Chapter 2 Oxcart Adventures: The Living Bodhisattva Driving an Oxcart
It is the instinct of almost all living things to run away when being chased, and Xu Sirui is no exception. He turned his head and saw that the film crew was indeed swarming towards him like a swarm of locusts. He cursed in his heart, "What the hell!" and immediately turned around and ran.
So a group of people chased him, forming a long line along the mountain path. Xu Sirui was the leader, and the others kept a regular distance behind him.
After running one kilometer, he quickly discovered two facts:
First, he dozed off the entire time he entered the mountain and didn't remember the route at all;
Second, it’s not that the staff couldn’t catch up with him, but they were deliberately slowing down their pace to walk him in order to capture more eye-catching materials such as “Shocking! This dandy young man rebelled and ran away on his first day of arrival.”
Xu Sirui pursues a life of saving energy. In other words, he is not good at sports. After running for a while, he feels chest tightness and shortness of breath, and his legs feel like they are filled with lead and weigh a thousand pounds.
Hungry.
tired.
thirsty.
He had lived for more than ten years, always the center of attention, and had never suffered any loss. The more he ran, the more confused he became: Why did he have to suffer like this?
Smart people know how to cut their losses in time. Xu Sirui believed that he should be among the smart ones, so he stopped at the right time and changed his attitude before dying suddenly: "...Okay, I won't run away. Tell me what you plan to do."
Yang Ji also caught up. He was fat and obviously not used to this intense aerobic exercise. He panted and said intermittently: "Xu...Xu Sirui, I'm glad you can figure it out. I...I'm telling you, you can't escape like this. When it gets dark, there might be wild bears and wild boars running around in the mountains around here. Do you really plan to...plan to sleep in the wilderness and put yourself in danger? Listen to your uncle's advice and go back. The villagers' ox cart has come to pick you up. You can take the ox cart to the villagers' home, drink a bowl of mountain spring water, eat a meal of hot white rice, take a comfortable bath and sleep. Isn't that nice? Your parents definitely didn't sign you up for this program to harm you. You have to understand their good intentions!"
Yang Ji's words made sense. Even at the intersection of spring and summer, the sky still darkened quickly. It was only a little after six in the afternoon, but the surrounding mountains and forests were already shrouded in a thick gloom. Even if he wanted to escape, he would have to wait until dawn. Running out now would be tantamount to seeking death.
Xu Sirui thought about it and decided to compromise temporarily.
Seeing that he was showing signs of softening, Yang Ji knew that people with his temperament would only yield to softness and not to hardness, so he quickly struck while the iron was hot: "I'll call the ox cart over now."
The term "ox cart" was too unfamiliar to Xu Sirui. He frowned and asked, "Are there no sedans?"
"Oh my young master—" Yang Ji clapped his hands and stamped his feet, "Where can we get a sedan in this deep forest? Stop making a fuss! The mountain roads are difficult to navigate. Nothing can get in except an oxcart. Do you really expect someone to carry you on a stretcher into the mountains? You should be content with an oxcart!"
As they were talking, the shadow of an ox cart appeared faintly on the mountain road behind them.
Yang Ji quickly waved his hand and said, "This way! This way!"
Xu Sirui also squinted his eyes and saw a skinny kid with a crew cut riding on the back of a cow, walking towards them from a distance.
Shepherd boy, yellow cattle, deep mountains. If this combination of images appeared in a TV documentary, Xu Sirui might still appreciate it, but now he was exhausted. He just felt that the cattle walked too slowly and the mountain road was too long.
Only when the ox cart approached at a snail's pace did he see its full appearance.
The only word to describe it is "horrifying". The moment Xu Sirui saw the entire ox cart, he regretted it so much.
The cart was made of several broken wooden boards, with black marks here and there on it. I don’t know if they were marks left by moldy wooden boards or feces and slop.
He was still wearing his limited edition Air Jordans, and although the sides of his shoes were covered in dirt from running, compared to the cart, his shoes were spotless, practically ready to eat. The thought of stepping onto this cart with his beloved shoes made Xu Sirui want to vomit.
Yang Ji didn't notice his strange behavior at all and introduced him enthusiastically: "Let me introduce her. Her name is Zhu Yingning, she's the same age as you. Her twin brother Zhu Jixiang is the country student who swapped lives with you this season. This means that you will be living in Yingning's house for the next semester. Since you are going to be together for a long time, you might as well take this opportunity to get to know each other better. Yingning is a very nice person, and everyone in the surrounding area doesn't dislike her!"
Xu Sirui ignored what Yang Ji said and stared at the wooden board again and again, unable to accept the truth. "What is this?"
"Ox cart." Yang Ji replied.
God knows how much effort he used to convince himself to step onto the ox cart. Ox carts are meant for sitting, but Xu Sirui couldn't bear to sit in one, so he had to reluctantly maintain a half-squatting position, trying hard not to let any part of his body except the soles of his shoes touch the body of the cart.
I thought I could just hold on to my destination in this position, but after the cart had moved for a while, a lame old man suddenly appeared in front of me. He was holding a dirty lamb in his left hand, leaning on a bamboo pole in his right hand, and limping along very slowly.
Xu Sirui glanced at him casually, and when he saw the yellow lamb with curly fur in his arms, a look of disgust appeared on his face.
It's so dirty.
When the ox cart passed by the old man, he couldn't help but hold his breath.
As a result, Zhu Yingning, who was sitting on the ox's back, suddenly let out a sigh of relief, jumped off the ox's back, and spoke to the old man in a mumbling dialect. Hearing this, the old man smiled and nodded, holding the lamb and walking towards the cart where Xu Sirui was.
He suddenly had a bad feeling in his heart and hurriedly asked the staff beside him: "What did he just say to this old man?"
"Let him get in the car."
Xu Sirui choked on a mouthful of blood, glared at Zhu Yingning, and said in disbelief, "Why didn't you ask me when you asked him to come up?!"
Zhu Yingning climbed onto the cow's back, looking at him in confusion and answering in accented Mandarin: "Why should I ask you?"
"Is this car for me? If you want to take other people, you must ask me first!"
"I don't understand what you're talking about," Zhu Yingning said. "This is our family's car. My father made it by chopping wood himself. I want to use it to pull someone. Why should I ask you?"
“…”
Xu Sirui found that he couldn't refute it.
He was used to being the center of attention in the city, being complimented by men and admired by women, and subconsciously thought it would be the same here. He didn't expect that this country bumpkin herding cattle would not give him any face at all.
No matter how much he complained in his heart, the old man still sat on the cart as if it was his own. Not only did he sit down on the wooden board with his butt, he also put the lamb down, forcing Xu Sirui to hide in a corner of the cart.
The body temperature and movement of living things, the warm and smelly smell of the sheep, the curious and impolite stare from the old man... all of them made him feel extremely bored.
But it's not over yet.
Two children appeared on the road ahead, seemingly from the lower grades. This time, Xu Sirui, suspicious, interrupted Zhu Yingning before she could even begin to speak: "You're not going to let them up here, are you? I won't allow it!"
Zhu Yingning glanced at him with a puzzled look and said to the two children, "Ah Qing, Xiao Shui, both of you come up."
“…”
"Ah Qing and Xiao Shui are both girls." Seeing Xu Sirui's distorted expression, Zhu Yingning kindly explained, "They are still young. It's not safe to walk on the mountain road in the dark."
Well, Xu Sirui thought, now he finally understood why everyone in the area liked this person. It turned out that she was a living Bodhisattva! From now on, there would be no need to put out forest fires. He could just push her in and burn out a pile of relics.
Xu Sirui was equally horrified by children and small animals. He loathed anything that couldn't control itself. Look at these two children, their cotton coats looked like they hadn't been washed in three years, their cuffs and collars as yellow as an old woman's foot bindings. He couldn't suppress the disgust on his face, but there was nothing he could do. A tiger in a desperate situation, he could only try to shrink himself into a flat, salted fish, keeping his body as far away from everyone as possible.
The two children seemed very curious about him. They looked at him from time to time, smiled, whispered with their companions, and then looked at him again.
Xu Sirui is very eye-catching.
As long as a man is tall enough, has fair skin and a good head-to-shoulder ratio, he is usually not ugly. What's more, his facial features are inherited from Zhou Tianlan, who once won the Miss Hong Kong title. His eyebrows are like mountain ink, his eyes are like peach blossoms, his nose is like frost and snow, and his lips are like red. He is extremely beautiful, and even his clothes reveal a noble temperament that is different from that of the mountain villagers.
While in Beijing, Xu Sirui had been scouted more than once for modeling jobs. Logically, he should have been accustomed to being stared at. The problem was, people in big cities were more discreet. Regardless of their feelings, their stares were reserved. Yet, whether it was this old man or the two children, their gazes were direct, like a plainly drawn landscape, without any veneer.
Being stared at by them made him uncomfortable already, but what made him even more sick was that when the ox cart was halfway there, the old man suddenly started coughing violently with the lowered throat, and then: "Ah--tah!" he spat a mouthful of thick phlegm directly onto the ox cart.
And that’s not all.
When Xu Sirui felt a warm touch on his limited edition AJ sneakers that cost 50,000 yuan, it was already too late.
The sheep pooped on his shoes, not just one drop, but a bunch.
"ah--!!"
Before this, he never knew that a grown man like him could actually make such a tortuous scream.
The others on the bus also noticed the sheep's handiwork. The old man pulled the sheep away, his fingers gesturing in the air, mumbling something in his dialect, his face devoid of any apology. Two children pointed at the tops of his shoes and giggled. One of them bravely tried to use the tip of her shoe to help him kick the sheep poop away. Unfortunately, the sheep might have had a weak stomach that day, and the kick not only failed to dislodge the poop, but instead left a soft, wet mark on the shoe.
"It's over." The child who caused the accident stuck out his tongue at his companion.
Xu Sirui's face turned green. He grabbed Zhu Yingning's clothes and shouted, "Stop! Stop!"
"What's wrong?" Zhu Yingning slowed down the car.
He jumped out of the car swiftly and was helped by the staff to avoid falling, but he refused to get back into the car no matter what.
So I had to walk.
With a full eight kilometers left, Xu Sirui, slipping on his battered sneakers, followed the film crew, one foot deep, one foot shallow. Only willpower kept him from passing out. Lactic acid accumulated in his legs, creating a stagnant, sour feeling. He gritted his teeth and persevered, his steps heavy and clacking.
I don’t know how long I walked, but a village finally appeared in the endless mountains, with a few scattered lights outlining the outline of the village.
Xu Sirui's previous imagination of villages had been based on the new villages in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, blessed by the reform and opening-up policy—a land of fish and rice, with red tiles and white walls, and rice paddies waving in the wind. But the village before him was nothing like that; it looked more like a haunted house.
As we got closer, we saw a dilapidated stone tablet with the words "Zhujia Village" written on it standing at the entrance of the village.
The village is built on the mountainside, and its overall trend is upward. Zhu Yingning dropped off the old man and the children at the entrance of the village, tied the ox cart into the house at the bottom of the village, and then led the crew and the pale-faced Xu Sirui, along the crooked gravel road, climbing all the way up to the house at the top.
"This is my home."
She turned around and introduced herself to Xu Sirui.
Xu Sirui looked around the dilapidated house with drafts on all sides and couldn't believe his eyes. "Is this your home? This is really not a pig shed?"
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