Into the Mountains to Hunt

Water went into a pot of bran rice, followed by sliced dried meat and some wild greens, all thrown together to stew. Only when the rich fragrance of rice and meat rose in curling wisps did Wang Dashan finally "crawl" over, his face slick with sweat.

"I'm just getting old. Back when I was young, mountain trails like these wouldn't even leave me short of breath!" Wang Dashan wanted to save face before his adopted son, so he embellished his younger days a little.

All the anger that had filled his belly earlier had long since vanished. Now, all he felt was hunger.

Wang Qi really did find him tiresome at this point. "All right, Uncle Dashan. Hurry up and eat, then take me into the mountains to hunt some more game. Winter's almost here. A hunter's household like ours doesn't lack meat, but we still need rice and flour for our staple food."

"The autumn harvest just ended, so grain prices are low. What we ought to do is hunt more game, take the meat or pelts into town, and sell them to buy rice."

"Right you are. We'll hunt plenty to get us through winter." Wang Dashan agreed readily.

Although Wang Dashan was already in his forties, he really was no good at carefully budgeting to keep a household running... Hard as it might be to believe, Wang Qi had been the one truly managing their household for seven years now.

Wang Qi had been only nine then...

Wang Dashan quickly polished off two large bowls of porridge with meat and greens, then let out a contented sigh.

Then he set down his bowl, stood up, and began gathering his hunting gear.

Meanwhile, Wang Qi cleaned up with practiced ease, extinguishing the fire before taking the pot and bowls to the little mountain spring nearby to rinse them.

He was simply particular about cleanliness.

"If I hadn't watched you grow up, I'd think you were some little girl who loved keeping things clean!" Wang Dashan's teasing arrived right on cue again.

Wang Qi could not even be bothered to respond. Once he had washed the pot and bowls, he went straight back to his room to fetch his hunting gear...

It amounted to a short hunting bow, two full quivers, and a billhook for clearing a path through the mountains.

With rope and a few other necessities strapped onto him as well, a rough estimate put his load at forty jin.

But warmth suffused his whole body, and carrying all that weight did not feel particularly tiring.

That convinced him that his body really had improved after achieving "first yang arises."

His endurance, speed, agility, and strength had all increased noticeably.

It seemed there was good reason for calling "lesser yang qi" an orthodox Daoist qi-refining art. Once his practice reached its subtler depths, it truly yielded wondrous results.

In theory, Wang Qi could now move on to a more advanced qi-refining art to further his cultivation... Unfortunately, Wang Dashan himself had followed a path from the external to the internal, and had no suitable qi-refining art to teach him.

Knowing how difficult the matter was, Wang Qi had never pressed Wang Dashan about it... Over these ten years, though, he had also learned some of Wang Dashan's external martial arts to protect himself, so he could be considered a practitioner of both the internal and the external.

When he stepped out of his little room, he found Wang Dashan already waiting with his powerful fur-wrapped bow, three quivers of arrows, and a heavy trail-clearing blade strapped to his back.

That gear probably weighed eighty jin altogether, yet Wang Dashan carried it as though it weighed nothing.

After all, he had trained his external body-hardening arts to the point that they reached inward. His physical strength was truly formidable.

Once father and son met up, neither wasted words. They simply nodded to each other, then set off along their usual route into the mountains.

They had laid quite a few traps along this route, so they might pick up some small game on the way.

A hunting trip into the mountains took at least three to five days, and this game would be just right to bring along for their meals.

Although Wang Qi was only sixteen this year, he had been accompanying Wang Dashan into the mountains to hunt since he was ten, so he traveled the route as easily as driving a light cart down a familiar road.

Along the way, Wang Dashan concerned himself only with pressing onward.

Wang Qi, however, would occasionally run off into the distance, slipping nimbly into secluded spots thick with vegetation to check the traps he had laid earlier...

"What's the point of all this? Hunting a wild boar outright would be much simpler."

Wang Dashan's thinking was just that straightforward.

Without even looking at him, Wang Qi replied, "We'd have to find a wild boar first. You don't have to worry about these traps anyway. Isn't it easier to catch game in a trap?"

Just then, the sixth trap he checked finally yielded something... A wild hare had been caught by one leg.

He immediately sliced through the cord around its leg, grabbed it, and tossed it toward Wang Dashan. "Look, we've got meat for tonight."

Wang Dashan caught the hare one-handed as it kicked its legs in midair, then bent a finger and gave it a light flick...

There was a muffled thump, and the hare's head lolled as it passed out.

He then tossed it into the large bamboo basket on his back, adding it to their provisions.

Meanwhile, Wang Qi took out some of the rope he carried, twisted a fine cord from it, and reset the trap. The whole process took less than half a minute; his hands were exceedingly practiced.

That way, they could try their luck for another catch when they returned from the mountains.

Naturally, Wang Dashan disdained this sort of penny-pinching, but Wang Qi had no intention of paying him any heed. He was still growing, and he had no desire to end up underdeveloped.

Besides, however scornful Wang Dashan looked now, come mealtime he would inevitably decide it was delicious. There had never been an exception.

Wang Qi continued checking his traps. Here on the outskirts of the mountain forest, little traps like these were their only way to catch some game.

His luck was good this time, and he found a pheasant in another trap... Tonight's dinner was looking promising.

After handing the pheasant to Wang Dashan, Wang Qi reset the trap once more.

Then he spotted some little mushrooms growing beneath a nearby tree... He might as well gather those too.

In any case, whenever he saw something edible, he would collect a little... Perhaps it had something to do with all the wilderness survival shows he had watched sixteen years ago.

He had no desire to experience the sort of ordeal where, no matter where you went, you first had to go hungry for three days.

On the first day, they traveled at this fairly comfortable pace until the sky began to darken, then arrived at a little cabin tucked beside a mountain stream, where they intended to spend the night.

This was their usual route into the mountains, and to hunt large animals, they had to venture deep into the mountain forest.

In fact, the little cabin beside the mountain stream had been built on one of their previous trips, after Wang Qi had dragged Wang Dashan into it through endless coaxing and pestering.

Originally, every trip into the mountains meant eating in the wind and sleeping beneath the dew for four or five days, which had been rather miserable for Wang Qi when he was little. Now they effectively had a "forward base," where they could sleep soundly for a night before truly entering the deep mountains and ancient forest. Naturally, that was a great comfort.

What was more, Wang Qi had gathered plenty of wild food along the way, so their night in the cabin promised to be very comfortable.

He lit a piece of foul-smelling wormwood and tossed it into the cabin to smoke out the mosquitoes and other insects first. Then he took the basket of their haul down to the mountain stream to clean and prepare it.

Wang Dashan did not do such things. While Wang Qi was busy, he gathered some mats of turf and climbed onto the cabin roof to make a few simple repairs.

Mountain weather was fickle. Judging by the clouds massing on the horizon, there would probably be rain in the middle of the night.