Peak C stood at the very center of Yaluo Mountain, and He Yi had never set foot there before. In fact, not only He Yi, but most people in Chongzi Village had never ventured so deep into the mountain’s interior.
Their destination, however, was not even Peak C. They were heading farther north toward Peak D, where towering peaks and steep ridges crowded together around a water source. Wild goats gathered and lived there.
The distance was extraordinary. He Yi, the snow leopard, and Xu Peng spent roughly four hours climbing mountains and crossing streams before they finally made it across Peak C’s high ridges and deep ravines.
The farther north they went, the harder it became to find level ground. Even ordinary slopes were rare. They were either climbing nearly straight upward or scrambling almost straight down. The terrain was so rugged and utterly devoid of human traces that it felt completely untouched. Naturally, there was no path left by anyone who had come before.
He Yi was almost impressed with himself for having lasted this long.
Even Xu Peng, an experienced hunter, was clearly tired, though he showed little of it and kept climbing at a steady pace.
The snow leopard, on the other hand, seemed entirely unburdened. Since the two men could not keep up with it, it had to stop and wait again and again, several times becoming visibly drowsy while waiting for them to catch up.
He Yi kept replaying the conversation from before they set out and regretting why he had insisted on coming.
At the time, Xu Peng had seen how interested He Yi was in hunting. For some reason, he swallowed whatever warning he had been about to give about the difficulty of the journey and instead mentioned that two days earlier he had found a very large pile of fresh droppings deep in the mountain. He suspected they belonged to a tiger. The stench showed the animal had eaten meat recently, so the next few days should be relatively safe. The tiger probably would not come out hunting again so soon.
He Yi had a certain longing for hunting, mixed with a desire to conquer the challenge. He simply could not resist the temptation of experiencing a real hunt. And since Xu Peng had not tried to stop him, he assumed the trip could not be that dangerous. In that respect, he had an instinctive trust in his hunter cousin.
But if he really went, what about the snow leopard?
So He Yi looked toward the snow leopard dozing on the daybed. “Snow Leopard, want to go hunt wild goats? You probably like eating goat, don’t you?”
Xu Peng frowned. “You want it to come too?”
He Yi nodded, then asked the snow leopard again, “Coming?”
Xu Peng had not expected He Yi to ask a leopard for its opinion. Did he truly treat the animal like a person? Unable to hold back, Xu Peng said, “Then we might as well not hunt at all. Either it’ll scare the goats away, or it’ll carry them off itself.” In other words, taking the snow leopard along would amount to making the trip for nothing.
The snow leopard stretched hard, opened its mouth wide with its pink tongue hanging out, and sauntered lazily toward He Yi. Once it reached him, it bobbed its head up and down, then lifted its face and looked directly at him, indicating that it wanted to go too.
He Yi hesitated. Xu Peng had a point, so he wondered whether the snow leopard could hunt on its own while the two of them hunted separately.
“If you think it can manage that,” Xu Peng said woodenly.
The snow leopard continued looking up at He Yi, its round gray-blue eyes full of closeness.
He Yi trusted it, so he answered on its behalf.
Later, Xu Peng gave He Yi a slingshot and five stone pellets. He also fumigated himself with mugwort leaves and brought rope, a short hoe, knives, a longbow, and realgar for repelling snakes. Fully equipped, they headed north.
As they continued northward, the surrounding green visibly thinned out. The mountains grew barer, birds and animals became scarce, and the landscape turned into little more than barren slopes and scattered rock. At most, they found a few shrubs and weeds tucked into sheltered corners.
Xu Peng had warned that they would spend a night in the wilderness. He had not exaggerated. By the time they finally reached the Peak D region, the sky was already dim. When He Yi was then informed that they still could not rest because they first had to dig a shelter, the last taut nerve in his body seemed to snap with a pop.
His mind felt as though someone had put out the fire inside it. The only thoughts left circling were so tired, so dark, so sleepy, so hungry. If the snow leopard had not occasionally nudged him from behind, He Yi suspected he might not even have known he was still conscious and still walking.
They finally found a patch of relatively soft ground. Xu Peng glanced at the half-dead He Yi and prepared to demonstrate how to dig a dugout.
Xu Peng drove the short hoe into the ground, pried up a chunk of earth, and then, sweat running down him, steadily dug out a shallow pit. Once the entrance had been made wide enough, expanding the space beneath was not especially difficult, but it still took time. If they delayed any longer, darkness would fall completely and they truly would not be able to see anything. Xu Peng told He Yi to stop resting and hurry over to dig.
He Yi genuinely had no strength left. In a thread of a voice, he asked the snow leopard whether it could help dig a hole.
The snow leopard lifted its chin with an air that said, Easy, then walked straight to the edge of the pit and began digging alongside Xu Peng. Working together, they soon excavated a hollow about half a person’s depth. After that, they still had to dig sideways until the cavity was large enough for two people to rest inside.
With the snow leopard helping, it took little more than fifteen minutes.
“That’s amazing.” He Yi rewarded the snow leopard by rubbing the soft flesh of its cheeks, but after only a few rubs he ran out of strength. The snow leopard, dissatisfied, nudged his hand.
Finally, Xu Peng moved several thick broken logs over and laid them across the entrance, covering most of it. He pulled leaves and vines over the top as camouflage, and only then was the dugout finished.
Once they crawled inside in the dark, Xu Peng spread two broad leaves on the ground, then took dry grass from the carrying basket and laid it over them as bedding.
He Yi scattered a ring of realgar powder around the entrance and called for the snow leopard. From a nearby tree, it answered with a low growl.
Only then did He Yi feel comfortable climbing down into the dugout. He collapsed onto the bed of dry grass and did not want to move again.
It was pitch-black inside. Suddenly, something struck He Yi on the head, and then he heard Xu Peng ask, “Did I hit you? Don’t sleep yet. Eat something. If you wake up hungry in the middle of the night, I’m not taking care of you.”
“…” He Yi could only prop himself up on one elbow.
Xu Peng later lit a fire near the dugout entrance and boiled a pot of water. He poured some powder of an indistinguishable color into a bamboo tube and gave He Yi another tube. Then he added freshly boiled water and told He Yi to stir it with a peeled twig until it became translucent. Once it cooled a little, it would be ready to eat.
He Yi asked, “What’s this? It’s really thick, and kind of smooth.” It had almost no flavor. It was like drinking starch water.
“Lotus-root starch. Eat it and you won’t get hungry during the night,” Xu Peng replied.
So it really was starch water…
After a night’s rest, He Yi felt that his strength had returned. His arm muscles were still sore and his feet still hurt, but neither was a serious problem. Compared with the day before, he should be more accustomed to the terrain today. He could probably manage.
Early the next morning, before sunrise, the two men and one leopard followed the vegetation in search of water.
Wild goats generally came out to feed at dawn and dusk, then rested on bare rock during the day. The cliffs they chose were so high that even a longbow could not reach them. That meant the hunters’ only opportunity was when the goats came down to drink.
After finding a stream, He Yi sent the snow leopard off toward the other side. They agreed that it could hunt whatever it liked while He Yi and Xu Peng targeted the goats in this area.
The snow leopard nodded and shot away like an arrow loosed from a bow. Apparently accompanying the two men all this way had left it badly pent up, and now it could finally go tear around to its heart’s content.
He Yi watched its agile figure leap away and smiled. Then he returned to Xu Peng and asked what they should do now.
“Watch the wind.”
“Find the downwind side before we approach them?”
Xu Peng glanced at He Yi in surprise. He Yi understood the look and said modestly, “I only know a little.”
“But how do we know which direction the goats will come from?”
“They don’t have fixed resting places. We can only wait until they appear, then move.”
The mountain breeze was extremely faint today, and the leaves alone were not enough to judge its direction. Xu Peng lit a piece of bamboo paper, whose burning scent was barely noticeable, and watched the smoke drift.
“Don’t we need to smear mud on ourselves or cover ourselves in leaves or something for camouflage?” He Yi eagerly suggested, recalling hunting knowledge he had learned from games in his previous life.
Xu Peng looked back at him. “…No. They’re only wild goats. There’s no need to go that far.”
“Okay.” He Yi shut his mouth and continued waiting with his cousin.
After roughly half an hour, five or six adult wild goats really did appear and slowly approach the stream. Two stood watch, one toward the front and one toward the rear, while the others went down to drink first.
Xu Peng gave He Yi a look, and the two bent low and quietly shifted toward the downwind side. They deliberately took a wider route so they would not alarm the herd.
Once they had chosen their shooting positions, He Yi took out a stone pellet and his slingshot. His heartbeat sped up, and nervousness crept in.
Xu Peng instructed, “Don’t aim at the females. Anything else is fine. Pick two. If the first shot misses, switch targets immediately.”
Damn. He Yi had no idea how to tell males from females. Games had never required that sort of distinction. After hesitating, he finally asked, “How do you tell the males from the females?”
Xu Peng paused and reflected on whether he had been placing far too much blind faith in He Yi. Of course it was normal that He Yi would not know. He explained that the males had longer, sharper horns, while the females’ were shorter and less pronounced.
He Yi then selected the two farthest to the right and moved slightly closer to the herd, setting a stone pellet into the sling. Xu Peng aimed at the male farthest to the left. His bow had the greater range, so he remained well behind He Yi, nocked an arrow, and prepared to draw his six-shi longbow.
Elio’s Notes: Here, shi (石) refers to a traditional bow-strength rating, not the bulk measure used earlier for pond mud. Historical values varied, so SL retains the source unit rather than assigning a modern draw weight.
But just as everything was ready, the herd suddenly erupted into chaos and scattered in panic. He Yi almost thought he had accidentally released his shot and frightened them, but when he looked down, the pellet was still sitting plainly in the leather pouch of his slingshot.
Beside him, Xu Peng’s expression turned cold. Calmly, he tracked one of the fleeing goats as it bounded away and loosed his feathered arrow with a whoosh. Unfortunately, the animal’s path twisted too unpredictably. The arrow struck where Xu Peng had anticipated the goat would go, but its actual route veered elsewhere, and the shot missed.
Within only a dozen or so breaths, the goats by the stream had vanished without a trace. Then the snow leopard came racing toward them from the east. He Yi pinched the bridge of his nose helplessly, but before he could even finish sighing, he discovered an enormous swarm of giant hornets boiling after the leopard, thick enough to look almost spectacular.
He Yi could not help shouting, “Snow Leopard, jump into the water!”
Only then did the snow leopard notice them. Hearing He Yi’s voice, it actually changed direction toward the stream and plunged straight in.
The stream was shallow, but the snow leopard seemed almost liquid. It pressed itself as flat as possible, spread all four limbs, and turned into a white puddle submerged beneath the water.
The giant hornets circled over the surface, unable to reach it. Before long, the swarm dispersed.
He Yi, watching from a short distance away, hurried to the stream.
“They’re gone. Get up!”
The snow leopard, buried beneath the water like a flattened snow pancake, blew bubbles with a glub-glub. Then, with a loud splash, it rose to its feet. The moment it reached the bank, it began shaking itself violently.
“Don’t…” He Yi called out too late. Water sprayed from the spinning blur in every direction, splattering all over him faster than he could block it.
Worse still, He Yi heard Xu Peng’s footsteps approaching and felt his heart drop.
Right… Before they set out, he had promised Xu Peng that the snow leopard would not interfere with the hunt. And now exactly that had happened. They had worked so hard to get all the way here, only for the hunt to collapse at the last moment and the prey to escape…
Using the excuse of wiping water from his face, He Yi covered the side of it and exchanged a furtive glance with the snow leopard beside him.