83: Harvest

Just as the large wild boar was about to crash into Chen Su,

he pushed off with his left foot and lunged fiercely to the right.

The large wild boar missed its target and rolled across the ground.

The steel fork in its rump hit the ground, sinking several inches deeper.

"Hmph, hmph~" The large wild boar roared in pain.

It turned around and charged at Chen Su again... "Fuck, here it comes again." Chen Su braced himself to dodge to the side.

Suddenly, a loud bang echoed across the fields.

"Bang~"

A spray of blood erupted from the center of the large wild boar's forehead.

"Gi~"

The large wild boar collapsed to the ground, twitched a few times, and breathed its last.

Dead as a doornail?

Chen Su and Wang Xingxing looked at each other in confusion. Where did that gunshot come from?

They looked around and saw Li Chuxia over a hundred meters away, still holding her aiming posture with the gun.

Did Li Chuxia just headshot this wild boar?

...Seeing the wild boar had been killed, Li Chuxia lowered the shotgun and slowly walked over.

"Are you okay?"

She stepped forward and carefully scanned Chen Su from head to toe.

"I'm fine, I'm fine."

Wang Xingxing, standing nearby, also walked over and gave Li Chuxia a thumbs up.

"Great marksmanship!!"

Wang Xingxing felt inferior; he would be lucky to get a headshot from ten meters away. To hit the boar right between the eyes from over a hundred meters was pure fantasy to him.

Chen Su felt as if he were seeing Li Chuxia in a new light. While she was sizing him up, he also scanned her from top to bottom.

She could drive like a maniac and shoot with such precision.

Chen Su looked at her in amazement. "Eldest Miss, is there anything you can't do?"

"This young lady knows a lot of things. But where's the fun in just saying it? It's much more satisfying to show off like this out of nowhere."

Li Chuxia laughed.

"Xiao Su, go collect the remaining animal traps so no one gets caught in them. I'll go back and bring the tricycle."

"Okay."

After saying that, Wang Xingxing quickly walked toward the village.

Chen Su took a cloth bag and collected the animal traps one by one.

Once finished, he and Li Chuxia split the work, each guarding one wild boar... The sun was gradually setting. Chen Su checked the time; it was 5:10 PM.

Dealing with these two wild boars had taken over half an hour, and he'd almost had his backside gored.

He felt a lingering fear; it was a good thing he had brought Li Chuxia along this time.

Otherwise, he would have definitely been bedridden for several days... The afterglow of the setting sun blanketed Xiulin Village, and the chirping of insects and croaking of frogs around the fields began to rise.

Forty minutes later.

Wang Xingxing arrived riding a motorized tricycle.

He had two people with him in the vehicle.

Chen Su knew both of them; one was Wang Xingxing's nephew Wang Chong, and the other was his nephew Gao Tai.

A few years ago, people in this line of work had to be as cautious as tomb raiders.

The helpers they called were always trusted relatives and younger kin.

Although wild boar hunting was more relaxed now, it was still better to keep a low profile.

"Holy crap, Old Uncle, today's catch is a heavyweight," Wang Chong exclaimed when he saw the large wild boar next to Chen Su.

Wang Xingxing laughed. "It's the first time your Old Uncle has encountered one this big, too."

In Xiulin Village and the surrounding forests, wild boars appeared from time to time. Most of the ones Wang Xingxing had caught in the past weighed around a hundred catties.

Ones over two hundred catties were extremely rare.

Today's large wild boar looked to be at least 270 or 280 catties, if not 300... Wild boars are different from domestic pigs; they don't eat fodder. They eat wild medicinal herbs, roots, wild fruits, and some small animals that are easy to prey on.

It takes one or two years for them to grow to over a hundred catties in the wild.

To reach over two hundred catties, nearly three hundred, in conditions where wild food isn't that abundant, might take three or four, or even five years.

"This one was actually shot by Xiao Su's girlfriend," Wang Xingxing said, pointing toward Li Chuxia, who was standing guard at the mountain entrance.

"That's impressive." Wang Chong and Gao Tai glanced at each other, both looking surprised.

"It's more than just impressive. She got a headshot from over a hundred meters away using that old piece of junk your grandfather left behind," Wang Xingxing boasted.

The admiration in Wang Chong and Gao Tai's eyes deepened. They had used that gun before; its accuracy was extremely low.

If she could headshot a wild boar from a hundred meters with that junk gun, she'd definitely be an Olympic shooting champion... "Alright, it's getting late. Let's carry them back quickly. I'm about to be carried away by mosquitoes here," Chen Su urged.

Chen Su pulled the Runtu-style steel fork out of the wild boar's anus.

Then, along with Wang Xingxing and the other two, each grabbing a leg, they lifted the large wild boar onto the tricycle.

Once it was loaded, Wang Chong and Gao Tai walked to the mountain exit and loaded the smaller wild boar next to Li Chuxia onto the vehicle as well.

"Xiao Su, do you two want to squeeze onto the tricycle?"

On the back of the tricycle, besides the two wild boars, there was a little bit of space left.

The two of them could sit on the tricycle's side rails.

"No thanks, Uncle Wang. We'll just walk back. You guys head on ahead."

"Alright, we'll go first then."

Wang Xingxing nodded and twisted the throttle. The tricycle sped off down the mountain road with the three men and two pigs... "Let's go, we should head back too."

"Okay."

The setting sun cast their shadows long on the ground.

Chen Su walked in front at a leisurely pace.

Li Chuxia walked behind Chen Su, her head down as she focused on stepping on his long shadow, one step after another... At Wang Xingxing's home in Xiulin Village.

In less than fifteen minutes, the three men and two pigs arrived at the front door.

Wang Xingxing brought out a scale from inside the house.

The three of them put the large and small pigs on it to weigh them.

The large one was 287 catties, and the small one was 162 catties.

After being butchered, the large wild boar would yield about 220 catties of meat, and the small one about 130 catties.

Selling them at the current price of 50 yuan per catty for pure wild boar, they could make over 17,000 yuan.

Wang Xingxing and Chen Su could each get over 8,000 yuan.

Over eight thousand yuan—most white-collar workers in the city didn't even earn that much in a month.

This was a huge harvest for Wang Xingxing... At Chen Su's home.

"What have you two been up to? Why are you covered in mud?"

When Chen Su and Li Chuxia returned, Mother Chen and Father Chen were sitting in the living room.

Mother Chen had already finished cooking by 5:30 and was just waiting for them to come back for dinner.

"I went into the mountains with Uncle Wang this afternoon to hunt wild boar. We caught two."

Chen Su said with a smile.

That afternoon, he had played a game of life and death with the large wild boar in the fields, and now he was covered in mud.

In contrast, Li Chuxia's school uniform was still clean and white, except for some fine beads of sweat on her forehead.

"What? You took Chuxia into the mountains to hunt wild boar?" Mother Chen's eyes instantly narrowed upon hearing this.

The temperature in the living room seemed to drop instantly.

If it weren't for Li Chuxia being there, she would have definitely given Chen Su a thrashing with a stick.

This rascal—such a beautiful city girl had traveled all this way to the village to find him.

And he took her into the mountains to hunt wild boar?

Such a dangerous thing—what if something had happened to her?

"Uh~ Auntie, I was the one who insisted on going. Chen Su couldn't talk me out of it, so he agreed to take me."

Li Chuxia also sensed the danger in the air and quickly helped explain...