Chapter 364: Even the Cunning Prey Cannot Defeat an Old Hunter (Barely)

A faint mist permeated the air above the hot spring valley. The further in he went, the thicker the mist became, as if entering a fairyland.

But at this moment, Li Long had no time to appreciate the scenery, which in later generations would be seen as having a xianxia atmosphere. He somewhat disliked this mist because, due to its presence, his field of vision was only about ten meters ahead; beyond that distance, he couldn't see anything.

Li Long simply climbed the slope and entered the pine forest.

Sure enough, the mist in this pine forest was thinner, allowing him to see further.

It was just that this patch of pine trees was relatively sparse, so the snow under the trees was quite thick. Every step he took, the snow sank to his knees, and pulling his legs out to move forward was very strenuous.

Hunting was not as easy or simple as imagined.

To gain, one must pay, and the payment is not necessarily proportional to the gain. Although it was very unfair, that was how the world worked; there was no help for it.

Walking in the pine forest, stepping on the snow would also make a crisp sound. Although the sound was smaller than walking by the stream at the bottom of the valley, this sound was also easy to alert those animals.

Li Long tried to be as careful as possible. The closer he got to the hot spring pool, the more vigilant his steps became.

When he was thirty or forty meters away from the hot spring pool, he heard grunting sounds, and not just one!

Wild boars!

A group of wild boars!

Li Long became excited; he had finally run into a decent group of prey. He suppressed the urge to rush out and continued to advance in the pine forest, intending to get closer and wait until he could see the wild boars in the pine forest before firing.

If he could hit one, he would; if he could hit two, even better!

As he walked, Li Long disengaged the safety of his rifle, trying hard to see the situation ahead through the gaps in the trees.

Unfortunately, this patch of pine forest became dense instead, making it impossible to see the situation over there.

When he walked a few more steps forward, suddenly a wild boar roared loudly, and then he heard the group of wild boars running wildly. The ground was still shaking. Li Long cursed to himself and hurriedly rushed down toward the bottom of the valley!

He didn't know if it was him or something else that caused the wild boars to riot, but this group of wild boars had all bolted!

When Li Long rushed down to the bottom of the valley, he found that the mist here was even thicker. He didn't know why the hot spring water seemed to have risen a bit, and the temperature had also increased. He vaguely saw the shadows of the wild boars escaping in the mist dozens of meters ahead. It was too late to aim carefully; Li Long raised his rifle and fired!

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"

Four bullets were fired. Li Long heard a wild boar scream. He quickly chased after it. When he rushed to the hot spring pool, he found that the hot spring pool had become muddy, and snow mixed with mud was splattered everywhere. Where he had just seen the wild boars, there were a few drops of blood in the snow, and some had dissolved in the water, but there were no wild boars.

He had hit them, wounded them, but hadn't killed them.

Li Long hurriedly chased in the direction the wild boars had escaped, holding his rifle. These wild boars had cut across the slope and bolted into the pine forest.

Li Long hadn't entered this area yet. Every time he hunted here before, it was an ambush; he would leave with the prey after the kill, without needing to enter the forest.

But this time, because of the mist and other reasons, he had wounded them without success, so he had to chase!

After Li Long entered the pine forest, he saw that the snow had been trampled into a mess by the wild boars, with hoof prints everywhere, both fresh and old.

In the snowy mud, there were faint red blood drops. As the wild boar ran, blood dripped from the wound, which just happened to give Li Long guidance.

Li Long followed the wild boar hoof prints and bloodstains along the slope. After chasing for five or six hundred meters, the pine forest became sparse, but the mountain terrain became steep. Those wild boar hoof prints turned sideways and ran forward. Li Long, panting, ran for dozens of meters more and finally exited the pine forest. The altitude here was already much higher than the hot spring pool.

A bare stone mountain stood on the front left, and the slope below was slightly gentler. The wild boars had run past here.

And below this slope was where the hot spring water emerged.

At this height, there was no mist. Looking down, he could see the valley below filled with mist.

Looking forward again, the group of wild boars had already bolted five or six hundred meters away. Li Long raised his rifle, wanting to aim, but finally put it down.

At such a distance, firing a shot, besides gambling on luck, was basically a waste of bullets.

The mountain road ahead was even steeper. Li Long continued to chase forward, half hoping to see if the wounded wild boar would lose enough blood to stop halfway, and half because he could circle back to the cabin from here.

He couldn't run anymore, but watching the wild boars ahead running further and further away, and always on the half-slope, the wild boars in front had already run into a shrub forest nearly a kilometer away, and the ones behind were almost there too.

Just when Li Long intended to give up, he suddenly saw a wild boar fall off the slope!

He was overjoyed and quickly chased after it!

He must have bet right; that must have been the wounded wild boar, unable to move properly, unable to maintain its balance on the steep slope, and it had fallen down.

The wild boar rolling down was screaming miserably at the bottom of the valley. The other wild boars ignored it and soon disappeared into the bushes and forest, vanishing.

After Li Long ran quickly for two or three hundred meters, he had to slow down—the area was filled with loose stones and was very steep, and the snow crust was quite slippery, so he had to be careful, otherwise he would fall down too.

After spending some effort to reach the wild boar, he found that the unlucky guy had broken its left front leg, and the white bone fragments were exposed. Its abdomen was also pierced by a piece of wood—evidently, when it fell, it had been stabbed by this dead small tree.

There was a large pool of blood under the wild boar. It wasn't dead yet, but it wouldn't live much longer.

Li Long raised his rifle and fired a shot at the wild boar's head, sparing it from its suffering. The wild boar was dead. Li Long rested well; his own work had just begun.

In the past, when he caught a wild boar, he usually took it back to slaughter. This wild boar wasn't very big, about fifty or sixty kilograms, and the meat should be quite tender, but Li Long didn't intend to take it back.

Having run for so long, and at such a high altitude, he felt he was panting heavily, so he thought about skinning the wild boar on the spot, discarding some internal organs here, and then going back.

He looked around and didn't find any danger. Li Long stood his rifle on a stone to the side, pulled out the knife he carried, first dragged the wild boar out from the piece of wood, dragged it to a relatively flat place, gutted it first, put the internal organs to the side, and began to skin it.

The wild boar's body was still soft, making it relatively convenient to handle. If he dragged it to the cabin, it would take at least an hour or two, by which time the wild boar would be frozen hard and difficult to handle.

Li Long could now be considered an old hunter—at least among the people he knew, he hunted or caught the most prey. Maybe even Yushanjiang didn't necessarily get more prey than him; after all, Yushanjiang wasn't a full-time hunter and only used his gun to protect his cattle and sheep.

The wild boar's skin was still easy to peel. After he peeled the skin, the meat on the wild boar's legs had already started to freeze.

He definitely had to keep the stomach among the internal organs. Li Long kept the liver and heart, and then discarded the rest.

He poked a hole in the stomach and used his hand to squeeze the undigested food inside onto the snow nearby. This thing definitely couldn't be cleaned thoroughly here. After simple processing, he put these internal organs back into the wild boar's stomach.

At this time, the wild boar's body had also become hard. Li Long wrapped it in a plastic sheet, tied it with a rope, slung his rifle on his back, picked up the wild boar carcass, tucked it under his arm, and walked down the mountain.

!.

It was mainly because there were many loose stones here, and he was worried that if he dragged it, the plastic sheet would be torn, making it useless later.

Anyway, the skin was peeled, and after discarding some of the things in the stomach, the remaining part of the wild boar was less than forty kilograms. With Li Long's current strength, tucking it under his arm and walking wasn't too strenuous.

After descending the mountain, relying on the direction in his memory, Li Long walked toward the cabin.

Under his left arm was the wild boar, and on his right shoulder was the rifle, with the muzzle pointing down. If there was any situation, he could throw away the wild boar at any time, hold the rifle with both hands, and fire at the target.

Half an hour after he left, at the pile of discarded wild boar internal organs, a black and white animal crawled out from a stone crevice, looked vigilantly in the direction Li Long had left, and after finding no movement, slowly came to the internal organs, sniffed, and began to eat greedily.

It only ate less than half of the pile of internal organs, then dragged the remaining part and crawled into the stone crevice.

The black and white color had a natural camouflage effect in this environment. After entering the stone crevice, this guy disappeared as if it had never appeared.

Li Long rested twice in the middle. After tucking the wild boar and returning to the cabin, he put down the wild boar and went to check the snares first.

Looking from afar and seeing that the snares hadn't been moved, Li Long was a bit disappointed, but immediately felt he was being too impatient. If setting a snare yielded results in half a day, the wild animals in these mountains would probably be overflowing.

Opening the door of the main room, Li Long carried the wild boar in, untied the rope, and spread out the plastic sheet.

The fire in the stove had burned down, so Li Long fetched charcoal and added it, used a fire poker to clear the ash, and the stove fire slowly started to burn. He let the wild boar thaw here, while he himself pried open the wild boar's stomach, took it out, and went to the spring water to start cleaning it.

Even while cleaning, Li Long didn't relax his vigilance. He placed his boning knife to the side, ready to be used at any time.

It was just that there were no wolves around, wasting his vigilance and setup.

After washing the wild boar stomach clean, Li Long's hands were also frozen red. He carried the thing and placed it on the rack in the small room. When he turned back to the main room, the wild boar meat had already thawed a bit, and he began to trim the meat.

As usual, he trimmed out the legs and tenderloin. The wild boar was relatively lean, and the abdomen, which was called pork belly, actually only had three layers. He cut it off and placed it separately to the side, and then broke down the remaining ribs and spine bone by bone, stacking them by category.

There were more gains on the wooden rack in the small room.

After tidying up the wild boar meat, Li Long let out a long breath. Seeing that it was already mid-afternoon, although he was a bit lazy to cook, his stomach was already hungry enough.

He took a mantou and threw it under the stove to toast, brought the pot over, and since there wasn't much pickled vegetables left, he simply got a pot of water, intending to boil some bones to gnaw on.

Wild boar bones were naturally not as tasty as domestic pig bones, but at this time, he shouldn't be so picky. When the water boiled, the foam floated on the top of the soup. Li Long finished the mantou, took a spoon, skimmed the foam, and threw it into the snow outside.

It was a careless method, but to attract those wolves over, it didn't matter. Even if the wolves didn't lick it, he could wait until next year to nourish the green grass.

Of course, it was actually laziness.

After skimming the foam clean, Li Long found a pot lid to cover it, and took another mantou to toast under the stove.

The consumption of mantou had been a bit high these two days. Li Long felt he should steam another cage of mantou—but he didn't know when Li Junshan and the others would come. If they came early, should he go back?