A sudden voice from behind startled Zhao Jun. He turned to see an old man and a little boy standing behind him.

"Master Xu!" Seeing it was Xu Changlin, Zhao Jun greeted him. He glanced down at the little boy and then smiled at Xu Changlin. "Taking your grandson out for a stroll?"

"Mhm." The old man smiled and grunted in agreement. Holding the child’s hand, he patted him on the head. "He came back with his mom and dad yesterday. I’m just taking him for a little walk around the village entrance."

Xu Changlin’s son and daughter-in-law both worked at the post office in the town down the mountain, so they could only come back for holidays.

The four of them were heading the same way as they entered the village, chatting as they walked.

The old man saw that Zhao Jun was carrying a gun and that he and Li Baoyu were each carrying a pair of boar-hide skis. He asked Zhao Jun, "Fellas, what were you two up to?"

"We set a couple of traps at the foot of High Mountain," Zhao Jun said, not hiding anything. "Trying to see if we can catch a Gall."

Hearing this, Xu Changlin nodded slightly and said with admiration, "You’re really something, fella. You can handle it all, big hunts and small."

At this point, Xu Changlin suddenly changed the subject. "You mentioned something big earlier. What was that about? Did you see something?"

Zhao Jun laughed. "Didn’t see anything, just the tracks of a whole herd of wild boars."

"Herding up now?" The old man furrowed his brow, as if remembering something. But what he said was, "This isn’t the season for them to be herding up."

"Exactly!" Li Baoyu chimed in. "Master Xu, you should have seen it. An entire mountainside was covered in their tracks. There must have been over fifty of them."

As soon as Li Baoyu said this, Xu Changlin stopped in his tracks and lowered his head slightly.

Suddenly, the old man looked up, his gaze fixed on Zhao Jun. "Fella," he asked, "you know something, don’t you?"

Zhao Jun gave a slight smile and said only, "I’m guessing there’s a huge boar."

"So you really do know!" Xu Changlin looked at Zhao Jun in surprise. "Did your grandpa tell you? No, that can’t be, can it?"

Seeing the old man acting so strangely, Li Baoyu, who had been listening in complete confusion, finally couldn’t resist cutting in. "Master Xu, Brother, how big does a boar have to be to be considered ’huge’? And what kind of boar can gather a herd this time of year?"

Xu Changlin stopped, holding his little grandson’s hand. He ignored Li Baoyu’s question and instead asked one of his own, "Where did you see the tracks?"

At the old man’s question, Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu exchanged a glance. Zhao Jun asked, "Why? Master Xu, you aren’t thinking of going after them, are you?"

Li Baoyu laughed. "Master Xu, are you regretting selling your dogs so soon?"

Xu Changlin shook his head. "If there really is a huge boar, dogs would be useless against it."

"Master Xu," Zhao Jun asked, "have you seen one before?"

Xu Changlin frowned in thought, but his memory seemed hazy with age. He said, "About thirty years ago, I think. It was around this same time of year. I took my dogs up the mountain, figuring I’d catch a boar for New Year’s dumplings, and I ran into your grandpa."

"My grandpa?" Zhao Jun asked.

"Mhm." Xu Changlin nodded. "I had my four dogs, and your grandpa had his four. We teamed up that day and headed toward Old Dragon Gully."

"Behind Old Dragon Gully, heading up toward... Forest Class fifty-four, the dogs started baying. Your grandpa and I had only run a few steps when we saw an entire mountainside covered in boars."

As he spoke, Xu Changlin turned to look at the distant mountains, then turned back to the two young men. "There must have been over a hundred of them."

"How many?" Li Baoyu couldn’t help but exclaim.

"Well over a hundred," Xu Changlin said gravely. "It was like they were in formation. The Big Cannon Eggs were on the outside, then a ring of old sows, and inside them were the yellow-haired young. The whole damn mountain was covered in boars!"

What a sight that must have been.

Xu Changlin kept his eyes on Zhao Jun as he continued, "Between the two of us, we had eight dogs. Two of them were Big-headed Dogs, every bit as good as your Huabiao. All eight dogs ran into the herd, but they didn’t even dare to bark. They just did one lap and came right back out."

Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu had no doubt that their dogs back then were exceptional. Zhao Jun’s grandfather and Xu Changlin—Zhao Pao and Xu Pao—were both renowned Cannon Shooters in the region. The hounds they ran would have been nothing but the best.

But for hounds of that caliber to weave through a herd of boars without daring to land a single bite was simply unheard-of.

Xu Changlin gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Your grandpa and I didn’t dare fire a single shot. We just grabbed our dogs, turned tail, and went home."

Eight hounds not daring to attack, two master Cannon Shooters not daring to fire... Normally, such a thing would be completely unbelievable.

"We went back to the village, dropped the dogs at home, and headed straight for the Qin Family’s place." Xu Changlin paused for a moment before continuing, "Elder Qin was still alive then—that’s Qin Qiang’s great-grandfather. We asked the old master what was going on, and he told us there was a Pig God in that herd."

"A what? A what now?" Li Baoyu could hardly believe his ears. He usually had no interest in all that talk about gods and ghosts.

Zhao Jun tugged on Li Baoyu’s sleeve and explained, "It just means a giant boar."

"How giant?" Li Baoyu turned to Xu Changlin. "Master Xu, did you see it back then? How big was that... Pig God?"

Xu Changlin just shook his head. "Those hundred-some boars were circling in layer after layer on the mountainside, like a giant millstone. They were kicking up snow everywhere. We couldn’t see what was in the center."

The four of them reached a fork in the road. Xu Changlin headed west, while Zhao Jun and Li Baoyu went north.

After running around for most of the morning without any lunch, Zhao Jun was starving. He ate the meal Wang Meilan had left for him and lay down on the kang to catch up on sleep.

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he heard dogs barking. Too lazy to get up and check, he simply rolled over and went back to sleep. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He slept deeply for a long time, right until his door was thrown open from the outside. Zhao Jun groggily opened his eyes to see that someone had switched on the light in his room.