Chapter 35: A Wild Boar Hunt (Part 1)

Shi Xiaolian cast a long, quiet glance at Mu Mian.

Mu Mian blinked her eyes innocently and flashed a sweet smile.

The next second, they both heard Xu Lele’s voice from the courtyard gate. “What are you guys doing, just sitting here?”

Following behind, Mu Wan called out loudly, “I know! Xiao Mian, are you two playing a game to see who can keep their eyes open the longest? The first one to blink loses!”

Mu Mian nodded with a straight face and declared, “Yes, and I just won.”

Xu Lele looked at her in disbelief. “Sister Mianmian, you actually won? Your eyes are so big, wouldn’t it be harder for you to keep them open?”

Shi Xiaolian, who had no idea when she had lost: “……”

Was that a dig at her?

She had double eyelids, okay!

Mu Mian couldn’t help but laugh at Xu Lele’s blunt remark. She leaned closer to Shi Xiaolian’s ear and whispered with a chuckle, “Kids don’t filter what they say. You know how Lele is.”

Of course, Shi Xiaolian wouldn’t hold it against a real child.

But Mu Mian was different. So, she could hold grudges against her.

As a result, when they played the beanbag throwing game, Shi Xiaolian took every chance she could to aim at Mu Mian.

Mu Mian dodged most of them with her quick reflexes.

As the saying goes, “Courtesy demands reciprocity.”

When it was Mu Mian’s turn to throw, she also targeted Shi Xiaolian, leaving the other girls silently watching.

Xu Lele, always speaking her mind, sounded genuinely puzzled. “Did you two get into a fight while we weren’t here?”

Mu Mian shook her head. “No.”

The other girls clearly didn’t believe her. Xu Lele, in particular, looked just like her mother as she spoke in a serious, lecturing tone.

“If there’s a problem, you should talk it out. Getting mad won’t solve anything. Life still has to go on, doesn’t it?”

Her solemn demeanor, her worried expression as she tried to mediate—she was basically a miniature version of Liu Guizhi.

Kids acting like adults were the most amusing.

Mu Mian felt her heart melt from the cuteness and reached out to pinch Xu Lele’s cheeks. “How are you so adorable?”

Xu Lele pouted and pushed Mu Mian’s hand away with a serious look. “I’m being serious, Sister Mianmian. Don’t interrupt me!”

Mu Mian played along and admitted, “Okay, okay, my bad. But really, Shi Xiaolian and I didn’t fight.”

Xu Lele turned to Shi Xiaolian suspiciously. “Really?”

Shi Xiaolian nodded silently. “Mm, we didn’t fight.”

She had just been given a one-sided lesson, that’s all.

Some people might look cute and innocent with their big eyes and thick brows, but deep down, they were actually black sesame-filled dumplings who loved to swindle others.

She understood now.

To prove they truly hadn’t fought, the two of them finally stopped targeting each other when throwing the sandbags.

Xu Lele was having a great time playing while feeling quite pleased with herself. She was convinced that her Sister Mianmian and Shi Xiaolian must have had a fight.

And yet, they still wouldn’t admit it!

Hmph, she saw through them at a glance!

Now that they had made up, it was definitely because… of whatever she just did.

What was that word again? Her mom often said it.

Oh, right—mediation! She was good at mediation!

When she grew up, she would take over her mom’s job. In the future, if anyone had a quarrel, she would surely be able to mediate and resolve it!

The innocent little girl had already mapped out her future.

They didn’t play beanbag for too long. Kids of their age all had to help out at home. For example, Mu Wan and her friend Fang Fang sometimes even had to take on the responsibility of cooking for their families.

Mu Mian didn’t need to cook since her grandmother handled the kitchen, but she still had to help out.

—

That night, when the world was quiet, Mu Mian lay alone in bed, carefully thinking over what Shi Xiaolian had said. The plan was highly feasible.

Besides, it wasn’t particularly dangerous. That place was near the deep mountains, but not exactly in them.

Bears and tigers were unlikely to venture down. Even if they took a step back, it was still uncertain whether such creatures even existed in the deep mountains.

The adults always used these tales to scare children, saying there were bears in the mountains, but no one had actually seen one.

There was no rush, though. They still had a few days left before next week.

During this time, Mu Mian finished her picture book completely and just needed to find an opportunity to send it out.

She also went with Shi Xiaolian to scout the area and finally saw the two crooked trees that everyone in the village had heard about.

They really did look like a gateway.

No wonder Shi Xiaolian could remember them so clearly even after a second chance at life. Landmarks as distinctive as this weren’t common.

—

On Friday morning, the two of them secretly went up the mountain again.

Shi Xiaolian brought a large iron shovel from her house, while Mu Mian carried a sickle to carve wood.

Digging a pit was hard work, but Mu Mian had no shortage of strength. After working through most of the morning, they barely managed to get it done.

Before leaving, they also marked the two trees nearby. This was meant as a warning for others.

It was common practice to leave marks near deeper traps, and Mu Mian had already spotted two on her way up. She had no idea who had dug those.

The day passed quickly, and soon it was Saturday noon.

With something on her mind, Mu Mian ate much faster than usual. As soon as she finished, she put down her bowl, wiped her mouth, and was ready to dash out.

Liu Shuangcui asked, “Where are you going in the middle of the day?”

Mu Mian answered without even preparing a lie, “I’m going to find Shi Xiaolian. She wrote some something again, and I’m helping her check it.”

Liu Shuangcui didn’t ask any further. The two little girls were both promising, and it was nice that they got along.

Mu Mian slung her small basket on her back. Inside, she had hidden an old butcher knife that her father had discarded.

The knife wasn’t abandoned because it was dull or chipped. It was simply because Mu Fugui had gotten a newer, more comfortable one, so he stopped using this one.

Sometimes, they used it to chop firewood. Other times, it was for cutting vegetables. Mu Mian had even taken it up the mountain before.

She brought it again today. If everything went smoothly, they might need it later.

After leaving home, instead of heading to Shi Xiaolian’s house as she had said, Mu Mian went straight toward the cornfield at the foot of the mountain.

When she arrived, Shi Xiaolian was already waiting.

The two didn’t rush up the mountain right away. Instead, they sat nearby for a while, just in case the wild boar hadn’t fallen into the trap and had instead come down to wreck the cornfield.

Shi Xiaolian had mentioned before that the boar was a young female, weighing just over a hundred pounds.

A boar of that size didn’t intimidate Mu Mian. She might not be able to kill it outright, but she could definitely drive it away.

If she did that, Shi Xiaolian could run to call for help, at least saving the cornfield.

As it turned out, their concerns were unnecessary.

They sat under the shade until it was almost time for the afternoon work shift, but the wild boar never showed up.

Mu Mian pushed herself up from the ground and said, “Let’s go. It must be caught. Let’s check it out.”

Shi Xiaolian quickly got up to follow.

When they huffed and puffed their way up to the two crooked trees, Mu Mian spotted something from a distance. The dried branches and leaves covering the trap were gone, which meant something had definitely fallen in.

Excited, Mu Mian grabbed Shi Xiaolian’s hand and ran forward.

Once they got closer and saw what was inside the pit, both girls froze for a second.

Mu Mian took a deep breath. This time, it was her turn to use a somber tone.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, before finally asking, “This is the young female boar you were talking about?”

Shi Xiaolian hadn’t expected this either and was momentarily speechless.

At the bottom of the pit lay a large, muscular wild boar with long, sharp tusks.

Judging by its size and tusks, this was undoubtedly a fully grown male boar—one on the bigger side, too.

After a few seconds, Shi Xiaolian spoke with certainty, “I really remember it being a young female.”

She was sure she hadn’t mistaken it. She had seen it herself when the pigs were divided.

Almost as soon as Shi Xiaolian finished speaking, Mu Mian narrowed her eyes and pointed down. “There’s another one underneath. It’s blocked from view.”

Shi Xiaolian moved over and looked down.

Sure enough, the one beneath matched the young female she had remembered.

Mu Mian grinned. “Well, that’s an unexpected bonus.”

Though, this bonus was a bit heavier than expected.

Mu Mian rolled up her nonexistent sleeves and pulled out a pig-slaughtering knife from her small basket. “Time to get to work!”

She followed the opening they had left earlier and slid down. The two wild boars were already dead, but they were still bleeding.

They needed to be dragged into the small cave later. Leaving a trail of blood along the way would not be ideal.

They also could not just leave the boars here. It was safer to move them to the cave.

For one, if she let her father come here directly, he might realize that she and Shi Xiaolian were the ones who had dug the trap. If he asked how they knew in advance that wild boars would pass through, they would have no way to explain.

Secondly, her father would not be back until evening.

If the wild boars were left here all afternoon, the scent of blood might attract who knew what.

On top of that, if her father wanted to keep things low-key, he would have to come up the mountain at night.

That would be far too dangerous.

The small cave was different. It was located halfway up the mountain, where there was nothing too dangerous—at most, just some wild rabbits or pheasants.

After sliding down and steadying herself, Mu Mian raised the knife and made a few swift cuts at the necks of the wild boars. Fresh blood gushed out even faster. The more it drained, the easier it would be to move them.

Her skilled movements left Shi Xiaolian, who was standing above, completely stunned.

Shi Xiaolian shrank her neck, her eyes widening slightly as she twitched at the corners.

As expected of a butcher’s daughter, her technique was so practiced that it seemed like she had slaughtered countless pigs before.

Mu Mian, of course, had never actually done it. But having a chatty father had its benefits.

When it came to butchering, Mu Fugui had explained the process at home at least seventy or eighty times, if not a hundred.

She had heard it so many times that she had practically memorized it.

While waiting for the blood to drain, Mu Mian pulled out the spears one by one and tossed them aside. This kind of trap could only be used once. There probably would not be another chance to do this again.

Not wasting a single moment, she turned to Shi Xiaolian. “Throw me the rope.”

Thankfully, they had brought a long enough rope, or tying up the boars would have been impossible.

Since there were two of them, Mu Mian had to put in a great deal of effort to secure them properly.

Shi Xiaolian, on the other hand, took care of covering up the trap to prevent the scent of blood from spreading too much.

Mu Mian then crouched down and tied the two boars together. They had to be tied tightly, or they would be difficult to drag.

If there had only been one boar weighing around a hundred pounds, she could have simply lifted it and walked away with ease.

But with two of them weighing several hundred pound combined, carrying them was out of the question. Dragging them was the only option, and it would save a lot of energy.

A moment later, everything was set.