Chapter 35 – Severed Head and Body

When Wen Lan got up from the ground, Xuan Yue was already walking out of the forest.

“Big Brother, wait for me!” Wen Lan hurried to catch up, worried that the hunter would walk too fast and leave her behind.

What if another wild boar showed up in the forest?

But she hadn’t even taken two steps when the pain in her backside made her legs go weak. She stumbled and fell flat on her face.

Her face landed right at Xuan Yue’s feet, and the pine mushrooms in the basket on her back spilled all over her. She looked utterly disheveled.

In the end, Xuan Yue didn’t harden his heart and walk away. He turned around and looked down at the mess that was Wen Lan.

After a long moment, he sighed.

“You… Why are you always like this?”

Then he bent down, grabbed the basket on her back, and pulled her to her feet.

Seeing that he was willing to help her up, Wen Lan didn’t fuss about the scrapes on her knees and elbows. She gave him a goofy smile and thanked him sweetly.

Xuan Yue didn’t respond. He just looked down at the mushrooms scattered on the ground.

Wen Lan quickly bent down to pick them up.

Soon, she had them all gathered back into the basket and slung it over her shoulder again.

Only then did Xuan Yue start walking forward once more.

As they passed by the wild boar’s body, Wen Lan asked, “Aren’t we taking this prey back?”

“Too heavy,” Xuan Yue replied without stopping. He walked back to where he had been standing earlier and picked up two pheasants from the ground.

“But this wild boar is huge. Wouldn’t it be such a waste to leave it here?” Wen Lan said, already calculating in her head how much silver a boar like that might fetch at the market.

But Xuan Yue remained unmoved. He pulled his knife from the ground, clearly intending to leave the boar behind.

Wen Lan felt pained. She was broke and constrained in every way, and now there was such a great opportunity to make some money—how could she just let it go to waste?

She was unwilling.

“Hunter Big Brother, how about you carry the basket for me, and I’ll drag the boar down the mountain?”

“You?” Xuan Yue looked her up and down. By his estimate, she probably didn’t even weigh as much as the boar. And she thought she could drag it down the mountain with that small body?

“We already have pheasants,” he said, hoping to squash her idea.

“But pheasants don’t have nearly as much meat as a boar. We can’t throw away a watermelon just to pick up sesame seeds. Come on, help me lift it onto my back, I’ll carry it down.”

Xuan Yue stared at her for a long while.

In the end, he seemed to give in. He bent down, sliced open the boar’s carotid artery to drain the blood, then lifted its hind legs and handed it to Wen Lan.

Wild boars in the mountains weren’t very large. Though their tusks were intimidating, they only weighed around seventy or eighty jin (35–40kg) at most. After the blood was drained, the weight wasn’t that much.

Wen Lan thought she could manage it.

But the moment the hunter placed the boar on her back, her legs felt like they were filled with lead. It was hard to take even a single step.

“Can you manage?” Xuan Yue asked.

“Yes,” Wen Lan answered, barely holding it together.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Xuan Yue let go entirely.

Wen Lan immediately felt like she was carrying a mountain.

Her back hunched, her legs shook, and each step was a painful effort.

Xuan Yue shook his head. He took the boar back from her, raised his knife, and chopped off its head in one swift motion.

Then he handed the now headless boar back to Wen Lan.

Wen Lan refused.

Just now, carrying the whole boar down the mountain was like hauling a bundle of goods. But now that the hunter had cut off its head, carrying it felt eerily like lugging around a headless corpse.

Just the thought of it gave her the chills.

“I’m kind of scared,” Wen Lan said, pointing to the boar’s severed head. “Do you think it’ll come to us in a dream tonight, saying we separated its body and head?”

“You can carry the body in one hand and the head in the other.”

Oh my god. What kind of suggestion was that?

Was he a devil?