As Li Baoyu was leading four dogs toward Yongsheng Village, Zhao Jun had just finished breakfast at the Zhou Family residence and was playing with his little nephew on the heated kang bed.

Just then, Wei Lai suddenly showed up.

He headed straight for the north room to see Zhao Jun. "Brother, playing with the kid?"

"Hmm?" Zhao Jun paused, thinking, ’Why is this guy here again?’

He had only told Li Baoyu to bring the dogs over yesterday. If Li Baoyu was arriving at Yongsheng Village today, the earliest he’d get here was noon. That meant any trip up the mountain would have to wait until tomorrow.

But Wei Lai seemed to have other ideas. He said to Zhao Jun, "Brother, the day we went deer hunting, I noticed you didn’t have any dogs with you, and your Spear Technique is quite good. Why don’t the two of us take a trip up the mountain today? If we can manage to track down that wild boar, it’ll save us the trouble tomorrow, won’t it?"

Zhao Jun sized up Wei Lai, sensing the man was up to something, but he didn’t refuse.

"Alright, Brother Wei. Let me get my things."

Hearing Zhao Jun agree, Wei Lai’s face lit up. "You get ready, brother. I’ll go home and grab my gun."

With that, Wei Lai headed out. Zhao Jun picked up his little nephew and went to the west room.

In the west room, Zhao Chun and Hu Sanmei were sewing a quilt. With Li Baoyu coming today, they needed to prepare a set of bedding for him.

Zhou Jianjun sat at the edge of the kang, making small talk with his mother and wife.

The three of them didn’t think much of it when Zhao Jun entered, because Wei Lai had only told them he was there to ask Zhao Jun about the hunting dogs.

Hu Sanmei and Zhao Chun were busy with their sewing, and Zhou Jianjun wasn’t particularly interested in hunting dogs, so they had let Wei Lai go in by himself.

Seeing Zhao Jun come out with the child, Zhou Jianjun just smiled. "Xiaojun, come on over. Sit and chat for a bit."

"Can’t." Zhao Jun placed the child in Zhou Jianjun’s hands. "Brother Wei asked me to go up the mountain. I’m just getting my things, then I’m heading out with him."

The three of them were taken aback. Zhao Chun quickly asked, "Aren’t you waiting for Baoyu to bring the dogs? Why are you going today?"

"He said he wanted to go scout it out."

Hu Sanmei, who was nearby, motioned to Zhou Jianjun. "Son, hurry and give the baby to me. You go with them."

"Alright." Zhou Jianjun handed the child back to Hu Sanmei. He then pulled two pairs of leg wrappings from the kang-side cabinet and passed one to Zhao Jun.

Zhao Jun took the wrappings and looked at Zhou Jianjun. "You don’t even hunt, brother-in-law. What are you coming for?"

Before Zhou Jianjun could reply, Hu Sanmei cut in. "Let your brother-in-law go with you. He’s got nothing better to do at home."

Once Zhao Jun and Zhou Jianjun were ready, Wei Lai returned to the Zhou Family’s home. The three of them set out together, leaving the village and heading straight for Little Gu Mountain.

Little Gu Mountain, true to its name, was neither large nor tall.

It was just a solitary peak, standing alone.

The three men made their way to the spot where Wei Lai’s hunting dog had been injured. As soon as Zhao Jun saw the hoofprints the great loner had left in the snow, he knew this boar was a big one.

Zhou Jianjun took everything in with curiosity. He was intrigued by the tracks left by the boar and the dogs, and also by the dried, frozen bloodstains on the snow.

The trio followed the boar’s tracks. After about half a kilometer, the dog tracks vanished, leaving only the massive hoofprints of the boar itself.

By this point, Zhao Jun had a basic grasp of the mountain’s topography. There were few steep inclines; it was mostly rolling hills and gentle ridges.

And it was incredibly dense.

"Dense," in this case, meant there were few open spaces. The entire mountain was covered in secondary growth, a forest without large trees, filled instead with spindly branches.

Where the forest thinned, thorny bushes dominated—things like tiger eye bushes, Siberian crabapple, and spiny aralia.

Such thickets of thorny shrubs were nearly impassable for men and dogs, but they were no obstacle for a wild boar.

’A large boar living in a place like this would be extremely difficult to hunt,’ Zhao Jun thought.

RUSTLE... RUSTLE...

Suddenly, the sound of scraping branches came from the woods to the north. Both Zhao Jun and Wei Lai raised their guns.

But two seconds later, a black dog squeezed out of the trees, followed by five more, one after another, until they were all in front of Zhao Jun’s party.

The dogs weren’t shy around strangers. They saw the men, but instead of barking, they simply turned and melted back into the forest.

"Someone there?" Wei Lai lowered his gun and bellowed.

A voice called back from the woods, "Someone’s here!"

Wei Lai’s heart sank.

He had invited Zhao Jun to hunt the boar specifically to get the reward money. When he’d heard Zhao Jun planned on bringing dogs, Wei Lai had already been hesitant.

With a stalking hunt, he and Zhao Jun would likely split the reward evenly. But in a hunt using dogs, by custom, the owner of the lead dog—which would be Zhao Jun—was entitled to an extra share.

Since all of Wei Lai’s dogs were injured, he’d be lucky to get a one-third share.

That wasn’t what Wei Lai wanted at all. That’s why he had insisted on dragging Zhao Jun up the mountain today—he wanted to kill the boar before any dogs arrived.

He just hadn’t expected another hunter to be in the mountains with dogs. Dogs were, without a doubt, much faster at finding a boar than men were.

’Are the one hundred yuan and fifty jin of food tickets about to be snatched away by someone else?’

As Wei Lai’s mind raced, a man emerged from the forest. He looked to be in his forties, dressed in a relatively new black cotton-padded jacket and trousers, with a No. 32 rifle slung over his back. Six hunting dogs milled around him.

Zhou Jianjun squinted for a few seconds before asking tentatively, "Is that Brother Huang from Lingnan?"

The man didn’t seem to recognize Zhou Jianjun at first either. He stared at him for a moment before it clicked. "Ah, Brother Jianjun."

With that, he started walking toward them, his dogs in tow.