The lynx was an agile creature.

It could cross mountains and ridges, climb trees, and scale cliffs with ease.

Once skinned, its body was revealed to be pure sinewy muscle.

Xing San had a rather brutish way of cooking. He took a small hatchet and chopped the lynx into large, bone-in chunks, then put them in a pot of cold water.

When the water came to a boil, Xing San grabbed a large scallion from the bottom of a wooden shelf. He peeled off the outer layer and, without washing it, broke off two sections from the white end with his hands, tossing them into the pot.

After simmering for an hour, the meat was still so tough a chopstick couldn’t pierce it.

It took nearly two and a half hours of simmering before it was finally tender.

Xing San used a skimmer to scoop the meat out of the pot, then ladled cold water from a vat to rinse it. Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu stepped up to help, and the three of them took small knives and began carving the meat off the bones.

As for Xu Changlin, the old man was taking it easy, sitting cross-legged on the kang and eating hardy kiwi.

Hardy kiwis are a type of small, wild kiwifruit, but their skin is smooth, so you don’t have to peel them.

They had a sweet and sour taste. If you waited until after the first autumn frost to pick them, they were even more delicious.

Life wasn’t easy for the mountain folk. They might go an entire year without eating a single apple, making the hardy kiwi the most common fruit they ate.

Of course, getting fresh ones now was impossible. The hardy kiwis Xing San had brought out were ones he’d gathered in the mountains right as winter began.

The fruit had already been frozen then. He’d brought them back and simply buried them in the snow in front of his dugout, only unearthing them by chance today while burying a roe deer.

Xing San carried two handfuls inside and put them in a basin of water. In less than half an hour, the hardy kiwis had softened. They weren’t fully thawed and still had bits of ice inside, but they were sweet, sour, and refreshingly cold—absolutely delicious.

By the time the three of them had carved off all the meat, it filled a basin. But after being bled, skinned, and deboned, with its head, paws, and tail removed, and then blanched, the lynx that had weighed over fifty pounds yielded only about ten pounds of meat.

Xing San followed Xu Changlin’s instructions, adding dried chili peppers to the meat and stir-frying it over high heat.

The meat of wild mountain animals always had a slightly gamey taste, and the lynx was no different. But as Xing San stir-fried it, Zhao Jun and the others caught a whiff of a unique, meaty aroma.

Living in the mountains, Xing San didn’t have many spices. He just poured in a little soy sauce, added a pinch of salt, and served the meat in a large basin.

Xing San placed a large, steaming, fragrant basin of meat on the table. Li Baoyu quickly scrubbed the pot, and Zhao Jun added sorghum to it to cook rice.

They were preparing steamed sorghum rice.

"Come on, fellas!" Xing San called out. He and Xu Changlin were already sitting on the kang, eating and drinking.

Zhao Jun climbed onto the kang and used his chopsticks to pick up a piece of meat. Since Xu Changlin had said to fry it in large chunks, the basin was filled with them, each piece about five or six centimeters long.

"Mmm, smells amazing!" Before Zhao Jun could even take a bite, he heard Li Baoyu exclaim beside him.

Xing San took a sip of his drink and laughed. "First time I’m eating this stuff, too. Gotta say, the flavor’s really something special."

Since they both said it was good, Zhao Jun took a bite. The meat was just as Xu Changlin had described: it flaked like cloves of garlic, similar to the meat along a fish’s spine. The difference was that cooked fish falls apart at the slightest touch, whereas this meat was incredibly firm.

Zhao Jun chewed slowly. Xing San had used plenty of chili peppers, which masked most of the gamey flavor, but they couldn’t hide a faint sourness in the meat itself.

It was sour, spicy, and fragrant with the scent of meat. The four of them gathered around the large basin, heartily eating their fill.

After eating and drinking their fill, they extinguished the kerosene lamp and went to sleep.

The next morning, Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu were huddled around the mud stove, toasting dumplings. Xing San pulled a small, square-folded piece of paper from the pocket of a gray cloth shirt hanging on the wall by the kang. He handed it to Zhao Jun. "This is the recipe. Take a look."

Zhao Jun unfolded it. Neatly written on the paper were a dozen or so medicinal ingredients, each followed by its corresponding dosage.

One look at the handwriting told Zhao Jun that this recipe wasn’t written by an ordinary person.

He committed the recipe to memory and handed it back to Xing San, who climbed onto the kang and tucked the paper back into his shirt pocket.

After Xing San got down from the kang, he grabbed a box from the wooden shelf. He took out a matchbox, opened it to check that it was full of medicine, and then handed it to Zhao Jun.

Zhao Jun thanked Xing San. After eating some toasted dumplings and gruel in the dugout, he and Li Baoyu said their goodbyes and left.

They left the dugout just after seven. Without Xu Changlin, the two of them made good time, arriving at the village entrance before nine o’clock.

Watching their four dogs run into the village, Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu didn’t head home. Instead, they walked straight to the station.

They had been at the station for no more than three or five minutes when the small train slowly pulled in.

The two boarded the train, found a corner in the carriage to wait until their stop, and after getting off, they headed straight for the state-run store.

It was the same store, with the same two long tables and the same two employees from their last visit.

The only difference was that today, several people were standing in front of the tables, waiting to sell their pelts.

An old man with a goatee took rolls of Yellow Leaves from a hemp sack. One employee counted them while the other recorded the sale and paid out the money.

The old man took the money, stuffed it into the inner pocket of his cotton-padded jacket, and walked out, beaming.

As soon as the old man left, a man in his forties stepped forward and took out mostly Yellow Leaves, but also a few gray pelts.

He took his money and also left.

After they left, the only person at the tables besides Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu was a man in a blue cotton-padded jacket, holding a small satchel.

"Back again?" the male employee behind the table greeted him. The two seemed to be well acquainted.

The man smiled, took a small cloth pouch from his satchel, and poured out two air-dried Bear Galls, handing them over.

The male employee took the Bear Galls and glanced at them, then handed them to the female employee beside him. The female employee took the Bear Galls with one hand and took a small plastic box from her desk drawer with the other.

Opening the plastic box, the female employee took out a balance scale and placed it on the long table.

She picked up one Bear Gall, placed it on one side of the scale, and then began fiddling with the weights.

Once the scale balanced, she removed the Bear Gall, pulled a piece of paper from the table behind her, wrote down the Bear Gall’s weight, and then placed the Bear Gall on that piece of paper.

Then, she weighed the other one, following the same procedure.

After weighing the Bear Galls, the female employee grabbed another piece of paper and did some multiplication. Once she had the result, she told the owner, "For the two Bear Galls, it’s three thousand one hundred and eighty."

"How much?"

"How much?"

The two exclamations of "How much?" came from two different people. One was from the owner of the Bear Galls; the other was blurted out by Li Baoyu, who had been watching from the side.

The owner’s voice was quiet, but Li Baoyu’s was anything but. His sudden outburst startled the other three people.

Seeing the two clerks and the Bear Gall owner staring at him, Li Baoyu didn’t shrink back. He asked directly, "What kind of Bear Galls are those? So expensive? When my uncle came to sell his, why didn’t you offer him such a high price?"

It was no wonder Li Baoyu was kicking up a fuss. The year before last, when Zhao Youcai had come to sell a Bear Gall, even a Copper Gall hadn’t fetched a price this high.

Plus, seeing that the male employee and the gall’s owner seemed to be acquaintances, Li Baoyu couldn’t help but let his imagination run wild.

Li Baoyu was tall and imposing with a booming voice, and his accusation momentarily stunned the two employees.

The Bear Gall’s owner was also a bit stunned, not by Li Baoyu’s outburst, but by the price.

He was heard asking, "When did Black Bear galls get so valuable?"

"The price just went up three days ago," the male employee, who had snapped out of his daze, replied.

The female employee to the side shot Li Baoyu a fierce glare, then asked the Bear Gall owner again, "These two, three thousand one hundred and eighty. Are you selling or not?"

"Selling! Selling!" the Bear Gall owner nodded hastily.

Hearing his confirmation, the female employee took one of the Bear Galls, along with the paper it was sitting on, and used that very paper—the one with the weight written on it—to wrap it up.

She did the same with the other one.

Meanwhile, the male employee took four stacks of ten-yuan banknotes from his drawer. He placed three stacks in front of the man and counted out another eighteen bills from the fourth stack.

Handing the eighteen banknotes to the owner, the employee said, "Make sure you count it."

"Right, right." The owner took the money and began to count it clumsily, an unstoppable grin spreading across his face.

It was all his money, so the male employee didn’t care how he counted it. He just asked Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu, "What are you two selling?"

Zhao Jun nudged Li Baoyu, whose eyes were glued to the man counting his money. The kid hadn’t even heard what the employee asked him.

Startled by the nudge, Li Baoyu turned to Zhao Jun with wide eyes. "What is it, Brother?"

"Take out the pelt."

"Right." Li Baoyu fumbled in his satchel to pull out the roll of Lynx Fur Xu Changlin had given them and handed it to the male employee.

The male employee saw that the item was wrapped in cloth. He untied the string and, upon opening the cloth, was suddenly stunned.

"A Lynx!" Being a city dweller, the employee didn’t call it by the colloquial "tiger cub," but used its proper name.

When he shouted "Lynx!", the female employee sitting to the side immediately stood up, came over, and reached out to take it, saying, "Let me see."

It wasn’t just her. The man counting his money stopped cold, his eyes now glued to the Lynx Fur just as Li Baoyu’s had been to the cash a moment before.

The female employee took the tube-rolled Lynx Fur and spread it out on the table. A complete, perfectly preserved, and dry Lynx Fur lay before them.

Seeing the two employees just looking at and touching the pelt without saying a word, Li Baoyu asked, "What’s wrong? Are you buying it or not?"

As soon as Li Baoyu said this, the male employee looked up at him. He was silent at first, but then quickly nodded repeatedly. "We’ll take it, we’ll take it!"

After speaking, he turned and took a measuring tape from the drawer. With a sharp ZIIIP, he extended it and began measuring the Lynx Fur’s length and width on the table.

After he finished measuring, the employee jotted down the dimensions on a piece of paper. Then he said to Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu, "You two wait here a minute. I need to make a phone call."

With that, he turned and walked toward the back, where there was another room.

A short while later, the male employee returned. As soon as he came back, he said to Zhao Jun, "Three thousand two hundred. You selling?"