Li Long threaded his way through the mountain woods with a rifle on his back.
The afternoon sun was fierce, and it felt hot on his skin, but whenever he stepped beneath the trees or into a mountain's shadow, he felt a chill. The difference between hot and cold was just a single step.
Now and then, the stream in the valley burbled, reminding Li Long that there was water here. He carried a canteen with water in it. He would never do something as foolish as drinking mountain spring water straight from the source.
After all, mountain spring water teemed with far more living things than water from a hand pump. There was no telling which mouthful might contain frog or snake eggs.
Li Long vaguely remembered his eldest brother, Li Jianguo, saying that when they used to come into the mountains to weave Taibazi and dig fritillaria, they had to wear leg wraps to guard against snakebites.
Li Long didn't know how to wrap them. He associated leg wraps with the old Red Army and thought they were quite impressive.
His destination this time was the hot spring, but he still headed southwest first before turning straight east. He wanted to see whether he might encounter that two-headed deer.
Even though the chances were slim.
Although he was following the same general route, he couldn't take exactly the same path as last time, so he discovered quite a few things along the way.
There was more fritillaria along this route. Some plants already had four leaves growing in opposing pairs. They weren't large, and anyone unfamiliar with them would miss them.
There was plenty of codonopsis too. Some stems were almost as thick as his little finger. Li Long guessed that the roots underneath might weigh a kilogram!