Chapter One: Autumn Wind, Autumn Rain

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A quiet autumn rain had been falling for ten full days. It was not heavy, but carried a trace of late-autumn chill as it pattered finely and densely across the boundless fields.

Masses of dark-gray clouds hung low over the earth. It was already deep autumn, and the woods stood bare. The rain had washed the old trees clean, but merciless autumn had stripped away their beautiful garments, leaving them standing gloomily while brown moss concealed the deep wrinkles in their bark.

The ten days of continuous rain had also turned the ground exceptionally muddy. Even the imperial highway was filled with murky puddles and mire, making it impossible for pedestrians to take more than a step at a time. Only with the aid of animal power could one manage to move slowly along the muddy road.

This was Tangyin County, under Xiangzhou Prefecture of the Hebei West Circuit in the Great Song dynasty. A broad, level imperial highway ran straight through the county. Ordinarily, travelers came and went along it, making it lively and bustling, but thanks to Heaven’s mischief, it was now difficult to see a single passerby.

To the east of the highway stretched endless wheat fields. The autumn wheat had long since been harvested, leaving the fields bare, with bundles of stalks standing everywhere like human figures. Farther away stood a massive waterwheel. Where there was a waterwheel, there was a river. Beneath it, the Tang River flowed quietly eastward, eventually emptying into the broader, glittering Yongji Canal.

Several miles west of the highway, a village of moderate size lay shrouded in misty rain.

At last, a man appeared on the deserted road. He seemed to be about thirty years old, with rather delicate features and a long, thin, sickly yellow face. Yet with a few full meals, his complexion would likely have become fairer than that of a young lady. At a glance, he was clearly not a rough farmer accustomed to agricultural labor, but looked instead like a man of letters.

He carried no umbrella. His thin, frail body trembled beneath the assault of the cold wind and rain. He could only fold his arms across his chest and wrap his plain white robe as tightly as possible around his slender frame, which resembled a sorghum stalk, as he ran toward the village on the opposite side of the road, stumbling through the mud.

* * * * *

The village was called Liwen Village. It contained thirty or forty households, half of them bearing the surname Li, most of whom were related by blood, whether closely or distantly.

The moment the man reached the village entrance, he suddenly cried out in delight. He had spotted something beneath a tree. His legs seemed to have shed heavy bags of lead, and he ran over with remarkable lightness. From beneath the tree, he lifted a dying weasel. It was a full two feet long, with bright, intact fur.

“Ha! Twenty cash in the bag!”

The man’s heart leaped with joy, and he spun around excitedly on the spot.

“Li the Bounty Hunter, we saw it first! Put it down!”

A cold voice suddenly came from behind him.

The man’s name was not Li the Bounty Hunter, of course. His name was Li Daqi, courtesy name Chengcai. “Li the Bounty Hunter” was his nickname, and a poisonous thorn driven into his heart—a name people had called him behind his back for five whole years.

Naturally, no one called him that to his face. Most people simply called him Daqi. But children had no sense of propriety and often repeated to someone’s face the things adults said behind his back.

Li Daqi could not keep his face. He turned around angrily. Standing opposite him were three children of about seven or eight years old. Their leader was a chubby boy with a face covered in rolls of flesh. He wore a fine black-satin jacket and deerskin boots, and stood with his chest thrust out and his head held high, looking exactly like a fat little gamecock. Though water droplets covered him from head to toe, sweat stained his forehead and steam rose from his head.

“So it’s Brother Fu. Didn’t you go to school today?”

The anger on Li Daqi’s face immediately transformed into a smile, and his waist instinctively bent a little. The chubby boy was the son of Liu Chenghong, the chief steward, and Li Daqi could not afford to offend him.

The two mischievous boys behind him also bore the surname Li. By seniority, they were Li Daqi’s junior kinsmen, yet there was not the slightest trace of the respect due to an elder in their contemptuous eyes.

“Whether I go to school is none of your damn business. Put down what you’re holding and get lost!”

The chubby boy displayed his father’s manner to perfection.

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Li Daqi had grown accustomed to such abuse. He cast a reluctant glance at the weasel in his hand. His instincts told him that it was probably the spoils of his own big black dog. Twenty cash! These children would surely ruin it.

“Brother Fu, please have mercy. Just give me this weasel.”

“Bullshit!”

The chubby boy shouted, “Hit him!”

The three little ruffians hurled the mud clods they had prepared. Caught off guard, Li Daqi was splattered from head to toe. One of the mud balls even concealed a sharp stone, which struck him squarely in the forehead. Blood immediately began to gush.

His forehead throbbed with pain, and dizziness blurred his vision. Panic seized him, but he could not bear to let go of the weasel. Covering his forehead with one hand, he fled frantically into the village.

“Bastard! Put down the weasel spirit!”

The three little ruffians refused to let him go. They chased him relentlessly, grabbing muddy stones from the ground and hurling them viciously at his back.

Li Daqi’s home stood at the southwestern corner of the village. A low courtyard wall, scarcely half a man’s height, had been built around it from branches and mud. Inside stood only three crooked thatched huts.

The room vividly embodied the meaning of the phrase “a home with bare walls.” It did not even have windows; a torn straw mat served to keep out the wind and rain. Still, there was at least a battered wooden door. The entire room contained only two pieces of furniture: a camphorwood chest in the corner, stripped of all its paint, and a small table on the earthen kang, its broken leg bound together with hemp rope.

At that moment, a child sat cross-legged on the kang, absorbed in a book. He appeared to be five or six years old and wore an old yellowed sheepskin coat.

His hair was tied into the traditional twin knots. His eyebrows were thick and black, and his arms and legs were unusually long. Although his features were those of a five- or six-year-old, his body was tall and sturdy, more like that of a child of seven or eight.

Beside him crouched a powerful big black dog. Drool hung from its mouth, while its small, glossy eyes remained fixed on half a vegetable bun in a chipped bowl on the little table.

Taking advantage of its young master’s distraction, it secretly stretched its head toward the bun. Just as its mouth reached the edge of the bowl, the child pressed down on its head.

“I already gave you half. You’re still not satisfied?”

He tapped the dog’s head with his book and scolded it with a laugh.

The big black dog lowered its head and whimpered softly, but its small eyes remained fixed longingly on the half bun.

“All right, all right! I’ll give you half again.”

The child placed the book on the table, tore the bun into two pieces, and casually tossed one away. The big black dog immediately leaped to the floor, but after searching for a long while, it could not find the bun. Puzzled, it turned its head to look back.

The child spread his hands with a grin. As it turned out, both halves of the bun were in his hands. The black dog barked furiously at the ceiling, then sprang back onto the kang, knocked its young master down, and began licking his face wildly.

The little boy giggled. “Stop licking me! Stop! I’ll give you half.”

The big black dog finally ate half the bun, then jumped down from the kang contentedly and ran into the courtyard to play.

The boy was named Li Yanqing. In another world, he had also been called Li Yanqing. He had grown up in a poor rural household in a distant southern region. That year, he had been admitted to a renowned university in the north with the highest score in the entire province. His elderly father had borrowed money from every household in the village before finally scraping together enough for his tuition.

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At university, he studied diligently and ranked first in his class every year. But to make a living and repay his father’s debts, he had, during his third year, committed an undignified act in a moment of poor judgment: taking advantage of his exceptional abilities to sit the national college entrance examination in someone else’s place.

He had failed to exercise proper caution. A wealthy heir who could not even solve middle-school mathematics had ended up ranking first in the entire district. When the truth came to light, Li Yanqing was expelled from the university and exposed in the news. He was too ashamed to face his elderly father.

Consumed by remorse and worn out in body and spirit, Li Yanqing collapsed in the hospital. Before long, he was transferred to the intensive care ward of the oncology department.

One day, when he awoke, he discovered that someone had pulled him from a well—and that he had somehow become a six-year-old boy in the Song dynasty.

It had been more than a month since Li Yanqing arrived in the Song dynasty, yet a trace of gloom had remained between his brows. It was not that he disliked his family’s poverty. He had already grown familiar with the village and with all the neighbors nearby. What he did not understand was the era in which he lived. He knew only that there were Khitan barbarians and the Liao kingdom, so this should be the Northern Song—but which period of the Northern Song?

His father had told him that the current reign was the first year of Zhenghe, but what year was that? He remained utterly confused.

Then, ten days earlier, after being pestered beyond endurance by his son’s questions, his father had finally revealed an important fact: the previous emperor had died eleven years earlier, and his temple name was Zhezong. That meant the current emperor had to be the historical Emperor Huizong of Song.

It was the final years of the Northern Song. How could that possibly make him happy?

Even more troubling was the fact that his father had begged books from people all over the place and now constantly lectured him on the importance of the civil service examinations. The greatest setback of Li Yanqing’s life had happened only yesterday, figuratively speaking. He had sworn that in this life he would never touch another examination, never sit for the imperial examinations again. Yet this Song-dynasty father of his regarded the examinations as more important than Heaven itself.

“This is reality. If you do not study and take the imperial examinations, you will never have a chance to rise above your station!”

Early that morning, father and son had quarreled once again over the examinations. After giving him a severe scolding, his father had left him with those words, ruining his mood for the entire day.

Li Yanqing carefully folded a chronology of the Song dynasty that he had compiled as a memorandum. He had made a small discovery today. His father had previously told him that the former emperor had died eleven years ago. By working backward from the year of the Jingkang Disaster and the twenty-five-year reign of Emperor Huizong, he had calculated that the current year should be 1111—fifteen years before the beginning of the Jingkang era.

Alas, the country would soon be ruined and families torn apart, yet his father still insisted on forcing him to take the imperial examinations.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

A burst of barking suddenly came from the courtyard. The sound was extremely urgent. Feeling puzzled, Li Yanqing jumped down from the kang and went outside.

“Dahei, what’s wrong?”

Li Yanqing crouched beside the big black dog and gently stroked the fur at its neck.

Dahei was not a dog that barked without reason. Intelligent and obedient, it was exceptionally skilled at catching field mice and house mice, to the point that all the cats in Liwen Village had lost their jobs.

This talent had won it the affection of the villagers. It ate at a hundred different households, sparing Li Yanqing the trouble of feeding it.

What was wrong with it today? Its agitation was highly unusual. Li Yanqing saw Dahei standing before the crack in the door, barking furiously at something outside. He rose and peered through the gap.

His entire body suddenly went rigid.

What he saw made his blood boil with rage.

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