The village of Yeon is located in a mountain valley, unlike most of the northeastern plains. It belongs to the Daxingan Mountains and is surrounded by larch trees. Two streams converge here, and the village is situated at their confluence. Originally inhabited by Oroqen people, after the founding of New China, many loggers settled here, gradually forming the current scale.

  Its early September now, and there is still some green in the mountains. Miao Lao Die is a man who has not seen much of the world in the village, but he has great prestige here. He has a daughter named Miao Lan, who is several months younger than me. When I saw her, she was drying mushrooms. As soon as she heard that we were educated youth from outside coming to learn here, and seeing how fat I was injured, she immediately started shouting in the village.

  Glutinous rice is very common in the south, but here is the north, and its a big mountain. Its harder to find glutinous rice here than to go to heaven. No wonder Shi Baozi has good fortune! There is indeed a family in this village that has glutinous rice. They have relatives from Anhui Huaiyuan County, who brought some local specialties over last year, including a small bag of glutinous rice.

  As for the snake medicine, this is a big mountain, and when people here are idle from farming, they will pick herbs to supplement their family expenses. By noon, everything that Zhang Wenbin had asked Miao Lao to prepare was ready.

  His lips are all purple now, his whole body is shaking with cold, from the root of his thigh to the lower part is all black, his legs were originally fat, and now they are swollen like an elephant.

  At that time, the wind was tight and Miao Lao couldnt dare to tell the truth in the village. He just said that the child was bitten by a poisonous snake or something. If he really said it was a zombie, who knows who would go out and report it, that would be a disaster.

  There was no kang, just a layer of straw spread on the ground. Cha Wenbin handed Miao Laos dagger and placed it on the fire to roast. When the knife turned red-hot, he made a slash at the wound on Shi Baizhus back. I only heard a "sizzling" sound, accompanied by the smell of burnt skin and flesh. Suddenly, the dark blood flowed out like an earthworm.

  Shi Baozi squinted his eyes and sniffed the air, asking who was roasting meat. Despite being injured, he still shouted to Yuan Xiaobai beside him: "Whos roasting meat? Im hungry! Whos roasting meat? Save some for me!"

  Yuan Xiaobai glared at him with a scowl: "Your meat! Rotten meat!"

  "What?" The fatty struggled to prop himself up with his hands and saw Zha Wenbin holding a knife, carving at another leg. A burst of green smoke rose, and the red-hot knife was instantly extinguished by the fattys blood.

  Miao Lan also looked on from the side, and that little girl kept rubbing her own hem anxiously, worriedly asking: "Wont he be in pain?"

  Cha Wenbin continued to lower his head and cut the fat meat: "Wont, dont believe me ask him."

  "Doesnt it hurt?" I asked.

  "Fatty fell head down and said: It seems that it doesnt hurt, this meat is all numb and can be asked to be fragrant, how come I dont feel anything?"

  Zha Wenbin stood up, grabbed a handful of straw to wipe his hands and said: "If youre bitten by that thing, its said that people will also become like that. The first step is muscle paralysis. Ill saw you in two and you wont even feel it."

  "Hey, dont scare me, Cha Ye! We revolutionary comrades should unite. Ah, right, what do you actually do? How come youre so capable?"

  "Its actually my first time too, Im just trying it out by following the book, after the bleeding stops, apply these herbs, and then Little White, can you cook? Make him some glutinous rice porridge to drink."

  Yuan Xiaobai looked at Cha Wenbin with embarrassment, then glanced at the fatty and shook his head firmly: "Wont..."

  Miao Lan grabbed a rice bag on the ground and laughed: "Little Bai is a city girl, its normal if she doesnt know how to do it. Let me handle cooking."

  "Alright, Ill go make a fire for you." "Can Little Yu Ge make a fire?" "Hey, Im also a rural kid, its something I often do at home." "Hehe, then come try it out, be careful not to burn your face."

  At noon, after lunch, Cha Wenbin asked Miao Lao again if there were any leeches around here. In the afternoon, when he learned that there were some by the creek on the mountain, Miao Lan took us to catch seven or eight leeches and brought them back. Under Shi Baizis slightly terrified gaze, those leeches were placed one by one near his wound until they sucked out all the blood. Someone had used this trick to treat snake venom before, but even Miao Lao didnt expect that a teenager would know so much, and he couldnt help but look at him with new eyes.

  Pangzis wound took more than a week to heal, during which time he stayed at Old Miaos house, while we moved into the house prepared for us on the mountain the next day: an old warehouse.

  The educated youth need to go down to the countryside to work, together with other laborers in the village. In that era of large collectives, all members of the production team had to participate in labor, also known as "going to work". After the end of each days labor, the accountant of the production team would come to calculate the work points. Basically, a full laborer could get 10 points for working one day, but we were just kids who had just arrived and couldnt compare with adults who had been working in the fields for years. We could only get 6 or 7 points, and Xiaobai was even worse off. As a city girl, she had never seen a hoe before, let alone worked in the fields. At first, she could only get 1 or 2 work points, just like the old, weak, sick, and disabled people.

  At that time, in the Wild Man Village, one work point was worth four cents, and ten work points a day were 40 cents. The production team took care of us and found some light work for us to do since we couldnt handle farm work. Yuan Xiaobai was arranged to herd cattle and cut pig grass, so he could earn five work points a day.

  At that time, there was a popular saying: "Work points, work points, the lifeblood of commune members." The allocation of various grains, clothing, shopping, and even oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar were all calculated from these work points. Like us in the early days, we were assigned to eat with each others families and had to earn work points to pay back the food money.

  Teenagers are in the midst of growing, and they can eat a lot. Take Shi Guang as an example, he could eat over ten big buns made of refined flour for one meal. With his meager work points, how could he possibly afford such food? We had no choice but to go dig some wild vegetables after finishing our work, mix them with coarse grains and make some "wotou" (a type of cornbread) to fill our stomachs.

  Shi Baozi was raised for a whole week and nothing serious happened, while the two of us have already started working. Just in time to go during the autumn harvest season, its busy beyond mention, getting up at over 5 oclock in the morning, after eating breakfast going down to the fields with other commune members, lunch is specially delivered to the fields, after finishing eating we work until the moon rises above the ridgepole.

  The whole village relies on this little food to get through the winter. The seasons in Northeast China are cold and fast, and before you know it, a big snow will fall, and by that time, even wild vegetables cant be dug up. We have to rush to clear the second dam in the field before the snow falls, preparing to plant wheat at that time. That one month was the fastest period for me to transition from adolescence to youth. A month later, my skin turned black, my arms thickened, and the blisters on my palms burst and grew again, gradually forming a callus, and I slowly got used to the collective labor life in rural areas.

  Zha Wenbin, I and Pangzi lived in a room, a large open space. Yuan Xiaobai lived next door, which was also our kitchen, separated by a curtain in the middle, outside for eating, inside was her place to live.

  We lived in a warehouse not far from Miao Laos home, and about a month later we started to live independently. The biggest problem was that there wasnt enough food to eat. Fortunately, Miao Lan often came to our aid, their family had two hunting guns, Miao Lans was an old-fashioned shotgun, said to have been used by her father in the past. The ancestors of the people in Wild Man Village were mostly Oroqen people, a nationality that has always made a living from hunting, and almost every household here had hunters.

  Grandpa Miao often goes hunting, and there are many pheasants, deer, wild rabbits, and wild chickens in the mountains. Sometimes he would give us some and have Miao Lan bring them over. Yuan Xiaobai was originally unable to cook, and we three boys naturally couldnt either. But in that kind of environment, everyone grew up quickly. Yuan Xiaobai learned by watching Miao Lan cook and slowly began to learn how to make a few simple dishes herself.

  Sometimes, Old Miao would come over with a wine jug when he was in a good mood. Inside the jug was tuhao wine. In those days, grain was very precious and no one would dare to use it to make wine. However, the hardworking Chinese people always had creative power. The straws of corn, sorghum, and the starchy kudzu root were collected and brewed into tuhao wine, which was as primitive as its name but also very powerful.

  I and Zha Wenbin dont drink, but Shi Huangzi loves to. In Miao Laos eyes, we are still children and rarely get wine. That fat guy is quite persistent, when the old man cant take it anymore, hell give in a bit. There have been several times when Ive seen Miao Lan sneak back to steal her fathers wine and bring it over for Huangzi to drink, I dont know how that kid convinced her, at that time, relationships between young men and women were limited to comrades and fellow soldiers.

  Time flies, and the mid-October has arrived. This years first snow is a bit later than last years. The hunters in the village have already started preparing for the annual winter hunt, which is the guarantee for the whole village to get through the winter. Every household takes it very seriously. The winter hunt of Wild Man Village is organized by Miao Lao Da, who has good marksmanship and is a retired soldier. According to what Miao Lan said, after the first snow, large prey will leave footprints on the snowy ground, and their target is those wild boars that have been fattened up for a whole year and the big deer with antlers on their heads. Of course, sometimes they are lucky enough to hunt bears.

  Winter hunting is different from peaceful hunting, hunters need to enter the deep mountains where people rarely set foot, generally it takes four or five days from departure to return, during which time the hunters will not come back, only the laborers responsible for transporting the prey will run back and forth.

  Originally, such an action was not our turn, but Fatso heard that it was a hunt and came in spirit. After softening and hardening, we finally managed to get a hard job for the two of us boys, and were allowed to follow behind and serve as porters, while Yuan Xiaobai and Miao Lan and those girls were responsible for collecting fungi and pine nuts, which are essential food materials during the winter...