Zhang Yuanmin mustered all his strength and brought the axe down. If this strike had landed, it would have split the Black Bear’s head in two.

But as the axe swung, its tip struck the tree, embedding itself just above the den’s entrance.

The bottom edge of the axe blade hung just an inch above the back of the Black Bear’s head.

It’s hard enough to pull an axe out when splitting wood along the grain, let alone when it’s buried in a tree.

"Ah! Ah!" Zhang Yuanmin knew this was bad. He yanked with both hands, trying to free the axe, but failed even after two forceful attempts.

But the Black Bear didn’t give him a third chance.

The bear was furious now. It dove headfirst, plunging straight down.

The moment Li Erchen saw the bear coming down, he froze in panic, then instinctively twisted around and bolted.

His flight had a dire consequence: he threw off Zhang Yuanmin, who had been standing on him.

THUD!

THUD!

Two thuds echoed in quick succession—the first was the Black Bear crashing into the snow, the second was Zhang Yuanmin.

The Black Bear scrambled to its feet, and the first thing it saw was Li Erchen.

So, it immediately charged after him.

Li Erchen glanced back and, seeing the Black Bear chasing him, started screaming his head off.

But what good was screaming?

The more he screamed, the more excited the Black Bear became.

The Black Bear closed the distance in a few bounds and swiped down with its paw.

The Bear’s Paw landed right on Li Erchen’s head. By a fluke, as Li Erchen lunged forward, the paw knocked off his dog-skin hat and gouged three deep grooves into the back of his scalp.

The three bloody gashes ran all the way down to the nape of his neck.

Blood gushed out instantly, streaming from the back of his head like three small brooks that couldn’t be stopped.

Li Erchen let out a bloodcurdling scream as the Black Bear tackled him into the snow. He yelled at the top of his lungs, "Big Brother! Big Brother!"

The moment the Black Bear had fallen from the tree, Li Dachen had taken off running. He ran so fast his dog-skin hat fell off, but he paid it no mind, just kept charging blindly forward.

But when he heard his younger brother’s cries for help, Li Dachen gritted his teeth without hesitation and turned back.

At that moment, Zhang Yuanmin also struggled up from the snow.

When he saw Li Dachen fearlessly rushing toward the Black Bear to save Li Erchen, a surge of adrenaline coursed through Zhang Yuanmin. He scrambled over to the large linden tree, snatched up the axe Li Dachen had dropped, and charged after him toward the Black Bear.

The Black Bear had just pounced on Li Erchen and was biting down on his left shoulder. Its teeth tore through the padded cotton jacket, and fresh blood soaked through the cotton and fabric.

Suddenly, the Black Bear sensed someone charging at it. It quickly rose, swatting away Li Dachen’s descending Invasion Blade with a Big Claw. The force sent Li Dachen tumbling, man and blade alike, and he landed flat on his back in the snow.

As soon as Li Erchen felt the weight lift off him, he didn’t care who had come to his rescue; he arched his back and tried to flee.

Blood was still streaming from the back of his head and his shoulder was wounded. He gritted his teeth against the pain but couldn’t manage more than a few steps.

Just then, the Black Bear, having repelled Li Dachen, turned on Li Erchen again. It reached out its Big Claw, grabbed him by the back, and instantly tore through his thick padded jacket.

The Black Bear yanked Li Erchen over and pinned him directly under its hindquarters.

Li Erchen was so terrified he was screaming and wailing. At that moment, Zhang Yuanmin rushed the Black Bear and swung the axe, burying it in the bear’s right side.

If it had been his own large broadaxe from Dandong, that one blow would have surely disemboweled the Black Bear.

But his Mirror-Like Large Axe was still stuck in the entrance of the Black Bear Den.

The axe in Zhang Yuanmin’s hands now was one Li Dachen had brought from home. It was just an ordinary tool for chopping wood and splitting kindling, with mediocre power at best.

Even so, the blow broke three of the Black Bear’s ribs. The bear let out a grunt, rose from on top of Li Erchen, and went after Zhang Yuanmin.

Seeing things had taken a bad turn, Zhang Yuanmin turned and ran.

Just then, Li Dachen, who had been thrown into the snow by the bear, got to his feet and rushed over to help Li Erchen up.

"Erchen, are you okay?"

Li Erchen’s face and head were covered in blood, his shoulder had been savaged by the bear’s bite, and his back was torn up by its claws. Hearing Li Dachen’s question, his lips trembled and his teeth chattered. He was clearly scared witless.

"Let’s go, now!" Li Dachen said without another word, helping Li Erchen forward. He didn’t care where the path ahead led; the Black Bear was behind them, so moving forward was the only right choice.

Right then, the Black Bear couldn’t be bothered with the two of them. It was busy chasing Zhang Yuanmin.

And Zhang Yuanmin? He was running for his life around the bonfire.

After two laps, he saw no sign of the Li Brothers. Zhang Yuanmin yelled his lungs out, but no matter how he shouted, no one came.

In an instant, Zhang Yuanmin’s heart went cold. He cursed himself for being so blind. ’What was I thinking, coming up the mountain to take on a Black Bear’s Den with these two pieces of trash?’

Thankfully, when they were building the fire earlier, Zhang Yuanmin had personally instructed Li Dachen to make the bonfire as large as possible.

With such a large fire, Zhang Yuanmin managed to evade the Black Bear’s pursuit for the first few laps without any trouble.

But by the fifth lap, Zhang Yuanmin was gasping for breath, feeling like he couldn’t run anymore.

But Zhang Yuanmin was a hardened man. He remembered bumping into Zhao Jun before he came here, and how Zhao Jun had told him about his experience fighting a Black Bear with an axe. Steeling himself, Zhang Yuanmin spun around and swung the Large Axe.

The axe swung out and struck the Black Bear dead-on.

But unlike Zhao Jun, who had struck the bear’s head, Zhang Yuanmin’s desperate blow landed squarely on the Black Bear’s shoulder. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

The Black Bear just let out a cry of pain, its pace not slowing in the slightest as it charged straight for Zhang Yuanmin.

Zhang Yuanmin veered aside, leaving the area around the fire. He found a poplar tree and started scrambling up it.

Seeing Zhang Yuanmin climb, the Black Bear seemed to pause for a second, but it quickly placed its paws on the trunk and shimmied up in a couple of movements.

As an old Mountain Runner, Zhang Yuanmin knew better than anyone that having a tree-climbing contest with a Black Bear was a complete joke.

But perhaps he was a mad genius. In that split second between life and death, a brilliant idea popped into his head: lure the Black Bear high up the tree, then jump down.

’The snow on this mountain is thick, anyway,’ he thought. ’If I jump from over three meters up and try to protect myself, I should be mostly okay.’

Zhang Yuanmin’s plan was to jump down and run. By the time the Black Bear climbed back down, he should have already covered a good distance.

He had it all figured out. Once he was down, he’d go after Li Dachen and Li Erchen. After all, the injured Li Erchen couldn’t run fast.

’They screwed me over,’ he thought. ’I’m not going to let them get away with it.’

But what Zhang Yuanmin never expected was that the Black Bear could climb so fast. Before he had even climbed two meters, the bear had already caught up to him.

Just as Zhang Yuanmin was about to jump, the Black Bear grabbed him by the rear. A huge Bear’s Paw yanked down, and he was thrown from the tree.

Coming down from a tree is one thing, but jumping down yourself and being thrown down by a bear are two completely different matters.

Zhang Yuanmin was knocked senseless by the fall. Meanwhile, the Black Bear was slowly, unhurriedly, making its way down the tree.

When a bear climbs a tree, it goes head-up, rear-down. It’s the same when it comes down.

The bear descended slowly, but Zhang Yuanmin was completely dazed from the fall. He used the tree to pull himself up and tried to stumble away.

But when he tried to run forward, his feet wouldn’t cooperate. He wanted to go straight, but his path became an S-curve.

It wasn’t like he was dodging stray bullets; he had just been thrown so hard that he was dizzy, and his vision was blurry.

Just then, when the Black Bear was still over a meter from the ground and about to jump down, a gunshot rang out.

BANG!