Chapter 74

He was still in his usual spot, leaning up against the wall.

Huo Jilin paused. He couldn't explain it either.

He couldn't explain why he needed to lean against Chen Jue to get a good night's sleep.

At first, he'd just moved the small table aside and laid his bedding next to Chen Jue, only able to fall asleep to the sound of his steady breathing. But people always want more—one thing led to another, and he ended up in the same blanket. Chen Jue's blanket was nice and warm.

Huo Jilin tugged at the quilt and coughed. "Maybe it got a little cold in the middle of the night, and it's warmer when we're close, so we just ended up huddled together. See, you're the one who pulled my blanket up."

He made a show of tugging at the blanket on top.

Yeah, right—like there's surveillance footage showing he was the one who pulled the blanket?

Chen Jue wasn't fully awake yet. It wasn't even light outside the window—clearly still way too early. He hadn't slept enough and couldn't be bothered to argue with Huo Jilin, so he shoved him out of the blanket. "Too crowded. Get out."

"Don't push, I'll get out on my own. Watch your belly."

Huo Jilin caught his hand mid-shove and glanced at him. Chen Jue was annoyed, but not angry.

Maybe the warmth of the blanket made him seem less cold than he did in the daylight—his face was all warm and soft. Huo Jilin took a slow breath and let Chen Jue push him out of the blanket.

It was safer to sleep alone in the early morning. Huo Jilin never imagined he'd wake up with thoughts about a pregnant man.

He lay stiff as a board wrapped in his thin blanket for a while, but still couldn't shake the restless urge. He had no choice but to roll over, turning his back to Chen Jue.

Chen Jue, still not having slept enough, kept his eyes closed and snapped: "Can you stop moving around?"

Even though the kang didn't make a sound, he just felt like something was off.

Huo Jilin had no choice but to lie still for a bit. But a moment later, he rolled over and sat up, crawling to the window to look outside. Sure enough, his ears weren't deceiving him—something really was going on. The horse in his yard was stomping around restlessly. Something was wrong.

By now, Chen Jue was completely unable to fall back asleep from all the commotion. Huo Jilin threw on his clothes and got out of bed. "Seems like something's come. Don't fall back asleep—get dressed, lock the door, and don't come out. I'll go check."

Huo Jilin mounted his horse and rode out. The horse stopped halfway up the hillside and refused to go any further—because up ahead, several wild boars, along with seven or eight young ones of varying sizes, were swaggering away from the sweet potato field.

The black bristles, the gleaming long white tusks—Huo Jilin sucked in a sharp breath. He was looking at real wild boars.

The sweet potato field on the hillside had been ravaged. On their way down, they passed the plot of land Huo Jilin had just cleared. The boars sniffed around the black soil, found nothing, and then knocked over the mud bricks he'd made over the past couple of days.

Truly, wherever they went, they left destruction in their wake.

Their crimes had the men and women of Pingshan Village seeing red.

Sweet potatoes were the village's staple food—they relied on them to get through the winter. Now half of them had been rooted up.

Watching fist-sized, wrist-thick sweet potatoes being tossed this way and that by the boars, the villagers' hearts ached.

Harvest was right around the corner!

"This is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! If you're gonna eat, eat properly—what's with taking one bite here and one bite there!"

Aunt Zhang said.

Uncle Liu paused—was that really the issue? The issue was they couldn't eat them at all! There was plenty of food up in the mountains, yet they still came down to ravage the fields. It was truly heartbreaking!

Zhou Qingshan and Huo Jilin came back from the front of the mountain. The two of them had ridden along the path the boars had taken and found that the group had indeed smashed through every fence they'd built to keep boars out. And they'd cleverly steered clear of the traps.

After they reported this to everyone, the crowd was furious. "They came two years ago, and four years before that—these boars come down for a feast every other year!"

Uncle Zhou said grimly: "If that's the case, they won't just come this once. If today's the first day, they'll be back."

"Then what do we do? How about we rush to harvest the sweet potatoes!"

"Can you out-harvest them? We harvest this patch today, and tonight they'll root up another field. There are so many sweet potatoes—it'd take us at least ten days to two weeks to harvest everything."

"Then what do we do? Village Head Zhou, think of something fast!"

"How did you handle it in past years?" Chen Jue asked after getting the full picture. Follow the old methods—since the boars came every other year, they must have gotten burned the year they came, been too scared to come down, and waited a year until the traps were no longer a threat before returning.

Everyone looked at him... then at Huo Jilin beside him.

Huo Jilin's back stiffened. He knew this day would come.

Sure enough, Zhou Dajiang said: "In past years, Dalin and his father drove them off. Two years ago, Dalin even killed one."

Zhou Hehua nodded vigorously. "That's right, I even bought wild boar meat to eat. Dalin, how about you kill another one this year? Let's take them down a peg and get some meat out of it!"

Huo Jilin glanced down at Chen Jue. Chen Jue coughed and averted his gaze.

This year, Huo Jilin would probably end up as boar feed.

It was Zhou Qingshan who came to Huo Jilin's rescue. He knew Huo Jilin couldn't hunt anymore—his silence meant he didn't want anyone to know—so he spoke up for him: "This year's group of boars won't be easy to deal with. From the tracks, I can see two adults and six or seven half-grown ones. Very dangerous. We can't let Dalin go alone. Let's think of another way together—a way to make sure they never dare come back."

"Right, let's think together. We'll dig traps in the fields they like to raid! Once they fall in, we shoot them dead!"

"They won't all fall in. Wild boars are very smart—the traps I set up on the mountain before, they avoided every single one," Zhou Qingshan said.

"If they don't all fall in, then as long as one adult is still out there, it'll attack and retaliate against us."

Huo Jilin said. Wild boars were smart and vengeful creatures. With their thick hides and hard tusks, they'd take on anything.

Even tigers sometimes had to steer clear of their herds.

"Then what do we do?"

"To catch the bandits, catch the leader first. To deal with this group, we have to take down the male. Kill the chicken to scare the monkeys—the sow will protect her young, but once the male goes down, she'll naturally take the piglets and run."

"The male boar—their hides are so thick, practically impenetrable. If you can't hit a vital spot dead-on, it won't die. Qingshan, Huo Lin—you two are good with a bow. Can you hit their vitals? Like the eyes, the neck, those critical spots," Zhou Shun asked.

Huo Jilin's brow furrowed, but he said nothing.

Hitting the eye was extremely difficult. If he had a pistol, he might be able to pull it off, but not with a bow.

He hadn't stopped practicing archery these days, but a bow was still different from a gun. He still couldn't quite master it.

So Huo Jilin kept a grave expression and said nothing.

His silence made everyone think he was confident.

Of everyone present, only Chen Jue knew his actual skill level.

Zhou Qingshan knew a little, but he just assumed Huo Jilin's shoulder injury hadn't healed yet.

So Zhou Qingshan stepped up. "I can give it a shot."

"How about putting poison on the arrowheads?" Chen Jue didn't expose Huo Jilin either, just asked, trying to think of a solution.

They're not easy to kill, so what about trying poison? Poisoning their food won't work since wild boars are omnivores and can even eat venomous snakes. So straight-up poisoning them is tough, but if they're gonna use arrows, they can coat the tips with poison.

With multiple angles, at least one's gotta work.

"Alright, let's all give it a try," Zhou Qingshan said.

Zhou Hehua was still hung up on the meat: "Can we even eat the boar if it's poisoned?"

Huo Jilin glanced at her—she really had some nerve, thinking about eating before they'd even killed one.

Chen Jue nodded instead: "We can eat it. I'll make two kinds of poison—one a tranquilizer, one that boiling can neutralize."

So everyone split up to handle their tasks.

Once everything was ready, they all hid along the ridge at dawn.

Chen Jue was there too. Huo Jilin hadn't wanted him to come—wild boars weren't easy to take down, and he didn't fully trust Zhou Qingshan's archery. If things went sideways, how could Chen Jue, with that belly of his, run?

But Chen Jue wanted to see his poison in action firsthand. He felt responsible—if the poison didn't work and the boars went crazy, the fields would be wrecked. And if any villagers got hurt, that'd be even worse.

Plus, he was worried about Huo Jilin.

Huo Jilin had a horse and planned to be the one drawing the boars' fire. If the hunt failed, he'd have to lead the herd away by himself. The horse was smart and fast, but what if something went wrong mid-run?

Huo Jilin knew he couldn't talk Chen Jue out of it, so he just kept telling him to stay on the edge and watch.

Chen Jue raised a torch and smiled at him: "Don't worry, the villagers all got torches. If worst comes to worst, we'll start a fire. You be careful too."

Huo Jilin smiled at him: "You worried about me?"

Chen Jue was speechless—Huo Jilin was a human being too, of course he'd worry.

Seeing his expression, Huo Jilin didn't push it; pressing further would only make him feel worse.

Huo Jilin took a deep breath: "Let's go."

As they'd expected, the worst-case scenario played out. Zhou Qingshan hit the male boar, but the arrow only got one eye. Before he could nock a second arrow, the boar had already gone berserk, and there was no way to hit it again.

The lead male boar went nuts in the sweet potato field.

It sent the other boars into a restless, agitated frenzy.

This couldn't keep up—the boars were charging at the crowd on the ridge.

Huo Jilin told Zhou Qingzhu to take Chen Jue back, tied the red silk his mother-in-law had given the kid around himself, and swung onto his horse. As he rode, he loosed another arrow at the furious boar, catching it in the belly. The boar didn't feel much pain there, but the eye wound had it seething with rage.

Huo Jilin hadn't hit the boar's eye, but he'd done his job of drawing its attention.

The male boar chased after him, and once it ran, the female followed, and the piglets too—he led the whole herd off all by himself.

Everyone watched, wide-eyed, as he rode off in red, alone on horseback, with a deadly train behind him, and couldn't help but gulp.

"Dalin... that's something else!"

Zhou Hehua's eyes lit up: "Dalin's so cool! I knew he could handle it all by himself!"

Chen Jue, standing on higher ground, watched Huo Jilin's horse tear off and relaxed. That horse hadn't let them down after all the pampering they'd given it like it was royalty—it had the speed of a thousand-li steed.

Factoring in the distance, it was Huo Jilin's usual long route. He could probably make a full loop before the poison kicked in.

Seeing the crisis was over, the villagers all sang Huo Jilin's praises.

"It's like walking a dog—sure, if it dies from being walked, it's still dead."

"Dalin's out there walking the whole boar herd by himself."

"Cough... cough, you're gonna kill me laughing. How'd Dalin come up with this? I was hoping to see him nail a boar with a cool shot! Did he take down all the boars he killed before like this?"

"Probably not before—he didn't have a horse then, so he couldn't have walked 'em to death..."

Chen Jue: "..."

He figured Huo Lin's reputation was getting ruined by Huo Jilin.

But Huo Jilin had also protected the villagers' property and lives single-handedly.

Huo Jilin's personality might not win people over, but his character was solid.

He was a soldier, willing to step up when danger hit.

Chen Jue stayed up on the high ground, waiting for Huo Jilin to ride back.

Just as everyone was wondering how Huo Jilin used to hunt, something else grabbed their attention.

"Hey... there's a piglet still here! Oh! Come check it out!"

Everyone's attention shifted to the little boar still chowing down, oblivious to everything.

It was small, maybe twenty-some pounds, no tusks yet, and looked pretty cute. So the group swarmed it and tied it up.

Meanwhile, Huo Jilin had run nearly a full lap before the male boar finally swayed and dropped.

Once it fell, the female boar circled it, nudging it a few times. When it didn't get up, it finally dawned on her that this wasn't a hunt they were leading—they were the ones being hunted. She let out a roar and bolted through a gap in the mountains with the rest of the piglets.

Huo Jilin sat on his horse, wiped the sweat off his face, and loosened the red silk around his neck, feeling like a total idiot who'd just been in a bullfight.

If anyone found out he'd been chased like this by a herd of boars, he'd never live it down.

In the past, he never had to lift a finger—he was the one calling the shots.

But today, forget calling the shots—the scene was a total mess, and he couldn't handle a dozen boars. He wondered what Chen Jue thought of him...

Huo Jilin closed his eyes. His reputation was shot.

He took a deep breath, dismounted, and with a ton of effort loaded the completely dazed boar onto his horse, then rode back. At least he'd gotten one, even if he'd walked it to death—it was still his prize.

The remaining boars probably wouldn't come down the mountain for a while, so that problem was handled for now.

Sure enough, when Huo Jilin came back with the big adult boar, everyone gave him a warm welcome.

The boar had to be eaten while fresh, so they gutted and dressed the unconscious male right there.

Even though it was Huo Jilin, Zhou Qingshan, and Chen Jue who'd planned and pulled off the kill, the three of them decided to throw a whole-pig feast for the entire village—all hundred households eating together.

The adult male boar weighed a good two hundred pounds. Each person might get less than half a pound, but it was still actual meat.

So the smaller piglet got a stay of execution for now.

Aunt Zhang said to keep it and slaughter it for the New Year. Village Head Zhou also put his foot down, saying the pig would be raised at Zhou Hehua's place and divvied up at the New Year.

The crowd cheered, feeling that not only had Huo Jilin become generous, but even Village Head Zhou was being a big spender.

The whole village seemed to be pulling together. Sharing a big communal meal a few times a year really brought everyone together.

This is probably the reason behind modern team-building activities.

Huo Jilin, that capitalist, really knew how to manage his workers.

Chen Jue thought, Huo Jilin was still looking at him. Chen Jue glanced back at him, sizing him up: "What's wrong? Hurt? Did a wild boar get you?"