fervent as boiling oil, were like a stone thrown into a deep, rotten pool, stirring up not only the surface clamor but also the dregs hidden deep in the mud, emitting a pungent stench.

The Jia family's curses and greed were just the tip of the iceberg. More scheming, envy, and dark thoughts were quietly brewing and fermenting in Yi Zhonghai's contemplation on how to use this matter to consolidate his authority as "Grandpa," in Liu Haizhong's chubby face filled with jealousy of Wei Chen's "shine" and his calculations on how to get a share of the pie, and in Yan Bugui's meticulous calculations and assessment of the future returns of his "investment" in Wei Chen.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Wei Chen, who had set off that afternoon for his rural hometown, was completely unaware of this. He was carrying a heavy backpack and a gun, riding his bicycle along a rugged, steep mountain path strewn with gravel and dead branches.

The wheels rolled over the muddy village road, leaving deep and shallow ruts. Wei Chen pushed the heavy-duty Forever bicycle and stepped into the territory of Baoyuquan Village.

The air is filled with the aroma of damp earth, decaying vegetation, and a faint wisp of smoke from cooking fires—a scent unique to the mountain village, familiar yet tinged with a sense of alienation after a long absence.

I hadn't been back for several months, and the village was eerily quiet. The mud-brick walls looked grayish in the late autumn sun, and there were few people on the road. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of a few old men squatting in front of their houses, smoking pipes. Their cheeks were sunken, their eyes were cloudy, and they had a numbness that had been eroded by hunger for a long time.

He went straight to his familiar old wooden door. There wasn't much dust on the door knocker, and few weeds grew in the cracks of the threshold. Pushing open the creaking gate, the scene in the courtyard made him pause slightly.

The yard was swept clean, even the few clumps of hardy wild chrysanthemums in the corner had been trimmed, displaying an untimely neatness. The water vat was tightly sealed, and the firewood piled under the eaves was neatly stacked. It seemed that my eldest uncle and third uncle had come to take care of things quite often. A warm feeling quietly welled up in my heart, washing away some of the fatigue and heaviness of the journey.

He put down his heavy canvas backpack, which was crammed full. After quickly tidying up the dust in the room, Wei Chen took out the heavy ten pounds of refined white flour from his spatial backpack. Snow-white flour was an absolute rarity in these days when even coarse grains were scarce.

He carefully took out the flour bag, put it into the bamboo basket hanging next to his bicycle, which was lined with a clean coarse cloth, pushed the bicycle out the door, and headed towards the house of his uncle Wei Changsheng at the east end of the village.

The gate to my uncle's house was open. In the courtyard, my grandmother, with her gray hair, was sitting on a small stool, squinting as she painstakingly sewed an old padded jacket in the daylight.

Grandpa, hunched over, squatted in the corner, slowly whittling a few thin bamboo skewers with a chipped knife, probably preparing to weave some kind of small basket. Auntie was picking at a handful of withered, yellowed wild vegetable leaves by the kitchen door, her movements somewhat sluggish.

"Grandpa! Grandma! Aunt!" Wei Chen called out loudly at the gate of the courtyard.

The three of them looked up at the same time, and when they saw who it was, their faces instantly lit up with joyful smiles, smiles that were filled with disbelief and relief.

"Chenwazi?!" Grandma was the first to react. She dropped her needlework, stood up shakily, and her cloudy eyes instantly filled with tears. Her voice choked with emotion, "My Chenwazi! You're back! Let Grandma see you!" She staggered forward a few steps, her hands, covered with age spots and cracks, tightly gripping Wei Chen's arm. She looked him up and down, as if to confirm that this was not a dream.