Once We Lived in Nanjing

After cleaning up the house and having breakfast, Ban Xia got dressed, put on her backpack, took her bow and arrow, and secured her dagger and handgun. She was fully armed.

She looked at herself in the mirror: light blue sleeveless dress, a fresh ponytail, a handgun holstered on her right hip, a dagger sheathed on her left, bow in hand, backpack and quiver on her back. A dashing armed young woman.

Cool!

Ban Xia gave a thumbs up and blinked her eyes.

"Mom and Dad, I'm heading out. I'll be back in the evening for sure."

She closed the door behind her and went downstairs.

It was scorchingly hot outside, so Ban Xia opened up a red umbrella.

Her stored food supplies were almost depleted. She needed to gather ingredients to make more dry food.

The distance from Meihua Villa to Crescent Lake Park was so close that there was no need for a bicycle; just a turn out the door and she was there. Ban Xia took out a small luggage cart from behind the staircase of the ground-floor apartment building. It had two little wheels, and it could stand upright or be dragged at an angle like a suitcase. The girl hung her backpack on the small trolley, and its wheels clattered noisily over the rough concrete as she went.

In October, Nanjing was reaching its peak temperatures. At eight or nine in the morning, the sun beamed down on the ground, and waves of heat rose up. The air smelled of mugwort; Ban Xia knew there was a big patch of it nearby, taller than she was.

She strolled on the deserted Muxuyuan Street, carrying her red umbrella and dragging her cart.

Turning onto the bridge over Crescent Lake from Muxuyuan Street, the narrow bridge spanned across to a large city gate. The girl walked along the railing as the wind tousled her hair and the hem of her dress. Standing on the bridge, she could see the gray-black ancient city wall laid out before her, nestled amidst the verdant tree canopy. Below the wall, there were three arched gates. This was Houbiao Camp Gate. Her teacher had said Crescent Lake was part of the moat surrounding the ancient city of Nanjing, so the city wall and the lake were side by side.

The girl paused on the bridge, tilting her head to gaze over the lake.

Over the years, the area of Crescent Lake had shrunk significantly. Originally, its expanse was shaped like a slender crescent, connected to the moat, lying outside the ancient city wall. But as the decades passed, the water gradually receded, and the crescent was no longer crescent-shaped. In the rainy summer, the water level rose, but by winter, it would shrink toward the center of the lake, exposing the muddy shores.

"The water of West Lake, my tears..."

Humming the song, Ban Xia turned right in front of the Houbiao Camp Gate and confidently stepped into Crescent Lake Park.

Next to the entrance was a lawn with an overview map of the park, partially covered by dense weeds. Only the gilded characters for "view map" were visible on the sign, which had been cut in half. The remaining part had several large bullet holes, melted and charred, big enough to put a fist into—likely caused by armor-piercing rounds.

The entrance led to a small square with tightly laid white square tiles, and a tall, slender statue that had fallen and split into two pieces—a brown marble column with a brass bird on top.

The teacher had said it wasn't a bird.

It was a rooster.

(Actually, it was the Vermilion Bird)

Ban Xia's dry food ingredients mainly came from Crescent Lake. Fish could be caught in the sea, meat could be hunted from deer, but starchy foods could only be gathered from Crescent Lake.

Sheltered by her red umbrella, the girl walked along the base of the city wall, passing under the thick shade of trees. She peered through the willow branches to the lake, which was covered in green duckweed along the shore.

Her sources of starch were lotus seeds, lotus roots, and water chestnuts from the lake. In the summer, when it was the prime season for lotus flowers to bloom profusely, Crescent Lake already had a lotus pond meant for viewing. After no one took care of it, the lotus plants grew even more rampant. In July and August, when Ban Xia visited the lakeside, lotus flowers competed in splendor, covering the entire area so that the large leaves, as big as washbasins, overlapped and hid the water surface.

A bit further along the city wall was the banquet hall of Night Shanghai Hotel, a structure with white walls and red tiles standing by the lake, surrounded and enveloped by green lotus leaves.

They were originally built as restaurants on the water, but now it was hard to distinguish their original appearance. Only the foundations and columns planted in the lake and the platform on the water remained, with the platform bearing remnants of walls, barely showing the red roof and white walls.

Ban Xia stepped into the water from here.

She took off her socks and shoes, put on sandals, left all her gear on the shore, climbed over the iron chain fence, and with a forceful "hey," jumped onto a large concrete block about two meters away from the lakeshore. Half of this block was submerged, while the other half remained exposed, forming a small solitary island.

This was her designated spot for entering the water.

Every time she went down to the lake, Ban Xia started from here. This area was relatively shallow; if she stepped in, the water would at most reach her knees. Furthermore, bits and pieces of building waste were submerged by the lakeside, providing easy rest spots to climb onto at any time.

Ban Xia tentatively stepped her foot into the water and gradually sank into the soft lakebed mud. The water was crystal clear until her feet stirred up the underlying silt, muddying it.

The mud completely buried her ankles. Ban Xia stamped her feet to secure her position before putting her second foot into the water, both of her long legs hidden by the cool lotus leaves.

Ban Xia hung a large bag in front of her chest to hold the lotus roots or water caltrops she dug up. If she came across a lotus pod, she would toss it in too. She tilted her head to clasp the handle of the red umbrella with her neck—the umbrella was meant for shading because the harsh sun could burn her skin if exposed for too long. She slowly searched through the lotus leaves, probing with her feet as she felt around the soft silt, searching through the complex network of lotus rhizomes. If she encountered something that felt like the swollen nodes of lotus roots, she would bend down slowly, meticulously digging through the mud with her hands, carefully and deliberately exerting force to unearth the entire root from beneath the mud.

This was a skillful task; she couldn't allow the root to break during the extraction since a severed one wouldn't keep well. An intact lotus root could be preserved for a long time, and Ban Xia had to pull out the half-meter-long roots whole from the mud and then rinse them in the water.

At best, she could unearth a root in five minutes; at times, a tough one could take over ten minutes. If that happened, she would become frustrated and snap it off, washing it clean before biting into it aggressively—in a fit of pique, as if to ensure it didn't remain intact in death.

Freshly harvested lotus roots didn't taste good; they were quite astringent. As a result, the girl would chew and then spit it out, pulling a grimace.

Ban Xia roamed slowly among the jade-green lotus leaves, her vivid red umbrella in tow.

The girl's tender arches and toes were sensitive and could easily distinguish the lotus roots.

"Is this it? No."

"Is this it? No."

"What about this... This one is, wow, definitely a root—thick and long! And solid!"

Ban Xia bent down, yanked hard, and then looked at what she pulled out, frowning.

She had made a mistake.

What on earth was this dark cylindrical object?

Whatever it was, it most certainly wasn't a lotus root.

The girl shook her head, casting it aside onto the dry mud by the lake.

There was plenty of trash in the Crescent Lake's muddy lakebed, which was why Ban Xia made sure to wear protective shoes when she went into the water. In addition to rocks, bricks, and broken concrete, the lakebed could also harbor shattered glass, rusty nails, and other sharp metal fragments, which could cut bare feet.

Once she had filled the bag around her neck, she would head back to the shore to unload and then sit under the shade of a tree to rest.

On scorchingly hot days, she would take a big gulp of water.

"Wow—! Refreshing!"

Ban Xia sprawled out on the stone slab by the lake, gazing at the green shade on the opposite bank, leisurely enjoying the breeze.

Living alone was actually simple and lazy; there was never anything urgent to attend to. Ban Xia would do as she pleased, whenever she felt like it, or pause whenever she desired. She could continue to dig for roots this afternoon, or she could sit here and revel in the moment. She could count the leaves on trees, squat to watch ants move house, or even close her eyes and rest—letting the breeze and time drift leisurely by.

That was her time alone with the whole world.