The Hunt

He survived, at the cost of half his face being ruined.

Muscles atrophied, his features twisted and shifted out of place—his left eye drooped, while his nose and the corner of his mouth were pulled upward, forever frozen in a sneer.

Xu Qingli didn’t care. He had already figured it out—life had always been this way. Whatever you wanted, you had to trade something for it. Once he understood this truth, life suddenly became smoother.

Yes, as long as he lived, survival itself was victory.

He traveled north, asking everywhere for news of Tian Baozhen.

When he ran out of money, he stopped and took odd jobs.

Now, he was skilled at negotiating terms. As long as food and lodging were provided, he would work for half the wages of others. Some bosses, intrigued, sized him up. His face was indeed terrifying, but they weren’t marrying him or asking him to bear children. For a menial laborer, what did it matter if he was ugly?

Given how cheap he was, they tentatively started by giving him unimportant, dirty chores.

A month later, they gradually came to appreciate his qualities—he spoke little, kept secrets, endured hardship, and carried himself with steadiness. Most importantly, he never caused trouble. When there was no work, other workers would gather to gamble, drink, or brag, but he always sat alone, quietly reading whatever he could get his hands on—sometimes an old newspaper, sometimes a tattered magazine from last year. He never complained, just as he never fussed over what he ate.

But Xu Qingli had one problem—he never stayed in one place for long, never working more than a year before leaving.

At first, bosses assumed it was a ploy for a raise and half-heartedly tossed him a few extra coins. But slowly, they realized something was off. No matter how they pleaded or what incentives they offered, the man would only smile and shake his head, resolute in his decision to leave.

Rumors began to spread, and with distance, an air of mystery grew around him.

People said he was impossible to keep, that the wind ran in his blood, destined to wander without roots, making the world his home.

Xu Qingli laughed off such talk. Only he knew why he dared not stay—because he was afraid.

Though he now had food and shelter, every day was still spent in fear.

He was used to solitude, indifferent to whether others accepted or rejected him, maintaining a detached distance. But whenever he grew close to those around him, when they mustered the courage to pry into his past, to ask about the scars on his face—he knew it was time to leave.

After all, this was a stolen life. He couldn’t live it with fanfare.

As for that man—the one named Ni Xiangdong—he knew nothing about him. He didn’t know what the man who died in the mud pit should have been like. All his guesses came from the things in that man’s pockets on his final day—a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

Xu Qingli didn’t smoke himself, but to get closer to the shadow of that man, he forced himself to overcome his fear of fire and placed a burning cigarette between his lips.

Bitterness spread across his tongue. He took a deep drag, choked, and coughed violently. The white smoke stung his eyes, making them water. Xu Qingli truly couldn’t understand why anyone would pay money to suffer like this.

But he had to learn—because the man named Ni Xiangdong had loved to smoke.He forced himself to light another cigarette, smoking slowly, gradually getting the hang of it. This time, he didn’t cough, but he still didn’t find much pleasure in it.

By the third one, he began to understand a little more, his mind growing sharper, his heartbeat growing stronger.

By the time he finished the entire pack, he had already grasped the appeal of cigarettes.

Now, he could be considered quite the expert.

Heading north, he covered his tracks along the way—smoking, drinking, spinning tales.

Traveling far and wide, his accent became a jumble, and after telling so many lies, he even began to deceive himself.

Gradually, he forgot his distant childhood, forgot the beatings he endured, forgot the small village deep in the mountains called Nanling.

Naturally, he also forgot his original name.

At first, the name "Ni Xiangdong" still felt awkward on his tongue. When asked his name, the surname "Xu" hovered on his lips countless times, nearly slipping out. But as time passed, "Ni" began to feel more like his true surname. When writing it, the double-people radical "彳" naturally shifted to the single-person radical "亻," and some part of his soul seemed to vanish along with that missing stroke.

He started doing things he would have never done before. Hidden behind the mask of Ni Xiangdong, he began to live as if he truly were Xu Qingli.

But he still remembered his father. No matter where he went, he always sent money back to him on time.

He didn’t use bank cards, insisting on cash payments for his labor. Only in the moment each month when he handed over the money and the remittance slip at the post office counter did he vaguely recall that beneath this incomplete shell, another soul still lay dormant.

In the late summer of 2019, Xu Qingli wandered his way to Qingdao, carrying nothing but a thin quilt.

Originally, he had planned to stay just one night as a stopover. But when he stepped off the train and looked up, he saw the sea. It was evening, and the crimson sunset scattered across the water, a burning splendor, the orange-red light reflecting in his eyes, stirring some long-faded memory.

Suddenly, he wanted to stay here. Maybe, just maybe, Baozhen would have loved this sea too?

The next morning, waking up in a small family-run hostel, Xu Qingli set out as usual to look for work.

Again, it was manual labor. He had a clear understanding of himself—no education, no looks, clumsy with words. All he had to sell was his brawn and the vigor of youth.

For a while, he worked as a stagehand at a theater troupe. The pay wasn’t much—just 60 yuan a day for a full 12-hour shift, always on call. But he didn’t mind; he had nowhere else to go anyway.

Later, through a coworker’s introduction, he took on some gigs setting up and tearing down stages. It was harder work, but the pay was better.

Often, he and his crew would squat outside shopping malls, waiting for the well-dressed men and women to leave, waiting for the dazzling lights in the display windows to go dark. Then, like beasts of burden, they would hoist the heavy loads onto their backs, panting as they carried them into the freight elevators.

In the empty mall, his cracked rubber shoes stepped across the polished marble floors.

The city’s prosperity wasn’t meant for him—but part of that prosperity was built by him.

At that thought, Xu Qingli grinned smugly, the scar on his left cheek twisting along with it. Reflected in the glass door of the fashion boutique across the way, it grinned back at him.Having worked at the theater for a long time, the boss greatly appreciated his character and wanted to offer him a permanent position. This would mean better pay and, he heard, even free accommodation. Naturally, Xu Qingli was thrilled. But when he learned he’d have to hand over his ID card for registration, his enthusiasm withered. He hastily waved his hands and declined the offer.

The following Monday, he collected his wages and slipped away without a word to anyone.

A week later, he found work at a construction site.

The city was booming, with skyscrapers rising everywhere. New projects were constantly underway, stacks of blueprints waiting to be realized. Construction sites of all sizes were desperate for labor.

So when Xu Qingli stood there, the scar on his face plain to see, the foreman didn’t ask too many questions.

Everyone working here had a past. Everyone had tasted life’s hardships.

If you really dug into it, each one had their own story, their own struggles. But the foreman had no time to pry. He wasn’t one to dwell on the suffering of the masses—his mind was fixed on the looming deadlines.

So he clicked his tongue, gave Xu Qingli a once-over, and noted with approval the young man’s taut muscles, clearly built for hard labor. After settling on a wage, he tossed him a yellow hard hat and called over an old-timer to show him around and teach him the ropes.

Xu Qingli had no special skills, so he was assigned the toughest, most grueling jobs.

Sometimes he worked as a rebar laborer, hauling steel bars on his shoulders or by hand. He’d spend entire days crouched under the blazing sun, tying and cutting rebar, his back and arms exposed, burning red and cracking.

The job required no skill, just endurance—bending over, crouching in the same position all day. Backaches and numb legs became routine. When he first started, he’d wake up the next day so sore he could barely move. But eventually, he got used to it.

Other times, he carried sacks of cement. Each one weighed 100 pounds, and he earned just 50 cents per sack. How much he made depended entirely on his own grit and stamina.

Xu Qingli was a master at turning sweat into coins. By the end of a day, he could haul 600 to 800 sacks without breaking a sweat.

That’s how people are. Until life forces you to the brink, you think you can’t endure it. But when suffering crashes down on you, you swallow your blood and broken teeth—and somehow, you bear it.

Work started at 6 a.m. and ended at 7 p.m. After the first month, Xu Qingli gradually adapted, even finding a strange sense of freedom.

After a day of backbreaking labor, most men were too exhausted to do anything but collapse into sleep. No one cared about his scar.

Besides, the site was vast and crowded with all sorts of people—everyone had their own troubles. Who’d bother with a quiet loner like him?

One afternoon, after tying dozens of steel bars, Xu Qingli suddenly craved a smoke.

Seizing a moment when no one was watching, he slipped into a shady spot for a quick cigarette.

But as he rounded the corner of a wall, he spotted a middle-aged man in the distance, his back soaked with sweat, crouched on the ground and sobbing.

Xu Qingli had seen him a few times before—a hard worker who kept to himself, never mingling with others, just silently hauling bricks day after day.

For some reason, Xu Qingli felt an inexplicable kinship with him. Before he knew it, he was walking over to speak, surprising even himself.

“Hey, brother, what’s wrong?”

The man didn’t respond. He stopped crying and wiped his tears with the back of his hand.

“Can’t go on anymore?”

Still no answer."Heh, who isn't?" He smiled, pulling out a cigarette and offering it. The man hesitated for a moment before reaching out to take it, placing it between his lips.

They crouched side by side, each exhaling smoke in silence, neither speaking another word.

Only when the cigarette burned down to the end did the man finally introduce himself, his voice rough and hoarse, much like the calluses on his hands.

"Cao Xiaojun."

Xu Qingli silently repeated the name in his mind, then crushed the cigarette butt against the ground. Squinting slightly, he gave a faint smile.

"I'm Ni Xiangdong."