Two sharp cracks rang out, and two squirrels tumbled from a tree. One of them, its back seemingly broken, struggled to flee, but the quick-eyed Zhao Jun pinned it to the snow with another lead pellet.

Li Baoyu walked over, bled them one by one, and stuffed them into his pocket. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The two continued their search through the woods, but for a full hour after that, they didn’t spot a single squirrel.

Li Baoyu circled around from the east to meet up with Zhao Jun. The first thing he asked was, "You don’t think Elder Bai trapped them all, do you?"

Zhao Jun shook his head. "That’s just how it is with a slingshot," he said. "Those critters have sharp ears. The moment they hear something, they all go into hiding."

Li Baoyu nodded, patting the bag slung over his shoulder. He grinned. "Bagging three today and making over a hundred bucks is good enough for me."

"Yeah," Zhao Jun replied. "And you also cleared out more than ten pounds of their winter stash."

Turns out, in that past hour, they had also raided three squirrel nests. Li Baoyu’s burlap sack now held about fifteen or sixteen pounds of nuts.

"Let’s head back." Seeing the sun climbing higher, Zhao Jun knew it was time to go home. He called out to Li Baoyu, put away his slingshot, and started the walk back.

They headed back the same way they came. Along the way, Zhao Jun remembered something. "We never finished our conversation from earlier," he said. "When do you think those skis will be ready?"

"Don’t know." Li Baoyu thought for a moment before adding, "Probably not until after the New Year."

"The opportunity will be long gone by then!" Zhao Jun was exasperated. He’d wanted to use the wild boar hide to make two pairs of skis so he could take Li Baoyu to High Mountain Foot to trap for Gall.

Gall, as it was called, was Sable fur.

Sables are very particular creatures; they only eat live prey, never carrion.

Therefore, you couldn’t catch them with bait. The only way was in the winter, after heavy snow had covered the high mountains.

You’d go up on skis, find a Sable’s trail, and then, without disturbing the top layer of snow, you’d hollow out a space underneath just big enough for a trap.

Wouldn’t it collapse?

No.

In the Northeast, the weather is brutally cold, and the snow itself freezes.

With enough snowfall, the top layer freezes into a hard crust.

You’d find a Sable’s tracks, clear away the snow beside them, and then carefully hollow out the snow from underneath the tracks. As long as you didn’t touch the frozen crust above, it wouldn’t collapse.

Rats have their runs and snakes have their trails.

A Sable will use the same path over and over, following its own old footprints.

You set a trap in the hollow. When the Sable comes by again, that frozen crust—normally solid—is guaranteed to collapse the moment the animal steps on it.

And just like that, the Sable would fall right into the trap.

That Purple Sable Fur was one of the Three Treasures of the Northeast, worth far more than Squirrel Fur.

Zhao Jun was anxious to make money, but his reasons were different from Li Baoyu’s. ’It’s not that I have anything to spend it on,’ he thought. ’I just want to have a good pile of cash, even if Mom takes it all.’

He was earning this money to have it on hand for Wang Meilan, just in case of an emergency.

But from the looks of it, trapping Gall was off the table for now. By the time the skis were finished, he’d have to wait until next winter to try again.

Zhao Jun remembered it clearly: Wang Meilan was supposed to die suddenly at the end of September, 1987, on her way home from the big market.

At the time, she just said she was having some heart trouble. Being a dutiful son, Zhao Jun had carried her on his back for a ways.

When they reached a bridge, he’d let her sit on the abutment to rest for a moment. But from that rest, Wang Meilan never rose again.

To this day, Zhao Jun still didn’t know what illness had taken his mother. Some people even whispered that if he hadn’t carried her on his back, she might have survived.

Zhao Jun pushed those thoughts aside. Right now, he just wanted to make more money for his mom and find some potent mountain remedies that were good for the heart.

"Baoyu," Zhao Jun said, turning to Li Baoyu, "do you know if anyone has a Deer Antler Key?"

"Huh?" Li Baoyu turned to look at Zhao Jun. "Brother," he asked, "are you planning to dig for Ginseng?"

Zhao Jun wasn’t surprised that Li Baoyu had guessed his motive; the Deer Antler Key was, after all, a tool used for digging Ginseng.

"Yeah. I was thinking, come fall when work slows down, I’ll take you Ginseng-digging."

"Now *that’s* a real money-maker!" Li Baoyu’s eyes lit up at the thought. Unlike Bear Gall, which had to be carefully air-dried, Ginseng was different.

You could sell it the moment you brought it down from the mountains, and it was incredibly valuable.

But then a problem occurred to him. "Brother," he said, "a tool like that is part of a man’s livelihood. No one just lends them out, and you can’t usually buy them, either."

"Then ask around and find someone who can make one."

"Make one?" Li Baoyu stared at Zhao Jun in surprise. "What would we make it out of? We don’t have any deer antlers, do we?"

Zhao Jun shot him a look, only then remembering that the kid had gotten wasted at Zhang Yuanmin’s house the day before yesterday and probably didn’t recall a thing they’d talked about.

Zhao Jun explained, "Didn’t Brother Zhang say he knows how to drug deer? Come spring, we’ll go with him. Then we’ll get our antlers, right?"

"You just focus on asking around for now. See if one of the old-timers knows how to make a Deer Antler Key. We can offer to pay for the labor, of course."

"Oh, right." Li Baoyu agreed, but then immediately asked, "Which Brother Zhang are you talking about?"

"What do you mean, ’which Brother Zhang’? The one at whose house you ate a feast and drank yourself stupid the other day. You’ve already forgotten?"

"Oh, Zhang Big Pants!" It all came back to Li Baoyu. He was about to say more when he suddenly froze, his gaze fixed on a line of tiny footprints in the snow.

Li Baoyu ran forward a few steps and crouched down for a closer look.

"What is it?" Zhao Jun asked as he walked over. It was just a trail of small footprints, and he couldn’t be bothered to examine them closely.

"It shouldn’t be a yellow fox," Li Baoyu muttered. "The tracks are about the size of a Weasel’s, but they weren’t here when we came up the mountain this morning."

That meant the tracks had been made recently.

But Weasels are nocturnal, so it couldn’t have been a Weasel.

Zhao Jun bent over for a quick glance, then patted Li Baoyu on the shoulder. "Let’s go," he said. "Pay them no mind."

From Zhao Jun’s tone, Li Baoyu could tell he’d recognized the animal. He stood up. "Brother, what made these?"

"They’re..." Zhao Jun started to answer, but he was cut off by the faint sound of an animal shrieking. He straightened his back, straining his ears to listen.

Just then, Li Baoyu heard it too. They exchanged a look and started heading down into the gully.

As they made their way down, they saw a roe deer below, leaping frantically from side to side.

Judging by its size, the roe deer must have weighed eighty or ninety pounds, but it was currently surrounded by a pack of small animals.

Roe deer, known for being able to fly across the snow, were creatures that even dogs couldn’t corner in the winter.

And yet today, in this gully, four small animals that looked like Little Foxes—not much bigger than Weasels—had the massive roe deer completely penned in.

They were incredibly fast, much faster than dogs, but still couldn’t match the roe deer’s top speed.

But their teamwork was flawless. Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu watched as the roe deer broke through the encirclement, only for the four small creatures to instantly redeploy. Two gave chase from behind, while the other two took shortcuts from the sides to head it off.

In just over ten seconds, they had the roe deer surrounded once more. Then, the two pursuers leaped onto its body. Their sharp claws dug in, anchoring them firmly as they lunged forward to bite.

One latched onto the nape of the roe deer’s neck, the other onto its soft underbelly.

The roe deer let out a bloodcurdling scream, a mournful, piercing sound that sent a violent shiver down Li Baoyu’s spine.