Chapter 816: If Li Long makes a move, there will definitely be something!

The Tianshan Mountains are over 600 kilometers wide; this is an average number.

Not to mention the Eastern Tianshan, from Wucheng west all the way to Shicheng, especially the Tianshan south of Maxian, is relatively narrower. Looking from north to south, those mountains are layered and dense, huddled together like students warming themselves by a fire in winter, wishing they could all squeeze together.

By the time it goes further west, the Tianshan splits in the middle, creating the Central Tianshan and the Ili River Valley, and the Tianshan becomes wider. With the Central Tianshan, there are the Southern Tianshan and Northern Tianshan.

Of course, the widest part of the Tianshan has almost run abroad, so we won't mention that.

In the middle of the Tianshan west of Shicheng, in the Ili River Valley, there are large areas of alpine grassland in the Tianshan. The altitude of these grasslands is over a thousand meters, with higher ones reaching over three thousand meters.

Why are many places in Ili called "air grasslands"? It's because these grasslands are on the mountains, on the mountain tops—for example, Tohulasu, for example, Nalati. You walk from the city into the mountains, go around the mountain road circle after circle, and then finally climb to the top of the mountain, only to suddenly discover that inside the mountain top, there is actually a large area of hilly grassland—so the mountain top is like this!

It subverted many people's cognition of mountain tops, so it is called an air grassland.

And the section of the Tianshan from Shicheng east to Wucheng almost has no large areas of grassland in the mountains, and air grasslands are almost invisible. This can be discovered from a rough map.

But if you zoom in on the map, you can see that entering the mountains from the north and walking through a dozen layers of mountains, there will appear pieces of sporadic, not necessarily connected, alpine meadows in the mountains.

Compared with the air grasslands in Ili, these alpine meadows are extremely small, but if they are really used for one or two families, or one or two small tribes to graze, they are actually enough.

Such alpine meadows are extremely rich in the deep mountains south of Maxian, but they are not large in scale, and then they are occupied by small tribes like Halimu, whose ancestors have grazed here for generations.

Li Long is currently walking on such an alpine meadow, and he estimates that the altitude here must be at least one thousand two or three hundred meters.

The grassland near Ye Erjiang's place must be over a thousand mu—such a scale is not worth mentioning compared to the grasslands of hundreds of thousands or millions of mu in the Ili River Valley, but walking in it, Li Long feels that he is still very small.

Li Long knows that it is not easy to find prey on the grassland. From time to time, marmots will show their heads. Despite sleeping for a whole winter, no matter how you look at it, this thing is chubby, as if it never gets thin.

These guys are extremely timid, and they are not reckless at all like their descendants, the internet marmots. After seeing Li Long, they immediately shrink their necks back—mainly because there are many natural enemies nearby, especially the eagles and falcons flying in the sky, and animals like foxes appearing in the grass on the ground.

Of course, Li Long also counts as one.

However, Li Long disdains these little guys. For one thing, the famous No. 1 disease might exist on them, and for another, this thing is too fat, which doesn't suit Li Long's taste. Even if Meng Hai and the others don't mind, how many would he have to catch to be enough?

Troublesome.

So Li Long looked left and right. It was too far from the mountain forest in the south, so he walked to the east. Four or five hundred meters to the east, there was a sparse pine forest, and behind the pine forest, it looked like there was a stone wall. There should be prey there, right? Even if there isn't, the terrain there is higher, and it will be easier to find things after climbing up.

When Li Long walked to the edge of the forest, a breeze blew over, and he immediately felt cool.

That's the situation in the mountains; it's too hot when the sun is shining, and the ultraviolet rays are too strong. Once you get under the trees, you immediately feel cool, even the kind of cool that is a bit gloomy.

However, what surprised Li Long was that he found quite a few particularly fat morels in the moss here.

Li Long immediately carried his gun, took a cloth bag out of his backpack, and began to pick these precious mushrooms.

The morels in this pine forest seemed to have never been picked by anyone. They were large and in patches. Looking at them, seven or eight were gathered together, growing densely. The largest one was actually as big as a palm. When he picked it up to look, it was very tender, and it would break with a little force.

In a short while, Li Long had picked more than half a kilogram.

The resources in the big mountains are truly rich. In places where people rarely go, those things worth hundreds or thousands are growing casually, and no one cares about them.

Morels look strange, and their taste is not obvious. Birds and beasts are not interested in them, so Li Long took advantage of them at this moment.

After picking this small patch of morels, Li Long carried the bag and continued walking into the forest. Morels are fragile, so he didn't put them in his backpack, planning to pick more if he couldn't hunt anything later, and then carry them back directly.

After walking not far into the pine forest, Li Long smelled a bloody scent.

He immediately became vigilant. At this time, he couldn't care about the morels anymore. He put the cloth bag containing the mushrooms into his backpack, held the gun with both hands, opened the safety, pushed the bullet into the chamber, and slowly touched toward the direction of the bloody scent.

This pine forest was not big. After walking out more than twenty meters, he walked out of the pine forest. He saw two gray wolves lowering their heads and gnawing on something in the grass under the mountain wall in front.

One wolf was gnawing vigorously and pulled hard. The head of the animal being gnawed was pulled up from the grass, and two round stick-like deer antlers were exposed. It turned out to be an adult red deer.

He didn't know if it had fallen from the mountain wall and died, or if it had been hunted and killed by two wolves. At this moment, the red deer had no movement, and one wolf had already torn open its stomach and was gnawing on the offal.

Carnivores like to eat the offal of their prey the most because it is rich in fat and can quickly replenish energy.

Li Long raised his gun and aimed at the gray wolf on the side closer to him.

"Awoo—!"

Before the gun fired, in Li Long's blind spot, where a pine tree was blocking, a gray wolf barked!

It turned out there was another wolf on guard there!

After these two gray wolves heard the bark, they quickly turned their heads to look at the pine forest. After seeing Li Long, they turned and ran!

Bang bang!

Two gunshots rang out, and one gray wolf fell to the ground in response, while the other gray wolf jumped and ran toward the depths of the grass.

The gray wolf moved very fast. Li Long held the muzzle of the gun steadily, predicted its movement trajectory, and then fired.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

After three shots, the wolf that had run twenty or thirty meters fell on the grass.

When Li Long stood up to look for the wolf on guard again, the other party had long since disappeared.

From beginning to end, Li Long didn't see what the guard wolf looked like.

Li Long didn't relax his vigilance. He took out a stripper clip from his backpack, pulled the bolt to catch the ejected bullet, pressed the magazine full again, put away the stripper clip, pushed the bullet into the chamber, and walked forward vigilantly with the gun.

The grass wasn't very deep. That wolf had either hidden in the forest or fled along the edge of the forest.

After looking around and finding no trace of the wolf, Li Long went over and carried the wolf he had shot in the distance back.

The gray wolf wasn't very fat, about forty kilograms, with a large body, but it looked very lean.

Putting the two wolves together, Li Long went to look at the deer again.

The red deer's body was much larger than the wolves'. If it were alive and uninjured, it would weigh over seventy kilograms.

At this time, its stomach had been torn open, the stomach and intestines inside had been pulled out, and half of its heart and liver had been eaten.

Li Long squatted down, pinched some red deer blood, and smelled it. The blood was very fresh; it hadn't been dead long.

He slung his gun on his back, took out his knife, and began to process this red deer.

Can't waste it. This red deer had no signs of falling injuries, and there were quite a few claw marks on its body; it should have been hunted by three wolves.

He used the knife to cut away the parts torn by the biting on the abdomen, and took out all the offal in the stomach and piled it to one side. He could feel that the offal still had heat.

Then Li Long began to process the red deer.

He cut off the deer head and put it to one side. These wolves didn't know good goods, leaving the most valuable deer antlers alone—it was cheaper for Li Long. Although the two deer antlers on this deer head weren't considered large, they weighed nearly two kilograms together, and they were still intact after being tossed around by the wolves for so long, which was quite good.

Li Long planned to take them back together later—without a saw, it wasn't easy to cut this stuff off with a knife.

The deer's offal had been taken out. At this time, skinning was a bit difficult. Li Long was very careful and skinned slowly, mainly because he was afraid of damaging the skin—the wolves had torn open the deer's stomach, creating irregular cuts. If he skinned it and ruined it at this time, the value of the skin would be greatly reduced.

Anyway, a complete deer skin was worth seventy or eighty yuan, so he couldn't be careless.

It took almost half an hour to skin this deer skin. Although it looked like it was missing a little bit, the shape was basically intact. The most important thing was that there was almost no grease or meat on the skinned skin, and it looked like very good quality.

Li Long himself was quite satisfied. He spread the skin out, stretched it, took salt from his backpack and gently wiped a layer on it, and wiped another layer of salt on the deer's crotch. After driving away the flies and wasps, he sat on the grass to rest.

Li Long didn't smoke. If it were someone else, smoking a cigarette at this time would be the most comfortable moment.

At this moment, his position was: north was the pine forest, south was the mountain wall, east was the junction of the pine forest and the mountain, and west was the mountain grassland. Looking over, it was a piece of undulating green, very pleasing to the eye.

Occasionally, you could see dots of white on the grass, either mushrooms or stones. Li Long planned that after finishing processing the wolves and the deer, and after processing them at Ye Erjiang's winter camp, he could come up again in the afternoon to see if he could spot a mushroom ring.

Although he had seen mushroom rings more than once, Li Long still wanted to see if there were any.

After resting for seven or eight minutes, Li Long felt his energy recover, so he stood up and began to skin the two wolves.

The first wolf was shot in the head, which was better, and a good skin could be skinned. The second wolf was shot while running, and it was hit by two shots—Li Long remembered he had fired at least four shots, and two bullets had missed.

One shot was a little below the spine, and one shot was in the stomach. These two shots made this skin a residual skin.

Of course, even a residual skin was more valuable than a sheepskin. The first one Li Long skinned was this residual skin. One of the two bullets remained in the wolf's body, and one passed directly through the body, resulting in three bullet holes.

The wolf hadn't been opened, so skinning was relatively easier. In less than twenty minutes, a wolf skin was skinned. Then he opened the stomach, took out all the offal, and put it to one side.

This time, the offal was definitely not wanted, but the wolf teeth had to be pried off.

The other wolf was also skinned quite quickly. After skinning, he piled all the offal of the deer and wolves together, which could be considered a sacrifice to the Mountain God. This could be called a sacrifice, or it could be called a tribute, anyway, it meant that.

Li Long remembered that he had once found a house built of stones in the mountains, where there was primitive worship. He didn't know whether the original residents in the mountains worshipped the Mountain God or the fierce beasts in the mountains.

In short, let them enjoy these.

After resting for a while, Li Long wrapped the crotches of the two wolves with skin, tied them with a rope from his backpack, and carried them on his back. Then he wrapped the red deer's crotch with skin, which could only be held.

The deer head with deer antlers was stuffed into the red deer's crotch—the same for the penis.

This was a bit cumbersome, but there was no other way. Who told him to hunt so many things?

Down the mountain.

Fortunately, it wasn't very far from Ye Erjiang's winter camp. Li Long didn't rest in the middle and walked to the place in one go.

Meng Hai and the others had just removed the roof of the winter camp and were re-laying wooden beams and wooden boards. Seeing Li Long returning fully loaded, they all cheered.

"Why don't you come over to help! The mushrooms I picked are all crushed!" Li Long shouted loudly.

Two young men immediately ran over and took the prey from Li Long's hands.

"Is this a wolf? We just heard gunshots, and there were so many gunshots, we thought you were in danger." Meng Hai glanced at the prey and asked.

"Two... no, three wolves, hunting a red deer. When I found it, the red deer had already been bitten to death." Li Long pointed to the red deer that had been taken over and said, "I shot two wolves, and one ran away."

"Amazing, truly amazing! Two wolves! Even with a gun, I would be afraid..." Someone exclaimed, "This wolf... hey, it's fierce!"

"Hmm, I remember, didn't some old man in our team get bitten by a wolf?"

"It was the old man of the Zheng family. When he was herding sheep, the sheep were lost, and he went to look for them with a whip, but the two wolves almost ate him." Another person said.

Qingshuihe Village is not far from the mountains. Wolves appear here much more often than on the side of the Fourth Team, and the probability of accidents is also greater.

"With a gun, I'm not afraid. Alright, I'm unloading the meat now. One of you come over and set up the stove. We'll eat boiled meat at noon, and then I'll unload the meat and distribute some to everyone." Li Long said, "When the meat is boiled, someone will have to go and send some to Master Hou."

"No problem!" Meng Hai and the others agreed very readily.

Li Long took off his backpack and looked at the morels inside. Sure enough, as he expected, most of them were crushed.

There was no way, after all, these mushrooms were fragile and couldn't withstand pressure at all.

Don't worry about that anymore. Li Long took down a large basin from the back of the jeep, went to the water pipe to get water, and then began to unload the meat.

Now Li Long found that this water pipe was really well connected; it was very convenient for washing things and daily water use.

The stove was set up—actually, this stove was also built with a few stones. Anyway, there was plenty of firewood. After lighting the branches with grass stalks, he put on firewood, and the fire under the stove became vigorous, making it very convenient to boil water.

Li Long first unloaded some deer meat, trimmed off the lymph nodes on the neck, and put them into the pot in pieces, followed by the ribs and legs.

Li Long's knife steel was very good, and he cherished it very much, trying his best not to let the blade touch the bones, and would never chop hard if he could cut from the joints. He also carried an oilstone bought from the department store in his backpack, and would rub it from time to time to keep the blade sharp.

A young man said enviously:

"Officer Li, your knife is very fast! Looking at this appearance, it was forged by yourself, right?"

"Hmm, forged from a shell casing picked up at the artillery range." Li Long said while unloading the meat, "Mainly because the steel is good."

"We've also picked up quite a few. Everyone at home has forged kitchen knives, but they are too hard to sharpen." Someone took up the conversation.

There is target practice at the artillery range every year, and shell casings are easy to pick up. It wasn't very strict at that time. Qingshuihe Village is closer to the target range than the Fourth Team and has more advantages.

Li Long smiled and said:

"Some people sold them as scrap iron, right? Get one, find a good blacksmith to forge a knife to carry with you, and it can be used for a long time."

Talking about idle things, soon nearly ten kilograms of meat were put into the pot. The red deer wasn't small, and this meat only accounted for a small part. Li Long began to cut and distribute the rest.

There was also wolf meat.

Fewer people came this time, so naturally, more meat was distributed. With two wolves and the remaining red deer, everyone could get nearly ten kilograms of meat.

So Meng Hai and the others didn't stop smiling—they originally thought they might not get meat today, but they didn't expect to get more than yesterday!

Their motivation became even greater. Li Long finished unloading the meat and originally wanted to go help work together, but was persuaded by Meng Hai and the others, saying that he had hunted the prey and made such a great contribution, so he shouldn't work and should take a rest.

Li Long smiled, spread out the skins to dry, and then went to process the deer antlers on the deer head.

There was a hand saw in the jeep. He removed the deer antlers and planned to throw away the deer head, but was stopped by Meng Hai.

"This deer head is also a good thing, can't throw it away, keep it and we'll take it back." Meng Hai said.

Li Long thought to himself that I didn't say to leave the offal there, otherwise wouldn't you have run over and picked them all back?

This wasn't Li Long's speculation. If he had said it, these people would really have run over and picked back those offal.

Those were all good meat!

Li Long left the deer head to Meng Hai, while he washed the crushed morels and then boiled mushroom soup.

Anyway, it was already crushed, so it was better to make use of it on the spot and nourish everyone.

He planned to specifically pick mushrooms in the afternoon. The resources of morels here were very rich. If he looked around nearby, he would definitely be able to pick more. When the time came, he wouldn't hunt, just pick mushrooms, and it would be good to get more back to dry.

A young man learned from yesterday's way of eating, went to find some wild green onions and wild garlic nearby, brought them back, washed and processed them, and then chopped them into pieces. Li Long had already taken out the hot chili oil and vinegar, and after adjusting the sauce, they could have a good meal.

The deer meat wasn't old and was soon boiled, and the fragrance of meat filled the valley.

At this time, a black cloud drifted in the sky, and Li Long hurriedly greeted everyone:

"Quick, hide, get into the car, get into the winter camp, a heavy rain is coming in a while!"

ps: The next chapter will be a bit later (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 817 =====