After leaving Guande Martial Arts School, Su Mo soon returned to Shuanglin Village.
"Su Mo, weren't you studying martial arts at the school in Qingshan Town? Why did you suddenly come back?"
"The school's tuition was too expensive. I couldn't afford it, so I had no choice but to come back and hunt to earn the money."
Su Mo's return quickly caught the villagers' attention. After all, his trip to study at the martial arts school in Qingshan Town had caused quite a stir in the village.
Su Mo was already a Martial Artist. Though he wasn't as powerful as Senior Brother Li Xian and the others, he had still resolutely headed to town to train.
People guessed that Su Mo didn't want to fall behind Zhang Qian, Zhang Hai, Li Goudan, and Chen Mazi, the village's young people who had all been accepted as disciples by the Black Eagle Sect in Anyuan County Town. They were said to become powerful Martial Artists, far beyond the likes of ordinary ones.
Some villagers thought Su Mo's choice made sense, while others thought he was just wasting his time. No matter how hard he tried, he could never measure up to Zhang Qian, Li Goudan, and the others.
"The tuition's too expensive, so you came back to the village to hunt for the money?"
"Su Mo's a little too honest, isn't he?"
The villagers hadn't expected Su Mo to be so straightforward. They'd only asked casually, but he'd told them the truth. In particular, he'd explained that studying martial arts at Guande Martial Arts School in town required fifteen taels as a tuition payment before he could enroll.
Some of the young people in the village who had failed to get into the Black Eagle Sect heard this and immediately gave up on learning martial arts. Fifteen taels just to enroll—not counting the expenses afterward—was more than they could afford.
Su Mo wasn't trying to discourage them. Guande Martial Arts School simply charged a lot.
When he returned to the village, Su Mo went to visit Uncle Chen Shan first. Uncle Chen Shan was overjoyed to hear he was back and immediately asked Aunt Zhang Cuihua to cook up a feast.
"Su Mo, whatever you decide to do, your uncle will support you."
"Take this money. It's just a little something from your uncle."
During the meal, Uncle Chen Shan unusually drank two liang of liquor. He told Su Mo he would support him in whatever he chose to do, then took out a little over two taels of silver for him.
Su Mo refused. He knew this was money Uncle Chen Shan had earned through hard work hunting in the mountains. How could he take it?
There were five people in Uncle Chen Shan's family: three adults and two children. They had plenty of expenses. But when Uncle Chen Shan heard that Su Mo couldn't afford the fees to study martial arts and had to return to the village to keep hunting, he had offered up his savings without a second thought.
The gesture warmed Su Mo's heart.
"Dabao, Xiaobao, come here. This is from your big brother."
Uncle Chen Shan's older child was called Dabao. He was eight years old. The younger one was called Xiaobao and had just turned six. As Su Mo was leaving, he patted their heads, then took a haunch of Green Wolf Meat from the cellar and asked Aunt Cui Hua to cook it for the two little ones.
He also told Uncle Chen Shan that if the family ever ran short of meat, they could just take some from his cellar.
Uncle Chen Shan didn't say much in response. He simply drank another two liang. He hadn't been wrong about the boy.
Su Mo was short on money, but earning some was easy enough. All he had to do was hunt in the mountains and sell his prey in town.
On his first night back in the village, Su Mo slept soundly at home. The next day, he took up his ancestral Hunting Knife, slung the Beast Hide Great Bow over his shoulder, and strapped a birchwood arrow case to his waist.
Su Mo went into the mountains to hunt.
The village's old hunters knew that with Su Mo back, the Green Wolves of Green Wolf Ridge were in for a rough time. Whenever he failed to find other prey in the mountains, he would head for Green Wolf Ridge to kill Green Wolves.
Sure enough, when Su Mo returned from the mountains, a villager spotted him carrying the bodies of three Green Wolves.
Apparently, Su Mo hadn't come across any other prey in the mountains, so he'd gone to sweep through Green Wolf Ridge.
The villagers were right. That was exactly what Su Mo had done.
Each of the three Green Wolves weighed around a hundred and thirty jin. He could sell them in town for thirty copper coins per jin, which came to eleven taels and seven qian.
[One liang equals one thousand copper coins, one qian equals one hundred copper coins, ten qian equal one liang, and one liang of gold equals ten taels of silver!]
In a single day, Su Mo had earned enough to cover a month's lodging and medicine fees at Guande Martial Arts School.
The villagers were astounded by Su Mo's feat of killing three Green Wolves in one day. After all, Green Wolves were genuinely ferocious beasts, yet Su Mo made hunting them look effortless.
The hunters knew the reason: Su Mo was a Martial Artist, second only to Li Xian in all of Shuanglin Village.
This made some of the village's young people start thinking again. Was becoming a Martial Artist really what made someone so formidable at hunting in the mountains?
What they didn't know was that it wasn't the Green Wolves that were easy to hunt; Su Mo was simply too strong. Ordinary Body Tempering Realm Martial Artists could still make mistakes when facing Green Wolves. One careless moment was all it took to be surrounded.
Su Mo had killed the former wolf king of Green Wolf Ridge, but before long another had risen among the pack. Whenever a hunter or Martial Artist entered the ridge, the new wolf king would lead its pack in an attack, hunting them down.
Even the Major Leaders of Black Wind Stockade, despite being Body Tempering Realm Martial Artists, hadn't dared enter Green Wolf Ridge lightly. They were afraid of running into the wolf king.
But Su Mo came and went as he pleased. Whenever the wolf king saw him, it trembled and hid, terrified that Su Mo would shoot it.
A few days passed in the blink of an eye. Over that time, Su Mo hunted a total of twelve Green Wolves. His terrifying record left the village's old hunters dumbfounded.
"Have you heard? Su Mo's hunted twelve Green Wolves in Qingliang Mountain over the past few days."
"I didn't just hear about it—I saw it with my own eyes. Normally, whenever anyone enters Green Wolf Ridge, the wolf king gathers its pack to attack them. But when Su Mo went in, that Green Wolf King was so scared it didn't dare come out. Who knows where it ran off to?"
"Right. Yesterday, when I passed by Green Wolf Ridge, I heard screams and howls from inside. I went closer and saw Su Mo hunting Green Wolves. He saw me and even smiled. Just thinking about that sight still scares me. Those were wild Green Wolves!"
"But in Su Mo's hands, they weren't even as good as chickens. He slaughtered them in no time. He killed them so brutally that now, whenever the Green Wolves in Green Wolf Ridge catch his scent, they're so terrified their guts turn to water. They flee for their lives."
"That sight was so shocking I'll remember it for the rest of my life. It was truly unbelievable."
The village's hunters were talking about Su Mo all the time. Some even said they'd seen him hunting Green Wolves in the mountains with their own eyes—slaughtering the pack as it howled, while the wolf king ran for its life. If the Green Wolves hadn't learned their lesson and started fleeing as soon as they caught Su Mo's scent, who knew what he would have done to them?
Some of the old hunters guessed that Su Mo could kill at least twenty Green Wolves.
Just imagining a hunting record like that made their scalps crawl.
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