Back to 1984: Hunting in the Mountains

Chapter 69: All are masters within one sword
"Oh, it's the one you've been sticking on your leggings. There's a word 'Hu' engraved on the handle. Yes, it's the one your buddy left you." Yu Qiutang said casually while inspecting the wild boar's corpse.

Yu Qiujiang's face was full of surprise.

He had a dagger stuck in his leggings, which was a souvenir given to him by a buddy. It was his secret and he did not tell Yu Qiutang. How did he know it?

His friend originally liked hunting in the mountains and was quite good at it. However, one time while trying to save a child that was taken away by a jackal, he accidentally fell off a cliff and died on the spot, leaving behind his wife, whom he had been married to for less than half a year.

This is also the reason why Yu Qiujiang, who has good physical fitness, has never gone up the mountain. He has psychological trauma.

If Yu Qiutang hadn't asked him for help this time, and thought that there would be no danger in just going to the oak forest, he would not have agreed reluctantly.

I didn't expect to encounter such a thrilling scene.

"Give it to me, you won't be reluctant to part with it, right?" Yu Qiutang didn't notice that Yu Qiujiang was in an abnormal mood. He was still studying how to cut up a wild boar.

There were no handy tools in the mountains. After thinking about it, he remembered that Yu Qiujiang had a short dagger that he often used.

The problem was, he had misremembered the time.

According to the timeline of his previous life, he didn't know that Yu Qiujiang had this dagger at that time.

That's why Yu Qiujiang was very puzzled.

However, Yu Qiujiang still bent down, untied the dagger and handed it to Yu Qiutang. He guessed that Yu Qiutang must have seen it by accident. The two of them had such a good relationship in the past, so it was not surprising for him to see this thing.

Yu Qiutang took the dagger, held it up to the sun, and nodded in admiration: "It is indeed a good knife. It is still cold even in the sun. There must be a lot of blood on the knife."

Yu Qiujiang said "hmm" lightly, thinking of the previous owner of this thing, it could be considered a hero's dagger.

Soon, Yu Qiutang focused all his attention on cutting up the wild boar.

Killing a wild boar is not the same as killing an ordinary rabbit or pheasant, and it is even more different from killing a domestic pig.

The villagers slaughter pigs during the Chinese New Year, and it is all planned.

For example, before the Chinese New Year every year, around the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, people would prepare to slaughter pigs. In that case, they would basically not be fed anything in advance, but would be given water to drink continuously in order to clean out the contents of their intestines and stomachs.

Therefore, when you slaughter pigs at home, there won’t be too much feces and urine. Otherwise, the intestines will be dirty and cannot be used. It will be disgusting to look at, and it may also contaminate the meat and pig blood.

In addition, how to cut up a wild boar also requires practice. If you are not skilled enough, you may just cut the intestines and ruin the wild boar.

Wild boars are not like domestic pigs, which have undergone "intestinal cleaning" in advance. All kinds of messy feces and urine are mixed with blood and flesh. Wild boar meat is unpalatable to begin with, and you will feel even less like eating it when you see it.

It is for this reason that hunters rarely shoot at the body of wild boars, but aim at the neck instead. This is not only to make it easier for the wild boar to die, but also to prevent the intestines from being damaged.

These are the basics for hunters.

Yu Qiutang certainly knew it.

But Yu Qiujiang and Wang Haofeng didn't know that. They saw Yu Qiutang trying to do it on the wild boar for a long time and was reluctant to take action, so they became anxious.

"Tangtang, what are you doing? You can't bear to kill it. You've already stabbed it to death, but now you can't bear to kill it. Isn't it too late?"

Although Yu Qiujiang was also surprised, he believed that Yu Qiutang must have his reasons for doing so and did not urge him.

"Watching." Yu Qiutang had almost recalled everything.

He came to the front of the wild boar, took a deep breath, inserted a knife into the bloody wound that had been pierced by the steel gun before, and suddenly pulled it with force. "Puff", the pig blood that had basically stopped flowing before spurted out again.

It splashed into the nearby stream, immediately dyeing a small area of ​​the stream red.

After Yu Qiutang waited for the violent blood to spurt out, he pulled the hole left and right several times to make the hole further enlarged and the bleeding speed faster.

"What a pity! If it were at home, the pig blood wouldn't be wasted." Wang Haofeng felt sorry for it.

"It's a pity, but there's nothing we can do," Yu Qiutang said helplessly, "It's too difficult for the three of us to take this 300-400-pound pig back.

Besides, we are in the mountains. Although it is at the foot of the mountain and it is unlikely that wild animals will come down, don't forget that there is a group of jackals there. If we don't get rid of them quickly, if those jackals are attracted by the blood, we will be in great trouble.

Those beasts will become more violent and greedy when they smell blood. It's okay if there are few of them, but if there are more of them, even though we are three grown men, we might all die here."

Yu Qiutang also spared no effort to explain the principles of the mountains to Wang Haofeng.

Yu Qiujiang, who was standing nearby, also heard what was said.

Wang Haofeng was simple-minded. He just listened to what Yu Qiutang said without any thought about how Yu Qiutang knew so much knowledge. He just thought that this brother was awesome and he was very proud of him.

Yu Qiujiang was much calmer.

But he couldn't figure it out. If he wasn't very familiar with Yu Qiutang, he would even doubt whether this was still his cowardly cousin.

A hole had been pierced in the front of the wild boar's neck by the steel gun, and a lot of blood had been shed. After the action just now, the wild boar's blood was basically drained, with very little blood left.

The remaining blood is like wrung-out clothes, which always feels a little wet to the touch but cannot be wrung out no matter how hard you try.

"Look, Fengzi, I'll show you a special skill!"

Yu Qiutang placed the knife on the wild boar's buttocks, secretly exerted force in his heart, and put all his strength into his right hand.

"Are you going to cut my stomach?" Wang Haofeng came over impatiently.

"That's right," Yu Qiutang explained with a smile, "How good a butcher's knife skills are depends on how many times he cuts the pig. In the past, the old masters said that if he cut the pig with more than three cuts, he was a wimp, three cuts was considered qualified, two cuts was a master, and if he could cut the pig with one cut, he was a master."

"That……"

Wang Haofeng was just about to ask how many cuts he needed, but he saw Yu Qiutang's knife cut directly from the back of the buttocks to the pig's head like flowing water.

"Awesome!" Wang Haofeng was shocked.

Yu Qiujiang also had his eyes wide open.

How could he not know that the skill of this sword requires both proficiency and precision, and the ability to do it with ease requires solid strength as a foundation.

This is really Yu Qiutang.

Why does he seem to recognize this cousin less and less?

Just relying on the skills he just demonstrated, if nothing else, he could just slaughter pigs and cattle for the surrounding villages and live a good life, and would never starve to death.

I have no idea how he did it.

The key is that he cannot learn this kind of skill easily overnight.

To build up strength, it takes years of practice. It's not like planting crops in the field. You can just add some fertilizer and water them and the crops will grow faster.

He then combined Yu Qiutang's other actions during this period, such as making the crossbow, making the long spear inserted beside him, and his bravery in killing two jackals with two shots today.

His heart was pounding.

Could it be that my cousin is possessed by someone else?

Yu Qiutang didn't know that his cousin had long suspected him and had already associated him with a mysterious power.

As the wild boar's belly was completely cut open, all the internal organs fell out. He quickly took out the pig intestines, pig heart, pig liver and other internal organs and threw them aside.

"Fengzi, rinse these things in the stream to remove the blood, put them in a bag, and then you can fry them when you get home."

If these things were sold, they wouldn't fetch much.

Except for the pig tongue which is a bit more expensive, everything else is just a few cents and it can be added to your purchase of other meats.

If it were a domestic pig, these things would be pretty good, but wild boars are too smelly and most people can’t eat them at all. Those who can eat them are not ordinary people, they are heroes in the food world.

While Wang Haofeng was washing the internal organs, Yu Qiutang cut the pork in an orderly manner.

He first cut off the head and asked Yu Qiujiang to put the whole thing in a bag. It doesn't matter whether you cut off the pig's head or not when cutting the meat. If you kill a pig at home, in order to ensure the integrity of the meat, you will not cut off the head directly at the beginning, but wait until everything is processed before cutting it off separately.

In later times, pig heads were more valuable, but in earlier times, they were cheap. At that time, people judged the quality of a pig mainly by how thick its fat was. Pig heads were mostly lean meat and tendons, so they did not have much of a market.

Strictly speaking, lean meat is not as fragrant as fat meat. The really delicious meat is actually all fat. At most, it has some fat and some lean meat interspersed. Lean meat alone is not delicious.

After the pig's head, the next step is the pig's legs.

Earlier, Yu Qiutang cut off two pig legs in half and dropped them into the mud below the stream, leaving only two and a half pig legs. He cut them up and put them into a bag, and finally only the whole pig was left.

It is also the most labor-intensive and time-consuming process in the entire pig-killing process. At this stage, the entire pig skin needs to be peeled off. If this thing is hung up, it is easy to do with special facilities, but it is quite difficult to just put it on the ground.

With the help of Yu Qiujiang, it took Yu Qiutang thirty to forty minutes to finally peel off the entire hairy pig skin. The weather was hot, and the two of them were sweating profusely, and their clothes were completely soaked with sweat.

When he took it off and wrung it out, it was like freshly washed clothes with water flowing down. Even so, Yu Qiujiang estimated the difficulty of the job in his mind and felt that if it were him, there would be no hope.

My admiration for Yu Qiutang increased even more.

As usual, the pig skins were stuffed into bags and carried back to be given to my father. He was a very capable man and could cut out several pairs of leather boots for him, which could keep him warm in winter and also be waterproof and bite-proof when going into the mountains.

The skin of wild boars is very, very thick and cannot be easily bitten through by ordinary animals, so it is also a good thing.

After all the debris was cleared away, what was left was the meat. Yu Qiutang cut the meat into three parts and prepared one portion for each of the three people.

This time when he went into the mountains, the two brothers originally came to help him, and the wild boar was an extra gain. He put in a lot of effort in the process, but the other two also helped a lot.

Whether he was being besieged by jackals in the front and acting as a staunch backstop so that he could stay alert to the jackals in front of him, or he was helping to deal with the wild boar and process its meat in the back, he put in a lot of effort.

There are still many things that will depend on these two people in the future, and he doesn't think he is so awesome that he will take the biggest share.

however.

When the division was completed and the two were asked to take a piece each, they both refused to take it. They said that this big project was Yu Qiutang's and he should get a bigger share. If it was divided equally, it would be too unfair to Yu Qiutang.

No matter what Yu Qiutang said, it was useless.

After watching the three of them arguing for a few minutes without giving in to each other, he finally gave in, and the final distribution was that he got two-thirds of the pork.

Yu Qiujiang and Wang Haofeng shared one third.

The pig's head was given to Yu Qiujiang, while the pig's heart, lungs, liver, tongue, ears, kidneys, etc. were all left to Wang Haofeng. The two jackals were originally killed by Yu Qiutang himself, so they also belonged to Yu Qiutang.

Yu Qiutang felt that he was taking too much advantage this way.

Wang Haofeng and Yu Qiujiang thought it was very reasonable. Even if they divided the meat, each of them could get 30 kilograms of good meat, and a pile of pig heads or offal, which was enough to eat for a while.

If it weren't for Yu Qiutang, they would have nothing. They are already satisfied with what they have. How could they ask for more?

On the way back, Wang Haofeng was carrying a slab of pork on his back and holding a bag of offal in his hand. Although the smell was fishy, ​​he didn't care at all.

Wild boar meat is more smelly than domestic pig meat, but for people who can't afford meat, the taste is really nothing. It's not smelly and it's not delicious.

"Tangtang, let's go down the mountain now, but what should we do with your wood? After all this trouble, you still haven't finished your work." Wang Haofeng also didn't forget about Yu Qiutang.

Yu Qiutang smiled and said, "I looked for wood to make a crossbow, and the purpose of making a crossbow is to hunt. Now that we have got the prey, it doesn't matter if we make the crossbow a few days later."

Wang Haofeng grinned and said, "Haha, that's true. Don't worry, we will come with you next time. I promise to find more wood for you so that you will be satisfied."

"Okay, if you don't want to go, I will take you with me." Yu Qiutang naturally wouldn't be polite.

"Ahaha~" Both of them laughed, and Yu Qiujiang nodded with a smile.

Following Yu Qiutang into the mountains, we got so much pork. If we sell it, even if wild boar meat is not as valuable as domestic pig meat, it will at least be worth a few yuan. Thirty kilograms is thirty yuan, plus the pig's head.

This requires making things to sell, but it takes a lot of time.

The blacksmithing business depends on the season and luck. If you are doing well, you may earn dozens of dollars a month. If you are not doing well, you may have no business for the entire month.

His sister is in poor health. She can't see the wind and can basically do nothing. The family depends on him for support. Not only does he have to support the two of them, but he also wants to save money to go to a big city to check up his sister's health.

The last time the doctor from the town health center came to the village, he saw his sister’s health and said that hospitals in big cities might have a solution, and asked him to take his sister to see a doctor if he had the chance.

He didn't know where the big city was, but after thinking about it, he realized that going out and treating illnesses would require money, so no matter what, it would never be wrong to make more money and save it.

I wish I had the same ability as Tangtang, he silently looked at Yu Qiutang's back, thinking wildly.

If I really had that ability, I wouldn't have to guard the blacksmith furnace that is several feet square all day long. I would be able to save enough money faster so that my sister can get well and live freely and happily outside like other girls of my age.

(End of this chapter)