Chapter 2: 2. Courageous Hunter

For the next month, Chen Li investigated the price of the marrow cleansing pill, its uses, where to buy it, what to look for when buying it, and how to consume it.

The one that made the most sense was the medium-grade pill from the Vermillion Twilight Pavilion, for the “low” cost of 5000 spirit stones.

The Chen family’s entire monthly revenue was 1000 spirit stones. And the profit was usually less than 50! The entire family lived off of that 50 spirit stones!

Therefore, Chen Li started to investigate ways of making money! Since he didn’t have a cheat to learn the arts of alchemy, refinement, formations, or even talismans, he had to get creative!

That’s why, two months later, he had secretly left the city on his own to hunt spiritual beasts!

This idea was originally brewing for years. Now that he was 12, he could reasonably hunt. Probably. The last two months were simply spent on his final preparations!

Of the huntable spiritual beasts surrounding the city, the most profitable by far -for his stature at least- was the desolate boar. A lone creature without much intelligence, with an odd taste for a certain river herb. Not worth the hassle for others, but a gentle introduction for Chen Li regardless.

At dawn, Chen Li finally left home under the guise of wandering around the city. 4 hours of walking later he found droppings with a tinge of metallic scent. Round, hard, and over a dozen deep brown lumps, confirmed that Chen Li had entered the habitat of the desolate boar. The slightly peeled-off bark of a nearby tree removed any doubts he had.

‘First, let’s check the surroundings and find try to find patterns like uncle Han mentioned.’

Chen Li’s number one “adviser” for hunting was a retired one-armed hunter, working in a talisman workshop.

His adviser suggested that desolate boars would only leave droppings close to their primary source of water, therefore Chen Li searched tramped grass and broken branches close to the river.

‘This looks like a hoof mark, the soil is too red, which means high clay content, a good way to clean off external parasites for a desolate boar. So, this really is the turf of an active desolate boar!’

Chen Li’s eyes lit up and he immediately started working. First he took off and hid all of his clothes and belongings, then dived deep into the river. The herb that the desolate boar liked to eat most was fallowthorn. A green-reddish plant that smelled like metal dust, and tasted like raw sewage. Though despite its taste, according to the top adviser it was quite rich in nutrients!

Around 10 meters down, he found and grabbed two handfuls of the herb. Upon coming ashore, Chen Li was already cursing at the desolate boar in his mind, because the water touching the “herb” was slightly contaminated by its taste.

“Uncle Han, I’ll take your word for it. You can eat this sh*t all you want…”

The sun had a few hours until it reached the peak, so Chen Li hurriedly changed into his “hunt” clothes, then set the bundle of fallowthorn inside the shallow riverside, so their scent wouldn’t permeate through the air. His next target was two sets of herbs, a cleverly devised concoction by his adviser to mask the scent of a human.

An hour later, Chen Li finally had enough to last him about 6 hours.

‘Huh, I know this scent, isn’t it somewhat like what laundry aunties use as Xianxia detergent?’

Uncle Han’s credibility took a blow on the spot, but Chen Li kept his optimistic outlook. The danger of his scent mask not working was rather low, since he wasn’t going to be in direct conflict with the beast! The worst-case scenario he devised was to stay on top of a tree until the desolate boar left from boredom or hunger.

After all, this was just a 1st stage spiritual beast, not some holy creature that had strong convictions about their toilet habits!

With preliminary preparations done, Chen Li retraced his steps back to the droppings he found earlier. For his plan to work, he needed the droppings to be buried at least three heads under the soil, therefore he relied on his Qi practicing technique to morph a hand-sized rock, and create a pseudo-shovel!

The operation that Chen Li was running right now was so low cost, he couldn’t even afford to bring in a proper shovel! Qi shaped rock was the best he could do!

After smelly and arduous half an hour of work, he tidied up the scene as best as he could, and took out two stalks of the scent-masking herbs, rubbed them into each other, then smeared around the places touched by the droppings.

As territorial creatures, desolate boars took care of marking their land! And would treat the disappearance of their marks as a provocation!

Probably.

Then, Chen Li thoroughly washed his hands at the river using clay as soap, took out the bundle of fallowthorn and placed them just a few meters away from the clay-rich soil. The first part of the setup was complete!

Chen Li applied the scent mask on himself, thoroughly, and went back to the burial site of the droppings.

‘Let’s see… Just as I thought, this tree should hold me nicely. The leaves themselves have a nice scent to them, would probably make mine even less noticeable. The bark should be able to hide the sleeping powder…’

After checking everything thrice once again, Chen Li wore a glove and rubbed the sleeping powder he made from Night’s Miracle stems. A single herb could hardly put a baby to sleep, but over the years he had been collecting Night’s Miracle herbs every few days! He had a considerable accumulation of dried stems!

‘Let’s hope this works. That was nearly 1/5th of my stash…’ Chen Li looked at the slightly whiter bark with complex emotions, then climbed up, carefully, to avoid leaving any scents.

Unbeknownst to him, an 8-year-old girl in the 8th stage of the Qi Condensation realm, was watching his every move from afar, from the other side of the river.

This girl of course, was Su Yan, Chen Li’s little sister. The more she watched, the more puzzled she became. What was her brother doing by taking a nasty weed out of the river? Why was he rubbing grass all over himself? Why was he burying animal excrement?!

She was her big brother, so of course she couldn’t let him wander around with only 1st stage cultivation! As Chen Li waited on top of the tree, so did Su Yan.

Hours passed. The shadows had started growing longer. But patience brought its rewards, and a desolate boar caught the attention of Su Yan first, Chen Li second.

The animal first enjoyed a “feast” of those terrible weeds, then took a clay bath for nearly an hour! Su Yan would’ve killed it out of annoyance if not for her brother’s watchful eye!

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Soon, the beast started aimlessly walking around. But came to a sudden stop and started sniffing the air, nervously at first. The more it sniffed, the more aggressive it became! Without warning it took off to the tree that Su Yan’s brother was hiding!

‘… Calm down. It’s just a mindless beast. My brother is… sitting at a strategic spot. Yes, he is in an advantageous position…’

Was he going to attack now? Su Yan waited with bated breath. But as the beast aggressively oinked and slammed itself on the tree, Chen Li didn’t look like he was even looking at an opening!

The boar tossed itself on the tree a few dozen times, left a fresh batch of droppings nearby, and left with proud steps!

After a while, Su Yan’s brother climbed down and started following the boar, leaving Su Yan speechless.

Chen Li followed the beast, with Su Yan following him from behind. Another hour later, Su Yan noticed the beast's sluggish movements, and immediately understood the purpose of that white powder.

Not 5 minutes later, the beast had collapsed!

Chen Li looked found a head-sized rock and started using the rock-shaping technique once again. The overall shape made Su Yan raise an eyebrow. It seemed that her brother was going to use a stick made out of stone to take out the boar.

‘Are we… that poor?’ She wondered. Most of the time she was in her room cultivating, and didn’t have a good grasp of her family’s livelihood. Judging by her family’s clothing though, she thought they should be able to afford a knife at least!

Chen Li took more than 10 minutes to reshape the rock into a sharpened stick. As he moved closer to the boar, Su Yan noticed how he took extra care of where he placed his feet. Finally, when he was near the soft neck of the beast, Chen Li seemed to hesitate.

‘This should be his first kill…’ Thought Su Yan as she watched. How long would he hesitate? Could he even do it?

As she was wondering, her brother raised the stone stick and plunged it into the beast’s neck. A huge gush of blood made it immediately obvious that the beast was, or would be dead within seconds.

Chen Li ran back and looked at the moaning beast with fear!

This was a genuine spiritual beast! Even if it was a normal beast, Chen Li would’ve given it the utmost respect regardless!

He had one life!

Well, actually, this was his second life, and perhaps there would be a third, who could know? But it was better to treat as if he had one life!

He had one life! So he had to take care of himself!

The desolate boar tried to get up and tried to scream in pain, but both it, and Chen Li knew it was too late. As the boar gave its last breath, Chen Li recognized the emotion in its eyes.

The memory of his own death flooded back into his mind. His last breath, the dull terror as the realization kicked in. Boundless, primal fear of the ultimate end.

Chen Li couldn’t bear to watch and looked away.

Did he do the right thing? Was hunting necessary? Was killing necessary? Couldn’t he have just collected more herbs? Tried to be more active in his parent’s shop?

Thousands of self-criticizing thoughts appeared one after the other. And the growing stench of blood made them stronger than they should’ve been.

After a while, Chen Li sighed with emotion. What was done was done, the least he could do was to make sure the boar’s death was not in vain.

He untied the rope around his waist and applied the knot taught by his top adviser. The desolate boar was far heavier than he thought, so Chen Li was only able to lift its body halfway to make the blood drain faster. Meanwhile, he found two big and long branches, tied them up, and put a Qi shaped stone wheel to complete his makeshift cart.

‘The sun should set in 3 hours… I should be able to make it to the out market… No fierce beasts should appear this close to the city either. Not bad.’

Naturally, the long preparation time included preparations in all aspects! Chen Li had already negotiated the purchase of one desolate boar carcass with the vendors outside the city!

Once he was sure that most of the blood was gone, Chen Li loaded the boar into his cart, and started his arduous journey back!

Thankfully, even with time wasted by cleaning his everyday clothes and wiping off the scent of blood, he was able to enter the city before sunset!

As he walked back to their house, Chen Li felt the 3 spirit stones in his pockets.

A full day of work, dealing with sh*t, and blood, made him 3 spirit stones! That was enough to last their family for 2 days!

Though he had doubted himself, all his guilt from killing an innocent animal had washed away already after receiving those 3 low-quality spirit stones!

The current Chen Li wouldn’t have minded hunting a desolate boar every day, but unfortunately, depending on these territorial boars wasn’t sustainable. At least according to his adviser!

“3 down, 4997 to go…” Chen Li muttered while stepping into the house, thinking that no one was near to hear. But unbeknownst to him, Su Yan had heard everything.

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