When he reached the Hot Spring, Li Long deliberately slowed down and cut through the woods.
When he reached the woods above the pool, where he had lain in ambush before, he put down his bag and raised his gun to look around, but found no sign of movement.
There was only a fairly strong smell of blood.
Was something there that he simply hadn't spotted?
Or had something already hunted here, and he had arrived too late?
Holding his gun, Li Long cautiously crept toward the pool.
Only after leaving the woods and reaching the pool did Li Long notice a half-grown roe deer lying beside the stream, its body still twitching now and then.
Blood kept spurting from its neck. Clearly, it had only just been bitten to death.
The hunter that had killed it had most likely heard him approaching and fled in fright. It seemed to have dragged its prey some distance as it ran, pulling it out of the stream, but perhaps it couldn't drag it any farther, or for some other reason, it had abandoned the little roe deer here.
Li Long grinned. He turned and went straight back to his earlier ambush spot, where he waited with his gun ready.
He thought the hunter would certainly return. Or rather, it was probably waiting somewhere at that very moment, unwilling to give up, waiting for him to leave. If he didn't take the prey away, that fellow would definitely come back.
Li Long was in no hurry. He simply sat there holding his gun, safety off and a round already chambered, waiting for his quarry to appear.
The wound wasn't very large, and there were signs of a struggle nearby. In Li Long's view, the hunter probably wasn't anything very big. It could have