As Li Long headed down the mountain with the venison over his shoulder, a wolf appeared on the ridgeline-it had come following the smell of blood.
Li Long had left the deer's innards there. He had no choice; he couldn't carry them.
That was how hunting worked: you had to give something up to gain something. It was like scooping up fish when Big Haizi dried up in his previous life. If he couldn't bear to leave behind the beautiful fish already scooped out before him, he would lose out on even more fish that he could have brought his whole family to collect.
It was the same now. If he couldn't bear to leave the innards and wanted to bring the entire deer back, he might lose even more—at over a hundred kilograms, it was impossible to carry. He could only drag it. In that case, the Deer Pelt probably wouldn't survive.
Decades later, all these parts of a deer would be worth quite a bit, but right now, the Deer Pelt and head were the most valuable.
Li Long hadn't noticed that something had its eye on him. He struggled downhill with the deer's body over his shoulder, feeling himself getting closer to the mouth of the valley. Once he was out of the mountain pass, he could drag the body on plastic sheeting. That would save him some effort.
He thought that once he got back to the wooden cabin, he absolutely had to cut off some venison to roast. This was far too much work.
The wolf charged down from the ridgeline and trotted over to the innards. It lowered its head to sniff, looked around, then stared once at Li Long receding into the distance before lowering its head to gobble up the innards-it was