Deep in the mountains.
Man versus wild boar. A head-on charge. The outcome was yet to be decided.
But Zhao Jun, watching from nearby, already knew the outcome. 'In two more seconds,' he thought, 'I'll hear Li Baoyu's bloodcurdling scream.'
Was he clairvoyant?
No. He had been reborn.
He not only knew that in today's battle, the wild boar would toss both him and Li Baoyu before breaking through the two hounds' encirclement and escaping scot-free.
He also knew that this failure wouldn't extinguish his passion for hunting.
Though his family was strict now, in a year's time his mother would pass away, his father would remarry, and his new stepmother would treat him and his two younger sisters poorly.
His father, caught in the middle and unsure what to do, simply arranged an early marriage for him. From then on, he separated from his father's household to start his own, getting married and having children.
Married life was pleasant enough, mainly because he had a good job as an Inspector at the mountain Forest Farm—a real plum job back then.
Crucially, the job wasn't tiring and left him with plenty of free time.
In his spare time, he practiced his marksmanship and trained his dogs at home.
In an era with no restrictions on guns or hunting, it wasn't hard for a man in the mountains to get a firearm if he had the money.
From then on, he often went into the mountains, hunting with his hounds.
Zhao Jun was a crack shot, and the hounds he trained were formidable. In less than three years, he became a hunter renowned far and wide.
Thirty years later, it would have been a life he wouldn't trade for anything. But back then, no matter how good life in the mountains was, it couldn't compare to the big city.
He still remembered a time in '95 when he accompanied his supervisor from the Forest Farm to Fengtian City on business. A local contact hosted a banquet, and on the table was a platter of shrimp.
These weren't like the tiny shrimp he used to catch in the mountain streams. These were ocean shrimp, and a single one was as big as dozens of the mountain variety.
The mountain shrimp were fried or stir-fried and eaten whole—no need to peel them or remove the heads and tails.
This was the first time Zhao Jun learned that you had to peel shrimp.
Staring at the bright red shrimp on the platter, he was at a complete loss.
Because he didn't know how to peel them.
When he returned home, his mind kept replaying his experiences in Fengtian City, and his heart grew restless.
The mountains, which had once seemed full of endless adventure, no longer held any novelty for him.
He gradually grew tired of the rural life, which had remained unchanged for over thirty years.
He wanted to go to the city. He wanted to live the life of a city dweller.
But what would he even do if he moved to the city?
He had no money and no connections. Was he supposed to give up his "iron rice bowl"—his stable job for life—to become a migrant worker in the city?
Just then, the arrival of a friend completely changed Zhao Jun's fate.
For the past few years, this friend had often relied on Zhao Jun to buy scrap wood from the Forest Farm, which he'd then haul back to the city and process into disposable chopsticks.
After a few years, he had saved up a small nest egg. Then, this friend went to Rakshasa Country to buy Ginseng in the Far East and sell it back home.
Following his lead, Zhao Jun went to Rakshasa. At first, he just helped his friend buy Ginseng to resell for a profit.
But later, Zhao Jun started going deep into the mountains of the Far East himself, searching for and harvesting Ginseng.
Unlike his friend, Zhao Jun had grown up in the mountains. He knew just where wild Ginseng grew and where to find it.
And just like that, in less than two years, Zhao Jun had made his fortune.
By the new millennium, his net worth was close to a million yuan. Back then, that made him a local tycoon.
But he was so busy making money that he neglected his relationship with his wife. Ultimately, the marriage couldn't be sustained, and they divorced.
After the divorce, Zhao Jun continued his business, but times had changed for the worse. People were less honorable. He was too sentimental and trusting, and he was repeatedly cheated by his so-called friends.
After two "friends" set him up and scammed him out of a huge sum of money, forty-year-old Zhao Jun suddenly found himself with nothing.
No, that wasn't true. He had debts.
A life for a life, and a debt must be repaid. That's the way of the world.
But what could he pay them back with?
He had long since quit his job at the Forest Farm. Having once made money hand over fist, how could he possibly go back to such a "miserable" job?
His house and land in the mountains weren't worth anything either.
In his darkest hour, it was his eldest sister and his two younger sisters who helped him.
When he was rich, his sisters had never benefited from his wealth.
But when he hit rock bottom, they gave everything they had to help pay off his debts.
Disheartened, ashamed to face anyone, and with no attachments left, Zhao Jun simply drifted between cities, taking on odd jobs.
He worked as a night watchman or hauled bricks and sand at construction sites.
It was no way to make a living. Sometimes, Zhao Jun struggled just to make ends meet.
So, after drifting for ten years, he was still completely broke.
Finally, he borrowed five hundred yuan from a coworker on a construction site and boarded the train back home.
When he returned to his village, much had changed.
The house where he had once lived with his wife and son was still empty, but just the sight of it brought back a flood of painful memories.
So he had no choice but to live with his eldest sister. At first, he relied on his sisters' charity. Later, he began farming his own land, paying off his debts little by little, right up until his 55th birthday in 2021.
On that day, he paid off his very last debt. And then, he was reborn.
He had returned to a time thirty-five years in the past. He was twenty years old again.
During his lowest moments, he had wondered countless times what he would do if heaven gave him a chance to start over.
But now, he knew there was only one thing he needed to do.
He had to take down this wild boar. Today.
The reason was simple. Half a month ago, his eldest sister had given birth to his first nephew.
His sister's kindness to him was beyond words. In fact, during that first, particularly cold winter after he returned to the village, it was that nephew who had gone to the city to buy him a padded coat and winter boots.
This boar would be the perfect thing to help his sister recover her strength.
At this thought, Zhao Jun planted his hands on the ground, kicked his legs, and sprang to his feet.
The moment he was up, he saw Li Baoyu and the wild boar clash.
Li Baoyu held the makeshift spear in both hands and plunged it toward the boar's back.
Right where the boar's hide was thickest!
But the sharp point of the blade failed to pierce its hide.
As Li Baoyu pushed with all his might and the boar charged forward, there was a loud CRACK. The wooden shaft snapped, and the top half, with the Invasion Blade still attached, fell to the ground.
The sudden loss of resistance sent Li Baoyu stumbling forward.
The boar lowered its head, drove it between Li Baoyu's legs, and with a powerful flick of its body, tossed him into the air.
The young man, well over six feet tall, flew over the boar's back and slammed heavily onto the ground.
It had been over thirty years, after all. His memory was a little off.
It turned out Li Baoyu hadn't let out a bloodcurdling scream as Zhao Jun remembered. He hadn't even managed a groan before the fall knocked him unconscious.
A loyal hound protects its master!
Seeing his master tossed to the ground, Da Huang, Li Baoyu's Yellow Dog, went into a frenzy. Without so much as a bark, he charged straight at the boar.
Though brave, a hound is no match for a wild boar in size, weight, or strength. Hunts like this relied on speed and coordination.
Normally, when fighting a boar, a hound would harass and harry it, never engaging in a direct confrontation.
But with his young master's fate unknown, how could Da Huang care about strategy?
THWACK.
With a dull thud, the Yellow Dog was sent flying by a whip of the boar's snout.
Da Huang landed in a heap, dazed and disoriented, but it scrambled back to its feet and charged the boar once more.
Zhao Jun saw that the Yellow Dog wasn't putting weight on one of its hind legs and knew it had been injured in the fall.
'Good thing this is a sow,' he thought.
If it had been a tusked boar, especially one weighing nearly 330 pounds, with tusks like daggers, neither Li Baoyu nor Da Huang would have gotten off so lightly.
"SQUEAL!"
This time, the scream of pain came from the wild boar.
Just as the boar was asserting its dominance, having injured both man and beast, Da Hua, Zhao Jun's Hua Gou, had already snuck up from behind and taken a bite out of the triumphant beast.
And at that moment, Zhao Jun made his move...