The ox at his side was always Three-Hairs.

The problem was that sometimes Zhihuang had to go to the quarry-particularly after autumn, when things got pretty busy there. After he'd left, no one dared use Three-Hairs. One time, though, I decided to try my luck at copying Zhihuang's way of "slipping" it. It was spattering rain that day, with lightning lashing the dark recesses of cloud layers; two bare metal broadcasting wires shaking in the wind had been struck by lightning and were spitting out great rounds of shooting stars. The naked wires strewed themselves across the patch of field I'd just been ploughing, over where I had to pass whenever I returned, my nerves jangling away as I did so. Every time I approached underneath, my legs would turn to jelly, time and again I'd hold my breath, twisting my neck upwards to keep watch, watching my fate rocking and swaying back and forth on a thread in the sky, spluttering handful upon handful of sparks, as I dreaded an earth-shattering blow hitting me smack on the head.

Seeing that other people were still braving the rain to plant seedlings out in the fields, I felt embarrassed at going inside without permission, felt that it'd look like I was running scared of death.

Three-Hairs seized this opportunity to have some fun with me. The farther away we were from the live electric wires, the more the animal tripped and gamboled, the more unresponsive and unstoppable it became, however hard I pulled. The nearer we got to being beneath the electric wires, the slower it went, either to crap or to pee, or to nibble the grass at the side of the field, as if greatly enjoying my discomfort. In the end, it stopped moving altogether, completely oblivious to how you "slipped," to how you cracked the whip-even if you pushed its behind forward. Its body leaned, slanted forward, but its four hooves had set down roots into the ground.

It just so happened to halt right under the electric wire. Sparks were still spluttering out in all directions, crackling, exploding, splitting, a string of them dancing along the electric wire, sounding off into the distance. My willow whip had been beaten to a straggle, breaking ever shorter at every crack. Then Three-Hairs suddenly, unexpectedly produced a great roar, yanked the ploughshare so that it shot out of the mud in a silver streak, and galloped crazily toward the cliffside. A tumult of terrified exclamations resounded somewhere off in the distance as the wrenching motion left me staggering, almost toppled over into the mud. The plough handle flew out of my hands, the pointed ploughshare swung forward and, like the merciless falling of an axe, stuck itself straight into one of Three-Hairs' back legs. Perhaps not yet feeling the pain, it leapt onto a mound of earth a good meter high and swayed briefly, dislodging great lumps of mud that collapsed with a crash; it didn't fall back off in the end, but the ploughshare behind it lodged, with a violent clunk, into a seam of rock.

I didn't know who was yelling in the distance, neither did I have any idea what was being yelled. It was only a long time after the event that I figured out this person was yelling at me to hurry up and pull out the ploughshare.

It was already too late. The ploughshare, stuck in the seam of rock, broke with a clang, and the entire plough frame twisted off into pieces.

The rope halter also snapped. Awash with the excitement of winning freedom, powered by a vast, unstoppable force, Three-Hairs headed bellowing for the mountains, its stride often lapsing into lop-sided leaps, surging with a never-before-experienced happiness.

That day, its nose was ripped through and it almost hacked off its own leg. In addition to breaking a plough, it also mowed down a telegraph pole, flattened a low wall, stamped to pieces a large bamboo basket, and barged over a manure shed in the village as it was being repaired-if the two people putting up the shed hadn't dodged quickly out of the way, they might not have escaped with their lives.

After this, I no longer dared use this ox. When the team leader decided to sell it, I gave my enthusiastic approval.

Zhihuang didn't agree the ox should be sold. His reasoning was somewhat singular: he'd fed this ox grass and water, he said, he'd got the doctor over to give it medicine when it was ill, if he said not to sell it, who had the right to sell it? The cadres said, you use the ox but you can't then say the ox's yours, you need to distinguish clearly between public and private. The ox was bought with the team leader's money. Zhihuang said, the landlord's fields were bought with money, but after land reform, weren't the landlord's fields all divided up? The fields went to whoever used them-wasn't this the same principle?

Everyone felt there was nothing much wrong with his reasoning.

"Accidents will happen. When Guan Yunchang threw Jingzhou away, did Zhu Geliang kill him, or sell him?" Even after everyone had finished talking and dispersed, Zhihuang was still wandering along making new points to himself.

Three-Hairs wasn't sold, but died at the hands of Zhihuang, in a finale that no one would have predicted. He staked his own honor on Three-Hairs: if this beast injured anyone again, he declared, he'd take the axe to it himself. He couldn't go back on what he'd said. One spring day, when everything in the world was sprouting back to life, sounds and colors shifting under the warm sunlight, a secret disquiet pervaded the air. Just as Zhihuang was driving Three-Hairs down the field, suddenly the animal's whole body shuddered, its eyes fixed straight ahead, and with a yank of the ploughshare it charged forward insanely, tramping the mud, smack-smack-splatter, into a rising and falling curtain of water.

Caught unawares, Zhihuang eventually identified Three-Hairs' target: a red dot at the side of the road. It was only afterwards that he found out it'd been a woman passing by from a neighboring village wearing a jacket with red flowers on it.

Oxen are particularly sensitive to the color red and often react to it aggressively-nothing strange about that. What was strange was that Three-Hairs, who'd always been led by the nose by Zhihuang, went mad like it did that day, became deaf, oblivious to the shouts and screams of its master. Not long after, a woman's high-pitched scream carried over.

In the evening, definite news came back from the commune clinic to Maqiao: the woman's star must have been in the ascendant, as she'd hung onto her life, but Three-Hairs had tossed her up into the air, smashing a bone in her right leg, and her fall to the ground had left her with a concussion.

Zhihuang hadn't gone to the clinic; dazed, alone, he sat at the side of the road fingering a half-length of ox rope. Three-Hairs was not far off, timidly eating grass.

When he returned to the village at dusk, he set Three-Hairs under the maple tree at the mouth of the village and searched out half a bowl of yellow beans to stuff into Three-Hairs' mouth. Three-Hairs probably sensed something was up and kneeled down before him, murky tears dropping from its eyes. He'd picked out a thick, coarse hemp rope and knotted it into a noose, looped round each of the beast's four legs. A good, long axe was grasped in his hand.

The village herd of oxen produced an anxious lowing chorus that merged into wave upon wave of echoes, swirling round the mountains and valleys. The setting sun sank, all of a sudden, into gloom.

He kept watch in front of Three-Hairs, waiting and waiting for it to finish eating the yellow beans. A few women thronged round, Fucha's mother, Zhaoqing's mother, Zhongqi's wife, wiping their noses, their eyes reddened. They said to Zhihuang, he's got himself into trouble, you know, you're sparing him, really, by settling things now. They then turned to Three-Hairs: it's no one's fault but your own things have turned out like this. Weren't you in the wrong, X number of years ago, when you hurt that ox in Zhangjia District? D'you admit you did wrong, Y number of years back, when you killed that ox from Longjia Sands? There was that time you almost kicked Wanyu's boy to death, you should've been killed long ago. That other time, though, that got people really mad, when you ate the yellow beans, you ate the eggs, and still you wouldn't stir yourself, wouldn't take the plough, then finally when it was on, you wouldn't move a muscle, even with four or five people beating you, and we nearly had to lift you onto a sedan chair-people don't forget these things, you know.