Chapter 808: The Rules of the Great Mountains: Participants Get a Share

The mountain shape of Northern Tianshan differs from that of many other places. Here, the outer mountains consist of several layers of earth hills and gravel-stone hills; initially, nothing grows there, later some sparse weeds and shrubs appear, and only further inward do denser shrubs and trees thrive.

Going further inward, the mountains become covered with much turf or pine and cypress trees. Possibly after crossing over a dozen or so steep and rugged mountains, vast gentle slopes suddenly appear.

Almost no trees grow on these gentle slopes; they are entirely covered with high-quality pasture grass. Viewed from afar, they display undulating curves, arranged with pleasing irregularity, resembling the figure of a beauty, later known as the "Human Body Grassland."

For instance, Kalajun, for instance, Qiongkushitai, for instance, Nalati Sky Grassland.

Deep within the Nanshan of Ma County, such grasslands also exist, though one must pass through many rugged mountains before seeing them.

At this moment, Li Long was striding through the mountains, carrying his rifle.

He felt somewhat excited—it had been a long time since he had carried a rifle through the great mountains searching for prey; this was what hunting truly meant.

Li Long lacked the skill of old hunters in tracking signs and traces, but his powers of observation were strong; descending into mountain gullies, he could see whether the turf or shrubs in an area bore recent marks of collision, or whether wild animals had left droppings or urine nearby.

From these clues, one could analyze whether wild creatures had recently visited the area—of course, Li Long did not have the patience for that; relying on his pair of long legs, his speed and strength, plus his keen eyesight, he simply adopted the most direct method: crossing over one gully after another, forcing his way through violently.

Here at Brother Brother Yushanjiang's winter camp, Xiang Qian was panting heavily, taking a rest.

It had been some time since he had engaged in proper labor; after moving bricks for just a while, he already felt his stamina failing to keep up.

Fortunately, after Li Long departed, Meng Hai and the others immediately came over to help unload the supplies; these people were the main workforce. After unloading the supplies, they began, according to plan, to tear off the roof of the winter camp, piling the construction debris to one side.

The timber above was already somewhat old, with some pieces showing signs of rot at both ends; after consulting Xiang Qian, Meng Hai began replacing those unusable wooden beams.

When Brother Brother Yushanjiang and his group departed, they took all the supplies from the winter camp, leaving only the wooden kang behind. Therefore, during renovation, they only needed to ensure the wooden kang remained undamaged; everything else could be moved.

Sitting before a pile of bricks, Xiang Qian pointed toward the southeast and said:

"Earlier, when laying the water pipes, Li Long told me there are still more than a dozen winter camps deep within the mountains; vehicles cannot reach that area, so regarding these supplies..."

"We will carry the supplies up," Meng Hai replied while working. "Director Li, rest assured; since we have taken on this job, we will certainly do it well."

"In that case, the construction period will be extended, and it will be very arduous—Li Long negotiated a daily wage of five yuan with you, correct? In that case, I authorize raising it to ten yuan. Later, you may need to use carrying poles to transport these bricks and cement to the other winter camps."

"That is truly most grateful!" Meng Hai rubbed his hands, looking at the others to signal they all understood; this time, they had struck gold.

Although ten yuan still could not compare to weaving carrying poles, it was surely better than five yuan, wasn't it?

Hearing Xiang Qian's words, the others were also extremely happy; this was indeed a great blessing!

"Rest finished? Come, let's get back to work!" Xiang Qian stood up and, along with the other cadres, moved forward to help.

Ma Ma Xiao Yan once again began taking photographs, then held her pen, recording the necessary information.

In a little while, she would also interview Xiang Qian, Meng Hai, and the others.

Originally, she had intended to take the opportunity to interview Li Long as well, but Li Long moved too fast, and she failed to catch him.

"Flap-flap-flap!"

A pheasant burst out from the shrubbery, flying five or six meters into the air, flapping its wings, preparing to land on the opposite slope; just as it took flight, it spotted Li Long. This pheasant reacted quickly, making a sharp turn in mid-air and flapping its wings desperately to fly away into the distance.

Li Long raised his rifle to aim, then lowered it again. Wouldn't a single shot likely smash this thing to pieces?

He was also concerned that the sound of the gunshot would scare away surrounding wild animals, so he put his rifle away.

With more than ten people on this trip, small game like pheasants and hares would not be enough to go around if the quantity was low.

Carrying his rifle, Li Long continued to cross mountain peaks, encountering two more hares and another pheasant, all of which he let pass.

He wanted to bag something big.

After crossing two more mountains and descending into a gully, Li Long suddenly heard someone shouting. Listening carefully, he realized the noise was coming from the adjacent gully.

Li Long sprinted up the slope; when he reached the summit and looked down, he discovered that about fifty meters to his left, a stag was limping forward, heading toward the gully in front of him, while twenty-some meters behind the stag, a man holding a stick in his left hand and a bag in his right was chasing the stag with all his might.

The stag's right hind leg appeared somewhat fractured, causing its limp, but at this moment it could no longer care about that; its remaining three legs ran desperately forward, actually managing to create a slight distance between itself and the man chasing it.

The man chasing from behind had not noticed Li Long on the slope; panting heavily as he ran, he shouted while running:

"You beast, stop right now for me! Let me tell you, if I don't chase you to death today, I'll write my surname 'Wang' upside down!"

In an instant, the stag arrived at the gully before Li Long; similarly, it did not notice Li Long standing among the shrubs.

Li Long estimated that there was less than a hundred meters left to the end of this gully; given the current running speeds of that pursuer surnamed Wang and the stag, by the time they reached the gully mouth, the distance between them would be forty or fifty meters.

The man surnamed Wang would definitely not catch up.

Mainly because the bag he was carrying likely contained something weighing over ten Jin Zhong; this fellow was reluctant to discard it, which slowed him down.

Li Long raised his rifle, estimated the lead probability, aimed, and fired with a bang; the bullet struck the stag's head.

The stag collapsed at the sound. The man surnamed Wang, who had been chasing from behind, froze on the spot.

He looked up and spotted Li Long holding the rifle, then let out a startled cry, turned around, and ran back the way he came.

"Don't run, or I'll shoot again!"

Li Long shouted loudly; the man surnamed Wang indeed stopped, raising high the hand holding the stick:

"Don't shoot, don't shoot, I won't run anymore!" Having spoken, he threw away the stick.

"Come over here!" Li Long shouted again, then carried his rifle down the mountain toward the stag.

Half a minute after Li Long reached the bottom of the gully, this man also approached, looking at Li Long trembling with fear, terrified he might fire.

"Did you injure this deer?" Li Long looked at the fresh wound on the stag's hind leg caused by a blow, then looked up and asked.

"Y-yes," Wang Qiang said, stuttering slightly. "I hit it with a stick just now."

"Not bad! Did you set an ambush for this stag?" Li Long engaged the rifle's safety, slung it over his back, drew his knife, and began bleeding the stag.

"I saw this stag moving in those gullies over there yesterday; last night I dug a pit there and covered it with grass. This morning I saw this stag again, so I drove it toward the pit, and then the stag fell in.

I thought I could capture it alive, but unexpectedly, by the time I chased it to the edge of the pit, this stag leaped out; I only had time to strike its hind leg with a stick and break it."

"Quite clever," Li Long praised. "Are you digging Fritillaria in the mountains?"

"Mm. Don't arrest me; I'm leaving the mountains right now. I don't want this Fritillaria anymore; it's all yours, just don't arrest me." Wang Qiang placed the bag before Li Long. "There are over ten Jin Zhong of Fritillaria in this bag, worth some money; I don't want any of it, it's all yours, just don't arrest me!"

"Don't leave yet." Li Long merely responded with those words, then continued to eviscerate and skin the stag. When the hide was almost completely removed, Li Long severed one of the stag's hind legs—the injured one—and handed it to Wang Qiang, saying:

"Here, take it. You discovered and injured this stag; although ultimately, if I hadn't fired, you wouldn't have caught it even if it ran, still, you deserve a share of the merit. Alright, take it and leave quickly."

Wang Qiang found it hard to believe.

"Hurry up, I have my own matters to attend to," Li Long said, holding the stag's leg and urging him.

Wang Qiang hesitantly accepted it; seeing that Li Long was genuinely giving it to him, he sincerely offered a word of thanks, lifted the deer leg, turned to leave, and kept glancing back as he walked.

"Take your Fritillaria bulbs; I'm not a robber. Although I am also a forest ranger, today we share a fate, so I'll let you go," Li Long shouted after him. Hearing this, Wang Qiang turned around, hurriedly dragged the bag of Fritillaria bulbs over, bowed deeply to Li Long, and then quickly departed.

Li Long removed all the internal organs of the male red deer and placed them in the mountain gully, then wrapped the entire yearling carcass in the deer hide, tucked it under his arm, and holding his rifle, headed back along the path he had come.

By the time Li Long returned to the location of Brother Brother Yushanjiang's winter camp, the place had already changed dramatically.

The roof of the winter camp had been completely stripped and replaced with new logs. The logs were laid very densely, covered on top with thick dry grass, and at this moment, Meng Hai and the others were mixing mud, preparing to plaster the roof.

Two other people were mixing cement mortar; one person, wielding a large trowel and finishing float, was repairing the walls of the winter camp, filling gaps with bricks and smoothing over them with cement.

Li Xiang Qian and two other leaders from the Supply and Marketing Cooperative were digging a water pit at the outlet of the water pipe. Seeing that they had dug the pit perfectly square and straight, Li Long guessed they were preparing to lay bricks there and build a water pool.

The head of the water pipe had already been diverted to the other side to facilitate construction here.

Ma Ma Xiao Yan held a camera, constantly adjusting the angle, taking only one photo after a long while.

Film was still relatively expensive at this time, so one could not shoot casually as people would in later generations.

Seeing Li Long return carrying a deer, smiles appeared on everyone's faces.

Li Long placed the deer beside the Jeep, then set about repairing the outdoor stove.

Once that was done, he took a pot from the Jeep's trunk, rinsed it at the water pipe, filled it more than halfway with water, carried it over to place on the stove. Since there was plenty of split firewood and kindling nearby, Li Long soon lit the fire beneath the stove and then began to butcher the deer meat.

While butchering the deer meat, he casually chopped the bones he had trimmed, which still had meat on them, into fist-sized chunks and threw them into the pot to start boiling.

After boiling half of the meaty bones, Li Long retrieved several basins from the back of the Jeep for the remaining half; he filled one basin with water and then soaked the deer bones in it.

Once these tasks were finished, he went to Meng Hai to borrow an iron shovel, dug a trench in a relatively flat area nearby, piled the excavated earth on both sides and compacted it to build two platforms; this was to make a roasting pit.

After digging the pit and cleaning out the dirt inside, seeing that the firewood burning under the stove was nearly consumed, he used the shovel to scoop out the embers and place them into the freshly dug earth trench, then stuffed more split firewood under the stove to continue burning.

Watching Li Long's movements, which flowed like floating clouds and running water, Li Xiang Qian exclaimed with admiration:

"This fellow is truly the master of Dashan; in these mountains, anyone else might starve, but he never will. Little Long, your marksmanship is getting better and better; you've only been gone a short while, yet you've taken down such a large deer."

"I just took advantage of someone else's effort," Li Long said, using a tree branch to spread the charcoal fire evenly in the pit, then taking a knife to the nearby water's edge to peel branches from a red willow tree, speaking loudly as he worked:

"Just now, there was someone digging for Fritillaria bulbs; he spotted this deer and broke its leg. But the deer ran too fast for him to catch, so I finished it off."

"Where is that person now?" Ma Ma Xiao Yan asked curiously.

"I gave him a deer leg and let him go."

"Not bad, you're quite particular," Li Xiang Qian said with a laugh. "Does this count as 'those who see get a share'?"

"It does, of course it does," Li Long replied, bringing back a large handful of branches, sitting by the stove to carefully clean them, and slowly whittling out a pile of wooden skewers.

Once the wooden skewers were whittled, Li Long began to cut the meat into blocks.

He fished the meat he had butchered earlier out of the basin, washed the bottom of an empty basin to use as a cutting board, selected pieces with alternating fat and lean, cut them into chunks, and threaded them onto the wooden skewers. At this point, marinating wasn't necessary; with fresh meat, even game, as long as enough seasoning was added during roasting, the gamey smell could be suppressed.

Unless it was the particularly gamey kind, in which case there was no helping it.

This male red deer appeared to be two or three years old, not yet at the stage of being excessively gamey, making it perfectly suitable.

On top of the red deer's head were two antlers, each with three tines; their fresh weight exceeded two kilograms, and these, along with the deer penis that Li Long had specifically saved, were excellent treasures.

The meat boiling on the stove over there had already come to a rolling boil; Li Long left it alone, continuing here to cut meat and thread skewers, while Ma Ma Xiao Yan conscientiously came over to help.

She discovered that Li Long's Jeep was like a treasure chest, its trunk containing all sorts of tools and various seasonings.

Ma Ma Xiao Yan found an aluminum ladle, took it to the water pipe to rinse, then went to the stove to skim off and discard the scum floating on the meat broth.

A fragrant aroma slowly began to permeate the air.

The meat skewers Li Long had threaded were quite large, with two or three hundred grams of meat on each; the charcoal fire beneath the pit was not very fierce, so the roasting time would be relatively long, meaning one could not rush.

After threading twenty or thirty skewers, Li Long took them over and placed them on the pit to begin roasting.

He retrieved salt, cumin, and chili powder from the Jeep's trunk and slowly sprinkled them over the roasting meat skewers.

Over there, the deputy director working alongside Li Xiang Qian, as well as Section Chief Zhou, could no longer contain themselves upon smelling the aroma, frequently turning their heads to look in Li Long's direction.

"Stop looking and hurry up with your work," Li Xiang Qian said with a laugh. "Don't let it happen that by the time they finish over there, the three of us haven't even built a single pool; that would be embarrassing."

Only then did the deputy director and Section Chief Zhou accelerate their pace. Fortunately, this work did not require much technical skill; laying a layer of bricks, spreading a layer of cement mortar, building the pool to a depth of about half a meter was sufficient, then plastering the inside and outside with cement, after which one simply waited for it to dry. Once dry, covering the surrounding area with sand and soil would complete the job.

Soon they finished the task, washed their hands, and quickly ran over to Li Long.

"Little Li, let me have a try?" Section Chief Zhou Yuan volunteered eagerly. "I've roasted meat at home before; I'm familiar with this kind of work."

"Alright, Section Chief, you take over," Li Long said, yielding the position to the more capable, then took the salt bag, walked over to Ma Ma Xiao Yan, grabbed a handful of salt, and sprinkled it into the pot.

"Is that too much?" Ma Ma Xiao Yan asked.

"Not too much, not too much," Li Long shook his head. "It's still a bit short."

"Won't the soup become too salty then?" Ma Ma Xiao Yan asked again, worried.

"It won't," Li Long replied. He hadn't expected Ma Ma Xiao Yan was planning to drink the soup, so he stopped the motion of sprinkling another handful of salt.

Fine, she is a guest; better to show some respect.

"There are wild chives on that hillside over there; go pull some and bring them back," Li Long said, treating Ma Ma Xiao Yan as one of his own without hesitation as he directed her to work.

Ma Ma Xiao Yan did not feel anything was improper about this; she placed the aluminum ladle by the pot and went to pull the wild chives.

"Hey, Little Long, you're quite skilled at ordering people around," Li Xiang Qian said with a low laugh.

"Make the best use of everyone's abilities," Li Long smiled. "By the way, Director, you won't need to come tomorrow, will you?"

"Come? How could I not come? We must come for at least three days. We are not putting on a show; we truly want to solve some practical difficulties for the herders."

"Tomorrow we go to another winter camp; this vehicle cannot get up there," Li Long reminded him.

"I know, I know. I also know that the construction materials brought tomorrow will have to be carried up by our brothers using litters. I just told them that their wages would be doubled, from five yuan to ten yuan. This work is hard; those who work hard deserve the money they earn."

"Then we'll follow the Director's orders," Li Long smiled, then lowered his voice. "Later, I'll wrap up the deer antlers and the deer penis; you can take them back when we return."

"Hey, you rascal," Li Xiang Qian said, patting Li Long on the shoulder, without refusing.

At noon, seeing that the roasted meat was nearly ready, Li Long raised his voice and shouted:

"Alright, everyone stop your current work for a bit; it's time for lunch. After eating, rest for a while before continuing."

Zhou Yuan had been roasting the meat just now; Li Long saw that his Rou De Shou Fa was indeed quite skilled, so he did not take over, but instead threaded some more skewers to roast on the side, while also placing the naan bread brought today on top of the roasting meat.

Naan and roasted meat are the perfect match.

Meng Hai and the others gathered around, laughing and chattering, going to the water pipe to wash the mud off their hands, faces, and bodies.

"Old Meng, there are enamel basins and disposable chopsticks in the trunk; hand one set out to everyone. Ma Qianshi, trouble you to act as the head chef and serve the meat and ladle the soup for everyone."

Ma Ma Xiao Yan had just dragged back a large bundle of wild onions; imitating Li Long, she used the bottom of a basin as a cutting board, washed the wild onions clean, chopped them up, and put them into a small basin.

When drinking the soup, whoever wants some can grab a handful and sprinkle it in; the flavor is extremely rich.

Meng Hai and the others were exhausted, but they ate with great joy.

They could see that Li Xiang Qian and these leaders were genuinely working alongside them, but what made them even happier was the good food and the promise of more money.

Even if such work was exhausting, they were willing to do it for a few more days. (End of Chapter)