The Hunter

"Brother Hao... don't scare me... sob..."

Darkness swallowed everything like ink, thick and impossible to dispel. Cui Hao heard someone crying, the voice sorrowful and heartrending, as if steeped in endless grief and despair.

He struggled to open his eyes, but his vision was a blur—something was blocking them completely.

He reached out and pushed. The thing beneath his hand was soft and warm.

"Ah!" The person let out a quiet cry and took half a step back. Then came a burst of barely contained joy. "Brother Hao, you—you're awake!"

Before Cui Hao could make out who it was, a splitting pain exploded inside his skull. Countless unfamiliar memories surged in like a broken, raging tide. He groaned and fell unconscious again.

He remained unconscious for two days.

"Brother Hao, it's time for your medicine."

Su Yun carried a coarse pottery bowl in both hands and carefully entered the room. Seeing that Cui Hao had propped himself up and seemed a little more clear-eyed, she felt some of her worry ease. She handed him the medicine. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Much better." Cui Hao took the bowl. He looked at the black, murky liquid, then raised his eyes to the girl before him. She was pale and thin, yet her delicate features still showed through. His expression was complicated.

He tipped his head back and drank the bitter medicine in one go.

The warm liquid slid down his throat, its tangible sensation bringing him fully back to his senses.

Yes, he had transmigrated.

He had transmigrated into the body of a selfish scholar, cold toward his family and warm toward his disreputable friends.

The place he was in was called the Da'an Dynasty.

The dynasty was vast. For now, all that mattered was Qingyuan City and Willow Tree Village.

There were crushing taxes, years of famine, swarms of refugees, bandits everywhere, and martial artists running rampant.

A terrible start.

Yet there was a touch of warmth, and it came from the young woman before him.

In his previous life, he had been a workhorse for over thirty years, only to end up alone.

This life was different. He had a wife from the very start.

It had all begun half a year ago. His predecessor's father, the family's only pillar, had quarreled bitterly with his grandfather, the head of their clan in the city. In a fit of anger, he had gone deep into Second Mountain to hunt—and never returned.

When news of his father's death arrived, his predecessor's first response had not been grief, but panic and anger: panic at losing the family's source of income, and anger that his hopes for the future had been cut off.

Not long afterward, his predecessor failed the provincial examination and did not pass as a licentiate. The successive blows left him bedridden with illness.

During his sickness, his predecessor, cold-hearted as he was, had even secretly planned to sell Su Yun—the child-bride his father had brought home years ago and who had devoted herself to caring for the family—as soon as he recovered, so he could keep funding his "scholarly ambitions."

Yet Su Yun had given her whole heart to him. No matter how dire their circumstances became or how coldly he treated her, she had always managed the household without complaint and never left.

Unaware that her husband had become someone else, Su Yun took away the medicine bowl. Soon, she returned with two coarse pottery bowls and set them gently on the only old wooden table in the room, its surface split with cracks. "Brother Hao, it's time to eat."

Cui Hao moved over and sat down.

The bowl held a gray-green mash mixed with wild roots and stems he couldn't identify.

In his previous life, it wouldn't even have passed for pig feed. Now, it was the life-saving food that kept this body—and this household—going.

Picking up his chopsticks, Cui Hao ate in silence. The food was bland, gritty, and hard to swallow.

Su Yun held her own bowl and ate in small bites. For a while, the only sound in the room was their quiet chewing and swallowing. She stole a glance at Cui Hao. Though he remained silent, his eyes were calm, nothing like the irritation and gloom he used to wear. Her heart eased a little, though a strange unease still lingered.

After hesitating, Su Yun spoke softly, as if to break the gloom in the room—or perhaps simply to share what she had heard. "Brother Hao, while you've been sick, things in the village... haven't been peaceful."

Cui Hao looked up. "Hm?"

"Last night before yesterday, thieves broke into Old Wang's house at the east end of the village and stole the half-sack of coarse rice he'd saved. Aunt Wang fainted twice from crying."

Su Yun lowered her voice. "They say it was those thugs led by Zhou Menglong. They're getting more brazen by the day. They even swagger around the village entrance in broad daylight, watching to see whose chimney has smoke rising for too long..."

She paused, deep worry rising on her face. "And... the village head came by the day before yesterday. He said the tax collectors in the city were pressing hard, and the Head Tax and Mountain and Marsh Tax are going up again this year. He told every household to prepare early."

"How much silver do we owe?" Cui Hao asked, concerned. "When's the deadline?"

"Three taels of silver, due... by the end of the month. Our family... we used up our last coins buying your medicine..."

Su Yun said no more. She just lowered her head and absently stirred the thin mash in her bowl with her chopsticks, her frail shoulders hunched slightly.

Cui Hao's hand stopped, chopsticks poised.

Memories surged through him. The Da'an Dynasty had countless taxes. The Head Tax was levied per person, while the Mountain and Marsh Tax was imposed on hunters like them, who lived off the mountains.

If they couldn't pay on time, the consequences ranged from a whipping, the seizure of their ox, or the demolition of their house, to being dragged off for forced labor—or even branded as criminals.

When his predecessor's father had been alive, his skill with a bow had just barely kept them afloat. Now, Cui Hao would have to rely on himself.

He looked at Su Yun's profile as she struggled to contain her unease, then glanced around the drafty, bare-walled earthen house.

The drudgery of his previous life and the harshness of this one tangled together, a heavy pressure clutching at Cui Hao's heart.

"The tax money..." Cui Hao said, his voice low but steady. "I'll find a way."

Su Yun looked up in surprise. Meeting Cui Hao's calm eyes, no longer hollow, she opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end only murmured, "All right."

After hurriedly eating a little of the mash, Su Yun cleared away the bowls and went out to work.

Every morning, she went into the city to wash clothes for the women of wealthy households. In the afternoons, she washed cloth at a weaving workshop.

Bracing himself against the table, Cui Hao slowly stood and steadied his weak body. He made his way to the room his father had used. An old bow hung on the wall before him.

He took down the dusty bow and examined it from every angle.

It was a composite bow. According to his memories, the bow's core was mulberry wood.

The back of the bow was layered with ox sinew. The tendons were dried and repeatedly pounded until their fibers separated, then glued onto the back of the bow.

This increased its tensile strength, boosting its initial velocity and killing power.

The belly of the bow was layered with water buffalo horn. The horn was cut into thin strips and glued onto the bow's belly.

This also increased its tensile strength, boosting its initial velocity and killing power.

The glue was made from a mixture of fish bladder glue, deer antler glue, and cowhide glue in a certain ratio. It was strongly adhesive yet somewhat elastic, binding sinew, horn, wood, and bamboo into a single, sturdy whole.

The bowstring was made of tightly twisted silk.

There were no arrows. He could sell the Four Treasures of the Study, then sell his books as well.

Didn't know how to shoot? No problem. In his previous life, he'd watched videos of people trimming donkey hooves, throwing axes, and using slingshots. They were all masters of their craft. There was only one reason: practice makes perfect.

With his mind made up, Cui Hao found a rag, bundled the Four Treasures of the Study in it, and set off.

Once in the city, he went to Wenmo Xuan to ask for a price, then to Mobao Pavilion to ask again.

In the end, he returned to Wenmo Xuan and sold the Four Treasures of the Study. They were decent quality, but he got only two hundred and twenty copper coins.

After leaving through the north gate, he found many stalls lining the straight road. Cui Hao stopped in front of one selling arrows.

"Young man?"

The vendor was a woman of about fifty. Her hair was wrapped in an old cloth kerchief, her face tanned dark red by the sun, and deep wrinkles creased the corners of her eyes. Yet her hands moved steadily as she arranged the arrow fletching. "Looking at arrows? I made these myself."

"May I pick one up?"

"Go ahead."

Cui Hao picked up an arrow. The shaft was made of hard Chinese mulberry wood, straight as a rod.

The tail feathers were common gray goose feathers, bound tightly and neatly with hemp thread.

"Grandma, you have a steady hand," Cui Hao said sincerely. The arrows were better than he'd expected.

The woman showed little reaction and merely said, "Just trying to make a living. These seven are all I have left. Ninety coins."

"Grandma," Cui Hao said, looking up with earnest eyes, "things are really tight at home, and we're waiting for rice to go in the pot. Would you take seventy? Your arrows are good. If I need more, I'll come back to you."

The woman stopped working and looked him over carefully. "You're... from Cui Bao's family in Willow Tree Village?"

"Yes. Cui Bao is my father."

"Your father was an honest man. He bought leather cord from me earlier this year. Seventy coins, then. Times are hard for everyone."

Cui Hao's heart stirred. "Thank you, Grandma."

He carefully counted out seventy copper coins and laid them gently on the stall's rough wooden board.

With the arrows in hand, Cui Hao picked one up, nocked it to the bowstring, and aimed it at the ground.

Suddenly, a panel appeared before his eyes.

[Archery: Beginner]

[Progress: 20/100]