Reborn in 80: Starting with hunting in the mountains to get rich

Li Ju'an was afraid he would walk too slowly, so he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.

"Don't get distracted when we set the trap, hurry up! Maybe we can catch some jumping cats, greyhounds, and chipmunks, and make a fortune!"

The little greyhounds, chipmunks, and jackals are nothing more than squirrels, chipmunks, and hares; they are nothing compared to the bear bile of the black bear.

Sun Weimin paused, his back turned, and he turned around, ready to unleash a torrent of curses.

Li Ju'an clasped his hands together and shouted, "Sun Weimin, don't use any more tricks when you're catching the cats, or next time you'll be bragging that you're a sharpshooter who can hit every single one of them."

Sun Weimin: ? ? ?

He spat on the ground, truly humiliated by the mockery. In shame and anger, he led his dozen or so Sun family hunting dogs away, refusing to suffer any more humiliation.

Sun Weimin's team walked away, leaving Changgouzi. Li Guaizi, smoking a cigarette, grinned at Li Ju'an.

"You're pretty arrogant, kid."

"Won't this offend everyone?"

Li Ju'an continued to whistle, calling for Da Hu to scout ahead, and also laughed, "Sun Weimin has really made thorough preparations for this trip into the mountains. Just look at the three men he brought; they're all relatives of the Sun family who can hunt bears. If this kid really lets us kill the bear bile, we won't even have a chance to fire a shot, let alone get a share of the bear bile."

Li Guaizi thought about it and realized that made sense.

Whoever kills the bear gallbladder first gets it. If Sun Weimin regrets it later, it's his own fault for coming and being fooled into leaving. All's fair in war, right?

Big Tiger has made a discovery.

Big Tiger, leading four hunting dogs, sat down beside a huge old tree, then quietly turned to look at Li Ju'an without making a sound, and slowly blinked.

This is a rare behavior for hunting dogs. Normally, after a hunting dog smells a herd of wild boars, it will bark loudly to signal the hunter, then restrain the boars and wait for the hunter to come and shoot.

Da Hu remained silent, extremely cautious. The leader's actions caused Li Ju'an, Li Guaizi, and Song Desheng to hold their breath, their hearts pounding with a mixture of excitement, elation, and tension. The thrill of the tension caused their hearts to pound wildly, their pulses racing.

Li Ju'an smiled and said, "I'm really lucky today, it's a Heavenly Granary."

He brought firecrackers and double-barreled slingshots, and fired dozens of shots at Sun Weimin, driving him and his hunting dogs away. He still had about ten slingshots left in his sack, but he couldn't fire them indiscriminately; he had to use them to scare the bear out of its den.

A "heavenly granary" is a hollow inside a dead tree, with the opening at the top. A "earthly granary" is a cave underground. A "bright granary" is a nest built by a black bear, where tree roots are forked and exposed. Earthly and bright granaries are the most dangerous and the hardest to collapse. So he said he was lucky to have encountered a relatively easy-to-deal-with heavenly granary; he just needed to throw two clappers into the opening at the top to scare the black bear out.

Song Desheng was a novice, hunting black bears for the first time, and excitedly lowered his voice to whisper.

“Brother Li, there’s a hole at the top of this dead tree. We’ll have two people climb up and stand guard on either side of the hole with long sticks to scare the bear out. Then we’ll trap its head in the hole, and a gunman will shoot it in the head. My gun is a 16-gauge single-shot, it’s really powerful, one shot will definitely blow the animal’s head off.”

He spoke with spittle flying everywhere, his eyes brimming with excitement, as if the precious bear bile was already beckoning to him from afar.

Li Guaizi's eyes widened in surprise. "Using a long wooden stick to clamp a bear's head? Who taught you that?"

Song Desheng gestured excitedly, lowering his voice, "Using a wooden stick to clamp the bear's head is the best way. When the bear first peeks out, it has no attack power and is easy to hit. We should also light a fire nearby so that if the bear comes out of its den and we miss and don't kill it, we can hide around the fire while being chased and look for an opportunity to shoot."

He spoke with an air of seriousness, while simultaneously expressing his resentment towards the two men for being cowardly and timid, insisting on scaring the bear out before daring to fire.

Li Ju'an was about to speak.

Song Desheng immediately gestured for him to stop talking. "So what if you're a coward? If you can avoid scaring the bear, then fight. But you two insist on making it so complicated. If you ask me, just clamp a stick over its head, and it'll be over in three minutes. I'd definitely shoot it in the head and then gut it to get the gallbladder."

Li Ju'an laughed in anger, really wanting to pry open his head to see what was pasted inside.

"The bear doesn't stick its head out first; its paws have to come out first. You think you can hold it with a thin stick? It'll pry it open with one paw, and the stick will snap in two."

Song Desheng was still unconvinced: "Make a thick stick, then."

"A bear can indeed break a thick stick in one go, but you can't lift it?"

Song Desheng shut up, but the more he thought about it, the more unconvinced he still was. He struggled and said, "Just fire three shots down from above and we'll be done with it! We're on higher ground, so we can definitely get headshots by shooting down from above."

Li Ju'an and Li Guaizi exchanged a glance, neither of them able to suppress a laugh.

Li Guaizi shook his head without saying a word, gathering firewood to start a campfire. Li Ju'an patiently argued with him: "You killed the bear by sticking its head out, but how are you going to get the hundreds of pounds of bear carcass out of the tree hole? Find someone to saw the tree? By then, several days will have passed, and the bear carcass will have been sitting for too long. If you cut down the tree, saw it open, and then gut the bear to get its gallbladder, the gallbladder won't be worth much."

Hunters go into the mountains to hunt bears, isn't it all for the bear's gallbladder?

If the bear has been dead for too long, the bile will take too long to be extracted and won't be fresh, so it won't fetch a good price. What's the point of all that effort?

After thinking about it carefully, Song Desheng suddenly slapped his forehead, realizing that it really made sense. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but seeing Li Ju'an staring at him with a half-smile, he couldn't utter a word.

You little brat, you don't want to make fun of me, do you?

Sure enough, Li Ju'an added insult to injury: "Have you ever seen a black bear? Don't be so weak-kneed when you're hunting bears later that you can't even hold your gun properly, let alone build a campfire. You might end up with your legs going weak and you won't be able to run away."

Song Desheng was stunned for a moment, then stood there, his expression quite interesting.

He really wanted to refute Li Ju'an with his actions; he wasn't such a spineless coward.

He proposed that he would use the double-banger to break the sky's granary, because only by contributing could he get a share of the profits. Li Ju'an, however, gave him another task.

"After I use the Heavenly Collapse technique, at the same time, use the back of your blade to smash the big tree with all your might. After you're done, run away. Don't linger. Keep running downhill."

If Li Ju'an really found him disgusting, he wouldn't have resorted to such a tactic. This time, he organized the operation, and as the leader, he got an extra share, but he also bore the pressure of bringing his teammates down the mountain safely. Despite Song Desheng's filthy appearance, he rattled off a string of words, yet he never uttered a single bear roar.

He was genuinely afraid that once the warehouse opened, the filthy boy would be so frightened that his legs would give way, his pants would be soaked, and he wouldn't be able to run away. If the bear sat on his chest and crushed him, he would be held responsible if someone died.

So he told Song Desheng to knock hard on the mountain to scare away wild animals. In the ginseng-carrying gang, knocking on the mountain like this also had an auspicious meaning, telling the mountain god that the old foreman was going into the mountain to get some goods and asking for the mountain god's protection.

Song Desheng stared wide-eyed in disbelief: "You're just making me do this little thing? You're going to knock down the mountain and then run away? What the hell are you doing, sending me off to work on my own?"

Li Guaizi had already lit two fires in the open area by the tree. Suddenly, he said, “It’s not about getting rid of them. Black Bear’s eyes aren’t that sharp, and he’s slow to react. As soon as this beast comes out of its den, it will see you recklessly hammering at the mountain, making such a commotion. Of course, it will keep an eye on you and chase after you. After you finish hammering, just run down the mountain. Don’t look back. If you do, you’ll get two shares.”

Song Desheng thought about it and realized that it made perfect sense.

He pondered for a while, then seemed to have an epiphany, and suddenly looked up and said, "So you two are using me as bait to fish? Let Black Bear bite me, huh?"

Li Ju'an burst out laughing.

Li Guaizi couldn't help but laugh.

He said seriously, "How could that be? If we fire, we'll just attract the bear over. Then we'll both stay around the fire and deal with the bear. You just need to run down the mountain and wait for your share of the money."

Just as Song Desheng nodded in agreement and stood by the tree with his dagger, Li Ju'an rolled a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag.

He lit the cigarette on the double-banged cigarette, then, following the direction indicated by Da Hu, he stretched out his arm and swung the double-banged cigarette into the Black Bear's granary.

boom--!