Jiang Huaishan woke beneath an avalanche in Beigou, a millstone pressing down on his chest. Using the empty birch-bark scroll his father had left behind, he saw the words, "Three li to the left, falling rocks. Go right," and crawled out of the snowdrift. When a snow hare passed by his feet, another line appeared: "Snow hare: swift-footed." By the time he returned to Yingzuiya Village, night had fallen. Red decorations hung in Su Changgeng's courtyard, where a banquet had been laid out. Su Changgeng, Zheng Youlu, and the fur trader Xue Mingli were discussing carrying Su Wantang off on the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month. The Xue family would provide bedding, cloth, and fifty yuan in cash, and wipe out the old debt of 120 yuan. Jiang Huaishan said nothing. He went inside and lifted Su Wantang, along with the two quilts on the kang. She weighed less than half a sack of cornmeal. Clutching his collar, she said he felt cold. He carried her outside, refusing to let the marriage go ahead. But the line "Snow hare: swift-footed" on the birch-bark scroll: was it telling him to chase that wounded deer, or showing him another way out of the mountains?
