When Fang Yuan dragged that wild boar down the mountain, the moon hung high overhead, and the night was dark and the wind fierce!
The cold wind whipped the dead branches of the Old Scholar Tree at the village entrance into a wild sway.
Several women wrapped in ragged cotton-padded jackets hunched their necks and kept looking toward the path leading into the mountains.
Their faces bore both anxiety and anticipation. The men of their families had gone up the mountain to try their luck and had yet to return at this hour; it was only natural for them to feel uneasy.
Several half-grown children were also running and playing at the village entrance, only to be scolded by the adults from time to time and told to quiet down.
Just then, a blurry figure appeared at the end of the path.
The figure moved very slowly, as though burdened by something immensely heavy, inching forward with difficulty along the path where the snow had yet to melt.
"They're back! They're back!" a sharp-eyed child cried.
Everyone waiting perked up, craning their necks to look. They wondered whose family it was and what they had brought back today.
A skinny pheasant, perhaps? Or had they gotten lucky and run into a foolish roe deer?
Yet as the figure drew closer, the faint chatter at the village entrance gradually fell silent.
It was as though everyone had been seized by the throat. Their eyes widened as they stared at the sight before them in utter disbelief.
This was not the familiar sight of any hunter stumbling home.
It was Fang Yuan!
His entire body was smeared with blotches of frozen, blackened blood. His sweat-soaked hair clung to his temples, and the white vapor from his mouth billowed as thickly as steam