The Entire Mountain Is My Hunting Ground

It was a little awkward at first, but they quickly got the hang of these skis.

The higher they climbed, the closer they got to the summit, and the snow became so deep it could swallow Zhao Jun whole.

The slope eased up a bit here, so Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu stopped to search the area.

A moment later, Zhao Jun heard a whistle and followed the sound on his skis.

From a distance, he saw Li Baoyu waving at him. Zhao Jun glided forward slowly, his eyes fixed on the surface of the snow.

When he spotted a few lines of small tracks, he carefully brought his skis to a stop and crouched down for a closer look.

Zhao Jun could tell they were definitely Sable tracks, but there wasn’t just one line of them, or even two.

Instead, they overlapped again and again within a very narrow area.

It looked like a Sable had traveled back and forth along this path countless times.

There’s an old saying: "Snakes have their paths, and rats have their trails."

In fact, it’s not just snakes and rats; rabbits also use the same path to come and go.

Sables are the same, which is why Hunters can use this habit to set traps.

Zhao Jun skied over to Li Baoyu’s side. He didn’t take the wooden board trap from Li Baoyu’s hand. Instead, he took off his gloves and pulled a stack of paper from his pants pocket.

The paper was grid-lined for practicing Chinese characters, likely from one of Zhao Hong’s used notebooks. Although the little girl—Xiaoya—was young, her handwriting was neat and tidy.

Not only were the grids on the front filled with characters, but the back was covered in writing as well.

"Here, hold this for me." Zhao Jun handed the paper to Li Baoyu.

Li Baoyu didn’t hesitate or ask any questions. Zhao Jun told him to hold it, so he reached out and took it.

Zhao Jun squatted down, then knelt on one knee, resting his left kneecap on the front of his left ski.

Zhao Jun put his gloves back on and began digging in the snow about thirty centimeters away from the tracks.

After digging a small pit forty to fifty centimeters deep, Zhao Jun reached his hand underneath to burrow sideways toward the spot beneath the Sable’s tracks.

Throughout this process, Zhao Jun’s movements were slow and extremely careful.

The Sable is an exceptionally sharp animal.

The saying "eyes watch six roads, ears listen in eight directions" couldn’t be more fitting for them.

It travels this same path back and forth every day. If it were walking along and noticed the tracks ahead of it were broken, or if there were traces of another creature nearby, it would turn and flee immediately.

Zhao Jun dug cautiously, carving out a narrow space under the tracks just big enough to fit one of the wooden board traps.

The layer of snow above this space was about five centimeters thick. It was firmly packed, and a thin, hard crust had frozen on the surface, which kept it from collapsing.

Once he finished digging, Zhao Jun called over to Li Baoyu, "Alright, hand me the trap first."

Li Baoyu skied to Zhao Jun’s side and bent down to pass him the wooden board trap.

Zhao Jun first set the trap, then, handling it with extreme care, slid it into the space he had made.

The top of the wooden trap was now about two fingers’ breadth from the layer of snow above it.

"A piece of paper," Zhao Jun said.

As he spoke, he took off both his gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of his cotton-padded jacket. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Li Baoyu couldn’t separate the sheets with his gloves on, so he pulled one off, peeled away a single sheet of the grid-lined paper, and handed it to Zhao Jun.

Zhao Jun took the paper and, using both hands, slid it into the space to cover the trap.

Without this paper, the moment the Sable stepped on the spot and the snow collapsed, the falling snow would land on the trap and trigger it directly.

If that happened, it wouldn’t catch the Sable.

But with a layer of paper, the falling snow would be caught. The paper could bear the weight of the snow above it, ensuring the trap wouldn’t be triggered prematurely.

Then, when the Sable itself fell through, its weight would exceed what the paper could hold. The trap underneath would then be triggered, catching the Sable.

After setting the trap, Zhao Jun put his gloves back on. He first took some snow and slowly sealed the opening to the space, hiding the trap from view.

Then, he refilled the pit he had dug, layer by layer. The process was still very slow and very, very careful.

Once the pit was filled, Zhao Jun stood up and used his skis to smooth over the area where he had been digging.

"Done!" After finishing, Zhao Jun grinned at Li Baoyu. "Let’s go. On to the next spot."

The two of them skied off toward higher mountains and ridges.

Moving on skis was much faster than walking. Before long, on another high mountain, they found more signs of Sable activity.

Zhao Jun repeated the same process, setting another trap along the Sable’s path.

After watching twice, Li Baoyu had it all figured out. Truthfully, the task didn’t require much skill—just care and patience.

So, Li Baoyu and Zhao Jun split up. They searched the surrounding mountaintops for Sable tracks and set their traps.

By the time they had set all eight traps, it was already past one in the afternoon. They started skiing back down the mountain toward home.

Going downhill from the mountains, their speed increased significantly.

Along the way, Zhao Jun had to keep reminding Li Baoyu to slow down. The kid was getting a little carried away, pushing off on his skis with wild speed.

Suddenly, Li Baoyu stopped up ahead and whistled repeatedly back at Zhao Jun.

Ordinarily, since they weren’t far apart, Zhao Jun could already see that he had stopped. That meant Li Baoyu’s whistling was meant to hurry him along.

Zhao Jun pushed off twice, hurrying. As he neared Li Baoyu, he saw that the snow at a fork in the path was covered in wild boar tracks.

Some of the tracks were muddled, but a rough estimate suggested that fifteen or sixteen of them had passed through here.

"Brother, should we hunt them?" Li Baoyu was eager to try.

"No!" Zhao Jun said decisively. It was already the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month, and the New Year was just around the corner. Forget wild boars—even if they ran into a Black Bear, as long as it didn’t attack them, Zhao Jun was determined not to hunt.

The tracks followed the same path as Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu. Unconcerned, the two continued homeward, following the prints.

However, when they passed another fork, they found tracks from another seven or eight wild boars coming down from the southern slope, merging with the tracks of the herd they had been following.

So, as Zhao Jun continued on his way, he noticed the boar tracks were getting more and more numerous.

’There must be more than twenty of them!’

"Brother, should we hunt them?" Li Baoyu was even more excited now.

"No." Zhao Jun refused without a second thought. It was for the same reason: the New Year was coming. Safety came first, and he wouldn’t look for trouble.

They followed the tracks further, but at the next fork, they found all the prints veered north.

Curious, the two of them looked north. The entire northern slope was covered in wild boar tracks.

Without even needing to count, both Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu knew the herd was frighteningly large.

Li Baoyu’s jaw dropped, letting the icy north wind rush into his mouth. "There must be fifty or sixty of them, right?"

"We’re going home!" Without a moment’s hesitation, Zhao Jun pushed off on his skis and headed for home.

’A herd that big... even if we wanted to hunt them, we couldn’t.’

The two emerged from the mountain forest. As they neared the village, they tossed aside the Fraxinus mandschurica Sticks in their hands, then unstrapped the boar-hide skis from their feet and carried them.

They couldn’t talk while skiing downhill earlier; they were moving too fast.

Now, Li Baoyu, who had been holding it in for half the day, immediately started chattering. "Brother, shouldn’t the wild boars be splitting up by now? Why are they gathering together?"

It’s true that wild boars are social animals, but they usually stick to their own groups, their own families.

They only gather in large numbers to breed at the beginning of winter, around the Xiaoxue solar term. By this time of year, having had their fill of that, the boars should have started splitting up.

For so many wild boars to be gathering together as they traveled was completely against their nature.

Zhao Jun’s brow furrowed. After a long moment, he said, "I’m afraid there’s something big out there."

"What ’something big’?" Just then, a voice spoke up from behind them.