The Tale Never Ends Chapter 115 The Hunt Begins

I turned back to look at Mother, who was still watching us from her perch on the rooftop. As if she had heard what we were saying, her arm rose suddenly, pointing into the distance. She was pointing towards Northwest, I realized. She was telling me that we should go to the northwest! I nodded to her and scrambled up the saddle of my horse, and we rumbled out of the encampment with our hunt renewed. Despite rarely being at my side to mollycoddle me, my parents had always been there for me whenever I needed them most. My heart had never felt so at ease, knowing that they were always watching me.

The endless stretch of prairies opened up before us as we galloped swiftly towards Northwest. After hours of riding, we finally came by a tract of woods. "Should we search in the woods too," Edelweiss asked nervously, yanking hard at the reins of her horse to pull it to a halt. The girls have buccaneered the Mongolian steppes, striking fear into anyone who dared roamed their domain without their auspices, but they rarely ventured into forests and woods. "No problem. We'll have a look as well," I said casually. "Fret not," Yuan Chongxi added gleefully, "Brother s.h.i.+yan here is our lord of the wild who fears not even tigers or wolves!"

I merely smiled and said nothing, taking the lead and began walking into the forest.

As we moved deeper into the woods, I slowly felt the creepy sensation of being watched. It could be due to the beasts and birds of the wild that were taking shelter in the forest; there were more animals in forests compared to the open fields of the gra.s.slands. Nevertheless, my intuition was tingling; we could be near to our quarry and I could feel it!

The light of the sun was already slowly ebbing away. We ought to make camp for the night, I decided. We had the horses tied to the trees and began foraging for firewood to start a fire. With a knife, I began sc.r.a.ping tree barks to weave them into ropes for the use of erecting makes.h.i.+ft tents. But hunger began to bite; our rations were finished.

"I had already mentioned before leaving that we should first take care of our rations!" Yuan Chongxi began grumbling. "Look! Without food, how are we supposed to continue the hunt tomorrow?!" "Quit fussing!" I snapped, "Just get your barbeque set ready and sharpen some branches to be used as skewers! Just you wait, our ingredient will come! "What are you?! You want to emulate the miracle of the loaves and fish?!" Yuan Chongxi retorted indignantly. "Surely Brother s.h.i.+yan has something up his sleeve," Edelweiss quipped, "You know him! He has no short supply of ideas and ingenuity!" Yuan Chongxi began getting to work, stripping the bark of several branches while still hissing irately, "You don't know! I've lost count of the times. Lin Feng and I have been hurt and walloped for nothing, only because of his ideas and ingenuity which only work in the last minute!" He quickly spun to face me. "Do you know whom do you remind me of? The heroes from action movies! They only come in at the last minute when everyone is most desperate to save the day!" This made everyone laugh. I wagged my finger at Yuan Chongxi. "You know what? And you remind me of the aunties at the market with your mouth that rivals the deadliness of barracuda!"

The night's shroud of blackness fell upon the forest. We sat around the fire under a tree. Yuan Chongxi was peering up at the starry canopy above us through the boughs of the forest. "Here I am, waiting for manna from the sky!" "There will no manna," I teased him and said, "Manna you can eat immediately. But what we are waiting for is the main ingredient for our food. We need to process it before cooking! I did explicitly mentioned 'ingredient' earlier, did I not?" "So where is it? Give it here!" Yuan Chongxi snarled in jest, spreading his arms wide dramatically. "Just you wait. It will be here in no time," I muttered. Lo and behold! Something fell from above our heads suddenly and leaped near the fire! With a branch, I bolted forward to hold it down, screaming, "There you are!" It was a wild partridge!

"Here you are! Quit complaining now and get to work, peel off its feathers!" I snapped at Yuan Chongxi gruffly, handing to him the wildfowl. Lin Feng and Edelweiss bustled closer with amazement. "How did you do it?" the latter asked, "Is that a spell? Teach me!" Saying nothing, I merely pointed at the fire with my stick. Out of nowhere, another two partridges leaped out of the bushes, beating their wings frantically to reach the fire! Exultant hoots came from the girls with joy! Some began plucking off the feathers of the carca.s.ses and cleaning their insides while others remained in waiting, hoping to catch more wildfowls. Indeed, a few more partridges were attracted by the fire and everyone busied themselves with preparing a dinner of barbecue chicken. With some beer and liquor to pair up with our meal, some of the girls began dancing around the fire, celebrating our bounty!

Still, Edelweiss continued hounding me to teach her the magic to summon the wildfowls. "That is no magic!" I exclaimed with a snickering laugh. "I did not draw them here!" Nevertheless, she carried on badgering me and some of the other girls joined her in tugging at my arms. I motioned for them to calm down. "You are accustomed to living in the steppes. This is the forest. It's different here. You might not be able to see them, but there are lots of feral partridges in these woods."

I set ablaze a cigarette and took in the sweet flavor of the tobacco. "It was not me who had drawn this chickens here. It's the fire. They can be easily attracted by any source of light, for example, the moon. They might even have mistaken the fire as the moon!"

More and more girls sat around me to listen to me talking about living in the wilderness. "All right! All right!" I relented at last. Even Lin Feng and Yuan Chongxi joined in the fray as well.

With a stick, I motioned at the fire in a circular motion. "Do you know what our ancestors call this? Us sitting together around a fire?" "What do they call it?" Yuan Chongxi's voice came from the back of the crowd. "It's called 'Zhe' (者: literally 'people' or 'matter')!" I answered.

"Come on now!" Yuan Chongxi barked again. "Quit trying to con the girls here! How can this be 'Zhe'?!"

With the stick still twirling between my fingers, I had its tip burnt and wrote the 'Zhe' (者) word on the ground. "I'm serious!" I said again. "This is now read as 'Zhe'. But in ancient times, it was p.r.o.nounced as 'Zhu' (煮). Yes, the same 'Zhu' we now used for the cooking. But many do not know that the four dots below the current 'Zhu' was only added thereafter. You will notice that Chinese words bearing the 'Zhe' word within shares the same consonant 'Zh'. There's 'Zhu' (诸) that means everyone, 'Du' (都) that means capital or town, 'Zhu' (著) which means authors.h.i.+p, among many others. In the past, when the 'Zhe' (者) word was contrived, the top half of the word, the 'Lao' (耂) halve was devised to resemble a stove or a hearth. The 'Ri' (日) bottom halve was not meant to refer to the sun, but an ill.u.s.tration of a group of people sitting around a hearth, chatting and eating merrily."

More girls began pelting me with strange questions that I was quickly overrun by their non-stop bombardment. The light-hearted hour pa.s.sed quickly into the late night until we fell asleep in each other's arms.

We were awoken the second morning by the incessant chirps of the birds heralding the coming of a new day. We had some leftovers of the barbecue for breakfast and continued our hunt.

The journey was uneventful until we came near the foot of a hill at noon and stopped near a gurgling brook. I motioned for the company to stop for a rest and everyone dismounted, pulling the reins of our horses and left them to graze at the meadows while we went to the brook to refill our water pouches. Gla.s.s-like shards of ice festooned the gra.s.ses around the creek but the water was hardly icy cold. We then sat down to refresh ourselves while some of us took a puff with cigarettes.

"So what should we do for lunch, Mr. Quartermaster?" Yuan Chongxi asked, "We have no fire here." Everyone's gazes s.h.i.+fted to me. "And all you know of is eating!" I snarled, brandis.h.i.+ng my riding crop at him in a farcical manner. Then I had an idea. "How about some meat? Pork?" I asked, only to be faced with confused stares as if saying, "But where in the world are you going to find pork around here?" "Just you wait. Edelweiss, Brother Lin; both of you, come with me. We'll go hunting!" "But you seemed to be immensely certain that the hunt will yield bounty?" Yuan Chongxi hissed with comical disdain. "Leave that to me. Just prepare the things we need for the barbecue and some firewood! We'll come back with meat!"

When we readied the horses, I set out with Lin Feng and Edelweiss at my heels. We came across a jungly woods and I extracted my Gourd to release some of my spirit wolves. The wolves sauntered around aimlessly at first, before they caught the scent of prey in the winds and immediately darted forward. I drove my horse forward, with Edelweiss and Lin Feng still following behind. After running for a couple of miles, the wolves slowed to long, stealthy lopes and began broke formation. They had found their prey and were moving to surround them. Edelweiss, not understanding anything, merely followed closely behind with a bewildered expression. We followed the wolves and found not one, but a herd of wild boars!

I immediately drew back my wolves. "What are you doing?" asked a puzzled Lin Feng. I left my Gourd uncorked. "Wolves will first attack the easiest prey of the entire herd," I explained with a devilish grin, "But I am not interested in catching a small prey!" I aimed the mouth of my Gourd at the largest and fattest boar and zapped it with a curse, the Soul-banishment Curse, and forcibly tore its soul from its physical body into my Gourd. The boar squirmed in its death as if it had been shot and immediately fell dead, frightening the rest of the herd and they immediately darted away in terror.