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

At this moment, Li Ju'an and Li Guaizi were burning snow to cook meat and eating it.

A small pot sat on a stone, roasting thick slices of wolf's heart, liver, and lungs. A small bamboo mat was also baking sticky rice cakes and cornbread. On the side, skewers of roasted rabbit meat sizzled and licked the flames.

He broke off two tree branches to make chopsticks, picked up a thick slice of meat, and chewed a big mouthful of meat. The meat was crunchy and delicious. He then took a bite of a cornbread. In the freezing cold and snowy landscape, the meal was incredibly satisfying.

The two men ate heartily, when suddenly the hammer started to slip again.

Iron Hammer was timid but loved to play around; he'd been playing with a yo-yo for a while now. What alarmed him was that Big Tiger had started barking softly.

Tigers usually don't bark; they just open their mouths and bite down hard. Li Ju'an immediately stood up, spear in hand, and faced the direction of the tiger's growl. Li Guaizi, standing beside him, quickly stomped out the fire and also raised his spear, his face pointed.

There are wolves.

As the sun was setting, it was the time when wolves came out in packs to look for food.

Countless battles have taken place between hunters and wolves in the Xing'an Mountains, and the hunting dogs' reactions don't lie. If a hunting dog is excited, it means there's prey nearby. If it's panicked and alert, it means there's a predator. In addition, wolves have very keen senses of smell, sight, and hearing; most of the time, they are the ones who spot humans first. Once they spot a human, their first reaction is always to distance themselves and flee.

Li Guaizi looked at the mother wolf that had just been gutted and thought to himself: "This is bad. I'm not afraid of a single wolf, but I'm afraid of a pack coming to retaliate."

He deliberately made some noise, intentionally trying to alert the enemy.

After he fired the shot into the air, Da Hu became increasingly anxious. His four dogs also growled and whined, constantly trying to change formation, both excited and restless.

"Oh no, it's a pack of wolves."

Five or more wolves can be considered a wolf pack. They came into the mountains to hunt wildcats, and suddenly they were targeted by a wolf pack seeking revenge. This was hardly a good omen.

Li Ju'an brandished his gun and shouted, "What are you afraid of! Haven't we offended enough wolves already? If the wolves hunt, we hunt too. Let's see who can outmaneuver whom. Big Tiger, Iron Hammer, go!"

He shouted loudly, and his two big dogs growled and rushed up the hill. Li Guaizi also released the dogs in his hands, and a total of nine dogs followed Da Hu up the hill.

In late November, the Xing'an Mountains were covered in snow. They followed the tracks and sounds left by the hunting dogs, and after running for about half an hour, Tiechui suddenly emerged from a ditch. The barking of Li Guaizi's four hunting dogs suddenly came from the mountaintop.

The mountain was filled with the incessant barking of wolves. Li Ju'an looked up and vaguely saw about six or seven wolves running towards the top of the mountain from the bushes halfway up.

Wolves have a far superior sense of perception than humans; they had already heard the sounds of people and dogs barking below, and quickly abandoned their prey to run towards the mountaintop. Meanwhile, in the bushes that had been surrounded by wolves, lay a human-shaped figure.

Li Ju'an loaded the bullet, cocked the gun, and aimed.

Li Guaizi reached out and pressed down on the gun barrel: "Too far! The wolf is halfway up the mountain, about 70 meters above us in relative height and about 300 meters horizontally. And it's a running wolf, we can't hit it at all."

Li Ju'an didn't listen to him at all. The wolf was about to run into bushes, and if they waited for it to hide inside, they would be impossible to hit.

He set up his Mosin-Nagant rifle, opened the 3.5x scope, aimed at the wolf slightly ahead, raised the muzzle slightly, and then pulled the trigger.

boom!

Anticipating a long-range shot, a spark flashed from the muzzle, and his body jolted. Without checking the result, he pulled the trigger again, aimed, and fired.

boom!

After firing two long-range shots, Li Guaizi sighed on the sidelines, "What a load of crap! Forget about injuring anyone, we couldn't even hit them."

Li Ju'an pulled the scope back, looked through it, and chuckled, saying, "Who said I missed? I took down the alpha wolf."

At a horizontal distance of 300 meters and an altitude of 70 meters, aiming was indeed extremely difficult, especially against a fast-moving object. Yet, those two shots actually managed to pierce the alpha wolf's thigh.

The alpha wolf, in pain, let out a mournful howl and led the pack into the bushes on the mountaintop, where they were now truly invisible and untouchable.

Li Guaizi sighed and slapped his thigh: "It's better not to shoot than to injure them. Wolves are very vengeful. With that shot, you've completely offended this pack of wolves. Next time you go hunting in the mountains, even just to gather resources, these wolves will follow you around like a shadow."

Li Ju'an was even less afraid: "Am I afraid of these mountain beasts? Let them come if they hate me, let's see who can beat whom."

If we're talking about offending wolves, he really has offended quite a few. First, he wiped out the pack of one-eyed old wolves, then he let a severely wounded male wolf from a pack escape, and today he disemboweled a female wolf. Now he's even injured the alpha wolf of a large wolf pack.

In the past, he would have been more wary, but now he's like someone who doesn't care about having too many lice or too many debts.

Li Guaizi sighed, picked up his gun, and followed: "Let's go! Let's see which unlucky guy got bitten by a wolf again. I hope he doesn't get bitten to death."

The local dogs are the smartest breeds; they know how to form packs and cooperate with each other. They also know how to protect themselves, avoiding reckless fighting and choosing to run if they can win. The nine dogs quickly rushed up the mountain, occasionally waiting for Li Ju'an and his companion. With Da Hu leading the way, Tie Chui became bolder and stopped slipping around. Tie Chui's large size, much larger than the average Qingchuan dog, with its strong, powerful paws and wide muzzle, intimidated even the wild animals; it was quite intimidating.

The dogs cooperated well, protecting him all the way. Li Ju'an didn't see any more wolves on his way up the mountain, presumably they had been scared away. The snow on the mountain was very thick, and he couldn't run fast in it. Soon it got dark, and a huddled figure appeared on the mountaintop.

Hammer was sniffing at the man, surrounded by the stench of blood and the mangled corpse of the hunting dogs.

The strong smell of blood filled the snow, and it was completely dark.

Li Ju'an cursed inwardly: Damn it! Which unlucky hunter has been killed by wolves again?

He and Li Guaizi hurriedly turned the huddled figure over and shone their flashlights on him. The first thing he saw was a very incongruous white dog-skin hat. This hat was clearly made from freshly skinned dogs; it was extremely rough, barely providing any protection for the head and ears against the -40 degree Celsius cold. Freshly skinned dogs? What kind of dogs could you find in the mountains on a freezing winter day besides dogs?

He felt uneasy, and when he pulled off the dog-skin hat, he gasped when he saw the blood-stained human face.

Li Guaizi was still cursing and complaining about how slow he was, but when Li Guaizi came closer to take a look, he was even more shocked than Li Ju'an.

"Old Qin?"

Anyone could be hunted by wolves in the snow-capped mountains, but they felt that Old Qin was the only one who wouldn't. After all, Qin Pao was the leader who led 18 hunters and more than 40 dogs into the mountains.

Blood gushed from Lao Qin's arm, soaking through his clothes and tattered sheepskin coat. When the flashlight shone in his eyes, he cursed and pulled it back to ask, "Where's the dog?" He had just heard the gunshot and thought the people coming to rescue him were Wang Guochang's group, but when the flashlight shone, Li Ju'an appeared.

The emotions that flashed in his eyes were very complex.