Reborn in 80: Starting with hunting in the mountains to get rich

Chapter 192 The Charming Widow's Gentle Cut

Lu Zhiqiang became increasingly angry as he spoke, spitting and foaming at the mouth.

He had been looking for this Handahan for a long time, but he never expected that someone would hang him high above his head in a snare. How could he stand it? It was as if a fellow hunter was deliberately provoking him with a snare.

He took off his glove, spat on his hands, rubbed them vigorously, and then climbed up the tree using both hands and feet.

In the old family village, the Lu brothers were the most mischievous. When they were kids, they would climb trees to raid bird nests and cause all sorts of trouble. He scrambled up the tree, muttering to himself, "Who hung the snare so high? Isn't this just deliberately trying to make things difficult for others?" Besides, according to the order of arrival, he was the one who took Handahan first, and there was absolutely no reason for him to let the later team take it over.

He grumbled and cursed as he finally climbed to his spot where the handak had been hung, only to be confronted with a dead face. The face was pitted and rotting, half of it emitting a foul stench. The flesh on the thighs had been scraped away, revealing stark white bone, which also reeked. Terrified, he gaped, his eyes wide, unable to utter a word, his body going limp and nearly collapsing.

In just a short while, Li Ju'an had crawled out of the snowdrift, and seeing no one around, went to the lit wooden house.

Once Lu Zhiqiang calmed down and could think more clearly, he discovered that the large tree was covered with dead things. Besides human corpses, there were also the corpses of mountain dogs and weasels of all sizes. Many were rotten, with good parts cut off to expose white bones.

A cold wind blew, and the chill and stench of the corpse seeped straight into his collar. He tried to climb down, but somehow the barrel of his shotgun hooked onto the thigh bone of the dead body and shifted. The thigh bone, along with the corpse, hung on his back, its weight pressing down on him, almost face to face.

This tall man, standing at 1.8 meters, was so frightened that his spine went cold, his hair stood on end, and his legs went weak, making him unable to hold on.

In the end, Lu Zhiqiang fell off the tree.

His legs gave way and he fell from the tree with a thud, screaming in agony. He was downwind, and his voice was carried away to the shady slope. It took him a long time to attract Song Desheng, who was a hundred meters away.

Song Desheng was already feeling uneasy and scared by the weasel footprints all over the ground. When he saw Lu Zhiqiang embracing a dead body in a somewhat ambiguous way, as if they were still in love, he was even more shocked and wondered if it was the weasel's doing.

After listening carefully to Lu Zhiqiang's words, Li Ju'an examined his legs and feet and said, "It's nothing serious, no fractures, just a sprain. The snowdrifts are so thick, how many meters could you climb? It's not easy to break your leg."

Lu Zhiqiang's temper flared up, and he said angrily, "We brothers worked ourselves to the bone last night fighting weasels, setting traps among piles of corpses, while you were having a good time, sitting in the wooden house warming yourself by the fire, eating big meat hot pot, living a very comfortable life."

Li Ju'an ignored his sarcastic remarks and asked Qin Yao, the educated youth, "Do you know about the deaths near the old work area?"

Qin Yao shook her head, her face pale, and didn't say a word, only shook her head.

Seeing how frightened she was, Song Desheng understood and said, "It's definitely not a recently deceased person, otherwise it wouldn't have rotted into such a foul smell in the dead of winter. I reckon it was a dead person dug up from an abandoned grave."

Upon hearing this, the faces of the group turned pale, and their expressions became extremely unpleasant.

The building in this old work area was the miners' duty room, and also the place where Qin Yao's husband's father was on duty. So, the person who was stationed here year-round was naturally Qin Yao's father-in-law.

Only in such desolate old tombs and mass graves could people move corpses at will. If an imperial tomb were to be discovered here, they wouldn't be surprised to encounter tomb raiders from out of town.

Lu Zhiqiang's face changed drastically. He spat out the roasted meat he had just eaten, disgusted, and used his finger to pick his throat: "Dead man's thigh meat, damn it!"

Qin Yao's face turned ashen, and she suddenly exclaimed excitedly, "No, that's not how it is!"

The woman began to cry, and after Li Ju'an patiently comforted her, he finally learned about Qin Yao's miserable life over the past few years. Wangxing Village was poor and backward. There were hunters in the village, but the surrounding area was full of weasel hills, which the elderly in the village considered taboo, so there weren't many hunters who made a living by hunting. Since her husband went to the mine and never returned, the family had lost its source of income, and her father-in-law had no choice but to hunt for a living.

Sometimes there was prey and meat, sometimes there was none at all. Later, there was meat every day, but no one knew where the meat came from or what kind of meat it was.

She didn't dare ask. In order to raise her child, she kept quiet and focused on eating.

The three men looked at the poor, thin woman and the chubby baby, and then fell silent.

Lu Zhiqiang sighed and said, "Life is hard for everyone, just try to make the best of it."

Li Ju'an recounted the story of the hammer and the ninth dog's footprints, seeking their opinions. Song Desheng suddenly slapped his thigh, realizing, "There must be someone there. The trap on the tree—the way it was set was different from the one set at Qin's sister's door before."

Li Ju'an also agreed to this.

He learned how to set snares from Old Qin, and could discern the effective techniques of each snare setter. This included how the wire rope was burned, which end to start winding the loop, and the knotting method—each hunter's technique was different. He followed the two men to the large tree and looked up at the knot of the snare.

His expression changed: "Old Qin is nearby."

If Lao Qin were here, everything would make sense. That bastard Sun Weimin deliberately mentioned a fake Xiongcang to lure him into the mountains. Sun Weimin would definitely have sent people to the real Xiongcang. Who would have thought Li Ju'an would be one step ahead? So Sun Weimin's team was essentially hiding in the shadows, quietly observing their route.

Qin Yao remembered and said, "When I was carrying the baby and taking the shortcut through the old ginseng path, my father-in-law was talking to someone in the house, saying something about buying some firecrackers. I saw them changing detonators and firecrackers in the attic, and then that group of people left. I heard Li Pao say that he was going to hunt bears, so I took out the remaining detonators from the attic."

"Qin Yao, how many people are in that group?"

"Two people, one older and one younger, and a dog that looked like a wolf."

Li Ju'an exchanged a glance with the two men, then suddenly stood up and shouted, "That's right!"

The person who can afford to keep a sly hound as a lead dog is none other than Old Qin, the King of Snares in Changbai Mountain. Therefore, Old Qin doesn't need many hunting dogs when running in the mountains; he only needs one lead dog as a guide, because Old Qin's attacks are mostly using snares, and he rarely needs to use a gun.

He called over the two men and the dog, and was about to give chase in the direction Qin Yao had pointed out. Before leaving, Qin Yao called him back and gave him a roe deer skin vest. It was made from a fully ripened roe deer hide, and was warm, soft, and lightweight. There was also a leather strap tied around it so that he could use it to hold things upside down.

Li Ju'an hung up his dagger, half a ring of shotgun pellets (which were bullets), and hooks, and then tied them with a hemp rope. Then he stepped into his cotton boots, tied high leg straps on his trousers, and said to Qin Yao, "Don't worry, I'll do my best to ask about your household registration in the city."

Qin Yao smiled gently at him, relieved, and said, "Of course I know. I was just worried you'd get cold." She even stuffed some fried dough sticks into his cloth bag. These things aren't afraid of the cold; they can be roasted over a fire or eaten raw.

Qin Yao replaced Li Ju'an's large cotton hat with a long-haired raccoon fur hat. Then he slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder, slung a cloth bag over his arm, and went out with the two of them.

Along the way, Song Desheng glanced at him sideways and said sourly, "Kid, you're lucky. My wife has never been this attentive to me."

Lu Zhiqiang was even more sour: "Damn it, what kind of blind dates did my mom find for me? They were all so cold and aloof, like I owed them a fortune. If you ask me, I should find a wife like Qin Yao, how lucky I would be. She's beautiful, capable, and considerate. Li Ju'an, why don't you just marry this pretty widow?"

Li Ju'an shook his head with a wry smile and said, "Other people's hearts are not in this mountain."