Yalha, who had his arms tied and followed the horse for a day, never imagined that the things he bought from Bear Island would lead to such a disaster.
Along the way, Yalha often looked at his mother, wife and children worriedly while walking. He noticed that two places on his mother's face had turned black due to the cold; his son was fine and strong; but the tears on his daughter's face had turned into ice and were frozen on her face.
Last night, the leader and his team stayed overnight at a Karen post. The fire was burning brightly in the outpost at night, so it wasn't too sad.
The new cotton robes worn by the old mother and wife had been stripped off by the armored soldiers before they set off on the road. At this time, the two women were wearing a piece of animal skin on their upper bodies and a single layer of clothing underneath, shivering from the cold.
This is the soldier from the same village who reported the information to the leader. Last night he saw Yarha’s mother and wife freezing in their single clothes. He couldn’t bear it, so he took out a few fox skins from Yarha’s horse. given to two women respectively. After the other soldiers saw it, no one objected.
As for the short boots that Yarha had exchanged for them, these armored soldiers had not stripped them, otherwise it would be hard to say whether they would be able to reach Hunchun.
After a journey of more than 400 miles, Yalha was very worried about whether his mother could finish the journey alive.
At this time, the armored soldiers did not dare to snatch Yalha's new cotton robe as their own. The leader said that this was a piece of evidence.
However, there were quite a lot of fur goods found in Yarha's house. There were over a hundred pieces of various kinds of pearl wool (fine hair, similar to cashmere to the touch), black fox skin, deer skin, and otter skin.
When we arrived at Hunchun City, the leader took 50%, and the remaining ten armored soldiers were equally divided. The harvest of this errand was pretty good.
That cast iron cauldron is really mouth-watering! Several soldiers were thinking about how much money they would get if they sold this pot to Ning Guta.
At this time, Yarha squinted at the armored soldier from the same village, and he knew in his heart that he was the one who was being reported by this man! Although he took the animal skins to keep his family warm from the cold, Yalha's eyes were still full of indifference when he looked at him.
In fact, this leader and eleven armored soldiers, like Yarha, are also from Kurkhachi. People like them, according to the classification of the Qing rulers, belonged to "Kuyala Manchuria", that is, New Manchuria. And their village, Yarha, belongs to Xiangbaiqi.
Now that he has become a member of the flag, he cannot be the same as the Feyaka people three thousand miles away. (The Manchu and Qing officials were very kind to the Feyaka people who participated in the Wulin appreciation, and their speech was very casual. Except for making mistakes, they never beat or scolded them.)
At this time, Yalha felt confused and scared. He didn't know what was waiting for him and his family in Hunchun City.
Maybe after arriving in Hunchun, if you explain everything about your previous three visits to Bear Island, everything will be fine...
The group turned an intersection and entered a narrow mountain road. A strong northwest wind suddenly blew, causing heavy snow to roll in the sky, and the snowflakes on the ground were also blown away. Suddenly, the surroundings were completely white and it was impossible to see the road clearly.
This is what Mongolians call "white-haired wind". The group was suddenly unable to take another step forward.
The leader who led the team secretly screamed "Oops". Just before he entered the mountain pass, he saw two straw sheds on the roadside, probably built by ginseng pickers.
So he pushed the horse forward a few steps with great effort, patted the two armored soldiers in front with his riding crop, and made a gesture to go back. Everyone then turned their horses' heads and walked back under the leadership of the leader.
The Yalha family had been tied up, but they were now unable to stand due to the strong wind. After falling down, they struggled to stand up again.
The soldiers all dismounted at this time. Several people held the horse's reins with one hand and helped the Yalha family up with the other, and walked with difficulty towards the hay shed.
When everyone finally found the hay shed, the armored soldiers first tied the horse's reins to a nearby tree, then untied the ropes tied to the saddles of Yalha's family, and pushed the five members of his family into two separate rooms. A hayloft.
The leader thought about lighting a fire immediately to ward off the cold, but under the strong wind, the tinder could not be used at all. So someone took the skins from Yalha's horse and distributed them to everyone to cover themselves. The group huddled in two huts and waited for the wind to subside.
Who would have thought that once the wind blew, it would not let up all night...
I don’t know how long it took, but Yalha slowly woke up from his coma. He twisted his body and suddenly shook off a large amount of snowflakes. He tried to move his fingers and feet, but found that several of them had no feeling.
At this time, Yarha heard that the wind noise outside had become much quieter, and large snowflakes fell on him through the roof of the low and dilapidated thatched shed. He touched the armored soldier next to him with his shoulder, trying to wake him up. After touching it several times, there was no movement. It turned out that the soldier had been frozen to death.
He turned to look at the other soldier next to him and found that this man was still alive, but his breathing was very weak.
"Eniang! Erniang!" Yalha suddenly woke up and shouted desperately for his mother in a hoarse voice.
There was silence and no one answered. There was only the sound of whistling wind and falling snowflakes all around.
Yalha called out to his wife, son and daughter, but still no one answered. He twisted his body desperately, trying to break free of the rope.
Then he noticed the short knife on the waist of the armored soldier beside him who had frozen to death. So he turned his back, used his movable fingers to pull out the dagger with difficulty, turned it over, and cut the rope.
Yalha shook off the cut rope and began to search for his relatives in the hut.
The old mother buried under the snow had frozen to death. Regardless of his sadness, Jalha quickly climbed out and rushed to another hut.
In another hut, except for the leader and a few armored soldiers who were still unconscious, all of Yalha's family members had turned into stiff corpses.
A howl, like a lone wolf in the wilderness, came from the hut and echoed among the mountains.
The grief-stricken Yalha was like a violent beast. He lifted off the animal skin covering the leader's body and found that one of the two cotton robes he had exchanged was covering the leader's body.
Angry, he picked up the cotton robe and threw it aside. He tore off the cotton armor on his collar and stabbed it out resolutely with the short knife in his hand.
The unconscious leader had no power to resist. After being stabbed several times, a large amount of blood spilled from his mouth and nose.
Immediately afterwards, Yalha found the soldier from the same village, regardless of whether he was dead or not. He also tore open the cotton armor, raised the short knife in his hand and stabbed without pause, and did not stop until he had made more than a dozen cuts.
The blood on his hands was quickly frozen. Yalha stared blankly at his hands that were black and stained with blood, and cried bitterly.
After a while, he was exhausted and struggled to get up, walked outside the hay shed, and began to dig away the thick snow on the ground outside with his hands. Until he came into contact with the hard earth, he was still digging, and his hands slowly became dripping with blood.
In desperation, he found the soldier's waist knife and dug in the frozen soil for a long time before digging a shallow pit that could only accommodate one person.
Yalha had no choice but to return to the hut, pick up his old mother, and put her into the pit. Then he found the cotton robe covered by his collar, covered his mother, and then pushed the earth with his hands to bury her.
Soon, the falling snow covered the tomb tightly.
After resting for a while, Yalha got up and took his wife, son, and daughter out of the hut and placed them on both sides of his mother's grave.
The dazed Yarha knelt in front of him for a long time, until the heavy snow turned him into a snowman.
(The early Manchus believed in cremation after death. For example, in the early days after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Emperor Shunzhi’s beloved concubine Dong E and Empress Xiaokang Zhang were cremated.
However, as the Manchu customs were gradually assimilated by the Han customs, coupled with the constraints of Confucianism, it was not until the Kangxi reign that the requirement for Han people to be cremated after death was abolished, but the Manchus still required cremation.
After Qianlong succeeded to the throne, he promulgated the "Banner People's Funeral Ban" in the third month:
"This dynasty set foot in Guandong, and used divisions and soldiers as camp guards. They moved around constantly. When their parents died, they couldn't bear to abandon them and couldn't carry them with them, so they were cremated so that they could be carried with them and fulfill their unbearable wish to be separated. It was a last resort. also.
Since Dingding, the Eight Banners and Mongolia have each had their own Ningju. The tombs of their ancestors have all been assigned to the local area, and funerals can be carried out according to ancient rituals. However, if the custom is not noticed, cremation may still be used. This is because of the old customs, without thinking about the reason why this was done as a last resort.
... From now on, except for poor people from far away villages who cannot help their coffins back home and who have no choice but to carry their bones for burial, no one can be cremated. If there are any offenders, they will be punished according to the law. The clan leader and his subordinates concealed themselves and refused to report the crime, so they were all punished. "
From this incident on, it marked that the Manchus in the pass had basically been completely assimilated into the Han culture. )
At the same time, Serdan led the horse and walked hard on the road to Hunchun.
After he was arrested in Yarha, he returned home and thought about it all night. He really couldn't trust his good friend and his family.
When the armored soldiers peeled off the cotton robe from Yalha's mother, he also saw it. If you walk more than 400 miles in a single suit in this kind of weather, Yarha's family might get frozen, which would be troublesome.
Thinking about this, Serdan packed up dry food and several large animal skins in the morning, and refused his son Erlu's request to go with him.
Before leaving the house, he stopped and thought about it. So he went back to the house again, took off his newly bought cotton robe, found his original old and torn cotton robe, put it on, and tied two pieces of animal skins to his body. He rolled up the cotton robe he took off, tied it behind the saddle, and went out.
After chasing all the way, a white-haired wind began to blow in the afternoon, which almost made Serdan almost trapped. In desperation, he had no choice but to return to the Karen post he passed by based on his memory, and spent the night there. After daybreak and seeing that the wind had subsided, we set off again.
Two hours later, Serdan, who was leading his horse in nearly knee-deep snow, saw a thatched shed on the hillside not far away. The hunter's intuition told him that Yalha and his party were also trapped here.
When Seldan struggled to climb up the hillside and took a look, he was shocked. An unrecognizable man covered in snow sat on his knees in the snow.
There were more than a dozen horses gathered together next to the hay shed, either standing or lying down. The horses seemed to be wearing ice armor and had already been frozen to death.
Seldan hurriedly rushed into the hut to check, only to see that four or five armored soldiers were silent, and one of them had a large amount of blood on his chest that had been frozen. He recognized him at a glance as the soldier from the same village.
Serdan was frightened and hurriedly fell out of the hay hut. He hurriedly went to another hay hut. When he looked up, he saw the blood-stained collar on his chest, mouth and nose.
"this!"
At this moment, he suddenly got excited and rushed to the kneeling snowman outside, brushing away the snowflakes with his hands.
"Brother Yalha!" Seldan shouted to his good friend and dusted the snow off his body.
He tried to put his hand under Yalha's nose and found that he was still breathing, but it was very weak.
Serdan didn't care about anything else and leaned over to pick up Yalha and put him on his horse; then he took out a cotton robe and animal skin from behind the saddle and covered Yalha's body.
After finishing these tasks, Seldan took the horse and strode towards the village along the path he took when he came.
The heavy snow falling in the sky continued, and half an hour later, all traces of Serdan's steps disappeared.
