novelAbuy Chapter 1 Refugees
Chapter 1 Refugees
The tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign in the Qing Dynasty, the year of Gengshen.
That year in Beizhili, the sky seemed to have been burned through a hole, and not a single drop of rain could leak out. From the beginning of spring to the beginning of summer, for a full four months, not a single foxtail grass that could provide shade could be seen on either side of the official road north of Baoding Prefecture.
The ground wasn't dry; it was cracked. Those dense, bark-like cracks gnawed from the field ridges all the way to the road, the deepest parts big enough to swallow half a foot. A layer of deathly white frost covered the edges of the cracks—the salt and alkali from beneath the earth forced to the surface by the scorching sun.
When the wind blows, the whole world is filled with a scalding, earthy smell. The dust isn't sand, it's powder, as fine as if it were ground-up bone fragments. If you inhale it, it can make you cough up dry phlegm mixed with blood.
When Li Qian opened his eyes, his first feeling wasn't pain, but bitterness.
A bitter, astringent taste, so intense it seemed to seep into his bile, spread from the back of his tongue all the way to his throat. He subconsciously moved his lips and found that his palate and tongue were stuck together, like two pieces of dry, hard leather.
There was something in his mouth.
He instinctively chewed it. A fishy, sour, and rotten taste, reminiscent of aged, decaying flesh, exploded in his mouth. The thing was incredibly tough, like chewing on a piece of greasy, rotten burlap.
Li Qian's pupils suddenly contracted. This extreme physical discomfort instantly brought his almost paralyzed brain back to normal.
"Wow--"
He suddenly turned his head and almost vomited up his internal organs.
What lay on the ground was a piece of purplish-brown meat, about the size of a finger. It was covered in white ash, with jagged edges, and half a sliver of thin, white tendon still attached.
That's human flesh.
In the desolate wilderness of the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor's reign, this creature had a chilling name: "two-legged sheep."
Li Qian stared intently at the piece of meat, his stomach convulsing violently, but he could only vomit a few mouthfuls of greenish bile. That utter emptiness was like a black hole, scooping out from the depths of his abdominal cavity, slowly draining away his remaining life force.
My throat felt like it was being repeatedly pulled and ripped by a rusty, dull knife; every breath felt like it was being torn apart.
"Where...am I?"
He opened his mouth, but his voice was only a faint, ghostly whisper.
Memories are like shattered pieces of glass, pieced together bit by bit. The blinding lights of the overpass, the out-of-control, overturned truck, and the excruciating pain that almost shattered my soul in that instant…
But this is clearly not a 21st-century highway.
He tried to prop himself up, and the moment his palm touched the ground, a piercing pain shot through him. Looking down, he realized it wasn't his hand.
That hand was thin and bony, its skin dry and cracked like a layer of old mud, with protruding knuckles and blue veins like green worms crawling under the withered skin.
This is a body that has been starving for a long time and is on the verge of collapse.
Li Qian slowly sat up, his gaze sweeping over his surroundings.
This scene looks exactly like a human altar.
In the dry ditch, which was a hundred feet in diameter, lay hundreds of people lying haphazardly. They wore tattered mandarin jackets that were no longer recognizable as their original color, their hair was disheveled, and the grime on their bodies had been hardened by sweat and sunlight.
Some people were already dead, their eyes still open, the scorching sun still reflected in their cloudy pupils; others were not quite dead yet, their chests rising and falling very faintly after a long while, as if afraid of disturbing the vultures circling overhead.
The whole place was eerily quiet. Here, when people were starving, they would conserve even the energy to cry or breathe.
As Li Qian stared at all this, a cruel thought suddenly popped into his mind: This world is truly rotten to the core.
When he saw these four characters in the history books, he thought they were just a sigh from a scholar. But when he was actually there, breathing in the air full of stench and dust, he realized that every stroke of the three characters "great famine" was soaked with the blood and tears of the people of Shengping.
His stomach cramped again; the feeling wasn't hunger, but burning. It was like a ball of scorching hot coals churning inside him.
He looked up and began searching his field of vision for anything that might save his life.
The grass? It's been completely looted long ago; even the soil has been scratched away by fingernails.
Trees? Those old elm trees in the distance, their trunks three feet from the roots up, were all gnawed white, even the innermost bark had been scraped clean, revealing the bitter wood.
What else can we eat?
Li Qian swayed as he stood up, his legs as weak as two mushy noodles. He lost his balance and fell headfirst onto the embankment, hitting his forehead and causing a sharp pain, but not a drop of blood came out—his blood was already extremely thick.
He moved forward along the terrain and saw an old man squatting a few steps away.
The old man had his back to him, his body hunched over like a fully drawn bow, holding a sharp stone in his hand, smashing it "crack" against a piece of white bone.
That was a broken human leg bone.
The old man smashed the bone open, carefully scooped out a tiny bit of dark red, dried marrow, and put it into his mouth.
His movements were extremely precious, as if he were savoring the finest of delicacies.
Li Qian's heart skipped a beat. The old man seemed to sense the movement behind him and suddenly turned around.
That's not human eyes.
In that instant, Li Qian saw wolves, he saw ghosts, and he saw the only thing left in this desperate situation—beastly instinct.
The old man's eyes were an eerie dark yellow, staring intently at Li Qian, making intimidating "ho, ho" sounds, like a beast guarding its food.
"roll."
His hoarse voice carried a resolute determination to perish together with his opponent.
Li Qian stopped. He felt no anger, no fear, not even pity. Here, pity was the most useless thing in the world, worthless.
He slowly backed away. He understood now; at this moment, that bit of bone marrow was the old man's life. Anyone who dared to try and take it, he would truly bite their throat through.
The wind rose again, bringing a new commotion from the other side of the official road.
"Da...da...da..."
The rhythm was extremely steady, so heavy it felt like it was pressing down on everyone's spine.
The sound of horses' hooves.
Li Qian suddenly looked up. On the distant horizon, dust billowed, and three black silhouettes were slowly moving towards them.
They were three Qing soldiers, wearing tattered blue cloth jackets, their braids swaying in the wind, with bloodstained Qing military swords at their waists, and matchlock guns wrapped in oilcloth on their backs.
Most importantly, several cloth bags were hanging on both sides of the horse's back.
The cloth bag was heavy, swaying back and forth with the horse's movements, and the outline of the squeezed grains could be vaguely seen.
In that instant, all the people in the ditch who looked like corpses suddenly reacted.
Pairs of eyes that were originally dull and lifeless suddenly glowed with an eerie green light. That light was the ultimate greed, and also the last struggle.
But no one rushed forward.
The knives in the hands of the officers and soldiers, the guns on their backs, and the tall horses they rode were, in the eyes of these starving corpses, the King of Hell who controlled life and death.
Li Qian stared at the cloth bag and licked his chapped lips. The cracks were aggravated, and a little blood seeped out. He subconsciously licked it into his mouth.
It tasted fishy and bitter, yet carried a burning heat that made his scalp tingle.
Fleeing from famine ultimately leads to death.
Lying here waiting for the rain is like waiting to die.
Since we're going to die anyway, why can't we find a different way to live?
He looked down and saw a wooden pole half-buried in the loose soil at his feet. The pole, which should have been a carrying pole used by refugees, was broken in two, the broken ends sharp as thorns, and stained with some blackened blood.
Li Qian stretched out his claw-like hand and gripped the piece of wood tightly.
His hands were trembling, a natural sign of physical weakness. But he gritted his teeth and focused all his strength on those few fingers.
Instead of rushing onto the main road, he followed a dry ditch that was only two feet deep to the side, like a snake crawling in the soil, slowly making his way towards the bend in the main road.
With every movement, his bones felt like they were about to fall apart. But his mind remained unusually clear.
He was calculating, calculating the speed of the horses, and the angles of the officers and soldiers.
He had read countless materials in modern times, studied ambushes using cold weapons, and analyzed the blind spots of cavalry. Information that was originally just for entertainment had now transformed into the most ruthless killing moves in his mind.
How can we survive?
In this world where cannibalism is rampant, only killing remains.
The sound of horses' hooves drew near.
One of the soldiers seemed to be boasting: "This trip to Baoding Prefecture was worthwhile. We robbed that villager of his stored grain, and we brothers can go back to the camp and relax for half a month."
Another soldier sneered, "That family's young wife is pretty too, what a pity, she's starving and just skin and bones..."
They didn't see Li Qian crawling in the ditch. In their eyes, the refugees by the roadside were no different from the withered grass; they were all inanimate objects.
Li Qian pressed his body tightly against the scorching yellow earth.
Five steps.
Three steps.
It's now!
The moment the lead warhorse stepped past Li Qian diagonally in front of him, a brute force suddenly erupted from his seemingly useless body, a force that would make even the King of Hell take notice.
He flipped himself up, the broken wooden stick in his hand kicking up a cloud of sand, and with the weight of his whole body, he stabbed it hard into the warhorse's vulnerable eye socket!
"hiss--!!!"
The mournful cries of warhorses tore through the desolate wasteland.