Hunting in the Mountains in the 1970s: I Can Understand Every Beast on the Mountain

[1970s Era + Mountain Foraging and Prosperity + Animal Speech + Portable Storage + Eagle, Hound, and Bear Companions]

In the winter of 1975, Lu Yuanshan returned to the night he had separated from his family at nineteen. His uncle drove a family of four into a drafty thatched hut, giving them only three yuan and sixty cents and a chipped woodcutter’s knife. His sister’s toes poked through her shoes, his parents were figuring out how to save on food for the next day, and Heizi, a stray dog, came through the door carrying half a frozen rabbit. Suddenly, Lu Yuanshan could understand the dog’s barks: there were two wild boars on the back mountain.

After spending decades struggling through the snow in his previous life, he wasn’t about to wait for dawn this time. Heizi found the game trail, and Lu Yuanshan read the terrain and made his move. He brought both boars home, giving his family their first proper meal of meat. The ancestral ring on his finger also held a small space that could keep things fresh, giving him the means to bring game and medicinal herbs down from the mountain.

Later, a golden eagle helped him scout the road ahead, a rescued black bear gave up a ravine, and Shen Qinghe helped him get the medicinal herbs inspected and sorted by quality. There was game in the mountains and buyers outside them. From a pot of meat and a pair of new padded shoes to a new house and one payment after another, Lu Yuanshan was determined to give his family a better life and make sure everyone who went into the mountains with him had food on the table.