Chapter 3

The Three-Armed Giant Under the Setting Sun

Just as Ha Yue hurriedly locked the door of the convenience store, two hundred kilometers away, Xue Jing was half-awake, resting with his eyelashes fluttering on the back seat of a Toyota Coaster.

Sui City had no airport, so at 10 AM, Xue Jing’s flight landed in the nearest city, Lincheng. He was immediately picked up by a local driver in a beige business van arranged by the Sui City authorities.

The van had sixteen seats, and at first, Xue Jing couldn’t understand why the local publicity department had sent such a small minibus to pick him up. However, as the vehicle entered Sui City and kept stopping at various places to pick up passengers, he soon realized that his tedious task had begun.

For adults, the prelude to work is socializing.

“Mr. Xue, we’re so glad to have you here. We, the big bosses, are just used to running businesses, we don’t really understand culture or the arts. Director Zhao said you’ve made great achievements in literature. This time, please say some good things about our wind power industry, and help us get more special funds from the leaders,” said one of the managers from the local wind power company.

The person speaking was a short, stocky man with an awkwardly unpolished accent. As he sat down, his beady eyes scanned Xue Jing from head to toe, sizing him up.

Despite the cramped space in the van, where people turned their necks to chat awkwardly with one another, Xue Jing, though tall, had a refined and untainted demeanor. His long fingers, which rested on his lap, were ivory-white, neatly trimmed, with well-rounded knuckles that seemed as though they were made for writing beautiful characters.

His face, even whiter than the fingers peeking from his sleeve, appeared delicate and almost fragile, but the calmness of his eyes gave it a composed, mature air.

Xue Jing graduated with a master’s degree from Ji City University in June of the previous year. He had studied Chinese language and literature in his undergraduate years, with a focus on classical philology. Later, he studied under Professor Zhang, a senior figure at Ji University, and spent two years at Yale researching Chinese texts and sinology. But despite his impressive academic background, Xue Jing’s career as a writer began much earlier.

Now, even though Xue Jing had been in the cultural scene for many years, he still appeared much younger than his actual age.

No wonder Mr. Huang was probing him with formal flattery.

Xue Jing was usually quiet and preferred talking about literature when the subject came up, but he greatly disliked socializing with businesspeople. However, since this trip had been arranged by the Ji City Cultural Bureau, he had specific tasks to fulfill, so he made a point of being extra humble. He smiled slightly and said, “Mr. Huang, you flatter me. Writing for a living is just that – no need to differentiate between coarse and refined. I don’t dare call myself a great writer.”

“Ugh, Old Huang, if you’re going to keep talking about those little schemes in your head, you’re not fit for this kind of occasion. Talking about money with Mr. Xue is tacky. We should be talking about plans, strategies, and the 35 years of development in Sui City’s wind power industry, and of course, the bright future of Sui City!” 

“Right, right, Director Zhao is absolutely right. Let’s have a couple of drinks at lunch!”

“Mr. Xue, is there anything you can’t eat? Sui City may not have much, but we have plenty of beef, lamb, and white wine. You must try our local Maotai!” 

“Today we’re welcoming Mr. Xue, so we won’t leave until we’re drunk!”

“Hey, that’s just us showing respect, Mr. Xue can stop whenever he wants. Haven’t you seen the interviews? Mr. Xue doesn’t drink or smoke in real life. Not like us!”

Listening to these people chat all the way, and after eating a table full of beef and lamb, when Xue Jing finally shook off his sleepiness, the Coaster had already made a loop around the most prosperous area of Sui City.

At the banquet, Xue Jing reluctantly drank a small cup of white wine due to the atmosphere. Because he wasn’t good at drinking, he felt a little tipsy. He couldn’t remember any of the landmark buildings that Director Zhao from the Cultural Bureau had pointed out, but when he opened his eyes, he was struck by a cold shiver as he saw the setting sun sinking toward the horizon.

Xue Jing was a native of Ji City. Although he had been immersed in academia for years, to better complete his work, he often traveled the world during the two summer and winter breaks, looking for inspiration. 

In addition to his public-funded archaeological internships in Dunhuang, Wudang Mountain, and other domestic locations, he had also been caught in a heavy rain on the sunny streets of London, and had once had his wallet stolen by a teenager with a woolen hat and a gun on a Parisian street late at night.

He had seen the sea in Sicily, and encountered the Northern Lights in Iceland, but at this moment, looking at the vast, desolate landscape before him—the giant windmills slowly turning in the distant mountains beneath the blood-red setting sun—he suddenly felt a unique sense of awe.

Here, there were no naturally majestic landscapes, no wealthy and bustling cities, but on the edge of this almost abandoned town, in this place where once no one passed through, as far as the eye could see, there were groups of giant, hundred-meter-high three-bladed wind turbines tirelessly whirling in the wind.

This was not an ancient civilization’s ruins, but a modern human-made industrial marvel.

Just as Xue Jing turned to ask his companions in the van about wind turbine power generation, there was a loud bang from the front of the vehicle. The windshield suddenly started spewing smoke, and the car, which had been bumping along the dirt road, came to a sudden stop.

“What happened? Xiao Jin!” Director Zhao from the Cultural Bureau leaned forward and asked the driver.

The driver, Xiao Jin, scratched his head, pulled on the handbrake, and awkwardly pointed at the dashboard before turning back to say, “S-sorry, Director, it seems like our car’s engine blew.”

After autumn arrived, Sui City’s days grew shorter.

It was just past 5 PM, and the sky was already starting to darken.

An hour ago, Ha Yue had ridden her electric bike around the city for four or five laps and finally found Zhao Chunni, who had been wandering near the abandoned elementary school.

She silently placed her mother on the bike and took her back home. As soon as they entered the house, the silent Zhao Chunni saw her aunt waiting at home and suddenly flew into a rage. She shoved Ha Yue and complained about being brought home, insisting she had to go back out to look for her pigs.

The mother and daughter exchanged some sharp words, and with their neighbor aunt taking sides, Zhao Chunni began to cry uncontrollably.

She sat on the floor, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes with her rough fingers while sobbing that if the pigs were lost, she wouldn’t want to live anymore.

With no way to calm her down, Ha Yue, still disheveled, hadn’t even had time for a drink of water before she once again set off on the tricycle, following the route Zhao Chunni had given her to search for the two pigs that had escaped.

Zhao Chunni, who didn’t seem to care about her daughter’s exhaustion, was instead urging the aunt, who was trying to mediate, to take off her headscarf and tie it around Ha Yue’s head, claiming that the night wind was cold and afraid it would cause a headache.

After passing through a densely populated residential area, the road ahead led to a long-abandoned farmland. Just before sunset, Ha Yue finally found the two little pigs munching on spoiled fruit beneath a few jujube trees.

The moment she saw them, her frustration flared. Not caring whether pigs understood Chinese or not, she grabbed the lead pig by the ear and began scolding it loudly.

After finding the lost pigs, Ha Yue finally breathed a sigh of relief. 

On the way back, she drove the tricycle quickly, but her mind wasn’t at ease. She was considering whether it was time to take Zhao Chunni back to a top-tier hospital in Ji City for a checkup to see how her condition had developed.

Three years ago, Zhao Chunni was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, commonly known as senile dementia. At first, Zhao Chunni dismissed the diagnosis from the county hospital, believing herself to be in perfect health and incapable of having such a disease. Moreover, since the mother and daughter had always had a strained relationship, she hadn’t immediately told Ha Yue about her condition.

It was two years ago, one afternoon, when Ha Yue received the phone call that ultimately led her to decide to move back to Sui City.

Just like today, the call came from the neighbor aunt, but it was made using her mother’s phone number.

At that time, Ha Yue was freelancing. She worked for herself, which, to put it nicely, meant having a flexible schedule. In reality, it meant that as long as she wasn’t sleeping, she was working.

She had spent nearly twenty thousand of her savings on the initial setup—registering the company, handling accounting and taxes, buying a domain, and building a website.

Although it wasn’t a large amount of money, the return on investment was very low.

Ha Yue did everything she could to attract customers, and she even wished she could spend every moment on Facebook and Instagram sending direct messages to promote her business. But even so, the orders were few and far between. At the same time, a patient had appeared in the neighborhood, and during the lockdown, prices for daily necessities and rent were rising rapidly. Her already limited savings were quickly running out. Additionally, after registering her company for half a year, she had almost no income, and her mental state had become very fragile.

When she saw the phone displaying “Zhao Chunni” as the caller, her first reaction was to reject the call and make it stop ringing.

Ha Yue didn’t consider herself a person with an avoidant personality, but just from seeing the call, she could already imagine the scolding she was about to receive.

Zhao Chunni would certainly not sympathize with her struggles in Ji City. After graduation, Ha Yue was supposed to be supporting the family. If Ha Yue dared to tell the truth, Zhao Chunni would only say, “Who told you to go to the big city to study? Want to run your own business? A maid’s fate, with a mistress’s heart. All of this is the result of your stubbornness and your arrogance in refusing to be disciplined.”

The phone rang twice before Ha Yue took a deep breath and, with both hands, carefully lifted the phone as if it were a bomb, cautiously pressing the answer button.

However, the voice on the other end was not her mother’s sharp, cold tone.

Zhao Chunni had been wandering around a highway exit in her pajamas late at night and was brought to the police station. After being questioned for two hours, she couldn’t remember where her home was. One moment she said she lived in a rural area a thousand kilometers away with two pigs, and the next she said she lived in the city with a small convenience store across from an elementary school. Her logic was confused, and her story unclear.

In the end, the police used facial recognition to unlock her phone and called the most recent contact, which helped identify her.

That recent contact was the woman Ha Yue called Auntie, Siqin Tuoya.

Unlike Zhao Chunni, who was Han Chinese married to an ethnic minority husband, Siqin Tuoya was a Mongolian woman married to a Han Chinese man. Although they had different lifestyles due to their cultural backgrounds, the two women grew close because they both shared the experience of living without their husbands. 

Zhao Chunni’s husband, Ha Jianguo, had run off with another woman, while Siqin Tuoya’s husband passed away from illness two years after their son was born.

Over the years, the two women had supported each other. They were not blood relatives, but their bond was as strong as that of sisters, united by a shared understanding and mutual respect.

It was similar to the bond between single mothers who face the world together.

So, after this incident, Siqin Tuoya took the initiative to call Ha Yue, urging her to reconcile with Zhao Chunni no matter what.

She told Ha Yue not to wait until it was too late to regret.

Ha Yue didn’t disappoint. That same day, she called her landlord to cancel the lease for the shared apartment in Ji City, packed her belongings, and shipped her luggage. The following month, she returned to her hometown in Sui City.

Aunt Siqin had often praised Ha Yue in front of Zhao Chunni, saying she was a daughter full of love and loyalty, willing to give up a prosperous life in Ji City for the sake of her mother-daughter relationship. What Zhao Chunni didn’t know was that Ha Yue herself knew her life in Ji City wasn’t glamorous at all. In fact, both financially and emotionally, she had been struggling for a long time. The real reason she returned home wasn’t just because of her mother’s illness, but because, ultimately, she couldn’t make it in Ji City anymore.

“Filial piety” had also become a convenient excuse for her to retreat.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t concerned about her mother’s illness. Over the past two years, under Ha Yue’s insistence, Zhao Chunni had been actively taking medication. Although the brain degeneration was irreversible, its progression had been effectively slowed down.

However, convincing her mother to go to the big city for another check-up was likely to lead to another argument.

Zhao Chunni had always been a stubborn person. On small matters, she hated smartphones and shopping online. She never yielded to the changing times. As a result, when she got sick, she became the type of patient doctors found most frustrating—one who didn’t trust modern medicine or diagnostic technology but only trusted herself.

When the doctor in Ji City told her that her condition required regular follow-ups, she immediately accused the doctor of trying to get her to undergo unnecessary tests.

Ha Yue’s thoughts were soon interrupted by a smoke-belching van ahead on the road.

In a small town, everyone knew each other. Ha Yue immediately recognized the license plate of the vehicle involved in the accident. It was the car that her neighbor Auntie’s son, Jin Zhenliang, drove every day.