The hunter guards the mountain, which essentially means guarding the village. If a ferocious beast comes down the mountain, he will fire a gun to warn the villagers. Some years ago, a tiger came down and killed many people, but Qu the Hunter finally shot it dead. The villagers remember Qu the Hunter’s good deeds. Qu the Hunter wasn’t willing to go into town to buy grain, cloth, or supplies; instead, the villagers helped him buy these or exchanged them for him.
As for Qu the Hunter, he is actually a well-known figure in this area.
Not because he once bravely fought a tiger, but because of a sentence said by a wandering fortune teller decades ago.
Qu the Hunter’s real name is Guo Erdan. When he was a child, his father went into the city to work and had his leg broken by his employer. After the wound got infected, he struggled in pain for over ten days on the bed before dying.
Then, a wandering Taoist came to the village for food and to tell fortunes. Mrs. Guo gave him half a bowl of porridge, and he predicted that Guo Erdan was born under a disastrous star.
It was said he would ruin his father, mother, relatives, and children. Mrs. Guo believed it without a doubt and thought Mr. Guo had died because of him. When she remarried, she took her daughter but left behind her youngest son, Guo Erdan, abandoning him at the foot of the mountain to die.
Then Guo Erdan was picked up by an old hunter.
The old hunter’s surname was Qu. He was an outsider with excellent hunting skills. He once had a happy family with a son and a daughter, both well-raised. However, a local wealthy family took a fancy to his daughter, bought her as a maid by force, and she died within two years.
The son went to seek an explanation and disappeared without a trace, dead or alive.
After his children were gone, Qu the Hunter’s wife fell seriously ill and died one winter.
In such circumstances, Qu the Hunter found Guo Erdan. He was unafraid of the fortune teller’s words about his star-crossed fate, adopting Guo Erdan and changing his name to Qu Shan. After the old hunter died, Qu Shan became the new hunter and inherited the old hunter’s name; everyone called him Qu the Hunter.
Qu the Hunter had married a wife earlier on, but she died of illness.
Later, someone introduced him to a second wife, who died during childbirth in a difficult labor, taking the baby’s life with her.
After that, the world fell into chaos, with wars and conscriptions everywhere. Originally, men like Qu the Hunter, with no immediate family, wouldn’t be targeted for conscription. But as the conscriptions intensified, the soldiers and bandits ignored the rules, and Qu the Hunter was conscripted, though he later escaped and returned, continuing his life as a hunter.
This year, Qu the Hunter is forty-seven, an age when men are regarded as grandfathers during these times. His hair is graying, and both his body and vigor are not as they used to be.
Seven or eight years ago, he could still hunt tigers; now he mostly lays traps for rabbits.
For years, the village chief has been persuading Qu the Hunter to adopt a child so that when he becomes too old to work, there would at least be someone to care for him in his old age.
But Qu the Hunter seems to genuinely believe the fortune teller’s words from back then, thinking he is doomed to his ill fate and unwilling to bring misfortune to another child’s life. Over the years, even though some families with more children looked to adopt their child to Qu the Hunter, seeing his good circumstances, he refused them all.
Even when children were left at his doorstep in the night, Qu the Hunter would send them back to the village chief’s house that same night, asking the chief to return the children to their families.
These years, the village chief might not know much else, but he knows exactly which families in neighboring villages have how many children and how old they are.
This is why, when Qu the Hunter adeptly brought Qu Jing to the village chief’s house today, the chief, after understanding the situation, saw it as an opportunity.
Qu Jing’s situation is practically identical to Qu the Hunter’s back in the day.
No matter how old the child is, if abandoned in the mountains, especially deep in the mountains, it means the parents have decided they don’t want to raise the child, intending for the child to die.
The village chief wagers that Qu the Hunter couldn’t possibly watch a reflection of his younger self and remain indifferent.
Whether the child was a boy or girl didn’t matter to the village chief. Qu the Hunter, at his age, would be considered lucky to live to sixty. In these times, with everyone having only about ten more years to live, all he wants is someone to care for him in his later years; whether the person is a boy or a girl makes no difference now.
That was the village chief’s original thought.
But when the village chief discovered that Qu Jing might be a fool, he felt he might have set his cousin up.
Evening approached, and it was almost dark outside. The village head’s wife took advantage of the remaining light to serve dinner without groping in the dark. There weren’t enough chairs at home, so mostly everyone stood or crouched, holding their bowls to eat.
In fact, there weren’t enough bowls either, so several children shared one bowl, each taking turns to eat with their hands, no one disdaining another if there was food to eat.
Qu Jing, due to her large appetite and being offered food, received a chipped large bowl and three sweet potatoes.
Qu Jing silently crouched in the yard gnawing on a sweet potato, her eyes fixed on the chickens in their coop, truly resembling a little fool.
The village chief held a sweet potato, too troubled to eat, standing at the doorway of his house, waiting for Qu the Hunter.
Qu the Hunter arrived.
He carried a basket on his back, full of sweet potatoes, a small sack of rice, and a rabbit. Seeing the village chief squatting at his doorstep, waiting for him, Qu the Hunter set the basket down.
The village chief looked at the rabbit with eyes alight, both excited and guilty, repeatedly saying, "Enough, enough. Even if this girl you picked up eats a lot, it’s more than enough."
"Let me tell you something." The village chief pulled Qu the Hunter into the yard, muttering about what everyone had observed that afternoon.
She couldn’t speak, didn’t react, stared blankly, and ate a lot, perfectly fitting everyone’s stereotype of a fool.
"I told you, even if she got sick and couldn’t speak, someone nurtured this girl to this size, and she looks decent. No matter how ruthless, people wouldn’t directly throw her into the mountains to feed wolves. She must have been burned brainless, with a large appetite, and if thrown nearby, could walk back. That’s why they chose a distant place in the mountains to abandon her."