Chapter 665: It Turns Out There Were Once Remnant People in the Mountains

Running into the mountains often, Li Long had also practiced the skill of climbing mountains. With his long legs, one stride was more than a meter, and walking up slopes and down gullies wasn't like walking on flat ground, but at least it felt like flying with rapid strides.

He parked the jeep at the door of Halimu's winter shelter, locked the door, carried his gun, and took his backpack as he walked into the mountains.

Changing direction and walking on unfamiliar mountain ridges, Li Long looked ahead and felt that the terrain here was a bit different from what he had seen before.

After entering the mountains for two or three layers, the Tianshan Mountains would branch out into many gullies horizontally and vertically. Usually, a large longitudinal gully led by a water system had many horizontal gullies on both sides like fish bones.

That could be considered a relatively standard terrain.

The non-standard ones were winding longitudinal gullies, with all kinds of irregular horizontal gullies on both sides, like snakes crawling.

The mountain trend before his eyes belonged to the kind where the mountains were steep and the slopes were deep, not big in size but layered and endless.

Unlike the mountains seen before, although layered, they weren't too dense, and occasionally there would be some gentle slopes and small patches of grassland in between.

Looking ahead, it seemed very difficult to see where there was flat terrain.

Would there be prey in here?

Li Long was a bit puzzled.

But since he had already come, then walk forward a bit more.

There was food, bags, matches, and a lighter in the backpack.

With a gun in his hand, Li Long wasn't afraid.

He was just worried that he might not be able to hunt prey in this afternoon.

There were many wild animals in the mountains, but once dispersed into the vast mountains, they would appear very few. It would be good if he ran into them—of course, he also needed to find places that met the habits of these prey.

For example, wild goats liked to run on steep mountains, and gray wolves would lurk in sparse forests and grasslands because there were roe deer and red deer eating grass here.

As for argali and ibex, those high, prominent mountain peaks with very little vegetation were their territory.

Five or six mountains ahead, and then there was a prominent high mountain. There was relatively little vegetation on it, and in some places, there were gaps left after landslides, looking exactly like a wound that had been slashed by someone.

Li Long thought to himself, there should be some relatively rare animals in that place, right?

He would head there today. After arriving, regardless of whether he caught anything or not, it would be time to return.

With his long legs, Li Long easily climbed over a mountain. With no harvest, he bent down and grabbed a handful of wild strawberries and stuffed them into his mouth, continuing forward.

When fritillaria was about to finish its season, wild strawberries would slowly grow, and they would grow until July.

In places where they grew a lot, you could grab them by the handful to eat. There was no pollution here, unless you were very unlucky and grabbed bird droppings.

Climbing over three mountains, Li Long stopped to rest and took his water bottle out of his backpack to drink water.

This imitation military water bottle was bought from the department store, aluminum, green, with a rope. At that time, Li Long chose it carefully—the slightly bad thing about this kind of imitation water bottle was that some would leak.

Fortunately, the service quality of the department store had improved, and he was a big customer, so many service staff knew him, so it was normal to test it.

Anyway, for a metal water bottle, testing it by pouring water in didn't worry about it breaking, and no one cared about this.

Li Long bought several and put them at the wooden cabin, and only one had been traded away so far—those medicinal herb diggers felt it wasn't worth it to trade one or two kilograms of fritillaria for such a water bottle.

When thirsty, just find a stream or spring eye and lie down to take a sip.

Li Long was different; he was worried about drinking leech eggs or something. Since he had the conditions, he should equip himself.

Looking ahead, that high mountain was a bit closer.

According to Li Long's own estimation, the altitude of that mountain should be about three thousand meters.

Maxian was in the southern part of the Junggar Basin; the county seat and the Fourth Team belonged to the plains, with an altitude of about five hundred meters, so there was no feeling at all.

Li Long didn't know what those people in his previous life were thinking, feeling that Northern Xinjiang would have altitude sickness—the altitude of most places from the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains, Urumqi, Shicheng, Maxian, all the way to Altay in the north, was about the same, not exceeding one thousand meters.

Even the altitude of the tourist city Yining was about the same, between five and six hundred meters.

The altitude of those mountain grasslands near Yining was a bit higher, between one thousand and two thousand meters—for example, Tangbula was over one thousand, and Zhaosu was about two thousand.

Only those mountain grasslands would have higher altitudes, over two thousand.

For ordinary people, not exceeding three thousand meters basically wouldn't have altitude sickness—for most ordinary people, four thousand meters above basically wouldn't have altitude sickness, right? Even if there was, it was relatively mild.

At least many people didn't have a reaction when passing the Baishifeng section and Guozigou section of the Yizhao Highway; the altitude of these two places was about three thousand four or five hundred meters.

Maybe individual areas in Southern Xinjiang had higher altitudes, such as Baisha Lake in Taxian, or further south on the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway.

But it was also individual places, and the altitude of most places was still very friendly.

The mountain ahead was about three thousand meters, bare on top, which was very special compared to those mountains with dense vegetation.

Li Long knew there were higher mountains further inside. The county boundary between Maxian and a certain county in Southern Xinjiang was a high mountain with an altitude of over five thousand meters; there were glaciers on it, and Li Long definitely couldn't find his way there.

Originally, he wanted to see if he could climb that high mountain today. After seeing it, Li Long suddenly made a decision: he must climb up to take a look today.

After going down the mountain and climbing over another mountain, Li Long suddenly discovered that the scene before his eyes was a bit different from what he had expected.

From the first look, these mountains were arranged in horizontal lines, with not much gap between one and another, and they all felt about the same.

But the mountain gully before his eyes was a bit wide, more than two hundred meters.

And there were some stone buildings on the flat ground in the middle of the mountain gully, which were obviously man-made.

Although they looked abandoned and some had already collapsed, with a large amount of shrubs and grass growing inside, they still looked quite like something.

A bit like an ancient abandoned village?

Li Long ran down curiously.

Maybe he could find some ancient objects.

Exploration belongs to the instinct of human beings to explore the world, driven by it. From east to west, regardless of which ethnic group or race, there is this spirit of adventure.

Li Long ran down quickly. Just as he arrived at the ruins, he startled a fox that was resting inside. That fox darted out from behind a stone wall, saw Li Long, turned its head, and drilled into the grass, soon disappearing without a trace.

Li Long didn't plan to take this fox either. Although the fur was worth a little money, it was troublesome to process.

He was here to get meat, not fur.

Unless it was very valuable fur, Li Long didn't plan to shoot.

It was just that there were foxes inside, so maybe there were other animals. Li Long turned on the safety of the rifle and walked inside slowly.

Maybe because there were stone slabs laid under the ruins, basically only small shrubs, weeds, and some vines growing against the stone walls grew inside, with no tall trees.

Li Long had already seen from the hillside that there were more than a dozen rooms here, with a stone platform in the middle, similar to an altar.

He also didn't expect that there would be such an existence deep in the Tianshan Mountains. Before, there were not only gold-panning people digging for gold here, but also people living here.

There was a thick layer of moss on the shady side of the stones. Li Long didn't know how many years this ruin had existed, but in short, it should have been a long time.

It was much older than those stone caves and dugouts of the gold-digging people.

The roofs of the stone houses were all gone. Li Long guessed that the roofs of these stone houses should have been wood or grass, and by now they had all rotted, and only the stones could remain for a long time.

The stone walls were very rough and hadn't been polished very smoothly. These stones were also simply processed, and some natural edges and corners hadn't been processed, indicating that the level of productivity at that time wasn't high.

Therefore, the people who originally lived here should have had very low productivity, so it should have been something from a very long time ago.

He didn't find anything of value in the first stone house, and not even anything else was left behind, except for the stone stove.

Li Long also didn't have professional excavation tools. He just looked simply, and if there was nothing, he changed to another place.

He looked for two more houses before finding a gold ring set on a snake bone under a stone slab bed in one of the houses. It was a bit large, not like a bracelet, nor like a gold neck ring—smaller than a neck ring.

Anyway, it looked golden and bright, quite beautiful.

Li Long was very happy. It was worth it.

This thing weighed more than a kilogram when weighed by hand. Even if it was placer gold, it should be worth quite a bit of money, right?

Actually, there were a few bronze objects under the bed, but they had already turned into a pile of green rust, and they shattered at a touch.

Li Long could be considered to understand the feeling of his older brother Li Jianguo when he looked at those rotted copper coins after plowing out a coin cellar.

Continuing to search the remaining stone houses, Li Long found two more gold rings, but they weren't big, totaling about half a kilogram.

The stone platform was searched last.

There was a small stone-built house on the stone platform, which was the only one among all the buildings that had a roof, a stone roof. Walking onto the stone platform, Li Long saw that in the small stone house, which was as big as a sentry box, there were two copper-made fork-like things stuck in the ground.

Those two copper forks had already rusted green, but they looked like they hadn't been completely destroyed.

In the position behind the middle, there was a stone table, and on it was a somewhat strange-looking statue.

Looking at the surface, it was golden and bright, thirty centimeters high. This statue was a beautiful woman riding a tiger.

Such an exquisite statue, compared to the roughness of this piece of architecture, really didn't match at all.

Li Long picked up this statue; it was quite heavy, but not as heavy as pure gold.

Li Long guessed it should be copper-made and gold-plated.

It was quite exquisite, and the only flaw was that there were some bird droppings on it. He didn't know which birds had committed sins on it.

Using his clothes to wipe off the bird droppings, Li Long satisfiedly put this thing into his backpack. Anyway, he couldn't see any characters, and didn't know what era it was from, so he would pack it up first.

Just as he was about to take those two forks, a commotion suddenly came from outside. Li Long turned around with his gun and rushed out.

He saw from the stone platform that on the southwest hillside, two red deer were rushing up along the slope as if startled.

Read every line and every clause!

What had startled them?

Li Long looked around and finally saw a few gray wolves in the mountain gully.

Their bodies weren't as tall as the red deer, and they weren't so conspicuous in the grass that was knee-deep, so it wasn't easy to see them at once.

This could be considered an excellent pasture. Li Long was also a bit puzzled; why didn't herdsmen build a winter shelter here?

Could it be because it was too far from the Northern Mountains?

Li Long felt a bit sorry. Those two red deer ran a bit fast and a bit far, already more than a hundred meters away from here. Chasing wasn't easy to catch up, otherwise, eating venison tomorrow would also be not bad.

Those were two male deer; looking at the antlers on their heads, they should still be young, about sixty or seventy kilograms.

He didn't know if they had run away from the deer herd or if there were other reasons.

Regret belonged to regret. Anyway, there was a harvest, so he planned to climb over that mountain and continue toward the high mountain.

However, just at this time, a deer call successfully attracted Li Long's attention again.

A gray wolf appeared in front of those two red deer, causing the red deer to turn around and run southeast—there were wolves under the north slope, and wolves in the west, so they could only turn around.

Li Long laughed. He carried his backpack, started his long legs, and rushed toward the mountain. If he could occupy the position at the top of the mountain ridge before the red deer, then whether he shot the wolves or the red deer, it would be up to him.

Li Long was panting as he climbed up the hillside. He turned his head to look and discovered that those two red deer had climbed onto the mountain ridge at almost the same time, while the gray wolves chasing them were still rushing up the hillside ten or so meters away from the mountain ridge.

Those two red deer also saw Li Long. Without any hesitation, they turned their heads and ran down the mountain ridge diagonally toward the southwest.

Li Long half-squatted, aimed his gun at the red deer fifty or sixty meters away, steadied his breathing, and pulled the trigger "bang, bang."

One red deer fell to the ground, and the other swayed into the shrubs and disappeared.

Those few gray wolves were startled by the sound of the gun, turned their heads and ran back. Li Long adjusted the muzzle, aimed at the wolves' butts, and fired.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"

Shooting at moving targets was always more troublesome. After four or five shots, only one gray wolf was left behind. He estimated that two more should have been wounded, but the vitality of these gray wolves was very tenacious. The grazing gunshot wounds didn't seem to stop them.

At most, they howled twice, and then darted into the shrubs or grass.

The sound of the gun echoed in the mountain valley, not subsiding for a long time.

Medicinal herb diggers in the distance were also startled when they heard the gunshots.

Li Long carried his gun over to check. The red deer had been shot in the stomach, and it was still twitching on the ground, but it wasn't far from death.

He kicked it, and the red deer moved again.

He walked over to look at the gray wolf on the hillside.

The gray wolf was slightly bigger than the dog in Halimu's family, about thirty or forty kilograms. The bullet had entered from the butt, and he didn't know if it had broken an artery or entered the internal organs; anyway, there was a large pool of blood on the ground.

The wolf was dead through and through.

Li Long carried the rifle in his left hand and the wolf in his right hand as he came to the red deer.

He sighed, raised his head to look at the high mountain in the distance again.

There might be snow lotus on that mountain, and there might be argali.

Unfortunately, he couldn't go today.

Li Long carried the gun on his back, then lifted the red deer onto his shoulder, and finally carried the wolf, heading down the mountain.

When he came, his long legs were quite fast, but when he returned, he could only be a bit slower. This mountain was quite steep, and he couldn't be fast at all.

That is, his strength was greater than ordinary people; otherwise, carrying a deer and carrying a wolf while climbing mountains, he wouldn't have had any strength after two or three mountains.

Even so, by the time he carried the deer and the wolf to the jeep, he was already panting.

It was in the mountains, and the temperature wasn't that high; otherwise, Li Long himself wouldn't have been able to stand it.

He put the deer and the wolf into the car, rested for a few minutes, then went to the water pipe in front of Halimu's winter shelter to wash his face well, then turned back, started the car, and drove back.

This time Li Long drove directly to Little White Poplar Gully. He planned to eat this meat here tomorrow, so he simply didn't go to the wooden cabin.

Twenty or so people, one deer and one wolf were definitely enough to eat. Old Huang was also tidying up things. Seeing Li Long come over, he looked at him curiously.

When Li Long took the red deer and the wolf down, Old Huang and the few people left in the temporary camp here all surrounded him.

"Little Long, you're amazing, only went out for a little while, and caught a deer and a wolf... yo, this wolf skin is beautiful."

"This deer is even more beautiful, right? This is deer antler on the head, right? Heard this isn't cheap?"

The deer antler on the red deer's head wasn't long, less than twenty centimeters. Li Long hadn't cut it off yet.

At that time, when the red deer fell, it fell sideways, and it didn't break the deer antler.

"Eat this meat in the afternoon and tomorrow." Li Long said with a smile, "Now I'll peel the deer and wolf skins. Old Huang, brother, give me a hand to process the stomach and intestines, and boil them?"

"That's good." Old Huang said with a smile.

Venison is better than wolf meat, so Li Long peeled the red deer's skin first.

Of course, before that, he had to cut off the deer head, so that it would be easy to process the deer antler later.

Peeling skin is a skilled job. Watching Li Long peeling the skin neatly there, the others watching were all sighing in admiration.

"What are you looking at? Take the basin! Later when the belly is opened, the internal organs in the stomach have to be taken out?" Old Huang saw everyone surrounding them and immediately drove them away, "Go peel the wolf skin if you want."

Sure enough, once he said this, everyone dispersed.

Li Long's familiar older brother, Xie Yun Dong, Tao Daqiang, and others weren't there. Jia Weidong was there; he went to take the basin over and also helped Li Long pull the red deer's legs, so it was easy to peel the skin.

"This red deer is big enough, can produce quite a bit of meat." Jia Weidong suddenly asked.

"Deer has." Li Long said, referring to meat with bones, which is "ke-lang-zi".

Anyway, it was to be boiled, so it definitely had to have bones.

After peeling the red deer and opening the belly, Old Huang and Jia Weidong went to process the stomach and intestines. Li Long rested for a while before going to process that gray wolf.

Actually, he didn't expect it to be so smooth. Originally, he thought he wouldn't be able to catch anything today, and he would go hunting again tomorrow morning when his older brother and the others were digging the sheep pool.

He didn't know if his older brother had caught anything at the salt cave on the east side.

If he could catch something, then the food for today and tomorrow would be rich.

The wolf was smaller than the deer, so it was faster to peel.

After opening the belly, Li Long discovered that the bullet had entered the wolf's stomach and stirred it up, so most of the internal organs couldn't be eaten. He simply took these things out, put them in the basin, and planned to find a place to bury them.

They couldn't be thrown away randomly; otherwise, they would attract other animals.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 666 =====

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