Ten Year Interval of Wind and Snow
The old Ge tribe leader had already half suspected the name from a subordinate’s report, and Fang Yuan’s confirmation moves him and the assembled elders to cry out in shock. Ge Guang, too young to know the name, asks who Chang Shan Yin is, and his father tells him to toast the man as more than a benefactor: northern plains’ own hero. Fang Yuan demurs with a bitter smile, calling himself a broken vagabond saved only by longevity heaven’s blessing, and weeps that twenty years’ sleep has left him too unfilial a son to face his own tribe. ch. 440
The elders sigh at this. Ge tribe leader consoles him at once: Ha Tu Gu’s bandits were savage enough to loot countless tribes, wiping out the weaker ones entirely and sparing not even their livestock, so killing them rid the land of a great threat. His mother’s death was a villain’s doing, the old man adds, not any failure of his own. His reputation for righteousness is already well known, the old man says, and his return is good fortune for the whole righteous path, a verdict the other elders echo in turn. Hearing of such a past, Ge Guang’s respect for him deepens further. ch. 440
Fang Yuan turns the toast toward simpler things and lets his expression fall into gloom, and out of courtesy no one presses him on the past again. The banquet runs from afternoon into late night until the elders are too drunk to notice him slip away, feigning drunkenness of his own. ch. 440
The next day brings a second banquet, and before it starts the old tribe leader presses a million primeval stones on Fang Yuan as thanks for his son’s life. Ge tribe is only small to mid scale and far from wealthy, plain from its camp and its people’s clothes, so the gift surprises him, and he accepts it plainly, admitting he is short of stones himself and promising to repay the kindness later. The admission pleases the old leader, Ge Guang and the elders alike, glad to have tied themselves to such a hero. Now familiar with everyone, Fang Yuan toasts each elder by name from memory, and the gesture wins them over completely. ch. 440
Asked about his past, Fang Yuan repeats the same tale he once used to win Ge Yao’s trust, told more carefully now than it was to a young girl, adding that his cultivation fell from rank four peak stage to initial stage from his injuries. The story holds without a crack, and his sighing, melancholic telling of it moves the tribesmen to grieve with him and draw closer still. ch. 440
On the third day, a reclusive elder in charge of Ge tribe’s intelligence joins the banquet; he had been ordered out to search for Ge Yao the moment Fang Yuan first reached the camp. The old tribe leader sighs over his spoiled, wayward daughter, and Ge Guang idly asks whether Fang Yuan crossed her path in poison grassland. Fang Yuan answers without hesitation that he saw no one but wolves, and Ge Guang, aware the grassland is vast, had not truly expected otherwise. He adds that Man tribe leader’s third son, Man Duo, was to marry her, and that his failure to claim her now risks Man tribe turning on Ge tribe in retaliation, a worry the gathered elders visibly share. None of them know that the Chang Shan Yin they have feasted for three days already killed her. ch. 440
Fang Yuan urges the tribe to migrate north, join the heroes assembly, and shelter under Huang Jin tribe in Wang Ting blessed land before the great blizzard, now just over a year off. Northern plains has no mountains to blunt it as southern border’s fortified villages do. Once every ten years a blizzard buries the whole plain for months in ice, wind and powerful wild Gu, killing so many that large tribes shrink to mid scale and mid scale tribes to small. ch. 440
The old leader refuses, saying he is too old now for such ambitions and that binding Ge tribe to Huang Jin would drag it into the imperial court’s conflicts, a risk too severe for a tribe that has struggled this far. He would rather stay on land that is fertile and resourced, and shelter instead in nearby Hong Yan valley, where underground fire burns through the blizzard, except that the valley belongs to Man tribe and only their goodwill opens it. Man Duo’s marriage proposal had been that very opening, worth to him and Ge Guang the sacrifice of one girl’s happiness, and Ge Yao’s flight has left Man tribe demanding her back with nothing Ge tribe can give them. Fang Yuan reads the old man’s real aim as seeking shelter with Man tribe instead, and feels some private pity even as he understands it: a migrating Ge tribe would have smoothed his own road to the heroes assembly. ch. 440
Asked again whether he will ever return to Chang tribe, Fang Yuan privately reasons that doing so would risk exposing the impersonation, and says aloud only that he cannot yet face his elders and kinsmen. The old leader accepts this with sympathy, thinking of Chang Shan Yin’s own ruin: a dead mother, a wife remarried to his brother. He proposes Fang Yuan rest a few more days before setting out, since his wolf pack alone is not yet enough for the road ahead, and Fang Yuan agrees. Ge Guang mentions a market the nearby tribes will soon hold together and invites him to see it. ch. 440
Several days later, Ge tribe decamps southwest and converges with other tribes into one large market. Fang Yuan declines Ge Guang’s company and walks into it alone. ch. 440
