Chapter 29: Old River Gully’s Whole-Pig Banquet, Xu Feng’s Wedding Feast

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Xu Feng?

Could it really be him?

The troublemaker from the special training camp outside Moscow—the one who was always the first to finish the extreme cross-country course, yet was constantly punished by her with stable-cleaning duty for breaking discipline?

The bastard who had taken down three of her men with nothing but a military shovel during a mock battle?

The man who, on the eve of graduation, got dead drunk, clung to her legs, and sang “Katyusha” in atrocious Russian all night long?

Eliza’s heart was thrown into turmoil.

She dared not be certain.

The war was over. He should have returned home.

But the world was vast, and there were far too many people with the same name.

And yet... the Xu Feng described by Wang Erhu—the man who could beat someone into looking like a pig’s head, then twist an entire village around his finger with a string of absurd arguments—how could that reckless, unreasonable courage resemble him so perfectly?

“The Xu Feng you’re talking about—which village does he live in?” Eliza asked, unable to keep the urgency from her voice.

“Old River Gully! Old River Gully Village, just over thirty li from here!”

Eliza drew a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.

She looked at Wang Erhu, her gaze turning sharp. “You had better be telling the truth. If I find out you fabricated a military report, you know what will happen.”

Without another word to Wang Erhu, she turned to a soldier behind her and ordered, “Vasily, ready the vehicle! We’re going to Old River Gully Village!”

...

The setting sun bathed the entire village of Old River Gully in a warm golden glow.

Beneath the ancient locust tree at the village entrance, several women who usually loved nothing more than gossiping had gathered together, spitting and gesturing as they discussed the biggest news of the day.

“You should have seen it! That Xu Feng fellow really came back from Black Bear Gully with his wife!”

“So what if he came back? Guess what they brought with them!”

“What? A pheasant? A rabbit?”

“Rubbish!” exclaimed one of the women who had witnessed the scene herself. She slapped her thigh in excitement. “It was a wild boar! A wild boar bigger than a calf! And its tusks—good heavens, they were this long!”

“My word! Is that true?”

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“I saw it with my own eyes. How could it be false? That pig must have weighed at least three or four hundred pounds! Xu Feng dragged the dead thing all the way from the village entrance to his own courtyard—and he didn’t even turn red or breathe hard!”

The moment those words were spoken, everyone drew a sharp breath.

A man who had earlier claimed that Xu Feng had been bewitched by his beautiful wife now edged closer, his face full of disbelief. “That can’t be right. Didn’t he say he’d been wounded while fighting out there and was crippled? How could a cripple kill a rabid boar? And then drag it home all by himself?”

That question struck the heart of the matter.

Indeed, how could a cripple possess such strength?

The villagers began whispering among themselves, and the tide of opinion shifted once again in a strange direction.

“I’d say his crippled act is probably just that—an act!”

“Absolutely! That boy has more tricks up his sleeve than you’d think!”

“But why would he pretend to be crippled? What would he gain?”

“Who knows? Maybe he wants to trick us into pitying him so he can establish himself in the village!”

Meanwhile, the instigator of it all, Xu Feng, was busy in his own courtyard with Lin Xue, dressing the enormous wild boar.

They worked in perfect harmony as they skinned it, carved away the bones, and cut the meat into portions, soon sweating from head to toe.

Outside the gate, curious villagers kept poking their heads in, pointing at the mountain of pork and whispering among themselves. Their voices carried clearly over the courtyard wall.

“Well, we’ve become famous in the village again,” Xu Feng said, wiping his sweat away with his sleeve. He glanced at the inquisitive eyes beyond the wall and gave a helpless, bitter smile.

He had actually anticipated this outcome.

If you hid your abilities, people would treat you like a soft persimmon and bully you.

If you revealed them, people would guard against you as though you were a fraud.

The power of gossip was truly harder to deal with than even the black bears in the mountains.

“If we took this pig to market in town, it ought to bring us quite a bit of money and grain, shouldn’t it?” Lin Xue asked softly as she looked at the great heap of meat.

To her, that was the most practical consideration.

With money and grain, they could repair the shabby courtyard and make a life for themselves.

“Sell it?” Xu Feng shook his head. He walked to the gate and called out loudly to the villagers still peering inside. “Uncles, aunties, everyone! Today, I, Xu Feng, have had the good fortune to hunt a wild boar! Xue’er and I came to this village without properly hosting a wedding feast, and we haven’t had the chance to visit any of our neighbors!”

“There’s no better day than today! Don’t bother lighting your own stoves tonight. Come to my house, every one of you! I, Xu Feng, am inviting the entire village—young and old alike—to a whole-boar feast! Consider it the wedding feast Xue’er and I owe you, and our thanks for standing up for us yesterday!”

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His words were like a massive stone hurled into a still lake.

For an instant, complete silence fell beyond the courtyard wall.

Then a wave of cheers erupted like a storm from the mountains and the sea.

“Excellent!”

“Feng is generous!”

“Then we certainly won’t stand on ceremony!”

Lin Xue stood in the courtyard, staring at the scene in stunned disbelief.

She could not understand why Xu Feng would willingly share something so valuable with villagers who had been speaking ill of him behind his back only moments before.

“Are you... crazy?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm, her face filled with confusion.

Seeing her look like a fussy little housekeeper, Xu Feng could not help laughing.

He drew her beneath the eaves and lowered his voice. “Which do you think is worth more—a few hundred pounds of pork, or the goodwill of several hundred people?”

“If we’re going to live in this village, we can’t act like lone wolves. The human heart is invisible and intangible, but sometimes it serves us better than gold and silver.” He pointed toward the delighted villagers outside. “One pig can win us the goodwill of most of the village, silence those foul mouths, and make life here a little more peaceful for both of us.”

He looked at her. “Tell me, isn’t that a worthwhile bargain?”

Lin Xue nodded, only half understanding.

She knew little of the complicated web of human relationships in this country, but she knew that Xu Feng must have his reasons for doing this.

Seeing her still wrestling with the matter, Xu Feng’s mischievous side emerged again. He leaned close to her ear and whispered in an ambiguous tone, “Besides, I just announced in front of the whole village that this is our wedding feast. What’s wrong? Are you saying you don’t want to marry me?”

Lin Xue’s face flushed crimson in an instant, like a fully ripened apple. She waved her hands repeatedly, so flustered that she could barely speak.

“No... no! That isn’t what I meant!”

She raised her head and looked steadily at Xu Feng with her clear eyes. There was a resolute seriousness in her gaze, as if she had finally thrown caution to the wind.

“You... you don’t despise me, and you’re willing to take me in. That alone already makes me... very happy.” She drew a deep breath, as though she had made some great decision. Her voice was soft, yet unmistakably clear.

“I decided long ago that everything I have... belongs to you.”