A gun!
It was the dream, the desire, that every man had once harbored in his heart.
The cold metallic texture, the unique design—it held a fatal attraction for men.
He didn't know its model name, but he had seen it countless times in movies and on TV.
Suppressing his excitement, Feng Shan took out the rifle.
The moment his hand grasped the stock, the cold metal fit perfectly in his palm. An indescribable feeling washed over him, almost like an illusion of kinship. He could clearly feel its weight and texture; every detail was real to the touch.
His heart began to race, and his blood seemed to boil in that instant.
Feng Shan then took out a kraft paper box from the drawer. It was heavy in his hands. He opened it to find rows of neatly arranged, orange-yellow bullets.
A gun, bullets, and no one to answer to.
'Who cares about cleaning?'
'A man ought to be playing with a gun.'
'It's almost noon. What else is there to do but go hunting?'
But a moment later, a problem arose.
'How do I load this thing?'
When it came to knives, Feng Shan was completely confident; he could carve the "Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix" out of a turnip.
But this was his first time handling a gun. Even though he'd seen it on TV, that was just visual recognition—a world apart from actual operation.
He had a general idea, though.
After fumbling with it for a bit, he quickly figured it out. With slightly trembling hands, he pulled back the bolt. It made a soft KLIK sound, revealing a staggered, double-row internal magazine.
Then, he carefully pushed the bullets into the magazine.
One round.
Two rounds.
Three rounds.
He stopped when the magazine was full with five rounds.
Feng Shan slid the bolt back into place, his eyes gleaming with excitement, and stepped out of the bus with the rifle in hand.
He stood in the clearing, aiming the gun around, imagining some prey flying past and him taking it down with a single shot.
MEOW!!
Coca-Cola poked its head out from his fur coat, wondering why its master had left the warm bus.
"Quiet. You're not getting cat food tonight." Feng Shan patted Coca-Cola's head, his gaze falling on the Moonlight Forest in the distance.
He went back into the bus. The grass stalks he had left by the stove were now dry. Feng Shan gathered them up, selected the best ones, and wove them into a thin grass rope, which he stuffed into his pocket.
...
The Moonlight Forest was the only green area in the Crown Territory. It contained a complex mix of trees—birches, pines, and many firs he couldn't name. The forest trees were lush and grew straight and tall, with thirty- to forty-meter giants dotting the landscape. Dense thickets of shrubs grew beneath them.
In places the sun couldn't reach, snow mixed with thick layers of fallen leaves. Every step sank deep into the ground.
Since it was his first time hunting, Feng Shan felt both excited and nervous. He walked through the forest, scanning his surroundings for any sign of prey.
Time ticked by, but he didn't see so much as a feather, let alone any real prey.
Feng Shan wasn't worried, though.
He took the thin grass rope he had prepared from his pocket. In his dreams, his ancestor Feng Meng had used a grass rope for divination to locate prey.
He deftly tied a knot in the rope with his right hand, then observed its shape.
He immediately had a premonition: if he headed east, he would find prey.
Feng Shan turned and walked east. Ten minutes later, he heard a clucking sound coming from the bushes beneath the trees.
'There really is prey!'
His face lit up. He moved cautiously, hiding behind a patch of low shrubs and peeking out.
Under the trees, a few black-and-white hens were scratching at the leaves, searching for food.
Hens!!
Feng Shan didn't recognize the breed, but based on their shape and feathers, they weren't much different from the free-range chickens back home.
He raised the rifle, aimed at the fattest hen using the iron sights.
He pulled the trigger.
KLIK!
The bang he expected never came. Instead, the hens heard the noise from the bushes and flew off, flapping their wings.
'What happened?'
Embarrassed, Feng Shan picked up the rifle to figure out what had gone wrong.
After fiddling with it for a while, he discovered there was a safety lever.
The safety was located above and behind the bolt. When flicked to the right, it locked the sear and the bolt body, preventing the rifle from firing or the bolt from being opened. Flicking it to the left allowed the rifle to fire normally when the trigger was pulled.
With the rifle figured out, Feng Shan looked up again to find the hens. They were really quite stupid; despite the noise, they hadn't fled. After flying about ten meters, they had landed and resumed their search for food.
'So careless!'
Now that he was properly prepared, Feng Shan raised his rifle and used the iron sights to aim at the hen that had just escaped, now a dozen or so meters away.
He pulled the trigger.
BANG! A loud shot echoed through the forest. The hens panicked and scattered into the air, flapping their wings frantically.
Feng Shan felt the gun jolt. The wooden stock slammed into his shoulder like a heavy hammer.
'A hit!'
Although he hadn't seen the bullet hit its mark, Feng Shan had a feeling.
'That shot definitely hit. I'll eat shit if it didn't.'
Ignoring the intense pain in his shoulder, he burst out of the bushes and stumbled towards the trees. Coca-Cola suddenly leaped out of his fur coat, darted under a fir tree with a one-meter-thick trunk, and started meowing beside a plump hen.
When Feng Shan got closer, he saw that the bullet had blown the hen's head clean off.
A fatal shot.
Haha!
'I'm a natural sharpshooter.'
He'd hit his prey on only the second shot of his life.
Feng Shan excitedly picked up the dead hen. He gave it a shake and estimated it weighed around three or four pounds.
After plucking and gutting it, there'd probably only be about two pounds left. Definitely not enough to eat.
But Feng Shan wasn't in a hurry to prepare his prize. Instead, he placed the hen back on the ground, laid his right hand on its corpse, and the Witchcraft Bone Ring materialized on his finger.
This was what his ancestor did in his dreams. Whenever he hunted a Fierce Beast, he would just bring the Witchcraft Artifact close, and it would collect the animal's Soul Power. Some of this Soul Power was used to temper and strengthen the body, while the rest was stored in the Witchcraft Artifact as energy for casting Witchcraft.
As the Witchcraft Artifact neared the dead chicken, Feng Shan felt a faint, warm current enter his body, disappearing in an instant.
A very faint red line appeared on the Witchcraft Bone Ring on his finger. It was difficult to spot without looking closely.
This was because the hen provided too little Soul Power. In his dreams, Feng Shan had personally witnessed his ancestor Feng Meng kill an Eight-horned Strange Bull as large as a small mountain with a bow and arrow. The Soul Power he absorbed from it made the Witch Pattern on the Witchcraft Bone Ring glow with a blood-red light that shot into the sky.
'A little is better than nothing. I'll take it slow. Every little bit counts.'
Next, it was time to dress the prey.
Feng Shan grabbed the hen by its feet and hung it upside down to bleed it out. If not bled promptly, the blood would seep into the meat, greatly affecting the taste.
Coca-Cola circled the pool of blood, meowing and sniffing at the scent.
"Get away from there. What if there are germs?" Feng Shan used his foot to cover the blood with dry leaves. He broke off a willow branch, tied it around the chicken's neck, and hung it from his waist. "Let's go. On to the next one."
Coca-Cola leaped nimbly onto his fur coat and clung tightly to his shoulder, its eyes staring intently at the forest ahead, as if the smell of chicken blood had awakened its primal instincts.
These hens really were stupid.
Their companion had been shot dead, but they didn't know to flee. After flying a short distance, they went right back to carelessly digging for food.
Before long, Feng Shan found the flock again.
He raised his gun and fired again.
The moment the shot rang out, Coca-Cola, who had been lying on his shoulder, darted off.
It found the downed prey and started meowing.
When Feng Shan followed the sound, he found Coca-Cola standing guard over two hens, its paws pinning down one that wasn't quite dead yet.
Hey!
'Two chickens with one shot!'
A satisfied expression appeared on Feng Shan's face. He praised Coca-Cola with a pat on the head, then collected the Soul Power with his Witchcraft Bone Ring before starting the "bloodletting therapy" on the hens.
"Three should be enough to eat. I'll reward you with a big drumstick when we get back."
Carrying their prey, the man and his cat swaggered out of the forest and back to their bus camp.
He boiled a pot of hot water.
First, he gave the hens a full-body "spa treatment"—a hot soak to make plucking easier. After he was done, the hens' once-fluffy skin was smooth and white. Even a rooster would have to call them beautiful.
When it came to cooking, Feng Shan had absolute confidence.
During the years after he ran away from the orphanage, he was the one who cooked and cared for the younger kids, always trying to find creative ways to make their meals more nutritious.
Later, he opened a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that became quite well-known in Hai City.
The place was packed every day during mealtimes. Customers would start lining up at eleven in the morning. There was no menu and no sign; it was all Feng Shan, stir-frying one dish after another. Business was booming!
A pity.
If only that incident hadn't happened.
...