The bright moon hung high overhead, its cool silver glow filtering through the wooden window and quietly spilling across the floor in mottled patches of light and shadow.
Outside, his parents' low conversation had long since fallen silent, replaced by his father Ning Dazhuang's steady snores and the even, unhurried breathing of his mother Liu Lan and younger sister Ning Xiaohe.
The day's clamor and busyness had ultimately melted into the deep peace of the present moment.
Yet Ning Chuan, lying on the bed in one corner of the room, remained awake.
With his hands behind his head, he stared into the darkness at the roof beams, blackened slightly by smoke. His gaze was calm as still water, but turbulent currents churned beneath his heart.
The scenes from the day flashed rapidly through his mind like a revolving lantern.
The twang of the bowstring, arrows ripping through the air, and the precision with which the wild rabbit fell; the lurking, tracking, mental lock-on, and the decisiveness of shooting down a pheasant with two arrows in succession; and... the life-or-death strike against that raging wild boar, adrenaline surging, Soul Power pouring forth, his fist shaking the mountain-like beast in a perilous blow!
The gains had been tremendous.
The courtyard full of meat, the neighbors' praise, and the unprecedented sense of security and hope in his family's eyes.
Yet beneath the joy of that harvest, a faint chill, like a hidden venomous snake, quietly coiled around Ning Chuan's heart.
Was I too conspicuous today...? Ning Chuan asked himself silently.
Hunting wild rabbits and pheasants could still be explained away as luck.
But an adult wild boar, especially one killed in what was practically an instant—there was no way the information contained in that could be fully concealed with a mere "good luck."