Of course, this was just a suspicion; he wasn’t an expert in ancient scripts, so his judgnt might not be correct, but these characters seed very familiar to him. For example, there was a character that the Ainu people often drew on their bodies, which looked a lot like the primitive version of "Su," probably aning "virtue" or "land of virtue," and many of the characters resembled the inscriptions on the Terracotta Warriors; at least so of the radicals were quite similar—as if they shared the sa origin or had influenced each other.
But the Ainu didn’t look like Chinese people at all: their skin was white, they were hairy, and the n sported big, curly beards—actually, they looked a bit like Russians.
Maybe they were mixed-blood?
Harano couldn’t figure out where the Ainu had co from, and as for Ah Man, she cared even less; she didn’t bother with where the Ainu ca from at all. She just drank with them and made friends. The old hunter Zapinon of the Zair Tribe in front of her was actually the first Ainu she’d ever t. A lot of Ah Man’s Ainu language was learned from him, and her accent was quite similar to his.
When they first t, Zapinon had co to Wujian to sell furs, and was very wary of Ah Man—he even seed slightly disgusted, only willing to talk to her because he wanted her liquor. But after Ah Man explained that she wasn’t a "Wajin," but a "Wanjin" herself, Zapinon took another look at her clothing, which really was quite different from the Wajin, at least very unlike the people from the Lizi Family, and his attitude softened.
After they got familiar, especially after Ah Man picked up a bit of the Ainu language, Zapinon would curse out the "Wajin" even more fiercely when drunk—he cursed them for migrating recklessly, invading the land the Ainu people depended on to survive, and accused the "Wajin" of being faithless cheats, always using inferior goods when trading, and having no reverence at all for oaths to the gods—in short, that they were a bunch of absolute bastards.
After all, the first violent conflict between the Lizi Family and the Ainu started when the Ainu ordered an iron short knife, but were dissatisfied with the goods, thinking they’d been shortchanged—so they argued with the shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper, in a flash, stabbed the Ainu man dead. The long-cheated Ainu were infuriated, banded together, and struck back fiercely at the Lizi Family, destroying more than a dozen settler villages. Unfortunately, their assault was turned back by Takeda Nobuhiro, son-in-law of the Lizi Family, and they failed to take the Lizi Family’s stronghold, Hua Ze Hall; in the end, it all fell short at the last step.
Afterwards, the Lizi Family used peace talks and border treaties as an excuse to invite local Ainu tribes to an alliance gathering. But in the end, they poisoned the wine, knocked out the visiting Ainu, slaughtered them, and used the opportunity to launch a counterattack, forcing the local Ainu to retreat and yielding the territory to the Lizi Family.
This was about a hundred years ago, and since then, the Lizi Family’s dirty tricks have only increased. Since the Ainu relied on them for ironware, grain, salt, cloth, and other essentials, the Lizi Family would buy at low prices and sell at high, constantly passing off shoddy goods, and breaking contracts was the norm. Basically, they never regarded the Ainu as people. At this point, the Lizi Family is notorious here—there isn’t an Ainu alive who doesn’t hate them.
However, it’s easy to go from simple to extravagant, but hard to go back. Once they’d used ironware, the Ainu couldn’t stand switching back to bone-tipped arrows and bronze daggers, so they could only grit their teeth and endure the long-term exploitation.
After Ah Man figured all this out, she imdiately joined Zapinon in cursing out the Lizi Family—said they were the absolute scum of the earth, with not a shred of integrity. She slamd her chest and promised: It’s only salt and iron and the like, right? Wanjin has tons of that junk; can’t even sell it! Their chief looks at the piles of salt and iron in the warehouses and frets so much he’s losing hair—it’s nothing for her to send Zapinon so of it!
By that ti, Zapinon was already tipsy from the taro wine Ah Man had brought, and took her words for drunk talk, never taking it seriously—but the next ti he went to that Lizi Family village to trade furs, he really was stopped halfway by Ah Man, who gave him a sack of salt, a fine knife, a big bundle of arrowheads, and a huge barrel of liquor.
The salt was pure white and refined, not a speck of sand or dirt, and tasted only salty, not bitter—he’d never even seen such good salt before.
The knife was made of high-quality steel, heavily forged and weighty, and the arrowheads t "heavy arrow" standards, made of tempered iron, very sharp—mount them on shafts with tail feathers, and you’d have an arrow stout enough to hunt bear or kill wolves.
Zapinon was overjoyed on the spot—felt that even if Ah Man was a tiny bean sprout with little hair and it wasn’t curly, she was still awfully loyal. He didn’t take her things for nothing, either—he promptly handed over all the deerskins and bearskins he’d brought.
And that’s how the two of them hit it off. Zapinon started going to the settler villages of the Lizi Family less and less, preferring to save his furs—even waiting an extra few dozen days just to keep them for Ah Man. He even introduced her to other Ainu tribes. Once, when Ah Man visited and they had a great bout of drinking, to thank her for the good wine, he even promised her a black fox fur.
But there are plenty of foxes in Ezo, though most are light brown or coffee-colored—black foxes are a mutant breed, extrely rare; so hunters never encounter a single one in their whole lives. He was just boasting drunkenly at that point.
He was bragging, but Ah Man rembered it—she knew black fox fur was rare and precious, and planned to make a fur collar to show off back in Wanjin; from then on, every ti she saw him, she’d ask for it. Zapinon could never deliver and got rather embarrassed.
This ti was the sa. Zapinon had managed to trap a few foxes this winter, but not a single hair of black fox—and, laughing awkwardly, he quickly changed the subject, looking to the snow sledge: "Just a black fox fur, right? I’ll give you one sooner or later. When I find one, it’s yours... We’ve saved up quite a bit of fur lately—do you have enough supplies to trade?"
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