The Entire Mountain Is My Hunting Ground

This was the nature of hunting—full of uncertainty.

Take today, for example. Li Baoyu had led the way, guiding the dogs to an overturned pine and letting them catch the Black Bear’s scent.

But a problem still arose after the dogs gave chase down the mountainside.

Of course, you couldn’t blame Little Bear.

Dogs might be perceptive and understand simple commands, but they weren’t people, after all.

You couldn’t just tell a dog to chase a Black Bear and expect it to *only* chase the Black Bear.

That was impossible.

Hunting dogs typically chased whatever they smelled.

Moreover, during a hunt, if a lead dog caught the scent of two different animals, it would usually choose to pursue the one it preferred to eat.

Just like Hua Xiao’Er and Little Bear. Both lead dogs had chased down from up the mountain.

But once they reached the bottom, Little Bear caught the scent of a wild boar and immediately veered south in pursuit.

Hua Xiao, on the other hand, continued after the Black Bear.

But you couldn’t blame the dogs, nor could you blame Zhao Jun. In his two lifetimes of hunting, he’d never run into a situation like this.

Li Baoyu led Tao Fei, Invasion Blade in hand, and gave chase.

As they ran, the sound of the barking up ahead changed. In the dialect of the Northeast, it was a ’bad bark’—a cry of trouble.

’Damn.’ Li Baoyu had been hunting with Zhao Jun for half a year. The moment he heard that sound, he knew a dog was hurt. ’At the same time, he knew that whatever the dogs had cornered—be it the wild boar or the Black Bear—he wouldn’t be able to handle it alone.’

When he drew closer, he saw four dogs surrounding a wild boar of roughly three hundred pounds.

It was a cannon eggs boar, currently cornered by the four dogs. Its back was arched, its head low, and its pair of tusks gleamed like sharp, polished daggers, honed to a razor-sharp point.

GRUNT! GRUFF... The boar moved first, charging violently at Daqing. Daqing dodged aside, then wheeled around and clamped its jaws onto the boar’s right ear. With a vicious twist of its body, it wrenched the boar’s head to the right.

Before the boar could react, White Dragon lunged in and latched onto its left ear.

"Brother Li, that white dog is hurt!" Tao Fei shouted to Li Baoyu, pointing at White Dragon.

In truth, Li Baoyu had already seen it.

White Dragon was wounded in the shoulder. Blood trickled down its foreleg, over its paw, and between its claws to finally stain the snow beneath.

Working together, the two dogs had the boar in a pincer grip, using their combined strength to force its head down.

Just then, Little Bear and Xiaohua charged in. Little Bear latched onto a hind leg, while Xiaohua went low, trying to bite the boar’s stomach.

With its head pinned to the snow by Daqing and White Dragon, the boar struggled, continuously arching its back. It kept shuffling its feet backward, slowly building up power.

Honestly, if Hua Xiao’Er were here to go for the pair of testicles under the boar’s tail, this boar wouldn’t be escaping today, even without Zhao Jun.

This was why Hunters always said that a dog that attacked from the rear was a boar’s nemesis.

But with Hua Xiao’Er absent, the four dogs could only lock themselves in a stalemate with the boar, a constant tug-of-war in the snow.

"Xiaofei, you hide behind that tree and stay put!" Li Baoyu pushed Tao Fei behind a poplar. "If that boar comes for you, you climb it. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah." Tao Fei nodded frantically. He’d spent the previous day in the mountains with Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu and thought hunting was pretty fun. But now that he was expected to face a wild boar with a blade in his hand, he was terrified.

After getting Tao Fei settled, Li Baoyu prepared to move in. ’Zhao Jun won’t be here for a while,’ he thought. ’I have to help the dogs.’

But he had only taken two steps forward when the boar violently threw its head back. Breaking free from Daqing and White Dragon’s grip, it whipped around and struck.

SMACK!

With a sickening thud, Daqing, who weighed over a hundred and ten pounds, was sent flying. The dog landed hard in the snow.

A huge gash, longer than a hand’s span, now ran up Daqing’s left foreleg from the knee. Flesh was peeled back, and it was bleeding uncontrollably.

On boars of four hundred pounds or more, the tusks start to curve. Curved tusks like those didn’t have this kind of devastating power.

It was only on boars of around three hundred pounds, like this one, that the tusks were as straight and deadly as daggers.

This was what Hunters called a "troublemaker"—the type of boar most dangerous to dogs and men!

Daqing scrambled up from the snow and, without hesitation, charged the boar again.

Daqing might have had poor stamina, a weak nose for trails, and a bite that wasn’t particularly vicious—it wasn’t a top-tier lead dog by any means—but it was undeniably tough.

Grievously wounded, Daqing’s eyes went red with fury.

The boar struck again, goring White Dragon and sending it flying. It then pivoted smoothly to attack Little Bear, who was still latched onto its hind leg.

Little Bear dodged aside. The boar then tried to gore Xiaohua, who was even more agile and darted away.

Though the boar had failed to land a blow on either dog, it now spotted Li Baoyu, who had been trying to circle around behind it.

The instant it saw Li Baoyu, the boar charged him without the slightest hesitation.

Seeing things were going south, Li Baoyu dropped the knife in his hand, spun around, and scrambled up a nearby birch tree in a couple of swift movements.

Seeing the boar go after Li Baoyu, Daqing, White Dragon, and Xiaohua all converged on it from different directions.

Xiaohua’s loyalty was a given. Li Baoyu was its master, and after all this time, the dog had long since accepted him as such.

As for Daqing and White Dragon, Li Baoyu was the one who gutted their kills and fed them their share of the meat after almost every hunt. To them, he was as good as a master.