Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Deaf Granny answered while clearing the table:
“That is a long story.”
“It’s something passed down from our ancestors, supposedly happening toward the end of the Great Han Dynasty.”
“If the Snow Corpse hadn’t appeared, I would have almost forgotten it.”
The Snow Corpse’s surname was likely Xu, but everyone had forgotten his given name, simply calling him Honest Tiger.
In life, he was the son of a mountain hunter:
Standing three meters tall, he possessed Herculean strength.
Tearing apart tigers and bears with his bare hands was child’s play for him.
Honest Tiger’s parents died early, and he was somewhat simple-minded, unable to manage even basic tasks like starting a fire or cooking a meal.
After his parents passed away, whenever he caught a beast, he would simply eat it raw and drink its blood.
He didn’t know how to build a house for the winter, so he would curl up in a cave to spend the night.
Sometimes, when he couldn’t find a cave, he would simply hold a captured beast and lie down in the wind and snow.
An old woodcutter in the mountains, possessing a heart of compassion, couldn’t bear to see him suffer and took him in.
Although Honest Tiger’s mind was muddled, he could still distinguish who treated him well.
He was exceptionally respectful toward the two elders, never daring to disobey them in the slightest.
The old couple had no sons, only a daughter named Cuilan, who had been as pretty as a porcelain doll since childhood.
While she might not have been a world-renowned beauty, she certainly qualified as a lovely girl from a humble family.
With a family to care for him, the Snow Corpse no longer had to go half-clothed or sleep in the wild.
To repay their kindness, the Snow Corpse would put on the animal-skin jacket Cuilan had sewn for him and enter the deep, ancient forests early every morning.
He hunted the largest beasts.
Relying on his inhuman brute strength, he brought back more prey in a single day than others could catch in a month.
When he carried the prey back and saw the smiles on the old woodcutter couple’s faces, it was the Snow Corpse’s happiest moment.
Of course, his sister Cuilan’s tender care as she treated his wounds also brought him great warmth.
Through Honest Tiger’s hard work, the family lived comfortably; while they weren’t wealthy, they never had to worry about food or clothing.
However, these harmonious days could not last forever.
When Cuilan reached marriageable age, matchmakers from all the surrounding villages practically broke down their door.
The old woodcutter couple adored their daughter and let her choose her own husband.
But years passed, and Cuilan didn’t take a fancy to any of them, continuing to live with her parents.
The old couple grew anxious. After repeated questioning, Cuilan finally revealed her heart:
“I want to marry Brother. That way, I can always stay by your side and serve you for the rest of your lives.”
The “Brother” she spoke of was, naturally, the muddled Honest Tiger.
It turned out the girl had long ago given her heart to this brother who, though simple-minded, took such good care of her and her parents.
Upon hearing this, the two elders weren’t angry; instead, they were overjoyed.
Kind-hearted as they were, they had also worried about who would care for Honest Tiger after their daughter married and they passed away.
Now that their daughter had suggested it herself, it perfectly fulfilled their wishes.
“Hu Zi, let me ask you: are you willing to take Cuilan as your wife?”
Honest Tiger scratched his head and asked innocently, “Isn’t Cuilan my sister? Why would she be my wife?”
The old couple looked at the simple-minded Honest Tiger with a touch of helplessness:
“If Cuilan is only your sister, she will eventually marry someone far away, and you won’t see her anymore.”
“If she becomes your wife, she can stay by your side forever, washing your clothes and cooking your meals.”
Honest Tiger understood a bit this time and shouted loudly:
“If I can’t see Cuilan, I’ll be so sad I won’t be able to eat or sleep!”
“I don’t want her to be my sister anymore! I want her to be my wife!”
The news that the beautiful Cuilan was going to marry her foolish brother spread like wildfire.
The young men in the vicinity who had been pining for her all sighed in regret:
A beautiful flower planted in cow dung.
When the news fully broke, it infuriated the local bully, Hu Ermao.
Hu Ermao came from a landlord family and had been a plague upon the village since childhood.
With an older brother serving as a constable at the county yamen, he was even more lawless.
He had long lusted after Cuilan’s beauty but had been too afraid of the Snow Corpse’s ferocity to use force.
Now that the beauty was about to marry someone else, Hu Ermao grew desperate. He led a group of men in the dead of night to kidnap Cuilan.
But they had vastly overestimated themselves and underestimated the Snow Corpse’s power.
The dozen or so men Hu Ermao brought didn’t even make it through the door before Honest Tiger tore them into shreds of meat.
Only one clever fellow saw things going south and fled early to report the news.
With such a horrific tragedy occurring at their doorstep, the old woodcutter couple panicked completely.
A kind neighbor warned them:
“You must flee quickly. If the Hu Family Eldest Son gets word of this, he won’t let you off.”
And so, the family fled into the night, intending to cross the great mountains to seek refuge with relatives elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the two elders were aged, and Cuilan was frail.
By dawn the next day, they were overtaken by the Hu Family Eldest Son and his men.
A bloody battle ensued.
Seeing the Snow Corpse’s ferocity, the Hu Family Eldest Son ordered his men to lure him away while he stayed behind with a few others to capture the woodcutter’s family.
By the time the Snow Corpse killed his pursuers and returned, the old couple had already been hacked to death by the Hu Family Eldest Son.
Cuilan, unable to bear the humiliation, had committed suicide by jumping off a cliff.
That night, everyone in the mountains heard the Snow Corpse’s roar of grief and rage.
The next day, the Hu Family Eldest Son’s entire household of sixteen in the county seat was slaughtered by the Snow Corpse. Not a single body was left intact.
After taking his revenge, and with the help of the villagers, Honest Tiger buried the woodcutter’s family in the valley.
He knelt before the graves, remaining motionless even as the wind and snow howled. No matter how the villagers pleaded, it had no effect.
He knelt there for nine days. After nine days, the Snow Corpse had turned into an ice sculpture.
The kind villagers, fearing that people from the yamen would come to desecrate his body, simply buried the Snow Corpse under the accumulating snow.
Later, a general named Xu Chu led his troops to this area.
He claimed the Snow Corpse was his cousin and that the man had once saved his life.
Thus, he petitioned the Emperor to posthumously title the Snow Corpse as the “Valiant General.”
A monument and temple were erected in the mountains, and people were assigned to offer incense day and night.
In the years that followed, hunters who encountered danger in the mountains were often saved by the Snow Corpse’s manifestation.
As time passed, everyone said the Snow Corpse had achieved a higher state of being, transforming into a Mountain God to protect the entire snowy mountain range.