Three Ears bit his lip and said no more. No matter how much Benyi swore at him, his expression remained determinedly calm and even vaguely supercilious, watching the Party Secretary perform, as if he had some well-planned strategy all thought out. He waited urbanely while the Secretary finished swearing, then turned his head and walked off with a melancholy air.

He walked to the mouth of the village, quietly watched two kids playing with ants, then went back to where he lived. He'd work all his shifts as arranged-he wasn't about to be thrown off balance by Benyi.

He went looking for Uncle Luo, Fucha, and Precious Huang too, he even went looking for the Commune Head. In the end, he actually ran all the way into the county seat to inquire where Long Stick Xi had been sent for labor reform, because he strongly suspected he was in fact the seed of Long Stick Xi and wanted to see for himself what Long Stick Xi looked like before he dragged him off for a blood test. If Long Stick Xi was his natural father but wouldn't recognize him as his son, he'd smash his own brains out in front of him. He'd asked for nothing all his life, just this, all he wanted was to unravel the riddle of his own birth, to pay his respects to his real father, never mind if it was only for a day-just one moment would be enough.

Twice he went into the county seat, without managing to find Long Stick Xi either time. He didn't lose heart. He knew this wasn't a simple matter; perhaps it would be his life's destiny, but he was fully prepared in any case. He wasn't like the other Daoist Immortals, lying around all day sleeping, or wandering the mountains, or enjoying the waters. He was busy every day until late, busy searching and surveying, and-while he was at it-busy with all the interminable things in the world that make you busy. He was lazy by nature, but not outwardly: he often went off to the supply and marketing cooperative, the clinic, the granary, the forestry station, the school, as if he went to work there every day. He helped the quack pound the medicine, helped the butcher blow out the pig's bladder, helped the teacher carry water, helped the granary kitchen grind bean curd. He'd help out a friend on any important matter. Because his family's class status was too high, Maqiao's Yanwu was sent back home from school in Changle and refused entrance to the commune middle school. Determined to campaign on behalf of this victim of injustice, an indignant Three Ears dragged him, huffing and puffing, to the middle school, donated his entire collection of cigarettes to the headmaster, and asked the man to give him some face, to take in Yanwu.

The headmaster said it wasn't that he didn't want to take him, the problem was he'd been expelled from the county middle school and- how should he put it-there were political… problems.

Without a word, Three Ears rolled up a sleeve, took out a sickle, and drew it across his bare flesh; a stripe of blood immediately swelled out.

The headmaster gaped.

"Will you take him?"

"You-you-you threatening me?"

With another horizontal cut, another wound split open.

Both Yanwu and the headmaster blanched and rushed at him to grab the knife. The three of them became one great wrestling mass, the clothes of each spattered with blood, even part of the headmaster's mosquito net was stained red. Three Ears held the knife aloft and rasped: "You decide, Headmaster Tang: d'you want to see me die?"

"Calm, please calm down," the head-teacher begged him through his sobs. He ran out to find another two teachers, and following a brief discussion Yanwu was asked there and then to complete the formalities for entering the school.

Three Ears' arms were covered all over in knife wounds, but he also had a lot of friends. One thing about him, though, was that he'd never return to work in Maqiao. He'd rather shed blood elsewhere than shed one drop of sweat back in Maqiao. He wore an old army uniform he'd gotten hold of from somewhere or other, to make him look a bit more dignified. He said he was busy selling his blood, and when he'd gotten enough money for his blood, he'd go to the county seat to buy some bits and pieces, some leather belts and electric wires, some screwdrivers and spanners, then he'd make a mountain drill and open a copper mine on Tianzi Peak. His copper mine would make the people of Maqiao rich, and afterwards they wouldn't have to work in the fields any more, they wouldn't plant grain, cotton, sweet potatoes any more, they'd just eat and enjoy themselves every day.

No one expected that ugly little runt Three Ears would ever dare shit on Benyi's doorstep, would stir up all the trouble that was to come. That day, returning to Maqiao from the construction site at Bajingdong Reservoir, and wielding a Japanese-made 38-gauge rifle, Benyi forced Three Ears, tied up like a turkey, onto the grain-drying terrace. In his blinding rage, Benyi was making just about enough of a racket to frighten all the chickens and dogs out of the village: tired of living, was he, the smart-ass bastard? Must've been, to think of raping someone from the Party Secretary's family. If it hadn't been for Party policy on prisoners of war,. he'd have cut off his dragon by now, wham, bam, gone. He hadn't been afraid of American imperialism in the Korean War, so was a lazybones like Three Ears going to scare him?

While he was saying his piece, people noticed that blood was coming out of Three Ears' nose, his clothes were torn to pieces, he had nothing but a pair of shorts on his lower body and his legs were black and blue. He'd lost the strength to keep his head up and it slumped weakly to one side; neither was he strong enough to talk and his eyes had shrunk to slits of greyish-white.

"Has he had it?" People were terrified by the very sight of him.

"Be good if he died, one less bastard for socialism to deal with!" Benyi said rather ungraciously.

"How could he do something like that?"

"He'd stab his own father with a rake, is there anything he'd stop at?"

He yelled at Zhongqi to give him a hand hanging him up on a tree, then scooped up a great dipper of dung and held it up over his head. "D'you admit you're guilty? Speak up, d'you admit it?"

Three Ears shot a glance across at Benyi, blew a blood bubble out of his nostril; remained silent.

The dipperful of dung tipped over.

Tiexiang was nowhere to be seen. Some said she'd fainted from fright some time ago, some said she was hiding inside the house crying, repeating over and over he shouldn't be let off the rape charge, how her thighs and waist had been almost broken, spelling everything out very clearly. The men on the terrace put their heads together and whispered, once more drawn into concern over her body. Given that she hadn't attracted attention like this for some time, then, you could say, Three Ears was now doing this job for her again. Was she anxious her body had faded from people's memories?

It was already late at night by the time anyone released Three Ears down from the tree. He limped along, using walls or trees for support, and in the end it took him a full two hours, gasping and panting as he went, to walk a tiny stretch of road, stopping to rest all the time, his body aching from head to toe. Every step was an effort, as the most serious wound was between his legs; his "dragon bag" (scrotum) had been cut to pieces, one testicle had almost fallen off and it all hurt so much he could hardly see straight. But he didn't dare go to the clinic, afraid he'd be spotted there by people he knew, afraid it would feed the gossips, that people would kick up a huge fuss. Neither did he want to go back home: his mother would take him in, but he didn't want to go asking for more trouble from that damned Zhaoqing. He had no choice but to go back to the House of the Immortals, ask his housemate Ma Ming to help him find a needle and thread, and crouch round an oil lamp making a few crude stitches in his dragon bag. By the last stitch, the space between his legs was smeared with blood and his own hand shook so much he couldn't hold the needle steady; his whole body bathed in sweat, he fainted before he could gather up the thread.