But hard work was the last thing Su Wei feared. He was only worried he might come back empty-handed.
Su Wei carried only an assault pack, containing water, spare ammunition, a waterproof tarp, and a small coil of nylon rope.
His Browning rifle hung diagonally across his chest, his right hand resting loosely on the grip, his knuckles slightly white from the cold.
"Let's go."
He murmured the words and headed back into the spruce forest with Cotton Candy.
The path was familiar; it was the same one he had taken yesterday.
A night of wind and snow had buried yesterday's tracks beneath a fresh layer.
Su Wei hadn't activated the Hunting Module's tracking assistance. The feature could only follow the tracks of a single prey animal.
And he had to bind it manually.
On the journey, rather than during the hunt,
it wasn't much help in practice.
For now, he relied on the tracking skills in the original owner's memories and his own excellent sense of direction.
Cotton Candy was clearly more of a professional than he was.
The little one's nose nearly touched the snow, twitching rapidly as Cotton Candy carefully picked apart the scents.
From time to time, Cotton Candy stopped to work out the direction of a scent, then darted decisively a few steps ahead and looked back at Su Wei with ice-blue eyes.
The snow on the mountain trail was deep. You never knew whether your next step would land on solid ground, a slippery rock, or a hole hidden under the snow.
Su Wei lowered his center of gravity and used the entrenching shovel in his hand as a walking stick, constantly probing the path ahead.
His stamina drained much faster than expected.
The Life Module's fatigue recovery bonus worked very well while he was resting and had been a tremendous help on this wilderness expedition.
But during such strenuous travel, it was completely useless.
After all, it was a logistics module.
Burning beads of sweat seeped from his forehead and ran past his temples, where the cold wind instantly turned them bone-chillingly cold.
Su Wei wiped the sweat from his forehead from time to time, breathed out a cloud of white mist, and checked whether he was on the right route.
More than forty minutes later, Su Wei finally returned to the foot of the gentle slope where he had buried the venison yesterday.
All was silent around him except for the howl of wind through the treetops.
There wasn't the slightest smell of blood in the air.
The temperature, at least twenty degrees below zero, kept the venison from spoiling and masked the smell of blood.
Su Wei breathed a sigh of relief.
Without the smell of blood, the chances of attracting a large predator were slim.
He strode over to the stones he had used as markers and swung his entrenching shovel to begin digging.
The loose snow on the surface gave way at a touch.
But the snow beneath it was mixed with dirt and had long since frozen into solid ice.
The metal edge of the shovel struck the frozen ground with a dull thud, leaving only a shallow white mark.
Su Wei had expected as much.
He lowered his center of gravity, steadied his breathing, and put his full weight behind his arms.
Then he aimed the tip of the shovel at the same spot and drove it down hard, again and again.
He began mechanically repeating the tedious motion.
Cotton Candy seemed unable to understand why he was picking a fight with the frozen ground and paced anxiously nearby.
Su Wei couldn't spare the attention. Head down, he kept driving the tip of the shovel into the same spot, again and again.
Finally, after blow upon blow, he pried up a large chunk of frozen earth.
Beneath it lay the sheets of birch bark he had used to wrap the meat yesterday.
Su Wei's heart suddenly raced. He threw down the shovel and clawed away the loose dirt and ice chips with his bare hands.
He lifted the birch bark away intact.
The neatly stacked cuts of venison beneath it came into view.
A layer of white frost covered the meat. It was frozen rock-hard, but still deep red, with no sign that anything had disturbed or gnawed at it.
"Phew..."
A hot breath escaped Su Wei's mouth and condensed into a cloud of white mist in the air.
He could finally put his mind at ease.
The meat was safe.
Su Wei immediately took the waterproof tarp out of his assault pack, spread it open, and moved the frozen cuts of venison onto it one by one.
Hind leg meat, ribs, shoulder meat... By a rough estimate, there were at least thirty or forty pounds.
He carefully wrapped all the meat in the tarp, tied it into a bundle with nylon rope, swung it onto his back, and secured it with a long rope slung diagonally across his body.
The enormous weight made him sink and nearly brought him to his knees.
"Let's go home."
He spoke to Cotton Candy, his voice a little hoarse from exhaustion.
The journey back was ten times harder than the way there.
The irregularly shaped bundle of meat on his back weighed dozens of pounds and completely threw off his balance.
Bent almost double, he shuffled toward camp, slipping with every step.
Several times his feet slid out from under him, and he only avoided falling by jamming his entrenching shovel firmly into the snow.
Cotton Candy could see he was struggling too. No longer running around playfully, Cotton Candy followed quietly at his heels without falling a step behind.
By the time the camp's conspicuous orange tent finally came back into view, Su Wei felt that his legs had gone numb, with no feeling left in them.
He heaved the bundle of meat off beside the sled, then leaned against the pile of supplies, gasping for breath.
It took five minutes before he could barely catch his breath.
The experience made him all the more certain.
The next time he went up the mountain, he had to be thoroughly prepared!
In fact, he had been well prepared this time too.
Not only had he brought plenty of waterproof tarps and nylon rope, but he had also brought seven or eight waterproof bags to hold portions of his prey's meat and blood.
Unfortunately, plans couldn't keep up with changes.
No one could have expected Su Wei to shoot a deer.
He immediately tucked the newly retrieved bundle of meat into a gap on the sled and used more rope to tie all the cargo down tight.
Looking at the sled loaded with supplies, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
All his haul had been sorted and packed!
With nothing left to worry about, he could think about heading down the mountain.
Su Wei took out his old phone.
The screen lit up, displaying the time.
1:03 p.m.
When Su Wei saw the time, his heart skipped a beat, and his satisfaction vanished in an instant.
It was too late.
Going down the mountain from here would take four hours even empty-handed.
Dragging a sled weighing over two hundred pounds along the difficult mountain trail, even twice as long would be an optimistic estimate.
Eight hours? Ten?
He definitely wouldn't make it before dark.
Travel through the forest after dark, dragging so much fresh meat?
Images flashed through his mind: being surrounded by the eerie green eyes of a wolf pack, or coming face-to-face with a Kodiak brown bear drawn by the scent.
That was suicide.
"I can't leave today."
He spoke to himself, having made his decision.
The first rule of wilderness survival was to put staying alive above everything else.
Greed was the original sin that wasted lives.
He had to cherish his own life.