The Entire Mountain Is My Hunting Ground

Every animal has its own habits.

When wild boars gather to feed or rest, if one hears a strange noise, it will stop what it’s doing and raise its snout to sniff the air.

As they twitch their snouts, they make a "FNUR, FNUR" sound. The moment the other boars hear this, they all follow suit.

Interestingly, while they are sniffing, they actually rely on their hearing to detect danger.

At that point, any sound in the vicinity will send them fleeing.

But this herd of boars was just too large.

The grunting from over one hundred and forty boars, a sound like "HOU-HU," mixed with the CRUNCH of them chewing walnuts, was enough to mask the sound of Li Dayong striking a match.

Yet even so, the massive wild boar hidden deep within the herd, weighing over a thousand pounds, was different from the others. It actually caught a whiff of sulfur.

It was the Pig God, passed down in the stories of generations of Mountain Runners.

It was not a deity, just a bit larger than the rest. But its long life and experience had granted it a special kind of sensitivity.

When it raised its snout and made that twitching sound, the surrounding boars all stopped what they were doing and twitched their snouts along with it.

The action rippled outward: the next ring of boars copied the inner one, and the ring beyond that copied them in turn.

At this moment, Li Dayong had already struck the match, but the instant he saw the entire mountainside of boars lift their heads, he couldn’t help but freeze, watching them quietly.

He was holding a long-stemmed match, about four centimeters long, so it wouldn’t burn down to the end too quickly.

Li Dayong waited. He would throw the Maze into the herd once the boars lowered their heads again.

This was the same tactic Zhao Jun had used when he snuck into the boar herd that day.

But just then, the great boar hidden in the herd moved.

The mountain’s main peak ran from east to west, with the ridge forming its spine and slopes to the north and south.

The Pig God started moving, heading straight east. The moment it moved, all the surrounding boars moved with it!

Whether they were in front of the Pig God or behind it, all the boars headed east.

For a moment, Li Dayong was stunned. He’d swear on his life that other than striking the match, he hadn’t made a single sound.

It wasn’t just him; Zhao Youcai, Wang Qiang, and Lin Xiangshun hadn’t made any noise either.

"Dayong! Blast ’em!"

Suddenly, Zhao Youcai’s sharp shout came from behind him. Li Dayong instantly snapped out of it, touched the match to the fuse, and with a full swing of his arm, hurled the entire bundle of Maze into the herd of boars.

BOOM!

A tremendous bang echoed out.

The Maze were basically just large firecrackers. They had a bit more gunpowder, so the sound was thunderous when they exploded, but their destructive power was almost negligible.

But Zhao Youcai and the others weren’t after destructive power. They wanted to throw the herd into chaos. Only when the herd was in disarray would the Pig God be exposed.

The entire bundle of Maze exploded at once. The sound reverberated through the mountains, making Zhao Youcai and the others’ ears ring so badly they had to open their mouths wide.

But the Pig God, long before Li Dayong had even thrown the Maze, had already swept away with a band of its followers.

BANG!

The instant the Maze exploded, Wang Qiang fired!

Zhao Jun had once said that a 16-gauge fitted with a Type 56 semi-automatic rifle barrel had more stopping power than the Type 56 itself—it could tear through three boars at once.

Today, there were more than enough boars!

Wang Qiang’s shot skewered them like fruit on a stick.

Two boars, one male and one female, were both hit.

The bullet passed through the Big Cannon Egg first. A small entry wound, a large exit wound. The Big Cannon Egg let out a pained squeal and collapsed.

The hooves of several other boars trampled over its body, instantly reducing it to a bloody pulp.

And that bullet, after piercing the cannon eggs, happened to hit an old sow that was running east.

Again, a small entry wound, a large exit wound. Blood splattered as the bullet exited, cloaked in gore.

The old sow didn’t even let out a squeal before it dropped dead. And just like the other, countless of its companions trampled over its body.

BANG!

BANG!

Zhao Youcai and Lin Xiangshun both fired. They then raised their rifles to search for the Pig God. When they couldn’t find it, they immediately opened fire again.

Li Dayong was next. In an instant, the three men, with their three semi-automatic rifles, had emptied their ten-round magazines.

By then, most of the boars had already run down from the ridge. On the summit, only dead and a few wounded boars remained.

Not all of these casualties were from gunfire; some were caused by the panic, as the boars crashed into and trampled each other in their desperate flight.

Having reloaded, Zhao Youcai raised his rifle and pinned a struggling boar to the snowy ground.

Lin Xiangshun and Li Dayong also took action, finishing off the five wounded boars nearby.

Meanwhile, Wang Qiang had already loaded his second round and given chase to the eastern point of Gangjiansi.

He looked down from his high vantage point at the herd surging downhill. There, in the middle of the pack, he saw a tall, burly boar, like a moving boulder, fleeing down the mountain.

By now, it was seven or eight hundred meters away from Wang Qiang. For his 16-gauge, hitting it was impossible.

But Wang Qiang pulled the trigger anyway.

BANG!

A boar in the herd collapsed, instantly trampled into a bloody mess by those behind it.

Wang Qiang lowered his gun. Zhao Youcai had come up beside him, rifle aimed downhill. He remained silent for a long time but didn’t fire again.

Because the Pig God had already gotten away. Killing its underlings was not Zhao Youcai’s intention.

Li Dayong and Lin Xiangshun walked over. They all stared after the herd as it vanished into the distance, looking at each other without a word.

"Big Brother, what do we do with all these boars behind us?" After a long pause, it was Li Dayong who finally spoke.

Zhao Youcai took a deep breath and looked up at the sky, guessing it was almost two o’clock. He then looked around and saw the entire mountainside littered with boar carcasses, blood and gore everywhere.

Taking a quick count, not including the one Wang Qiang had killed on the ridge with his last shot, there were eighteen dead boars right here on the summit.

Among them, five were no longer intact.

They had indeed driven here today, but dragging this many boars all the way down the mountain and getting them home seemed impossible.

But there was no way Zhao Youcai was going to just abandon the boars. They had all come up through hard times; they had even lived through those three years of famine when people starved to death.

Zhao Youcai reached back, pulled the Invasion Blade from his waist, and said, "Field dress them!"

"Second Uncle, how are we going to haul this many boars back?" Lin Xiangshun asked.

He was also a Mountain Runner and knew that you had to field dress a boar after killing it. But he had to ask: how were they going to drag so many back home?

They had a vehicle, sure, but it was at the foot of the mountain, and there was still a long way to go from the car to the base of the mountain itself.

Just getting this many boars down the mountain was a problem, let alone loading them onto the vehicle.

Zhao Youcai said, "First, we field dress them. Then we leave them here and go home for today. Tomorrow, we’ll find more people to help haul them down the mountain."

The three men heard this and agreed it was a reliable plan, so they immediately did as he said.

But just then, the sound of a gunshot rang out, instantly making the four men’s moods even worse.

That’s right!

Even though they had taken down so many boars, the four men couldn’t feel happy at all.

With their skills, getting a taste of wild boar meat was no difficult task. The reason they had mobilized such a large-scale hunt today wasn’t for these dead boars, but for the Pig God.

If they couldn’t get the Pig God, they wouldn’t be satisfied even if they had killed a hundred boars today.

And now, that gunshot might mean the Pig God had been killed by someone else. After working so hard all day only to have someone else reap the rewards, how could the four Cannon Shooters possibly accept it?