In the circle, a middle-aged man with a bare upper body, a red kung fu belt tied around his waist, and a body covered in dark scars was practicing martial arts. Beside him stood a simirly bare-chested young man, also with a kung fu belt, holding a heavy green brick in one hand.

  San Laizi pulled Song Ke's hand and squeezed to the front. San Laizi sat on the ground, and Song Ke stood behind him. San Laizi watched the itinerant fighter perform his punches, his eyebrows dancing, his fists clenched and moving, making howling sounds. Song Ke took a notebook and a pen from his pocket and started sketching.

  After the middle-aged man finished his punches, he cupped his fists and bowed to the onlookers, then sat cross-legged on the ground, closed his eyes, and began to circute his energy. His muscles bulged out one by one, looking as hard as stone.

  Before long, the boy standing to the side stepped forward and forcefully smashed the heavy green bricks in his hands onto the middle-aged man's head. Both bricks shattered, but the middle-aged man's head remained unharmed.

  San Laizi shouted loudly, cpping his hands vigorously, and the crowd erupted in enthusiastic cheers. After doing this, the middle-aged man picked up a bottle from the red cloth, poured out a few bck pills, and swallowed them dry. Then he began to introduce the miraculous effects of the bruise-relief pills.

  There were very few buyers for the medicine.

  Song Ke felt a bit sympathetic towards the two itinerant medicine sellers.

  Before Song Ke could gather his thoughts, the middle-aged man began his new performance. Song Ke saw the snake, a long snake, and the man said it was a mountain wind snake, one of the most venomous snakes in the mountains.

  The middle-aged man lifted the bck cloth covering the bamboo cage, and Song Ke saw the viper inside, its tongue flicking. The man grabbed the snake out of the cage, pinching its head with his thumb and index finger, while the snake's body coiled around his sturdy arm.

  At that moment, the young boy assisting the man showed a look of fear on his face. He quickly picked up a rough ceramic bowl containing a small amount of clean water and a piece of tree root on the red cloth and began grinding them together in the bowl. The middle-aged man said to the boy, "Kid, don't be afraid; it's fine! Our medicine is good; it won't kill anyone!"

  Song Ke didn't know what the middle-aged man was pnning to do, and he felt a bit nervous for him.

  At this time, the people around Song Ke quietly moved a bit further away from him and San Laizi, having caught a faint, unpleasant smell.

  They concluded that this unpleasant smell was emanating from either San Laizi or Song Ke. Not far away, a woman wearing a bamboo hat approached Song Ke, carrying a shoulder pole.

  The middle-aged man watched as the young boy finished grinding the tree root, then he stuck out his crimson tongue at everyone. He turned around, allowing everyone present to see his tongue, and then he thrust it into the open mouth of a snake that was sticking out its tongue.

  The young man stood beside him, his hand holding the ceramic bowl trembling slightly. Everyone present was sweating for the middle-aged man, and a few women covered their eyes with their palms. Song Ke stood there in a daze, his teeth lightly chattering. San Laizi had their mouths agape, drooling without realizing it. At that moment, the woman wearing a bamboo hat and holding a carrying pole stood behind Song Ke. She lowered her head and took a deep breath, as if inhaling a strange fragrance. The incident with the middle-aged man in the courtyard had no effect on her at all.

  A middle-aged man's tongue was bitten hard by a venomous snake.

  Someone screamed.

  The middle-aged man bit down hard on his tongue, sticking it out of his mouth. Calmly, he pced the snake back in the cage and covered it with a bck cloth. Then, he took the ceramic bowl from the boy's hands and walked around the crowd, holding the bowl in one hand and pointing at his swollen, bleeding tongue with the other, making gurgling sounds in his throat.

  Next, the middle-aged man smeared the potion from the bowl onto his tongue.

  The potion quickly took effect on his tongue, and the middle-aged man scraped off a lot of mucus-like slime from his tongue. Again and again, he flicked the slime off his tongue onto the ground. The bleeding from his tongue stopped, and the swelling miraculously disappeared. Finally, he downed the remaining potion in the ceramic bowl in one gulp, threw the bowl on the ground, and raised his fist to the onlookers.

  The crowd responded with enthusiastic appuse and cheers.

  A weight lifted off Song Ke's heart, and a smile appeared on his face.

  Now Song Ke understood that those pieces of tree roots were medicine for snake bites. Compared to the situation when he was selling the bruises medicine earlier, selling snake medicine was a completely different story. People were eagerly pulling out money to buy his snake medicine. There were many snakes in the mountains, and snake medicine was the most practical thing for the locals.

  San Laizi stood up, patted his butt, and said to Song Ke, "Painter Song, why don't you buy a piece of snake medicine too?"

  Song Ke replied, "To sell some medicine, you're really risking your life!"

  The woman standing behind Song Ke had disappeared without anyone noticing.

  The local dog stood under the old camphor tree, looking at Song Ke, whimpering, with a sticky liquid oozing from its eyes.

  On this day, the 25th day of the fourth lunar month, an utterly unexpected event occurred. This event gave the lonely painter in Tang Town an opportunity to paint portraits of the dead

  Compared to the bustling market, the valley behind Wugong Ridge, called Guofeng Valley, was so quiet. A gentle stream flowed through the valley, and the tidal mudfts on both sides of the stream were covered with tender wild wwheatgrass

  This season was the best time for wild wwheatgrass.Wild wwheatgrasswas a type of wild grass that rabbits loved to eat. Usually, many people would come to Guofeng Valley to pick wild wwheatgrassalong the stream. But since it was market day, Guofeng Valley was silent, with only the mountain breeze freely swirling through the sunlit valley.

  In the afternoon, a woman appeared in Guofeng Valley. She wore a blue scarf with a floral print on her head. She chose a patch of the most lush wild wwheatgrassby the stream, set down the basket she had been carrying on her shoulder, and squatted on the grass to pull out the wild wwheatgrass

  This woman was Shen Wenxiu, the wife of Zhong Qi.

  The women in the town would take a day off for themselves on market days, wandering around the market in small groups, buying little things they liked, or watching street performers. Sometimes, puppet masters would set up a tent in Tang Town to perform puppet shows, and the women would be drawn to the shows, ughing or crying for the fates of the characters, temporarily forgetting their own struggles.

  Shen Wenxiu was lonely; she had no friends in Tang Town. Zhong Qi also did not allow her to chat idly with other women. Moreover, from the first day she was brought back to Tang Town by Zhong Qi, who had escaped from the front lines, the women of Tang Town cast her inscrutable gnces, simir to how they viewed the prostitutes in the Xiaoyao Pavilion on Emperor Alley.

  Market days were a torment for her; the hustle and bustle would stir up painful memories of her hometown for Shen Wenxiu. So, this profoundly lonely woman from a foreign nd would always hide alone in a secluded pce during the lively days in Tang Town.