"You—you really dare to kill me!" He bared his teeth, clutching his wound, struggling to get up.

Du Jianshan didn't give him a chance at all. He took a few steps forward, stepped on his chest, and pointed the knife at his throat. "How many more times do you want to hide? If I hadn't been alert this time, you dog would have really succeeded?"

"You want to kill me?" Cai Changgui gasped for breath, his eyes rolling back. "If you really dare to kill me, you'll become a bandit! When the commune sends people up, you'll be the first one they deal with!"

"Then what are you trying to do? Ambushing us in the middle of the night and using hidden weapons—isn't that the work of bandits?" Du Jianshan's face was ashen. "Speak! Who sent you? Have you been watching us for days?"

"No one ordered me to do this, I just won't submit to you!" Cai Changgui's eyes flashed, but he still gritted his teeth and shouted, "You, a fugitive from the village, do you think you're worthy of monopolizing the mountain produce? What gives you the right? The mountain belongs to everyone, not just your private land!"

"Pah!" Du Jianshan sneered. "You still talk about the collective? Where's your gun? The higher-ups have ordered it confiscated, why are you still hiding it? If I had been a fraction of a second slower tonight, it wouldn't have just been a scratch."

Cai Changgui's lips twitched, but he remained silent.

Just then, Lanzi's footsteps sounded. She came running, panting, and when she saw what was happening, her face changed. "You...you really started fighting?"

"It's nothing." Du Jianshan glanced back at her, his voice low. "This guy tried to touch my knife, but I caught him red-handed."

"Please let me off the hook," Cai Changgui said, struggling. "I'll go back and keep quiet. You know, if I really yell, those people in the village will definitely come and cause trouble, and then all the dried meat and hides you brought will have to be handed over to the authorities."

Du Jianshan's eyes turned cold. "Do you really think I'm easily scared?"

"Brother Du—" Lanzi suddenly tugged at his sleeve and whispered, "Don't linger here. It's windy at night, and if he shouts, it could attract ghostly trouble. If you're going to kill him or tie him up, you'd better take him somewhere far away."

Upon hearing this, Du Jianshan pondered for a moment and finally withdrew his knife slightly.

“Your life is worthless, touching you would only dirty the knife,” he said. “Come on, cut off his belt.”

"Huh?" Lanzi was taken aback.

"Tie his hands and feet," Du Jianshan said coldly. "I won't kill him, but he'll have to lie in bed for two days."

"Brother Du..." Cai Changgui became anxious upon hearing this, "If you really tie me up in this desolate wilderness, aren't you just waiting to die!"

"You're so tough, aren't you?" Du Jianshan smiled sinisterly. "With your physique, you can probably only last two more days. I'll go back to the village to deliver the goods, and while I'm at it, I'll bring some men up the mountain to rescue you. That would be a good deed."

Lanzi had already picked up a vine from the side and quickly tied Cai Changgui up tightly, and tore off a strip of cloth to gag his mouth.

"Let's go." Du Jianshan dragged him to a fallen pine tree under the trees and threw him there. "Even a dog wouldn't want to smell your stench."

Lanzi asked softly, "Should we just leave it like this?"

“He deserved it.” Du Jianshan walked ahead, knife in hand. “He thought his little tricks could really harm me? Humph, after all these years of living in the mountains, I’ve learned one thing—humans are more venomous than wild beasts.”

When we returned to the lime kiln, the sky was already turning gray.

As Lanzi walked, she looked at the bloodstains on Du Jianshan's left arm. "Are you injured? Was it from that knife earlier?"

Du Jianshan shook his head. "It's nothing serious. It's just a minor injury; I can just wipe it off with some strong liquor later."

"Then you rest for a while, I'll start a fire and make some water. We need to pack up quickly, as you said, we need to go around to Huangmaoling tomorrow."

He grunted in agreement, sat down in the corner, holding the knife in one hand and taking out the already dried wolf pelt with the other, carefully rolling it up and tying it tightly with hemp rope.

“We need to tighten our belts on these mountain products,” he said. “If we run into someone like Cai Changgui again, losing even one piece would be a waste of our lives.”

Lanzi pursed her lips, then suddenly asked, "You... you knew he was following us all along?"

Du Jianshan didn't answer immediately, but looked at the wisps of smoke rising from the fire and lowered his voice: "Three days ago, at Black Donkey Slope, I saw him drop a matchstick under his feet."

"Then why didn't you do it sooner?"

“You don’t understand.” He shook his head. “In the mountains, you can’t fight people with sheer ruthlessness. You have to wait for the right moment. You have to push them to the limit before they reveal their true intentions. If you act too early, they’ll shut up and you’ll be at a disadvantage.”

Lanzi's eyes flickered, and she nodded slightly. "You want to force him to reveal whether there's anyone else behind him."

"Hmm." Du Jianshan said in a low voice, "But it seems that he was just asking for death; no one sent him."

"Then can we walk faster?"

"We can get there in a day. If the weather is clear and the wind is calm, we can cross the ridge by noon the day after tomorrow."

That night, the two took turns keeping watch. The dried meat, hides, and herbs wrapped on the straw mat were all packed into bags. Du Jianshan changed his clothes and sprinkled grass ash on his wounds to stop the bleeding.

The next morning, an east wind blew through the clouds, illuminating the treetops.

Lanzi got up first and was boiling water in a pot when she suddenly heard a faint sound coming from afar—it sounded like a dog barking.

She stood up nervously and ran into the kiln. "Brother Du! There's a dog barking outside, coming this way!"

Du Jianshan immediately became alert, grabbed his knife and backpack, and shouted, "Let's go out from the back entrance and squeeze into that crevice in the rocky cliff—quick!"

The two quickly packed their food and rushed out through the hidden path behind the lime kiln. The snow melted as soon as they stepped on the ground, and the remaining ice fell down, leaving a trail of messy footprints.