Infinite Hunter

The educated youth were envious, but not yet resentful. Having just arrived, they hadn't had time to make any enemies. Cheng Yijiu was surrounded by mostly good people, and his 5'87" frame was a guarantee of that.

The house was renovated, and the pine planks were fashioned into a large wooden barrel. Next to it, a stove was built using clay and iron rods according to Cheng Yijiu's design. With a single tap, hot air would flow through the pipes beneath the small bathroom and along the walls. The hottest air would swirl through the pipes beneath the large barrel, heating the water inside. To accomplish this, Cheng Yijiu had to pile dry firewood into the nearby woodshed. Coal would have been even better, but there wasn't any here.

He sold the ginseng directly to the brigade. Since he wouldn't be going to town anytime soon, he simply converted it into work points within the brigade. Cheng Yijiu was currently using hydrated mud. His wooden house already had two cellars behind it, one large and one small. Cheng Yijiu believed the large one was probably a semi-underground room used to keep out the cold before the wooden house was built. Digging a hole and sealing the entrance made it a pretty good warming room after the snow accumulated in the winter. As long as they kept the ventilation right, they wouldn't freeze to death.

After the house was built, this place was probably converted into a vegetable kiln—that was the original function of the small underground cave. Now Cheng Yijiu was using hydrated mud to seal the entrance to the small cave. It was already filled with dry waste wood and branches cut from tree trunks. Cheng Yijiu cut them off and filled the small kiln with them, leaving a very small air outlet. Then, below the sealed opening, he left an air inlet the size of a bowl. He stuffed burning charcoal into it and ignited the wood inside...

Cheng Yijiu had seen videos of this before, but this was his first time doing it himself. Watching the fire, he sealed the air inlet, allowing the flames to smolder without oxygen. Cheng Yijiu had spent the past two days plowing the fields—a task that should have been done by draft horses or oxen, but there were no oxen. Besides, oxen and horses need fine feed, which humans don't... Plus, there wasn't enough time.

Two days later, Cheng Yijiu opened the entrance and found charcoal inside, cool enough to hold in the hand. He simply reinstalled the original wooden door and used the charcoal to heat the stove. Shen Yuanchao, who lived with him, was actually quite nice. At least he wasn't dirty, cleaned diligently, and maintained good personal hygiene—he and Cheng Yijiu took turns fetching water to fill the wooden barrel and the shower bucket.

These two guys showered almost every three days, washing their underwear and socks almost daily—trying to maintain at least the same hygiene standards as their time in Shanghai, even as educated youth in the countryside. This was in stark contrast to the other male educated youth—the other two in Shanghai weren't as diligent, but they still made sure to shower and wash their clothes once a week. As for the two female educated youth, they were just as diligent as Cheng Yijiu and Shen Yuanchao, though they fetched their own water and collected firewood to cover the cost of heating and bathing.

Of the other educated youth, only the female ones would come over and ask if they could use their bathrooms. Cheng Yijiu didn't care, as long as they collected more firewood and cleaned up after showering. If they couldn't handle it, there would be no next time. After all, to shower, one had to open the door through their rooms.

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Cheng Yijiu was the poster child for sturdy, almost oxen-like strength among the educated youth. The problem was, he was a bit lazy—he didn't do any of the backbreaking, meticulous farm work, constantly asking for leave. He'd do the most demanding tasks, like pulling the plow, and crucially, he worked just as fast as the animals and ate less. Did he earn enough work points? At least as much as the other educated youth...

He hadn't committed any theft, but he was just wandering around the village like a scoundrel. He didn't mess with the local vulgar women, and he wasn't seen approaching any widows or young women. He even rarely interacted with the female educated youth. It was unclear what this person was doing, but Cheng Yijiu was simply bored and wandered around without a thought. He usually returned to his house after a while to lie still.

At night, Cheng Yijiu began to dress, packing dried bread, a water bottle, a field lunch box, and a can of braised pork, and prepared to head up the mountain. "Sooner or later, I'll have to eat a bird, so I better save some game first." Even if he didn't hunt anything this time, he planned to bring back some wood. He could use the tools from the team to make some personal tools, which he would later use to make a bow.

A simple lathe, even a hand-cranked one, is also needed to make the shafts of the arrows. This lathe can be made of wood as the main structure, as long as it has a sufficiently sharp knife—in fact, the knife used on the lathe for making arrow shafts is similar to a pencil sharpener. Finally, the arrowheads need to be forged. Thin pieces of wood will suffice for the fletching, and don't bother with elaborate feathering—they'd probably be scolded if you went to someone's house to plucking chicken or goose feathers these days.

The shooting range was only about twenty meters, so forget about speed and long-range accuracy. As long as the arrow was stable enough within thirty meters and heavy enough, it would be fine. Cheng Yijiu could shoot a Tiger Power bow, but he estimated that this hunting bow would only have eight or nine pounds. He could shoot at any poundage, and with an eighty- to ninety-gram arrow, the damage was significant.

After putting on his clothes, Cheng Yijiu disappeared silently into the forest. At first, he walked quickly. The forest under the moonlight was no different from daylight to him, and there were no large or medium-sized animals. However, there were many small animals sneaking into this place. Because of the tree planting here, there were still many low trees and tender leaves, and some small even-toed ungulates like muntjacs would approach at night.

Cheng Yijiu didn't care about these small animals at all—could killing one yield ten pounds of meat? The largest ones would only yield a dozen pounds of clean meat... He was concerned with larger animals like wild boars—forget red deer and moose. Even in this day and age, Cheng Yijiu still didn't want to hunt nationally protected animals. The same was true for reindeer, and he was even more reluctant to casually kill wild beasts like bears and tigers.

To eat meat, you only need wild boars that reproduce quickly. The Eurasian wild boars here are big enough, and they can weigh three or four hundred pounds after bleeding. Although the meat tastes a bit strong, it is still edible. If you catch a young wild boar, you might be able to castrate it and raise it to eat.

Cheng Yijiu moved briskly, his jungle life no different from his home. His brisk pace didn't even provoke a mass exodus of the roe deer that had sneaked in to graze on the tender leaves. This would later become a protected species, and now it was probably considered a rare species—it would take five or six years of mountain closures before it would gradually become more common, but it ultimately wouldn't reproduce as quickly as wild boars. Soon, Cheng Yijiu crossed the forested area—there were still many large trees here, and they would probably be cut down one after another in the future.

"This will become a protected area, with the mountains closed off for reforestation. As for timber, some will come from fast-growing trees, as natural logs are becoming increasingly scarce," Cheng Yijiu thought as he ventured deeper into the old forest. He still couldn't see any signs of boar here, and only when daylight finally dawned did he discover fresh hoof prints. "A herd! Wow... There's a giant one, probably weighing 500 pounds? Then there are at least four smaller ones, and six or seven piglets of varying ages." This was a small herd.

As for whether to hunt wild boars in such a group, Cheng Yijiu said it depends on the situation - you can't make a wasted trip, and there are traces of rabbits here, and there are quite a few... However, there are also bear paw prints here. Cheng Yijiu saw brown bear paw prints on the tree trunk, which were nearly three meters high - this was an adult male bear. Friction marks on the tree trunk were also found, which belonged to an Asian black bear. Unfortunately, no traces of tigers were found.

By dawn, Cheng Yijiu had already caught up with the herd. "Sows, sub-adult pigs, piglets, and free boars." An older sow led the herd, but a large boar roamed the periphery—presumably the "lord" of the surrounding land. The boar must have weighed 300 kilograms, a massive body with long bristles and a pair of tusks. It was none other than the Ussuri wild boar, the largest wild boar subspecies native to China's three northeastern provinces.

Boar wasn't Cheng Yijiu's choice; its meat was incredibly tough and had a strong, fishy smell. Unless it was bled thoroughly and cooked with spices, it was completely unpalatable. Don't even think about using it for braised pork; it only made wood for braised pork. He chose sub-adult wild boars and piglets. The trees here also had the wood he needed—oak and birch. Cheng Yijiu planned to take a relatively thick main branch back home.

Cheng Yijiu charged forward with almost unbridled force, and the wild boars naturally scattered. Normally, wild animals would flee when encountering an enemy. A lone, large male wild boar would rush in ready for a fight. However, this male wild boar was in its gregarious phase, so it naturally ran away first. Cheng Yijiu had his eye on a sub-adult wild boar, weighing over 100 kilograms. He pounced on it, pinning it to its back, and with a single thrust, stabbed it through the throat. The 30-centimeter blade was enough to sever the carotid artery.

Cheng Yijiu pinned the boar with terrifying force, blood gushing from his arms as the boar's struggles grew increasingly feeble. "Damn, thank goodness my military jacket is dirt-resistant! I'm afraid the fleas on the boar won't crawl onto me..." Cheng Yijiu cursed. The boar, pinned down, was motionless, its blood flowing like a stream. Cheng Yijiu began dissecting the boar at top speed—almost all of its internal organs, save for the stomach and heart, were unusable due to the sheer parasite problem.

He also estimated the time it would take him to return. The nutritious offal would definitely be in danger of spoiling by the time he got back, so he simply left it here. The pig stomach and pig heart could be preserved relatively better.

Chapter 25

The wild boar's gallbladder, stomach, and heart are both edible and medicinal, and they can be preserved for a relatively long time. However, the liver and lungs, which have a rich blood flow, are prone to spoilage. The kidneys are too pungent and unsuitable for food, and the intestines are even more prone to spoilage—unlike domestic pigs, which have ample time and conditions for processing. Therefore, Cheng Yijiu could only leave with these few offal organs and the entire, gutted and bled wild boar.

After Cheng Yijiu tied up the wild boar, which weighed about 150 to 160 kilograms, he hung it from a thick branch, hung its internal organs, and strode towards the village with it. By noon, he had already seen the smoke from the village. Because he took a straight line and followed a superman-like route, he didn't encounter any other forestry workers or villagers going up the mountain to cut wood.

Even if he was carrying a wild boar, he would still be able to run up the mountain like flying. If this person was walking on two feet, it must be a tiger. If he thought about it carefully, Cheng Yijiu had already become a tiger when he was punished for the mission, right? The king of the southern foothills of the vast Himalayas, the tiger that devoured thousands of people.

The tall man, carrying a wild boar weighing over a hundred pounds, came down the mountain at a brisk pace. The villagers were the first to see him—they were working in the fields at the time, so they looked up and saw him. He was wearing a well-worn but clean-looking "Future" M65 military jacket and a pair of "Future" multi-pocket, ultra-durable, water-repellent tactical pants. His hunting knife was hanging from a heavy-duty reinforced fiber belt on his right back.

He was also wearing "Future" lightweight half-height combat boots, which actually looked quite appropriate for the era—with a rifle on his back, he looked like a WWII soldier... Didn't you see that the hat he wore was still a German field cap, just without the Imperial Eagle sewn on. This guy had a cheerful smile on his face, carrying a wild boar weighing over 100 kilograms—200 kilograms including the wood—he was indeed very strong.

There were also villagers who could talk to Cheng Yijiu, and they shouted, "Would you like to have some meat?" Cheng Yijiu laughed, "Just bring me the ingredients and I'll treat you!" He then ran to the river bank at the edge of the village and started skinning the wild boar. At this time, other educated youth also ran over, and they swallowed their saliva as they looked at the wild boar, unsure whether this young man from Shanghai would treat them to meat.

These days, everyone craves meat. Although there's relatively more game in the forested areas, people still don't eat much meat. In recent years, even game has almost disappeared. Only a few veteran hunters among the Oroqen people dare to venture into the deep mountains and forests. The educated youth don't have that kind of talent—it's already a good thing if a few of them join the logging crews.

Being able to bring wood down from the mountains was good enough, but hunting was definitely beyond their capabilities—not to mention there wasn't much prey left, and it wasn't like the Cantonese people ate snakes and rats. Cheng Yijiu peeled the pig skin off and threw it into the river, weighing it down with rocks and letting it wash away. He then placed the whole pig into the stream to rinse and began to decompose it.

Wild boar meat is much thicker than domestic pork, and has less fat, with almost no intramuscular fat. The only way to enjoy it is to add spices and cook it—presumably with baking soda, or else the meat will become tougher, and there's no pressure cooker in this small space. Cheng Yijiu reserved the tenderloin and a hind leg for himself—he wondered if these would be cured into prosciutto after the blood had been drained.

Cheng Yijiu gave up after taking one look at the belly meat—domestic pigs have pork belly, but wild boars obviously don't have pork belly. This one is just lard with two layers of meat, and the fat has a relatively strong smell. The villagers didn't care, and Cheng Yijiu said, "Bring money to buy it, or trade it for seasonings and rice."

This is an unwritten rule. After all, you can't ask others to treat you unless they ask. According to the rules, whoever kills such a large prey can do whatever they want with it. But that was in the past. Nowadays, although there is no animal protection law, the mountains here are nominally public. Animals do not have ownership rights, so naturally they belong to the public. If you kill public prey, then the prey should belong to the collective?

Generally speaking, they are not that shameless, but for a big guy like this, the team leader still came over and said that they would buy the food collectively so that everyone could have a good meal - this can only be said to the educated youth. If it were the villagers, the team leader would be spitted on.

Cheng Yijiu didn't care. He had no capital to invest in the mountains, so earning a little money wasn't a bad thing. Besides, the Magic City was deserted, so how could anyone send money and tickets? Everyone was happy; they had meat to eat—at least they could have broth, right? And Cheng Yijiu's spoils wouldn't be snatched away. He'd already taken a wild boar, so of course the leg and tenderloin had to go to the hunter. Otherwise, it would be too much of a bully, and if someone stabbed him in the neck in the middle of the night, no one would sympathize.

Everyone was from the forest area, so of course they knew a person, a young man who had just come from a super city in the country to settle down, a young man who had never even climbed a mountain or entered a forest before. He went into the mountains alone for a day and a night and hunted a wild boar weighing nearly 200 kilograms with only a hunting knife. What kind of skill was that? No one wanted to mess with such a vicious person.

No one expected such a vicious person to emerge from a city like Oriental Paris. He was a bipedal beast. Even a hunter with a hound couldn't handle a 200-pound wild boar without a gun, but Cheng Yijiu only needed one sword strike. According to him, he subdued the boar and then killed it with one strike. This was definitely the strength of an ox or a horse.

Then he carried the wild boar over the mountains and across the ridges. What kind of monster strength is that? This kind of educated youth can't afford to offend. This guy is like a tiger. The real thing is to build a good relationship with him. Cheng Yijiu took a good bath in the cabin. Shen Yuanchao was not as strong as him. He was still working in the fields to learn agricultural technology, so he was not at home. Cheng Yijiu found salt and some spices collected from the mountains - rosemary collected from the road and thyme collected from the mountains, and pepper to marinate the tenderloin and hind legs. Then he hung it in a cool, dry place and sealed it with oil paper.

If it loses too much water, it will become harder than wood, and then you'll have to carve it like the British.

"It's no less lethal than the British Royal Specialty of pickled beef," Cheng Yijiu muttered. This thing can only be cured for seven days before being smoked—and Cheng Yijiu happened to be planning to build a small smokehouse, just over a meter tall, out of mud bricks. This would be easy to build; the weight and shape of the bricks would naturally form an unsupported vault—he did have the skills; he'd learned them before.

Chapter 26

A mud house can be built with wooden planks for a door, a hole cut in one side for a chimney, and a semi-underground stove. Simply chop the pine wood you've found into chips and simmer it in the stove. The smoke will naturally flow through the chimney into the mud house, where it's like smoking the cured meat. "I'd love to eat whole-cut bacon, but it's hard to find pork these days," Cheng Yijiu muttered. Of course, the stove had a semicircular space above it, so baking bread inside would be no problem.

Even if this place could bake, it would only produce black bread, the classic Russian black bread with sawdust mixed in... maybe even a mixed-surface potcake that could be used as a shield, but forget about sweet, fluffy white bread. Eating that kind of thing would definitely require hammers, axes, and saws. Chewing it raw would probably be too tough on your teeth, so you'd better cook it in soup. "It makes me feel like I'm fighting on the Eastern Front in World War II..."

Cheng Yijiu shuddered. It would be better not to go to such a nightmare place as the Eastern Front in World War II.

If you think about it carefully, it seems that there wouldn't be any terrifying beasts that need to be hunted in World War II, unless it was the magical so-called trench monster - whether it was World War I or World War II, Cheng Yijiu didn't want to hunt this kind of deformed monster.

Old Shen was indeed a shrewd man, decisively shouldering half the expenses—a move that nearly wiped out the savings he'd brought from home. This made life at the educated youth camp relatively easy for Shen Yuanchao. At least after a hard day's work, he could get a pampering shower or a cleanse, like in Shanghai, and then sleep for eight hours in the warm wooden house. These sleeping conditions were far superior to the dormitories in the educated youth housing complex...

The living conditions were good, and the food was sufficient - Cheng Yijiu gave Shen Yuanchao a piece of meat from the prey he brought back. He then managed to stew the meat in the stove for a long time before it was tender, and had a delicious meal with the rather soft pancakes he made himself - the family in Modou ate rice, and even when making pasta, they mostly used glutinous rice flour to make pancakes. Not many people could make noodles with wheat flour at home, so he learned how to make it at the educated youth center after coming here.

Cheng Yijiu seemed to prioritize rice. He almost never ate pasta—"Unless the rice was gone or I wanted a change of pace." He even gave all the cornmeal to the other educated youth. "It's too spicy for my throat. I can't eat it. Pearl rice is okay when cooked, but why is it so unpalatable when ground into flour? It's so coarse."

In fact, the pearl rice he ate in the past is a completely different variety of corn from the cornmeal he uses today.

Cheng Yijiu now uses his work points and some of the money from selling ginseng to buy rice directly from the brigade—if it weren't for the three northeastern provinces, he wouldn't have been able to do this. Rice is definitely not enough, so he can also buy potatoes. Cheng Yijiu also wanders into the mountains to collect some food—the mountains here are rich in yams and polygonatum, "eating enough can make you immortal." At least it can provide some carbohydrates to fill your stomach.

It's enough for food, and animal protein is also sufficient. Otherwise, how can I feed this strong body? This time, hunting wild boars, Cheng Yijiu earned some money—of course, a lot of it was recorded in the account. Cheng Yijiu asked the brigade for a few iron rods to offset part of the money. These were for tools, and as usual, this guy took leave from the work in the fields, acting like the worst of the educated youth.

If he didn't steal, he wouldn't be able to leave, nor would he be sent to the farm—his wilderness survival and hunting abilities were best left under his watch, which would also provide the brigade with a bit more income. The three northeastern provinces were influenced by Russia, and many people in the cities had Russian-style eating habits, like baked bread. Cheng Yijiu had surprisingly learned the art of baking bread in the forest—he, too, had been sent down from the city. Seeing Cheng Yijiu looking for yeast to make dough, he kindly taught him a lesson.

Of course, Cheng Yijiu also gave him a whole roast of pickled pork loin, which weighed more than a pound. The baked black bread was indeed hard and sour, so Cheng Yijiu went into the mountains again with the black bread.

This time, he found his familiar trail to the spot where he'd hunted wild boar before and began tracking them. "Old hoof prints, spiderwebs all over them," Cheng Yijiu muttered. Then he spotted roe deer, a small herd of six. Cheng Yijiu didn't rush to kill them, but instead followed them, hoping to find larger prey. Then he noticed something unusual about the ground—it was a valley, but it looked unnatural.

You can see traces of human intervention; the ground here has been leveled. The plants on the ground grow differently. Standing on the mountainside, Cheng Yijiu can clearly see the traces of tire tracks. "These are tire tracks formed by long-term rolling." This is very interesting. Cheng Yijiu stood beside the tire tracks and looked in both directions. This should be a simple road. It's hard to say how many years it has been abandoned, but it shouldn't have been long. One end winds out of the mountain—it should pass by the brigade, while the other end leads to an unknown place.

Cheng Yijiu stood up straight and said, "Look at this road. They can build a simple highway and have trucks driving on it? Could it be the Northeast Army? I don't think Xiao Liuzi has this ability. It must have been made by the Russians or the Japanese? I would like to see it for myself. But I will go back first and come back next time with equipment and dry food." Cheng Yijiu collected a lot of edible and medicinal plants on the road and stuffed them into his backpack separately.

He hadn't even started making the bow yet, because the brigade didn't have the ox horn and tendon he wanted. He said the accountant had connections, but he'd have to ask at his mother-in-law's house to find out, and the price wasn't necessarily cheap. The wood was just being stripped of its bark and lightly dried before being shaped, so it was still a long way from being finished. This thing would take over a year to make using traditional methods, and several months using modern techniques—if long-term use wasn't a concern, even a shorter time wouldn't matter.

By this time, Cheng Yijiu was missing the fiberglass sheets. If he had those, why would he have used wood and ox horns and tendons, and why would he have wasted so much time? Carrying a bag of plants, he crossed the mountains and returned to the educated youth site—he encountered no creatures other than roe deer, let alone Siberian tigers, not even black bears. He didn't tell anyone about his finds. Would he have told them and taken a group there? He didn't have a good impression of the place, and he was worried about casualties if he did.

This road leads deep into the valley. Judging from what he saw on the ridge, it winds its way in for at least five or six kilometers. The mountains are high and the forests are dense, and who knows what is inside.

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A large bag of spices, herbs, and food was spread out on the stone slab. Cheng Yijiu wrapped the harvested Chinese yam and Polygonatum in dirt and dropped it into the cellar to slowly eat. The other plants were prepared for drying—the herbs could be used or sold, while the spices were definitely for personal use. The pork leg and the remaining tenderloin were already cooked, and Cheng Yijiu placed them in the smokehouse—even though the dirt in the house was still wet, but that didn't matter.

The result of smoking is that the meat is indeed fragrant, but also quite tough—the pine-scented leg meat, after being sliced ​​and placed in the pan, must be fried with a little skin. The meat slices sandwiched between sour brown bread can only be said to be extremely beneficial for chewing muscles. "The meat is indeed fragrant and tastes okay, but there's still a slight pungent smell that can't be removed." This stuff is not bad as dry food. Cheng Yijiu plans to bring a whole loaf of brown bread and some meat as dry food—and of course, dehydrated vegetables.

That's easy. The village has plenty of dried vegetables—dried cabbage and radishes. Cheng Yijiu also brought a good amount of dried evergreens, so the food will be nutritionally complete. He got some water and sharpened his large Bowie knife on a whetstone, including the back edge. He then rubbed a thin layer of grease on the hanging pork to prevent rust. He washed his clothes, put on a new pair of socks, and placed his shoes on the windowsill for fresh air. He rested in the cabin for two days before setting out again.

As usual, this guy kept asking for days off and refused to go to the fields. With the exception of the monkeys he lived with, all the other educated youth at the educated youth camp were dissatisfied with his typical petty-bourgeois behavior. But there was nothing they could do about it. The educated youth were not forced to go to the fields; they were paid work points. Without work points, there was no food or money, so they would naturally starve to death. However, Cheng Yijiu's need for work points was not that great. This guy could go to the mountains to dig yams and polygonatum, and even hunt a 200-pound wild boar and carry it back. He deserved to be well fed and well-watered even without going to the fields.

In this world, open robbery didn't exist. Although the wild boars Cheng Yijiu hunted were collective property, the collective had to pay for them. Otherwise, the captain would be worried that this ruthless person, who went into the mountains alone to hunt wild boars and brought them back, would kill his entire family at night and then escape into the mountains. Only then would anyone catch such a guy. The fact that such a ruthless person appeared in the Magic City made one sigh that the thugs of the Qinghong Gang and the Axe Gang in Shanghai were not dead...

Will this place solve personal marriage problems? Any educated youth with a bit of ambition certainly wouldn't—those born in Beijing and Shanghai dreamed of returning home and were absolutely unwilling to put down roots in Heilongjiang. Those who truly wanted to do so were surely a minority. As for the educated youth from Hebei and other places, it didn't really matter. If the area truly developed, they could settle down in Heilongjiang. But who could have imagined that in a few years, they would be allowed to take university entrance exams again, rather than the Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' University? Who knows how many "karmic debts" would be created by then.

Cheng Yijiu had no interest in finding a Northeastern chick. He had no interest in the Shanghai chick who had come with him, nor in the Beijing chick he'd met before. He was tall, strong, and incredibly handsome. His features weren't particularly handsome, but his skin was fair enough, and he was considered respectable among the local educated youth and villagers. The young wives and girls in the village actually seemed to be watching him—Northeastern women were straightforward and bold, and openly looking at men was no big deal.

Cheng Yijiu was considered a stylish person in the village, but not outlandishly so—it was typical military style for the outdoors. Even in the real winter, when temperatures reached 20 or 30 degrees Celsius below zero, what would Cheng Yijiu wear? He didn't bring a cotton-padded jacket, so he probably would have to hunt wild animals and wear skins.

After everything was ready, Cheng Yijiu put on his backpack—this time it was the US Army M41 Marine Corps backpack that had been tucked away under his camel pack. This thing was considered "war trophy," and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army had captured a lot of it during the Korean War. He stuffed it with bacon wrapped in oil paper, two loaves of brown bread, dried vegetables, a bundle of bandages, hemostatic powder and iodine, and of course, some other items.

On top of the backpack was a rolled-up tent and tarp, a sign of a foray into the wilds to make a killing. Someone in the village said they wanted to go too. "I've got a gun! Let's go." Because of Cheng Yijiu's previous skill at hunting wild boar with a hunting knife, a young man in the village named Li Ergou also said he wanted to go. His grandfather and father were both hunters, and he, a member of the forest militia, was also a pretty good hunter.

How could he still refuse? He could only take him along. Originally, Cheng Yijiu hadn't thought of hiding all this - the money or other things he got from this place were impossible to take away, so why hide and sneak around? But forget about taking a lot of people with him, as that wouldn't make the adventure any more enjoyable. Cheng Yijiu looked at the weapon that Li Ergou was carrying, "Aha, Mosin-Nagant... Take out the bullets and let me see. Is the rifling of this thing okay? Don't let it be an old one with the rifling worn out."

Cheng Yijiu took the gun, pulled the bolt skillfully, took a look, and used the cleaning rod to poke it twice. "Oh, it's well maintained. How many rounds of ammunition did you bring?" This thing was indeed an international brand in the hands of the militia. Logically, they should have been equipped with 500 and 600 rounds, but the militia had a lot of miscellaneous brands. "Give me a bullet and let me try to see if your gun is adjusted properly." Li Ergou looked at Cheng Yijiu. "You know this? I thought you came from Shanghai and had never used it before."

Cheng Yijiu fired a shot. "The mechanical sights are adjusted fine. You should have no problem shooting within 40 or 50 meters." Most hunting is done within a hundred meters. Many hunters don't have the ability to hit accurately beyond that. Cheng Yijiu led Li Ergou, who also carried a bag of dry food, into the mountains. Li Ergou was also chattering along the way, despite the fact that he was actually "older" than Cheng Yijiu.

"Can we kill a wild boar? Maybe even a bear—if it's a bear, it's a big deal, it can be exchanged for a lot of money." The guy said happily, "By the way, how did you kill that wild boar?" Cheng Yijiu didn't mind chatting on the way, anyway, they hadn't entered the hunting area yet. "Ah, I found them and chose the one that looked the most pleasing to the eye. I rushed out and suppressed it, and stabbed it in the neck to let the blood flow."

This was said lightly, but Li Ergou was amazed. He even pinched Cheng Yijiu's arm and said, "Really?" Cheng Yijiu smiled but did not respond. He took Li Ergou through the forest area and stepped into the mountains.

Chapter 28

"Did anything special happen when the Japanese occupied this place?" Cheng Yijiu asked directly. Li Ergou was born in 1950. When he was born, Northeast China had already been liberated. The Japanese had been annihilated by the Soviet Red Army five years ago. This guy thought for a long time and shook his head. "It seems that the Japanese have never come here? At least they haven't seen it many times. According to my grandfather..."

Cheng Yijiu touched his chin and said, "Interesting." Li Ergou continued, "In the past, only my grandfather and father would come here occasionally when they went hunting. Our village was not originally here. We all moved here one after another after liberation." Cheng Yijiu nodded and said, "No wonder." According to Japanese tradition, if this village really existed at that time, they should have massacred it and kept it secret.

He was almost certain it was the Japanese, as the Soviet Red Army had no need or time. "Roe deer!" Li Ergou said happily, raising his gun to shoot, but Cheng Yijiu grabbed the gun and raised it. "We don't hunt that," he said. "We protect animals. We're targeting wild boars." Li Ergou was completely confused and stared at Cheng Yijiu. "We don't hunt roe deer? We protect animals?"

Cheng Yijiu nodded and said, "That's right, animals need to be protected. An Oroqen person should be able to understand it. Besides, I have many other animals to hunt besides wild boars. There's no need to rush." ​​He didn't intend for Li Ergou to understand what he said. Anyway, he just needed to stop Li Ergou from taking action.

Continuing forward, Cheng Yijiu brought Li Ergou to the place he arrived last time. "Did you see anything?" he asked Li Ergou. The guy, who should be a few years older than "him", showed a wise light in his eyes, touched his head and said he didn't know.

Cheng Yijiu pointed at the road. "Look carefully and tell me what that is?" "A pothole?" Li Ergou replied. "Sir, please take my advice and don't go into the mountains anymore, okay?" Cheng Yijiu was at a loss for words. "Road! A simple highway! Don't you see the tire tracks?" Cheng Yijiu pointed at the ground, but it was completely covered by vegetation, making it difficult to distinguish at times.

"Let's go, follow the highway and see what's at the end." Cheng Yijiu said, "This road has been abandoned for at least twenty years. And it leads to the mountains. It's impossible for it to go directly to Russia through hundreds of kilometers of mountains." Li Ergou was also very curious, "Maybe there are treasures here. The Japanese invaders robbed a lot of good things in the Central Plains back then, and hid them here and never found them." Li Ergou was very excited, and in turn urged Cheng Yijiu to speed up.

The simple road began to climb, a long uphill slope, and the vegetation that had once covered the ground gradually disappeared, replaced by bare road surface. Cheng Yijiu completely ignored the animals that might be on either side and strode directly onto the road towards the mountains.

The road twisted and turned, following the mountain's slope. After walking up and down for over half an hour, they finally reached the end. A cliff marked the end of the road. "It must be a cave deep within the mountain," Cheng Yijiu said with keen eyesight. He could immediately discern traces of man-made excavation and two obscured gates from the vines and branches. He led Li Ergou closer to the gate, which was nearly ten meters high and five or six meters wide.

While clearing the plant matter from the door, Cheng Yijiu used a little too much force and actually peeled off a large piece of rusted iron, revealing a dark cave behind. A chill immediately seeped out, but the wind blew it back. "Ah, just start smashing it! Use the butt of your Mosin-Nagant to smash it hard! Make a big enough hole for us to get in," Cheng Yijiu instructed Li Ergou.

So the guy started bashing around with the butt of his rifle, while Cheng Yijiu kicked at it, quickly creating a hole in the rusted iron gate, more than a meter tall. The two men boldly slipped in. Li Ergou even took out a lantern to illuminate the area, while Cheng Yijiu scanned the walls, searching for a light switch. Regardless of whether they were Japanese or someone else, since it was an iron gate, there had to be modern lighting inside. Whether there was electricity or not was another matter...

If you find it, you can just follow the wires, right?

Cheng Yijiu has night vision, even with only a lantern, it is enough for him to see here as if it were daytime. "I will walk beside you, and we will go forward together. If I walk in front of you, I am afraid that you will accidentally fire and hit me in a hurry." Cheng Yijiu said. The ground is hard soil, and the wall here is not leveled. There are still bumps on the stone, but they have been roughly trimmed, otherwise the car will easily scratch it. "Poor guy, the ground is not even paved with cement."

The cave wasn't winding, nor did it seem dangerous—although the air felt a bit stale from being closed for years, it wasn't suffocating. Walking straight ahead, they soon arrived at a large hall. The lantern couldn't illuminate everything, so they could only rotate it in the direction it pointed, like a flashlight, to explore. "Damn it!" Li Ergou screamed, while Cheng Yijiu held him down. "Don't drop the lantern. It's just a skeleton."

There were several skeletons in the hall, all wearing tattered yellow military uniforms and carrying bayonets and other weapons. "Successfully committing suicide with this thing? I have to say it's amazing!" Cheng Yijiu walked up to a skeleton and looked at the weapon on the scattered hand bones of the short skeleton. "Turtle Box, Nambu XIV." The gun was rusted and in poor condition. Even if it was in good condition, Cheng Yijiu wouldn't want it. Who would want such a rotten pistol?

There were quite a few iron shelves here, a third of which had rusted and collapsed. There was nothing on them. The tables and chairs were fine, but they had mushrooms growing on them and I didn't dare touch them, fearing they would fall apart. The notebooks and other things on them had long since rotted away. Cheng Yijiu picked up one and found it was stuck together, unable to be separated. "It's something unimportant."

"Is this the Japanese's arsenal or supply depot?" Li Ergou shone his lantern everywhere, curiously searching every iron rack. "I don't know, but there's something..." Cheng Yijiu examined the skeletons. "Why do I feel like something's wrong?" He squatted down to observe. The skeleton's ribs were broken. "It's actually collapsed outwards, and there are holes in the bones... There are even file-like marks on the skull."

What could have caused all this? Cheng Yijiu pondered for a moment. "Something must have come out of their chests. It wasn't big enough to completely tear them apart, so at most it must have been the size of a house cat... I don't know what the holes in the long bones are, but the file-like marks on the skull are definitely the teeth marks of some creature. These fine teeth marks are quite effective for scraping flesh."

-------------Chapter Dividing Line---------------

The best-preserved item among the corpse's tattered uniform was the leather wallet and the Japanese yen inside—the photo was blurry, but the notes were still legible. But I wondered if they were usable... Cheng Yijiu didn't think much of it and let Li Ergou stuff them all into his bag. The two continued walking inside, and they came upon a niche carved into the cave wall and a two-person-tall stone statue within.

"Stone Weng Zhong? Ergou, hurry up and clean the ground to see if there are any stone slabs?" Cheng Yijiu shouted immediately when he saw a pair of stone statues on the left and right. Li Ergou got on the ground and dug around to find some large stone slabs. "There's a sacred path, who the hell is buried in the mountain? Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Li Zhi?" Cheng Yijiu was really confused. In the bitter cold of the Northeast, who the hell would be buried here? And judging from the specifications, he must be a prince at least - in the flickering firelight, these Weng Zhong were lined up in pairs.

The Qing dynasty is out of the question; Nurhaci's tomb isn't here. The Jin dynasty is also unlikely; who, having occupied northern China, would return to this Heilongjiang border region for burial? The Liao dynasty is equally unlikely. Going even further back... perhaps we have to look before the Tang Dynasty? In any case, it's impossible to trace back to some super-ancient civilization. The fact that they could build such a shrine and Weng Zhong suggests they were definitely quite productive.

"I wonder if the Japs have done anything wrong," the two muttered as they continued forward. Cheng Yijiu felt that given the Japs' nature, if they had, the stone statue would have been removed long ago. Its presence suggested the Japs hadn't completely wiped it out. The problem was, as they walked further in, they were seeing more and more bones on the ground. Some were in military uniforms, some were not, and judging by the appearance of Skull Island, they seemed to have died tragically.

The bones were shattered, many broken or severed. Some of the unlucky ones looked like they had been torn in half. "This place is unlucky! I don't know what we'll encounter." Li Ergou was already starting to back out. He said to Cheng Yijiu, "Cheng Zhiqing, let's get out. This place looks unlucky."

Cheng Yijiu nodded. "True. The animal that caused all this—let's just call it an animal—isn't a simple creature at all. I've never seen anything like it." He immediately decided to turn around and leave. After all, he didn't want to directly engage this creature—it was obvious it wasn't just one, and it could tear through a human body from the inside out. Could it be an alien? The lack of mucus didn't seem like it, and the fine gnaw marks looked more like the result of an oversized snail licking it with its tongue.

Seeing what it looked like would probably cost him his SAN points, so Cheng Yijiu thought it best to report it to the relevant authorities and have them all do a massive excavation. Even if there was something there, they could still take it down with all their might. As for what the Japanese were up to, we'd talk about it later—judging from the road marks, this place had been operating for quite a while, and it's possible the Japanese had been secretly taking action since the Sino-Soviet War.

At least two hundred people died...

There was one thing he didn't understand. Logically, given the Japanese's madness, with World War II facing its end, they should have desperately tried to use the thing that killed at least two hundred people in here as a doomsday weapon. Or had they already used it and it had no effect? ​​Cheng Yijiu had a vague idea of ​​what was in there, but he thought it best to let the government verify it.

They didn't encounter anything unusual on the way out. They squeezed through the breach and luckily spotted a herd of wild boars on the way back. That was easy. Instruct Li Ergou to shoot. "Remember, only shoot one, and choose a sub-adult or older sow—there are no boars here, otherwise you'll probably be killed by a boar," Cheng Yijiu said.

"Where are you aiming for? The head? Be careful of ricochets! Aim to the side, slightly above and behind the front legs!" Cheng Yijiu whispered, then he crept in with Li Ergou. After observing the man's skill, they stopped about fifty meters away. "There's no other way. We can only get this close. If you keep getting closer, the wild boar will be spooked and scatter." Cheng Yijiu squatted nearby, watching Li Ergou aim for a long time before firing a shot. The wild boar ran away.

He slapped Li Ergou, who was wearing a fur hat, on the head. "Your marksmanship is terrible! How dare you go hunting in the mountains? Stay home and raise pigs. Hunting isn't for you. Going back into the mountains would be like delivering food to tigers and bears." Li Ergou felt embarrassed. Missing the target at fifty meters was truly humiliating. Cheng Yijiu led him to the wild boar gathering place. He knew Li Ergou should have hit the target, but his aim was too high...

So the bullet must have struck the wild boar's shoulder, piercing the resin-and-mud coat before dispersing. This was with a Mosin-Nagant rifle; an older, black powder rifle like the old-fashioned, slide-action rifle wouldn't have done anything. Li Ergou's skill level is far from mature. A black bear might be a survivable target, but a brown bear is doomed. A tiger is also doomed, a leopard is also doomed, and a boar is about three-quarters dead.

He could only bring back prey if he encountered a foolish roe deer, but as the saying goes, if you climb too many mountains, you'll eventually encounter a tiger. Li Ergou's face wasn't auspicious; he didn't look like someone who would live a long life. Instead, he looked like someone who was destined for a sudden death. Therefore, staying at home, raising pigs and farming, was his best future. Didn't his grandfather never return after entering the mountains? His father was lucky; after having Li Ergou, he rarely went hunting, and at most, he scavenged some mountain goods.

So he is still alive today.