My 1995 Small Farm.

"Fugui, where are you going? Come down and fire a couple of shots. We have just as many birds here as you do over there."

A hunter from Kinmen Village recognized Chen Ling and called out from a boat in the distance.

"Let's do it another day. I have something to do today, so I'll go to your village to see Uncle Guangli."

Chen Ling smiled and agreed, slowing his horse to cross the bridge and enter Kinmen Village.

Kinmen Village, nestled along the Jinshui River and against the mountains, is a typical village that relies on fishing and hunting for survival.

Don't let their small size fool you; the villagers here are even more formidable than those in Chenwangzhuang. Due to limited arable land and reliance on fishing and hunting, they have a rather fierce and unruly culture.

In the 1930s and 40s, and even earlier, there were many gangs along the Jinshui River, such as the gun gang we just saw. There were also boat gangs, net gangs, and so on.

Gun gangs hunted on the water, boat gangs transported goods, and net gangs fished with nets.

Back then, most people who made a living on the river were controlled by gangs.

If you don't join, you'll be a "white neck" and there's no way you'll survive.

So gradually, everyone became a ruthless person.

Take Liu Guangli, for example. He looks thin and unremarkable, honest and simple, but if you provoke him, even a few strong young men wouldn't be enough to deal with him.

Kinmen Village is small; it only takes a few steps by horseback to reach Liu Guangli's house. As soon as you approach his small courtyard, which is right next to the foot of the mountain, a foul and pungent fishy smell hits you.

Chen Ling held his son and looked around. Good heavens, the clothesline was almost full of all kinds of game skins.

There are various large prey such as deer.

There are also small prey such as rabbits and foxes.

Rabbits are the most common species.

There were strings of clothes hanging on the clothesline, and others nailed to the wall.

Is Uncle Guangli home?

Chen Ling tied up the horse and was about to lead Rui Rui inside.

A chorus of barking dogs erupted in the yard, and five or six tiger-headed yellow dogs rushed out, mostly yellow ones.

"return."

Liu Guangli, with a pipe in his mouth and wiping his hands haphazardly on his clothes, came out. When he saw Chen Ling, he immediately exclaimed with delight, "Oh my, Fugui, you are a rare guest, and you even brought a baby. Come in, come in and sit down."

As she spoke, she grabbed Chen Ling's arm and pulled him home.

"Uncle Guangli, why are all your dogs turning tiger-headed yellow this year?"

Chen Ling eyed the well-proportioned hunting dogs, each with a square head and cat-like ears, and asked curiously, "You're not keeping the brindle dogs anymore? You're not keeping the blue dogs anymore?"

Among the local hunters, the tiger stripe is the most prized.

The blue dog, also known as the wolf-blue dog, is ruthless and prone to standing out.

Paired with Tiger Head Huang Jinshan, they are invincible.

"It's not that we've stopped raising them, but some have gotten old, some have been injured or disabled, and some have died in the mountains."

The night before last, my lame blue dog broke free of its chain and ran up the mountain, never to return.

Now the two old dogs are tied up at the old house, it's quieter there now.

Liu Guangli sighed softly. Years of hunting hadn't hardened his heart. When talking about his beloved hunting dog, he couldn't help but feel melancholy.

Pointing to the dark, sticky, and dirty iron bucket outside the kitchen, he said, "That's why we feed them some meat every day."

Chen Ling nodded: "Yes, feed them something good, they're all good hunting dogs."

As the saying goes, a dog doesn't live eight years, and a rooster doesn't live six.

The hunting dogs that often hunt in Changnian Mountain are extremely active, and even if they are not injured during the hunt, very few of them live past the age of eight.

Many hunting dogs die from exhaustion or from running themselves ragged.

And this is especially true for the best hunting dogs.

A good hunting dog is proud to the core.

Like people, dogs tend to become stubborn and inflexible when they get arrogant.

They won't leave until they've caught their prey.

Many of them eventually died from exhaustion.

Even if they don't run themselves to death, hunting dogs age faster than regular guard dogs from year after year of hunting.

Most people start aging rapidly at the age of five or six.

Good dogs are intelligent and perceptive; if they sense their impending death, they will leave the house on their own and will not die inside.

A good dog doesn't die at home; a good hunting dog dies on the mountain.

"These tiger-headed yellow puppies are young; they were bought from the village market and have just grown up this year."

Liu Guangli chuckled at Chen Ling: "We can't not buy dogs. We need to bring some up the mountain. We can't just rely on the dogs in the village. The Tiger Head Yellow dogs we brought back will become mixed breeds after three generations. We'll have to go outside to find some breds."

East of Changle Township, there are relatively few tiger-headed yellow tigers kept as pets; most are kept by hunters.

There are only three or four tiger-head yellow tigers in the whole village.

After three generations of breeding, they become impure, especially the tiger-headed yellow ones, which are very prone to reversion to their ancestral traits. Reverted dogs are fine as watchdogs, but they are really no good as hunting dogs.

"Next year, we'll see how much the dogs they breed with yours will be worth. The puppies from your wolfhound are really valuable. The ones in our village that were bred with tiger-headed yellow dogs were almost ready to be sold."

After thinking about it, they still refused to sell; they also wanted to raise a few top-tier dogs.

"Haha, yeah, those puppies are almost a month old now. They said they'll bring me one or two when they're two months old."

Chen Ling has relaxed the rules this year, allowing his dogs, Erhei and Erhei, to mate with good hunting dogs from outside. It's free; if they have puppies, he'll give them one for every two puppies, and two for every three. That's how it works.

Whether I sell it or not is not important; it's just for my relatives and friends to raise.

Sun Yanhong and Xiao Mianyang had said they wanted to raise two dogs to guard the shop and the car, big ones, and a bit fierce.

Good offspring should be raised by our own people; it will be convenient to select breeding dogs for propagation whenever needed.

After talking about dogs, Chen Ling asked about the yellow-throated marten.

When asked this question, Liu Guangli paused for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"What's wrong? Scared?"

Liu Guangli patted Chen Ling on the shoulder: "You guys haven't been into the mountains enough. These mountain wolves are really fierce. Let me tell you, unless you're an experienced hunter, an ordinary person will never encounter one in their entire life."

People like Li Xian from your village have never ventured deep into the mountains, rarely spent the night there, so they probably don't know how dangerous these mountain wolves are.

As they were talking, they saw Rui Rui whimpering and frowning, pulling Chen Ling's hand to walk out.

He could only stop talking, squat down and say with a smile, "Little one, Grandpa has kittens at home. You can play here for a while, and later you can take one home, okay?"

Rui Rui didn't care about the kitten at all. Without even looking at the old man, she pouted and pulled Chen Ling forcefully, trying to get out.

Chen Ling frowned and said, "You're being disobedient again. You said you were good when we came. If you do this again, I definitely won't bring you out next time."

Liu Guangli realized what was going on: "Oh, I know, they must be complaining about the smell in our yard. We adults can stand it, but the kids can't."

"I was just about to go to the old house to feed the dog. Come on, let's go outside and talk as we walk."

The old man picked up the bucket, led the father and son outside, closed the courtyard gate, and locked all the tiger-headed yellow cats inside the yard.

"Isn't your aunt at home?"

"I'm not here. I've been setting up a stall in your village every day lately, or going to the county to sell eggs, duck eggs, and mountain products... Your horse is getting better and better. Look how tall and big it is, and how smooth and shiny it is. It's really beautiful."

Chen Ling smiled, picked up Rui Rui, and untied the horse's reins. The little blue horse then followed on its own.

Once they were far enough away from Liu Guangli's yard, Rui Rui indeed stopped making a fuss. It seems the smell in the yard really was the problem.

"Speaking of horses, I was nineteen years old that year, just two years after the founding of the People's Republic of China. My unit was assigned a warhorse, an old horse left over from the early days of the army. That old horse was skin and bones at the time, and it was no wonder that people didn't feed it properly."

The main problem is that this horse was injured in battle and is afraid of the sound of cannons. It gets startled as soon as it hears a cannon shot, and it either pulls off the reins or jumps out of the pen and disappears without a trace. Every time it is found, it is skin and bones from hunger and can never be fattened up.

Once, he ran into the mountains and never came back. Nobody knew what happened to him; everyone said he must have been eaten by jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards.

Only our hunting team knew that the horse wasn't eaten by jackals or tigers; it was bewitched by a group of wild yaks and was bitten to death piece by piece by them.

"Blinded by the mountain barbarians?"

Chen Ling looked puzzled upon hearing this: "Uncle Guangli, you're not going to say that Huang Daxian is casting spells or something, are you?"

"No, it's just that I got something in my eye."

You haven't seen it, but if a mountain goat has its eye on prey smaller than itself, it will kill it instantly.

If the prey is larger than them, they will be blinded by it.

Then you'll see that whether it's a deer or anything else, once it's bewitched and entangled by the mountain wolves, it doesn't know how to fight back, and sometimes it can't even run away.

Normally, deer and wild boars, when chased by us with dogs, will know to fight back and seize an opportunity to strike you.

The mountain yak is not.

Isn't that strange?

"This... Uncle Guangli, what you're saying is really scary, isn't it? It's too eerie, isn't it?"

Chen Ling thought to herself, "I should have asked Han Ninggui instead. Even if this yellow-throated marten is fierce, it's not like it's a spirit."

Even if it can't beat a prey bigger than itself, wouldn't it know to run away?

He really didn't know what to say.

It feels a bit like the stories told by my father-in-law, an old herbalist, which have been turned into a narrative.

“No wonder, no wonder, this is the skill of the mountain yak.”

You know wild monkeys, right? They're so annoying, and there's nothing you can do about them.

A mountain yak can kill a wild monkey, even a big one.

If you look again at this point, the wild monkey doesn't know how to run away. It lets the mountain yaks jump around it, baring their teeth, but it doesn't run away or climb up the tree.

He just stood there, dodging and weaving, frantically trying to defend himself.

In the end, they couldn't hold out any longer.

You're saying this isn't just blinding you?

Seeing that Chen Ling's expression was off, Liu Guangli seemed to know what he was thinking. He stopped in front of a low old house, put down the dog food bucket, and opened the door with a key while giving a mysterious smile.

"Actually, when I first saw a mountain goat eating a horse, I was just like you. I was terrified and thought the little thing was eerie, like a witch doctor."

Think about it, I was only nineteen years old back then, and I didn't know anything.

Later, an older hunter in the team told me not to be afraid, saying that he had been scared before. He was really frightened and almost died from a high fever when he got back. He even had to ask someone to call back his soul.

Later, when the family was starving, they had to go into the mountains to hunt for game and dig up medicinal herbs out of fear.

Then they encountered the mountain wolves again.

This time, however, it wasn't the mountain yak showing off; instead, it was killed and hung on the treetop, then eaten bite by bite.

Do you know what's so amazing?

"Uh, I don't know, is it a leopard? Or a civet?"

Chen Ling had been led astray by the old man, and his answer was somewhat dull.

"Oh, it's an eagle."

The old hunter smiled smugly: "Eagles have seen the sky, how could they let mountain wolves blind them? That old master told me that this is what the old saying means: one thing subdues another."

After all this, do you still think it's weird?

Squinting might be a skill that the Yao people have that we don't know about, but this little thing isn't scary.

The eagle is its natural enemy.

It can be killed by swords and spears, and burned to death by fire.

That's not weird, right?

Just then, the sound of dogs barking came from the old house.

Two brindle dogs with pale chins and cloudy eyes slowly walked out wagging their tails.

Liu Guangli stopped talking, patted the heads of the two dogs, and hummed a little tune as he fed them with a bucket.

Chen Ling stood there stunned for a moment, then slapped his forehead. 'One thing subdues another; such a simple principle, and I actually forgot it.'

The natural ecosystem is like a game of chess, where each creature has its own unique abilities that can counter some enemies, but in turn, it has natural enemies that specifically counter it.

No matter how powerful the yellow-throated marten is, it shouldn't be demonized; there must be something that can counter it.

But looking back, this vicious little thing is actually quite interesting.

He's not bad-looking, and he's very capable in the mountains.

If I get the chance, I'll catch two and see if I can get anything out of the house weasel.

Thinking this, his curiosity grew even stronger.

What exactly is the situation regarding the yellow-throated marten's ability to confuse its prey, as mentioned by Liu Guangli?

Yesterday, when they were in the mountains, they only saw yellow-throated martens biting and nibbling at wild boars.

The initial siege and hunt scenes were not witnessed.

I don't know if it's really that magical.

Once entangled by a yellow-throated marten, its prey neither knows how to resist nor how to escape.

"Well, that's simple. If you have some free time, you can spend the night in the mountains, but you don't need to go too deep into the mountains."

There's a path for animals outside; just guard it.

This "animal path" refers to the path used by grass-like animals and small animals.

Go deep into the mountains, as you know, those places are prone to wolves and leopards.

The trails used by small animals are frequented by mountain weasels and civets, but you have to be careful of leopards, as they sometimes go there too.

Liu Guangli offered Chen Ling some advice.

"Is that so? I'll try it when I get back. Our village is also going to be greening these days."

Chen Ling chatted with Liu Guangli for a long time in Jinmen Village and learned a lot. As the old saying goes, "An elder in the family is a treasure." When he has time, he should visit these elderly people more often to learn from them.

There are so many things I don't know.

During that time, he also took Rui Rui with the old man to wander around the village and see the puppies born to the families who had bred dogs at his house.

Most of them are quite good. After all, these female dogs are mainly Tiger Head Yellow and Blue Dogs, and they are offspring of mating with Erhei and other first-generation wolfhounds, so they can't be too bad.

Their fur is quite beautiful, and apart from being a little smaller than the puppies at home, they have no other flaws.

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