Chapter 18: The Hanging Snare
"Song, for what you have done, your name will be remembered by the tribe forever."
"Remembered forever? Even after I die?" Song's eyes shone with a brilliant light.
"Yes. Like the sun—we cannot live without it. Long after you are gone, those who are sick will remember the one who found the herbs to cure their diseases."
Chen Jian clapped Song on the shoulder, then picked up a clay pot and shouted to all the assembled clansmen, "For anyone who makes life better for our people, we will sculpt their likeness in pottery and paint the story of all they did! As long as our bloodline continues, every such person will be remembered by our descendants forever. Wood rots and stone turns to dust, but a name, like the sun, can be passed down for all time."
"Roar!"
The clansmen cheered loudly, each imagining their own name being honored by future generations.
Sitting by the fire, Langpi grinned, showing his teeth. According to Jian, anyone who saw a feathered arrow in the future would think of him, just as someone cold would think of the sun. The arrow had been his idea, after all.
*Perhaps I can make the bow and arrow shoot farther and more accurately,* he thought.
Langpi caressed his favorite bow, imagining a day when he could stand before his tribe and shoot down prey from afar, all without leaving the comfort of his home.
Chen Jian looked at the hopeful expressions on their faces and solidified his plan: this was how the primitive movement of creating legends should begin.
The sages revered in China during his past life weren't worshipped for their religious piety alone. They were honored for their contributions. Whether it was Xuanyuan, who established codes of dress; Shennong, who tasted a hundred herbs; Yu, who tamed the great rivers; or Leizu, who cultivated silkworms and silk—even the legends of Erlang of Dujiangyan attaining sainthood—all of them embodied the belief that humankind can conquer nature.
If the sun was too fierce, you bent your bow and shot at it. If the waters flooded, you built dikes and dams. He wanted future generations to remember that their ancestors used their hands and their minds to become the masters of the wilderness. He wanted them to remember that their ancestors never bowed to disaster or surrendered to injury.
Since we have this life, why seek an afterlife? With hands and brains, why fear calamity?
He stared into the fire, his eyes burning with intensity as he imagined the possibilities of the future.
"Jian, what are you thinking about?" Langpi asked, leaning closer.
Chen Jian shook his head. "It's nothing. We'll head home tomorrow."
"We're not going any farther downstream?"
"No. A two-day journey has shown us a territory large enough for our needs. Any land beyond that is not ours to claim yet."
Chen Jian was very satisfied with their discoveries. This new territory represented the limit of what his home tribe could manage within the next three years.
Langpi was a little disappointed, muttering, "We should have gone farther, to see that tribe from the stars."
"Don't worry," Chen Jian reassured him. "I will give the new tribe a proper explanation."
When the others heard they were going home the next day, they too were filled with anticipation. They were eager to see this place Jian spoke of, where one could eat their fill every day, and to meet the people who lived without the fear of hunger.
Early the next morning, Chen Jian was woken by Langpi to a low humming sound. The clansmen were already awake, standing ready and looking into the distance.
A massive boar, flanked by two sows and a drove of piglets, was rooting in the saline-alkali soil. It was far from them, but it made a demonstrative grunting sound, as if an emperor declaring his domain.
Its half-foot-long tusks were terrifyingly sharp, and its weight was easily four to five hundred kilograms. Its thick hide, caked with pine resin and mud, was the source of its confidence. The tribesmen rarely provoked such large animals unless they were on the brink of starvation, as someone was bound to be injured in the confrontation. Being charged by a great boar was no small matter.
The two groups were about 200 meters apart. The pig family had clearly come up from the south side of the canyon. As long as neither party provoked the other, they would pass peacefully. The great boar snorted a few times, dropped a pile of dung, and kicked it backward with its thick hind legs, a clear signal to stay away.
Chen Jian, however, had his eyes on the dozen or so piglets trailing behind. He was already scheming how to capture them.
There were only a few animals that humans could successfully domesticate. Besides a docile nature, domestication required a reliable ability to reproduce. Some animals, like elephants, could be tamed but were too shy to mate in the presence of humans, making them impossible to domesticate fully. Other birds similar to chickens had courtship rituals that were far too complex, involving feather displays, nest building, and elaborate songs.
Pigs had none of these drawbacks. A sow with a litter of fewer than eight would be too embarrassed to show her face to other pigs, and boars were known for getting straight to the point without any courtship.
Looking at the dozen little piglets, Chen Jian chuckled to himself.
Langpi eyed the great boar's tusks. "There are other animals we can catch," he warned. "We shouldn't provoke that one."
Chen Jian pointed to the piglets. "See those? That's our future food supply."
"You want to raise them?"
"Yes. Don't disturb them for now. Let's pack up and leave."
After stowing their clay pots, the aunts carefully cradled the jars filled with salt they had spent all afternoon preparing. They knew their family back home would love it and could already imagine the taste of rich mutton and fish soup seasoned with salt.
After helping the wounded get ready, Chen Jian led his party slowly out of the wild boar's sight. Seeing the humans retreat, the great boar flamboyantly scattered the dung at its feet, a final show of dominance.
Once out of the narrow gorge, Chen Jian took out the rope he carried and supplemented it by weaving more from the vines growing on the stone walls. He had six or seven people pull on it together to test its strength.
He twisted several ropes into a slipknot. Then, using a bone plow, he dug several small pits ten centimeters deep, covered them with a layer of leaves and twigs, and carefully placed a slipknot inside each.
They were at the canyon exit, where many trees grew. He found a few with trunks as thick as a man's arm and stripped them of their branches. More than a dozen men strained together, pulling one of the trees down into a bow shape, wedging the tip into a crack in the rock wall. The wood made a frightening creaking sound, but it held. Everyone moved around it cautiously, Chen Jian included. If the tree sprang back, it could shatter stone, let alone a person.
He tied one end of the slipknot rope to the bent tree. The simple hanging snare was complete.
Wild boars were immensely strong. Before the invention of wire, ordinary traps could rarely hold a large one. But hanging snares worked differently. Once the boar stepped into the pit, the slipknot would tighten around its hoof. Its instinct would be to run forward, pulling the rope taut. The rope would then pull the tree trunk free from the rock crevice, and the massive rebound force would hoist the boar into the air.
Whether a front or hind leg was caught, once the boar was lifted off the ground, it could only struggle against its own weight, unable to leverage its true strength. The sudden, violent inertia might even break the boar's leg. With a broken hoof, its sharp tusks and powerful body would be useless.
To be safe, Chen Jian set up four hanging snares in a row, warning the clansmen to be careful where they stepped. Tripping one could result in a dislocation, a torn ligament, or even have the skin ripped from one's calf.
After setting the traps, he sent Langpi with a few others to set up an ambush at the opposite end of the canyon, telling him to capture the piglets, not shoot them. Langpi nodded hastily, with an expression that said it was obvious. But Chen Jian knew that if he didn't specify, Langpi—who had recently developed a love for shooting anything that moved—would certainly have put an arrow through them.
The women were positioned at a safe distance and told to climb trees if the boar broke free and went into a rage. For women who spent their days gathering wild fruits, acorns, and pine nuts, climbing trees was as basic a skill as childbirth.
The remaining men, including Chen Jian and Song, held their stone spears and waited for the boars to return. They knew the boars would come back this way after replenishing their salt.
The clansmen crouched in the tall grass, having never hunted like this before. Although Chen Jian had already shown Song and the others incredible things, they still found it hard to believe that a few ropes could catch such a massive beast. A great boar like this was a match for a tiger; only a starving tiger would risk a fight to the death. Song couldn't believe that a few vines could be stronger than a tiger.
Chen Jian clutched his stone spear, waiting anxiously. Even though they had rubbed wormwood and mint on their bodies, mosquitoes of all colors buzzed relentlessly around their heads. A tick crawled onto the back of his hand. He startled, then quickly crushed it. A sesame-sized tick could burrow its head into the flesh and, after drinking its fill of blood, swell to the size of a corn kernel. Worse, it could transmit forest encephalitis, a disease that remained incurable even in later generations.
Just as everyone was growing restless, a humming grunt echoed from the canyon. The men tensed, gripping their stone spears tightly. Song stared wide-eyed at the snares, eager to see how this seemingly impossible feat would unfold.
"They're coming!" Chen Jian whispered. He wiped his sweaty palms on his hide trousers and fixed his gaze on the leading boar.
*Crack.*
The boar's hoof touched a twig covering one of the pits. The noose instantly tightened around its hind leg. The boar snorted in panic and instinctively lunged forward. Its cumbersome body and incredible strength pulled the rope taut. The tension yanked the bent tree trunk from the rock crevice, and it snapped straight.
With a *whoosh*, the rope went rigid, the tree straightened, and—*SNAP!*—the rope broke. The clansmen let out a collective sigh of regret.
The boar was clearly terrified. Though the rope had broken, its hind leg was already bleeding. It took another panicked step forward and stumbled right into the next trap.
This time, the rope held. The great boar, weighing over 400 kilograms, was hoisted into the air, its hind legs dangling while its front legs clawed uselessly at the ground.
"Now!" Chen Jian roared.
Seven or eight men charged out with stone spears, scaring the two sows, which fled with the piglets back into the canyon.
The boar thrashed and howled wildly, but hanging by its hind legs, it couldn't use its core strength to maneuver. All it could do was roar to try and scare away the hairless monsters.
Chen Jian didn't let his guard down. He ordered his men to stay clear of the boar's front and stab at it from the sides with their stone spears. Suspended in the air, the boar's soft underbelly was completely exposed.
"Roar!" the clansmen yelled, thrusting their spears into the boar's body. Blue-purple intestines spilled out, accompanied by piercing squeals.
Blood snaked across the ground. Chen Jian slapped his thigh. *What a pity,* he thought, *that could have been a pot of blood.*
Song and the others were now completely convinced. He touched the taut, vine-woven noose, amazed that something so simple could fell such a mighty beast. He no longer had the slightest doubt about anything Chen Jian said.
Hearing the boar's dying howls, the women jumped down from their trees and ran over, surrounding the scene in astonishment. Hunting could be this simple? Chen Jian's aunts were smug, bragging about how they had fished with him and caught several days' worth of food for the tribe in a single afternoon, claiming they had grown tired of eating fish.
A roar from Langpi echoed from the other end of the canyon. Chen Jian knew the sows had reached them. He ordered someone to cut the snare ropes so no one would get caught when they ran through to help.
"Catch the pigs!" he yelled.
The clansmen, men and women alike, roared in response. More than twenty people rushed chaotically into the canyon, chasing the piglets that scattered in every direction, their squeals echoing sweetly through the gorge.