Ying Xiaoman had always felt that she was quite lucky.
An abandoned baby girl left in the wilderness by her birth parents, she had neither been dragged away and eaten by wolves or wild dogs, nor had she starved or frozen to death. Instead, she had been found by her Adoptive Father while he was out hunting in the mountains, and from that moment on, she had a home.
The timing of her rescue couldn't have been more perfect – not too early, not too late.
Even her name, "Xiaoman," was pleasing to the ear.
At seven years old, when she was sitting in on classes at the local school, she loudly announced her name. Among a room full of "Dog Egg" and "Iron Pillar" nicknames, "Xiaoman" stood out like a breath of fresh air. The teacher's eyes lit up as he repeatedly praised her, "Good, good."
The teacher nodded his head thoughtfully and recited, "Confucian teachings warn against both insufficiency and excess. 'Xiaoman' means 'small fullness,' implying just the right amount – neither too much nor too little. To give a girl child such a fine name, Xiaoman, could your father be a scholar?"
Ying Xiaoman answered honestly, "My father can't read."
The teacher was taken aback. "If he's illiterate, how did he come up with such an excellent name?"
The boys in the classroom burst into laughter. In their small village, everyone knew everyone else's business. They all chimed in:
"It's because Xiaoman was found by her father on the mountain."
"She was brought home on the day of the Xiaoman Solar Term, so they named her Xiaoman."
"If it had been two days later, during the Grain in Ear solar term, she'd have been called Mangzhong instead."
The teacher, caught off guard and irritated, bellowed, "What's this girl doing listening in? Get outside! And you lot, you disrespectful brats, did I ask for your input? Back to your recitations!"
As the room filled with the sound of "Heaven, Earth, Dark, Yellow; Universe, Vast, Profound, Deep," Ying Xiaoman took a handful of walnuts from her pocket, respectfully placed them on the teacher's desk with both hands, and obediently went to stand outside the window to listen.
Her Adoptive Father's family was poor. They couldn't afford the tuition fees.
The teacher's school had strict rules and didn't accept girls.
But a line of poor boys and girls from the village who were eager to learn would stand outside the school windows all morning, listening in. The teacher inside would turn a blind eye, never chasing them away.
Although Ying Xiaoman had never formally attended school, she had memorized the Thousand Character Classic in its entirety and could stumble through a few poems.
Her Adoptive Father was built like a bear, but unfortunately, he had a lame leg. He rarely ventured deep into the mountains to hunt fierce beasts, making do with hunting in the foothills to barely scrape by.
When she was little, they were so poor that you could hear the wind whistling through their pockets. Her Adoptive Father would repeat hundreds of times, "When we save enough money, I'll buy silk clothes for you and your Adoptive Mother." Year after year, New Year after New Year, they never managed to save enough, and she and her Adoptive Mother never got to wear silk. But her parents loved her, and even without silk clothes, they would grit their teeth and buy two feet of new cloth before the New Year. Wearing new clothes made of ordinary fabric, she could still celebrate the New Year with joy.
In their village of about a hundred households, there were cases every year of parents marrying off or selling their daughters. When Ying Xiaoman reached her early teens, her beauty became renowned far and wide. Matchmakers and go-betweens almost wore out their welcome, and even wealthy families from towns a hundred miles away sent people to inquire indirectly.
Her Adoptive Father, muscles bulging, would grab the door bolt and chase them all away, shouting angrily, "Open your dog eyes and look! Are you worthy of my Xiaoman?"
The villagers gossiped: "That man from the Ying family has big ambitions!"
"He even turned down the owner of the fabric shop. He must be planning to offer his daughter to some noble in the city!"
Gossip aside, by the time Ying Xiaoman was fourteen or fifteen, people who saw her for the first time would often be dumbstruck. Everyone felt that even the few wealthy families in town were indeed not good enough for her.
However, as with most things in life, good luck rarely lasts forever.
The year Ying Xiaoman turned fifteen, her Adoptive Father fell gravely ill. No medicine seemed to help, and his once bear-like frame wasted away before their eyes.
By winter, her Adoptive Father's condition had worsened considerably. One day, after mustering the strength to get up and angrily chase away the matchmaker sent by Landlord Wu's family with the door bolt, he leaned against the doorframe, gasping for breath. His chest heaved like a broken bellows, wheezing and struggling for air.
"We can't stay here anymore," he said, standing in the middle of their three-room tiled-roof courtyard that had been built just two years ago. His gaze, however, looked past the snow-covered mountains surrounding them, towards the north beyond the horizon. "When I'm gone, leaving you two – a widow and an orphan – alone in the countryside will invite trouble."
His wife wiped away tears and said, "You rest! I'll go stew a chicken in the kitchen. Have a good bowl of soup, work up a sweat, and you'll feel better in the morning."
As soon as his wife's figure disappeared into the kitchen, he quickly instructed, "Xiaoman, close the door. I have something important to tell you."
Ying Xiaoman closed the door in surprise. "What is it that we need to keep from Mother..."
"Call her Adoptive Mother," he said sternly. "You're old enough now. Stop calling her Mother! You have your own birth parents. I'm not your real father, just your Adoptive Father! Remember that."
When her Adoptive Father got angry, his voice boomed and echoed through the tiled house. Although the sound made Ying Xiaoman's ears ring, she was used to it. She obediently sat by the edge of the kang bed-stove and said, "What does Adoptive Father want to say?"
Satisfied with her response, he nodded and moved the porcelain pillow from the head of the kang. He removed the cloth cover, reached inside, and after some rummaging, pulled out a hefty ingot of gleaming silver.
Ying Xiaoman was startled and blurted out, "Father, you've been hiding money from Mother!"
Her Adoptive Father immediately started coughing so violently he nearly coughed up blood.
After a long bout of coughing, clutching his chest, he angrily said between gasps, "Don't... cough cough, call me... cough cough! I'm not..."
"Adoptive Father!" Ying Xiaoman quickly corrected herself, patting his shoulder to help him catch his breath while gently suggesting, "Even though Adoptive Mother might not like you keeping secret savings, she'd be happy if it's a lot of money. Let's tell her."
Her Adoptive Father again looked as if he might cough up blood, and indignantly said, "It's not secret savings! Don't tell your Adoptive Mother about this!"
He beckoned Ying Xiaoman to sit closer and pointed at the silver ingot. "These fifty taels of silver aren't mine. I'm just keeping them safe for someone. The silver is still here, but the person... alas, they're no longer in this world."
Her Adoptive Father stared at the bare, snow-covered mountaintops outside the window, a rare expression of nostalgia and pain crossing his face. He admonished her again, "Don't tell your Adoptive Mother about this. If she knew, she'd surely use these fifty taels for my funeral. I'll be dead anyway, so why waste the money! Xiaoman, you take this. After the funeral is over, I'm buried, and your Adoptive Mother is settled, take these fifty taels of silver and go to the Capital City on my behalf."
Ying Xiaoman opened her mouth to speak, but tears beat her to it, falling onto the kang.
Choking back sobs, she said, "Why go to the Capital City? To seek out relatives? It's just the start of winter now, and the roads are bad. Let's make plans in the spring."
Her Adoptive Father gave her a toothy grin.
He was dark and burly, with a fierce countenance that indeed resembled a black bear from the mountains at first glance. Now, gravely ill, his smile looked even less appealing than usual. But in Ying Xiaoman's eyes, there was no smile more kind and endearing in the world than her Adoptive Father's.
Adoptive Father raised his hand to smooth her soft, beautiful hair, then pressed a hefty fifty taels of silver into Ying Xiaoman's hands, saying, "Your Adoptive Father won't make it to spring."
The cotton curtain was lifted from outside, and Adoptive Mother entered, bringing a steaming bowl of chicken soup and a gust of cold air. She urged repeatedly, "Quickly, drink the soup while it's hot, and eat more meat. Look how thin you've become."
Adoptive Father took the chicken soup and asked Ying Xiaoman, who sat dazed at the edge of the heated kang bed, "Did you hear everything I told you clearly? If you've heard it, go rest in your own room."
Ying Xiaoman lowered her head, wiped away her tears, and returned to her room with the fifty taels of silver tucked against her chest.
*
On the third morning, Ying Xiaoman was awakened by an urgent cry. She rushed to the next room, clothes hastily thrown on, to find Adoptive Father lying beside the kang, his last breaths leaving him.
Adoptive Mother knelt on the ground, her hair disheveled, her frail shoulders tightly hugging Adoptive Father as she cried helplessly, "Xiaoman's father! Xiaoman's father!"
Ying Xiaoman rushed forward. Together, they managed to lift Adoptive Father's heavy body back onto the kang. They pinched his philtrum hard, and he came to weakly, clinging to his last breath. In the dim morning light, he fixed his gaze on Ying Xiaoman, his lips moving with great effort, "Re— re— re—"
Ying Xiaoman choked back a sob and, tears in her eyes, leaned forward to hug Adoptive Father.
Adoptive Father grew frantic, his eyes conveying, "Don't you dare forget what I told you, girl." He glared, holding his breath, and with great difficulty uttered his final word, "—venge!"
Beside them, Adoptive Mother's eyes widened in shock.
Ying Xiaoman choked out a response, "Xiaoman remembers. After the funeral, I'll go to the Capital City immediately to seek revenge. Adoptive Father, you can go in peace!"
Adoptive Father exhaled a long, relieved breath and closed his eyes contentedly.
*
Although Adoptive Father was an illiterate mountain hunter, he was truly a wise man who feigned foolishness.
As he had predicted, he didn't make it to spring.
With the pillar of the Ying family gone, wolves and tigers indeed came prowling immediately. Before the first seven days of mourning had passed, while Ying Xiaoman was still kneeling in the mourning hall dressed in coarse hemp mourning clothes, a group of people arrived at the Ying household claiming to be relatives.
"My child!" Six or seven unfamiliar faces barged in uninvited, both men and women. A woman in her thirties led the charge, bursting into the mourning hall and wailing as she tried to embrace the white-clad Ying Xiaoman.
"The Ying men are fierce! While he was alive, I didn't dare come to claim you. Now that the man of their house is gone, I can finally speak the truth. Xiaoman, my child, I am your birth mother! You're not surnamed Ying at all, you're a daughter of our Zhang family. Mother has missed you for so many years!"
Adoptive Mother's lips quivered as she stood up, supporting herself on the incense table. "What kind of people are you? My husband is gone, and you rotten lot dare to come and make trouble? We raised Xiaoman from two feet tall to this age, and in fifteen years we've never seen any of you! Xiaoman is our daughter!"
A man in his thirties stepped forward from the group, saying dismissively, "I'm Xiaoman's uncle! Xiaoman was adopted by your family. Now that your husband is dead, it's time for us from the Zhang family to take Xiaoman back. We'll give you two bolts of cloth and ten bushels of rice as compensation for the expenses of raising her these years. Xiaoman, come here. This isn't your home anymore. Come back to our family with your uncle—Ow!"
A scream like that of a slaughtered pig rang out in the mourning hall.
While the two sides were arguing, Ying Xiaoman had silently gone to the wall and picked up the two-foot door bar leaning against it. She swung the bar, striking her supposed uncle's kneecap.
The heavy whoosh of air was accompanied by a bone-cracking sound that set one's teeth on edge. The clamor in the mourning hall instantly ceased.
The so-called uncle immediately fell to his knees, clutching his knee and crying out, "It's broken! It's broken!"
"Kneeling is the right thing to do," Ying Xiaoman said, holding the door bar and standing in front of Adoptive Mother. "Kneel and kowtow, and I'll forgive your sin of disturbing my father's spirit. I'll spare your other leg, and you can find someone to carry you home on a stretcher. With some rest, you might still be able to walk."
The six or seven men and women who had barged in all wore expressions of shock and fear.
Before them stood a young woman in coarse hemp mourning clothes, looking like a delicate white jasmine flower. Yet in her hands, she held a twenty-pound heavy door bar, twirling it effortlessly like a long spear. The iron-capped ends of the bar flashed bright, ghostly trails in the air.
"You must be from the Zhang family in the village across the hill. You've only heard that my father was fierce, and now that he's gone, leaving just us two women in the Ying family, you thought we'd be easy to bully. You probably haven't heard—I've been hunting in the mountains with my father since I was eight years old."
"Come here and kneel down one by one to kowtow. Do it well, and I'll forgive your sin of disturbing my father's spirit. Do it poorly, and you'll be carried home on stretchers."
*
After the seven days of mourning passed and Adoptive Father was laid to rest, the mother and daughter of the Ying family packed their belongings and valuables, locked up the house, and quietly left the village where they had lived for many years, without informing anyone.
Adoptive Mother's eyes brimmed with tears as she looked back longingly at their three-room tiled house and the small yard with its wicker fence.
"Child, what are we going to the Capital City for?"
"Father said to seek revenge."
"Who's the enemy?"
"I don't know. Never heard of them before. Father said it's a corrupt official in the Capital City."
"Don't listen to your father. He's already in the ground, what revenge is there to seek? We can't stay here anymore, let's go to the Capital City and live a good life."
"I promised Father. Don't worry, Mother. We'll go to the Capital City to live a good life, and take our revenge along the way."
Adoptive Mother sighed with worry, "We don't even know who the enemy is. How can we seek revenge so far away? How great a grudge could it be..."
Ying Xiaoman weighed the fifty taels of silver in her bosom, then felt the bag of grain on the mule cart. Leaning against her mother's warm shoulder, she looked up at the rare warm winter sun and thought that if the road ahead was as smooth as today, going to the distant Capital City to seek revenge might not be such a difficult task.
She knew the enemy's surname and that they held an official position in the Capital City.
Adoptive Father, though illiterate, had told her face to face that the enemy's surname was "Yan," with a falling tone.
He said the enemy was from a powerful clan that had held official positions in the Capital City for generations. They weren't martial officials who wielded weapons, but civil officials with rotten hearts.
It was a generations-old feud; if the father wasn't around, they'd seek the son, if the son wasn't around, they'd seek the grandson. The root was in the Capital City, and the surname wasn't common. A large clan surnamed Yan should be easy to find.
She just didn't know if it was the "yan" from swallow, the "yan" from wild goose, or the "yan" from inkstone.
In Ying Xiaoman's mind, she pictured a frail scholar, thin as a bamboo. His features were vague, but she imagined he probably had the treacherous look of a villain from the opera, with a painted white face.
She pondered silently.
Seeking revenge in the capital - it's not as easy as it sounds, but not impossibly difficult either.
In the end, it all comes down to the swing of a door bolt.