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He shades it, hauls water from ever more distant sources, and fights off rats and wolves. At the end he lays himself in a grave beside the stalk so its roots can feed on his body, and the returning villagers find corn kernels to replant, with roots grown through his corpse and the dog's.
In both novellas, continuing life across generations requires an adult's body to be literally consumed. Flesh fertilizes the corn and bone marrow becomes the cure. Sacrifice here is not a moral gesture but a material transfer, in which the old and the parents become the substrate the next generation grows from.
Yan exaggerates rural deprivation into myth. The sun can be weighed on a scale, a dog is blinded by light, and a mother boils her husband's bones. Pushing hardship past realism makes the endless labor and self-erasure demanded of peasants legible as a condition rather than an unlucky accident. The absurdity works as an amplifier, not an escape.