Chapter Twenty-Three: Reminiscences of the Past

The shadow that hopped and skipped disappeared in a flash. Yet the dog in Zhao Hong’s hands seemed to have gone mad, still barking wildly in the direction of the pale figure, as though it had suffered a great provocation. No matter how hard Zhao Hong pulled, the black dog continued its frenzy, poised to charge at the white shadow.

Confronted by this inexplicable apparition, my mind raced. Though I had only glimpsed a shadow, it was unsettling enough. In the brief instant when the shadow flickered and vanished, I was certain I saw a fox’s face.

That face was smiling—a teasing grin, its eyes bright like the dead gray cat’s, yet brimming with mocking playfulness.

The three of us stood dumbfounded, facing the spot where the apparition had been, stunned by this new wave of strangeness before the previous one had even subsided. Our nerves were growing numb.

Zhao Hong clung desperately to the dog’s leash, staring blankly at me. “How do you explain that fox’s face—was it fake as well?”

His voice trembled, and the cigarette dangling from his lips fell to the ground. I could tell Zhao Hong’s emotions were dangerously unstable; the dual assault of myth and real danger had pushed him to the brink of a nervous collapse.

Seeing his face on the verge of tears, I suddenly realized I could not continue traveling with someone so emotionally volatile. To do so would endanger both him and myself.

So, as Zhao Hong seemed about to lose control again, I didn’t answer directly. Instead, I recalled a phrase our old squad leader had once told us and said, “Zhao! Do you remember—‘Doubt kills the heart, and fear is born from the heart.’ Remember the time at the firing range? We faced tougher challenges then—and we made it through. You were a soldier once—think back! Remember what our old squad leader used to say!”

“Doubt kills the heart, and fear is born from the heart.” This simple, almost Zen-like phrase contained a meaning and power that only we in the mess squad could truly understand.

These words could pull Zhao Hong back from the abyss of dread into rational recollection.

In that electrifying moment, my own words drew me back into the memory of those “supernatural” events…

It was a story from my days as a soldier, at the firing range.

During my service, our unit was stationed amidst the layered mountains of the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau, surrounded on three sides by hills and lush forests of bamboo. The entire camp seemed awash in a sea of green, the scenery tranquil and soothing.

Yet for all that, there was one place in the camp where nothing grew—no bamboo, not even weeds: the firing range.

The unit’s firing range was notorious. When I first enlisted, the old-timers told me that before the founding of the country, it had been a mass grave, and during certain historical campaigns, counter-revolutionaries had been executed there. It was said that more people had died there than had ever served in our unit.

Perhaps because of this, I always felt the place was heavy with ominous energy. Even in broad daylight, I avoided it, except for the few annual shooting drills or special training sessions. Otherwise, I rarely set foot in that forsaken ground.

Yet despite all my caution, I couldn’t escape the ill fortune lurking in the firing range.

In my second year, before the army-wide special training, our unit needed to level the ground. Since the mess squad had fewer combat duties, we were ordered to dig the deep trenches for target reporting within the range.

It was a grueling task, and none of us in the mess squad wanted any part of it. Digging those trenches was exhausting, and we still had to manage the unit’s meals—both jobs had to be done without fail. For those of us accustomed to a relatively easy routine, this was unbearable.

As a result, the usually unpopular “fire duty” in the mess squad suddenly became desirable, with everyone scrambling to volunteer. Compared to the sweltering outdoor labor, cooking and resting in the air-conditioned kitchen seemed infinitely more pleasant.

But our feigned enthusiasm was quickly seen through by the deputy commander, who openly reprimanded us at a unit meeting for our false attitude, sparing no words.

The deputy was a hot-tempered Northeasterner, and during that meeting his anger rose as he slammed the table, berating the mess squad for “fake enthusiasm, real avoidance.” By the end, he waved his hand and assigned us the special training target reporting duty as well.

With that, we were plunged from one hell into another, even deeper.

During the half-month of special training, thanks to the deputy commander’s “care,” we spent every day doing double duty: cooking in the mess squad and running errands as logistics aides on the training field, exhausted and worn thin.

It was a miserable existence. Reporting targets under the blazing sun and whizzing bullets was hard enough, and those not on duty had to serve tea, refill magazines, clean the ranges—everyone else’s rest was our work, and their work was also our work. We were little more than servants.

By day’s end, the mess squad was breathless from running back and forth. Even after sunset, we couldn’t leave until everyone else had formed up and departed.

Those days tested our endurance and patience. After a few days, several members of the mess squad showed signs of dehydration and mild heatstroke, walking with a limp.

Soon, someone couldn’t take it anymore.

On the fifth day of special training, Platoon Three conducted a live-fire exercise—I recall it was prone-position, one hundred meters, ten rounds each. After the shooting, the target reporters signaled their results, the commander recorded them, then we changed the target sheets and continued…

But after that exercise, the range was eerily quiet. The commander and deputy raised their binoculars, but the target reporter failed to signal.

In that strange calm, everyone sensed something was wrong with the “signalman” hidden in the reporting trench.

The commander, sensing trouble, immediately ordered the deputy to investigate. The deputy nodded and took the Mongolian soldier, Batu, to halt the training and rushed to the trench.

At the time, I was with Zhao Hong, loading magazines, and didn’t see the incident directly, but soon we found Batu and the deputy carrying the unconscious target reporter out.

The fallen soldier was named Zeng Hongbing, barely eighteen when he joined the mess squad, a short Sichuan lad who loved spicy food, so we called him “Little Pepper.”

At first, Little Pepper’s collapse didn’t alarm us—after a medical check, the health team concluded it was dehydration and heatstroke, prescribed some medicine and IV fluids, and said to wait until he regained consciousness.

But no one expected that Little Pepper would not recover.

He was awake after the IV drip, but couldn’t sit up, his thoughts were sluggish. When Zhao Hong and I visited, we felt something uncanny about his behavior—he foamed at the mouth, muttered incoherently about “plums,” “plums”—did he want to eat plums? Or was it someone’s name?

Amid our speculation, Little Pepper spent two days in a half-awake, half-asleep state.

On the third day, the old squad leader couldn’t stand it any longer. He took Zhao Hong and me to the medical room and quietly checked Little Pepper’s pulse, playing “folk doctor” for a moment.

After examining his pulse, the old squad leader’s face twitched, but he soon regained composure. He withdrew his hand and said calmly, “He’s got ‘yin heatstroke.’ At noon, make him a bowl of ‘soul-restoring soup’ and feed it to him. I’ll handle the rest.”

Later, I learned that “yin heatstroke” was caused by exposure to uneven temperatures and evil energy entering the body—often from seeking shade in the heat. Its symptoms begin like regular heatstroke but are actually opposite in cause, and a misdiagnosis could be fatal. Soul-restoring soup was the unique remedy.

Initially, I didn’t know what soul-restoring soup was, but after watching the old squad leader prepare it, I realized it was nothing more than ginger soup with powdered black donkey hoof.

He made it and assured us that ginger dispels cold and evil, being the most yang element in nature, referred to as “Purple Yang” in Daoist circles. Both traditional medicine and Confucianists consider it highly beneficial, excellent for treating yin deficiency.

As for black donkey hoof, the cooks in the temple called it “Kirin’s Hoof,” and prepared properly, it had the nourishing effect of donkey-hide gelatin.

The old squad leader reminded me, “Don’t underestimate ordinary ingredients like ginger. In the hands of a good cook, they can work miracles like ginseng.”

His words smacked of self-promotion, and at the time, influenced by my family, I considered cookery a lowly trade. So I replied with a dismissive smile.

After all, we, hidden away in the kitchen, were barely seen by the diners—what good was it to make food as potent as ginseng? Become a doctor? At most, a folk healer.

The old squad leader didn’t rebuke my attitude. He calmly said for the first time, “Food and medicine are inseparable. Eating can bring life, bring death, and even cure disturbances of ghosts.”

I didn’t understand his last point at the time, but in the days that followed, I witnessed his ability to treat “ghost disturbances.”

It wasn’t luck—it was a kind of fear and astonishment. Because of what happened later, I began to pay attention to the old squad leader’s wisdom, the so-called “secret rules” among cooks.

After we started giving Little Pepper a bowl of soul-restoring soup each noon, his condition improved rapidly. In three days he was fully recovered. On the fourth day, he returned cheerfully from the health team and resumed duty in the kitchen.

But after his return, we suddenly felt that Little Pepper... was no longer the same person he used to be.