Chapter 3: In dire straits, returning from the hunt, the first wisp of meat aroma rises from the broken house!

Those fragmentary hunting tips he'd heard in his past life were now a jumbled mess in his mind.

He himself had never properly hunted before.

They were just hearsay; he remembered as much as he could.

Seeing the dense footprints behind the rabbit, even exposing a yellow earth burrow, Lu Qingshan's heart pounded nonstop.

He hurriedly and carefully withdrew from the slope.

In broad daylight, catch a rabbit barehanded?

That's just daydreaming.

He needed to get some tools.

Lu Qingshan walked straight back to the village entrance and began scratching around nearby.

He picked up a few stones frozen hard as rock.

He snapped off a few supple bramble branches.

And from near the firewood pile at Li Laonian's house, he picked up a length of wire used by carpenters when repairing roofs.

He even struggled to pull out a few strands of yellowed cotton wadding from the interlayer of his tattered cotton coat, twisting them into barely usable thread.

By the roadside outside the village, under a bramble bush half-buried in snow, he actually felt two rust-spotted mouse traps, discarded by someone unknown.

He pulled them back and forth twice; they should still work.

Luck, it seemed, hadn't completely run out.

He couldn't worry about anything else.

Lu Qingshan stuffed them into his pocket and hurried back to the vicinity of the rabbit burrow.

He found a relatively sheltered spot, a depression in the snow with faint, chaotic marks.

He began setting up the traps clumsily.

His movements were really unfamiliar.

His fingers, frozen like carrots, were stiff and hard.

Several times he almost knocked apart the flimsy contraption he'd just managed to assemble.

He walked around nearby and found two rabbit burrow entrances, then cleverly stuffed the two mouse traps into the dry grass and snow nearby.

He also used cotton thread and branches to make a few lopsided snares that looked dubious, placing them at the rabbit holes.

He fussed with them for most of the day.

Only then did he barely manage to finish one, a mechanism that looked utterly unreliable from any angle.

All the tools he'd picked up were used up.

After doing these, he was utterly exhausted.

The sweat beads on his forehead, just emerging, were frozen into ice chips by the cold wind.

Stuck to his skin, they felt cold and numb.

He didn't leave; he found a dry tree root that could block some wind and curled up there.

While panting heavily, he recovered his strength.

While pricking up his ears, he paid attention to any movement near the traps.

Inside his body, that intermittent strange perception was like an undercurrent underwater.

It made him unusually sensitive to changes in his surroundings.

Quite strange, he seemed able to sense that prey was nearby.

The sky gradually grew darker.

The leaden clouds pressed lower, as if the sky were about to go dark.

Lu Qingshan felt a faint prickle of unease in his heart.

Could it be that after all his effort, he only had a few frozen little birds in his pocket?

Just as he was feeling cold, hungry, and somewhat desperate, preparing to retreat home first.

From the distant rabbit burrow entrance, an extremely faint "shush-shush" sound came from the direction of the snare trap he had set!

His whole body jolted, and he immediately held his breath.

Like a wildcat, he hurried over silently and without a sound.

Using the last bit of dim light.

He saw it!

A grayish blur was frantically flopping in the snow.

The thin cotton-thread snare had tightly gripped its hind leg!

It was a rabbit!

It was snared!

Lu Qingshan's heart pounded wildly.

He almost rolled and crawled over to it.

With his frozen hands, he pressed down hard on the wild rabbit still desperately kicking its legs.

He freed his right hand and gave the rabbit's neck a heavy twist!

Was it luck?

Or was it that strange perception that really helped him?

After tying up the rabbit.

He then wandered around nearby again.

That feeling led him to not far away, the edge of an ice‑sealed stream.

In some spots the ice layer is unusually thin.

Beneath the ice, a dark shape flickered indistinctly.

He grabbed a thick branch, fashioned it into a fish spear, and held it ready.

He also picked up a sharp stone.

He struck the ice hole hard to break it open.

He stabbed wildly into the water.

He actually speared two small fish the size of a palm!

The catch was meager.

One rabbit, a few frozen birds, and two small fish.

But for him, suffering from hunger and cold, his belly burning like fire,

This was practically a blessing from heaven!

He used the dry vines he'd found to tightly tie up the catch.

With legs that felt leaden, he trudged down the mountain, stepping deep then shallow.

The wind cut his face like a knife.

Yet inside his heart, it felt like he harbored a tiny furnace.

Even his steps grew noticeably lighter.

He shoved open the squeaky, broken door.

He entered the dim hut.

Lin Yue'e remained seated on the kang's edge.

She cradled the already-sleeping Xiao Xue in her arms.

No lamp was lit in the room.

Only in the stove did some firewood, added who-knows-when, burn with a weak flame.

It cast light on her silent profile.

She heard the door move.

Her body shuddered.

She turned her head.

Her eyes landed on him.

Then it moved to the items he'd set on the table.

Her look was complex.

She couldn't conceal her surprise.

She was also filled with doubt.

Most of all, it was a bone‑deep wariness.

Yet beneath that wariness lurked something so faint she herself hadn't perceived it.

Did he really… go looking for food?

And he actually brought it back?

Lu Qingshan remained silent.

He silently set the catch on the stove.

He stepped to the stove and began to ignite the fire clumsily.

He went outside, gathered some clean snow, and threw it into the pot.

To boil the water.

To prepare this pitiful catch.

He'd never cooked, had no experience, and his motions were crude.

Luckily there was no salt at all, so he didn't need to bother—he just wanted to cook it done.

He plucked and gutted, leaving his hands a mess.

Yet he was unusually focused.

Soon.

A scent of fish and faint meat rose.

It began to permeate the chilly hut.

It wasn't strong.

Yet it was enough to whet the appetite.

The sleeping Xiao Xue on the kang seemed stirred by the scent.

Her little nose twitched as she sniffed.

Her eyelids fluttered.

She opened her eyes blearily.

When she saw the broken pot on the stove bubbling "gudugudu" with steaming, cloudy meat broth,

Her formerly dull eyes lit up!

Her small mouth opened unconsciously.

A faint swallowing sound came from her throat.

Her tiny body instinctively leaned toward the scent.

That was hunger's instinct.

Lu Qingshan used the only two chipped coarse porcelain bowls at home.

He carefully skimmed off the foam.

He ladled a little over half a bowl of relatively clear soup.

He laboriously tore the rabbit and small fish meat into fine shreds.

He carefully picked out the fish bones before putting it in the bowl.

He took a bowl and brought it to Lin Yue'e.

Lin Yue'e looked at the bowl, at the meat shreds Lu Qingshan personally picked out, and the rising steam.

Her lips moved a few times.

In the end, she still silently took it.

She held it in her hands.

But she did not drink it right away.

Lu Qingshan again held another bowl.

He walked to the already warm kang.

His actions were as light as possible, handing it to Xiao Xue, who gazed at him hopefully.

"Xiao Xue, are you starving? Drink the soup, eat the meat."

His voice was very low.

Carrying a kind of care so humble he himself wasn't aware of.

Xiao Xue timidly glanced at him, then turned her head to look at her mother.

Seeing her mother had no reaction.

Only then did she hesitantly extend her thin, skin-and-bones little hand.

She received the warm bowl.

She lowered her head.

First she sipped the soup in small mouthfuls.

Then, with her dirty little hand, she clumsily grabbed a pinch of meat shreds.

She stuffed it into her mouth.

Her cheeks bulged as she chewed slowly and preciously.

The room was extremely quiet.

Only the occasional crackle of firewood bursting in the stove remained.

And the faint sounds made while Xiao Xue drank the soup.

Suddenly.

Xiao Xue raised her head.

Her dark eyes looked at Lu Qingshan, using a vague, childish voice.

She whispered, almost as if murmuring in a dream:

"Dad... really nice..."

These four words.

Like a red-hot branding iron.

It suddenly scorched Lu Qingshan's chest!

The hand holding the bowl trembled violently.

The scalding soup burned his thumb.

It burned fiercely, yet he seemed not to feel it.

He looked at his daughter, whose eyes, from a little hot soup, slightly glistened.

He looked at the soup residue at the corner of her mouth.

His nose suddenly felt sour.

His eye sockets instantly felt hot.

In his previous life.

When had he ever heard his daughter call him like that?

What he had left for her.

Only fearful screams and silent tears.

An indescribable surge of emotion.

Mixed with boundless regret.

An inexpressible soreness.

Turbulent excitement.

Also a sense of responsibility, heavy and almost crushing him.

Vigorously striking his chest.

He forcefully blinked.

He forcibly pushed back that warmth and moisture.