Chapter Twenty: The Wolf's Head

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Of course, I never mentioned this idea to Master Old Chen.

After dinner, the two of us left the paired hut and headed into the woods.

Our destination was the place where we had set out poisoned bait the day before.

At that moment, I began to pray that our bait had poisoned either a fox or a wolf.

Not because we wanted their meat. Our main goal was their pelts.

Winter was approaching.

And the clothes we were wearing now were nowhere near sufficient to withstand the Great Khingan Mountains in the bitter cold of midwinter, when heavy snow sealed off the mountain roads and temperatures fell dozens of degrees below freezing...

As we walked through the forest, Master Old Chen asked, “How does it feel, entering the mountains for the first time?”

With a crossbow on my back, I answered between heavy breaths, “Everything else is fine. It’s just that after walking through the woods for so long, my underwear and undershirt are soaked and clammy. It’s horribly uncomfortable!”

“Heh!”

Master Old Chen said, “It’s not so bad right now. Thirty-Seven, coming into the mountains at this time of year is actually pretty fortunate. If you had come in summer, you’d know that no human being could stand living here! Mosquitoes, ticks, biting midges, and all sorts of other pests. Those insects are the worst.

“Take mosquitoes, for example. The mosquitoes in the mountains are nothing like the ones outside. One bite can raise a huge welt!

“And then there are ticks. Their bites are vicious. They can even burrow into your body to suck your blood. If you try to pull one out with your hand, you can easily tear it in half, leaving the other half embedded in your flesh. If that happens, you have to get to a hospital immediately.

“And biting midges are smaller than mosquitoes, and they love crawling into people’s ears!”

Hearing Master Old Chen say this, I felt my heart sink.

I had always thought being a hunter would be easy enough. You went into the mountains to hunt, and when you weren’t hunting, you holed up in the cabin with the other fellows, talking about women, smoking, and playing cards.

Now it seemed that wasn’t the case at all!

Just hearing Master Old Chen describe those three kinds of insects was enough to make my skin crawl.

While he was telling me about them, we arrived at the place where we had laid the poisoned bait the previous day.

We first went to inspect the spot where we had placed the poisoned jujubes. The bait was still sitting exactly as we had left it, untouched.

“Damn it! Master Old Chen, the foxes didn’t eat any of it!” I said, feeling dejected.

“Go take a look farther ahead!”

...

After walking for another ten minutes or so, Master Old Chen and I suddenly saw a wolf lying stiffly beneath a large tree not far away.

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“Master Old Chen! Master Old Chen!” I said excitedly.

“What are you getting excited about? Shut up!” Master Old Chen scolded me, and I immediately fell silent.

He did not approach at once. First, he carefully examined the surrounding area. Only after confirming that there was no danger did he lead me over.

Then he said to me, “Thirty-Seven, listen to me. No matter what happens, don’t get excited and don’t get angry. You have to stay calm! Excitement will make you lose your judgment, and anger will cloud your wisdom!”

“Understood!” I nodded.

The wolf was thoroughly dead. By the time we reached it, its body had already gone cold. I began to wonder whether it had died the previous night.

Without hesitation, Master Old Chen hoisted the wolf onto his shoulder. Just as we were preparing to leave, the corner of my eye suddenly caught sight of another dead wolf lying in a patch of grass a short distance to our right.

“Master Old Chen, there’s another wolf!” I whispered, pointing toward the carcass.

He turned his head and glanced at it before saying casually, “Yes. That one’s yours.”

“Got it!”

My heart leapt, and I jogged over.

Even so, I remained extremely cautious. I crept toward it, crossbow aimed and ready.

Once I was close enough to confirm that the wolf was not moving, I reached out and touched it. It was ice-cold.

Clearly, it was dead as well.

Under Master Old Chen’s watchful gaze, I hoisted the wolf onto my shoulders.

Strangely enough, the instant I lifted it, I glanced beneath the place where the carcass had been and saw a patch of black powder.

I was just about to examine what the powder was when Master Old Chen hurriedly called for me to come back.

I acknowledged him, but in the end I paid no attention to it.

...

On the way back, Master Old Chen and I chatted intermittently.

I asked first, “Master Old Chen, there’s quite a bit of meat on these two wolves. Can’t we eat it?”

“No. We didn’t catch them for their meat. We caught them for their pelts! Besides, wolf meat has too strong a gamey, earthy taste. It’s practically inedible, and the smell is awful.”

“Oh, I see.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “With the two wolf pelts, we should be able to make a wolfskin coat for each of us, right?”

“Mm. There’s enough.”

By the time we returned to the paired hut, it was not yet noon. Perhaps because we had actually obtained some game, our spirits were unusually high.

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We laid the two wolves on the ground outside the paired hut, and Master Old Chen quickly pulled a knife from his pack.

“Thirty-Seven! Come over here. Let me see how good you are at skinning.” Seeing me standing a short distance away, Master Old Chen called out to me.

“All right!”

I was not afraid.

Back at the hunting grounds, many hunters had taught me how to skin animals, and it was considered a fairly important skill.

A hunter’s greatest profit from hunting deep in the mountains came from selling pelts. Wolf pelts had not been worth much in the past. At that time, a wild wolf pelt might fetch only three or four hundred yuan, while one in good condition could bring several hundred more. And to be clear, that was the price paid to hunters by the people who bought the pelts—not the price those buyers charged you later. How much you paid was your own affair.

Note: Since 2021, hunting, killing, and trading in wild wolves and their products have been illegal. Do not violate the law. This detail is included solely for the purposes of the story.

I took the knife Master Old Chen handed me and began at the belly, starting roughly beneath the chin, cutting all the way down to the base of the tail.

Then I took out my own skinning knife and carefully separated the hide from the flesh. The movements had to be gentle and patient, preserving the pelt as completely as possible. I cut with the knife while using my hands to peel the hide away to either side.

When I finished, Master Old Chen gave me a thumbs-up.

“Not bad, Thirty-Seven. You can handle it!”

I grinned. “Nothing special. Just practice.”

“Very good!”

Master Old Chen made no attempt to hide his praise, clicking his tongue approvingly.

I lowered my head and began removing the stray hairs and blood from the wolf pelt while Master Old Chen prepared to skin the other wolf.

Then, suddenly, something strange happened.

I saw the mouth of the wolf’s head—the bloody head I had just gutted and skinned and tossed aside—slowly open.

My heart jolted.

What was going on?

I was just about to speak when I saw the wolf’s jaws begin opening and closing.

As though...

As though it were not dead at all!