PDLP Chapter 60 Feint to the East, Attack in the West
Chapter 60 Feint to the East, Attack in the West
"Master Wu, you have to see if the people going into the mountains are up to the task. If not, then let them stay behind!"
In the Songling Forest Area, there are differences between entering the mountains when it's not snowing and entering after heavy snow has blocked the mountains.
The temperature drops to minus 20 or 30 degrees Celsius during the day and minus 30 or 40 degrees Celsius at night.
Even a lack of experience can easily lead to freezing to death in the mountains.
"That's fine. You go back and choose your people first, I'll skin these wolves and then head over..."
Wu Laowai was willing to offer advice, and Sun Changkui was about to go back and gather manpower when Chen Tuo said:
"Brother-in-law Sun, I'm afraid not all of the bayonets you allocated can be returned. I just glanced at them, and quite a few are missing!"
Chen Tuo was lying through his teeth, but Wu Laowai ignored him.
The bayonets we stuck in yesterday are frozen in the ice shell; even the wolves can't pull them off. How could there be any missing bayonets?
"Well, there's nothing we can do about it. Didn't you hunt wolves? You don't need the wolf pelts, just take a couple of wolves with you later..."
The two boxes of bayonets that Sun Changkui allocated to the Xiaoyangqi educated youth settlement were indeed given with care.
Chen Tuo could understand, which saved him the trouble of reminding him again, but there still had to be an explanation for the lost bayonet, and wolf meat could barely be used as an explanation.
Chen Tuo and Sun Changkui had a back-and-forth relationship, and things were going quite well between them.
Old Wu curled his lip, wanting to take more than his share. The quality of a knife is greatly related to its material.
Without good steel, even the best craftsmanship cannot produce a good knife.
"Sun the Cripple, isn't hunting wolves official business?"
As soon as Wu Laowai spoke, Sun Changkui knew he wanted to take over the two boxes of bayonets.
The damaged bayonets in the inventory were simply considered obsolete in the armed forces department's records.
But those were weapons after all, and now that they were all gone, he couldn't say anything.
"Uncle Wu, let's just do it this way. We can't possibly eat that much anyway!"
"Master Wu, you're not as straightforward as Xiao Chen in this respect..."
"He did that for fun, but I'm doing it to make a living."
Wu Laowai's words revealed Chen Tuo's motivation for fishing and hunting, which made Wu Laowai feel disgusted.
Both Chen Tuo and Chen Tuo were begging for food in the mountains and struggling to survive in the water, so how come Chen Tuo, a complete novice, could get whatever he wanted?
Just as Wu Laowai and Bai Long began to clean the wolf pelts and Sun Changkui stepped onto the riverbank, the howling of wolves echoed from the surrounding mountains and forests, reaching the Hetao region once again.
After getting up and identifying the location of the wolf howls, Wu Laowai solemnly called out to Sun Changkui on the shore:
"Sun the Cripple, this time the feud is serious. You need to call the Forestry Bureau and have all the work sections bring their guns to work."
In the old forest, tigers, black bears, brown bears, lynxes, and wild boars are all afraid of people and will not easily stare at them. But wolves are different!
A wolf that has made an enemy of a human will not only attack people, but will also try to attack livestock, and even the weaker elderly, women and children.
Songling, located on the edge of the Great Northern Wilderness, has a different terrain from places like Huma, Xinlin, Huzhong, and Tahe.
The terrain slopes from west to east, with several major rivers flowing through the area. The southwestern part is a river wetland and tidal flats similar to the Great Northern Wilderness.
Songling's terrain, resources, and environment are all suitable for wolves to settle here.
The most crucial point is that Jinshankou and Xinglonggou in Huma, which are next door, are connected to the Yangtze River, so the wolves from the Russian side can directly rush to Songling.
Wolves not only hold grudges, but they also have their own ways of communicating.
Hearing the wolf howls coming from the northeast and heading southwest, Wu Laowai guessed that the scale of this wolf attack was probably not small.
But his guess was just a fleeting thought, and according to the educated youth, it had no theoretical basis.
Therefore, he simply reminded Sun Changkui to be on guard.
"The notice has already been given, Master Wu. You'd better get to work. It's better to hunt wolves sooner rather than later."
Sun Changkui left, Wu Laowai and Bailong skinned the wolves, and Chen Tuo was in charge of pulling the wolves away for the two of them.
The two men's method of skinning wolves was similar to that of skinning sheep on the grasslands. After watching for a while, Chen Tuo wanted to try it himself.
Although Chen Tuo's technique was clumsy as he skinned wolves for the first time, he was filled with memories of skinning sheep, cows, and pigs, so he acted with practiced ease.
"You used to skin sheep, didn't you?"
Seeing that Chen Tuo's knife skills were rusty but his steps were correct, Wu Laowai offered a half-hearted, half-asleep suggestion.
"Hmm! I've seen it, but I've never done it!"
"You'll get the hang of it with practice. Your knife isn't sharp enough. I'll teach you how to sharpen it when I get back from the armed forces department!"
After skinning more than a dozen wolves, before leaving, Wu Laowai thought for a moment and decided to take Chen Tuo with him.
"Kid, come with us to the armed forces department..."
Wu Laowai dragged Chen Tuo to the Armed Forces Department, and he didn't know why Chen Tuo said that.
I just feel it's not right to leave Chen Tuo alone in Hetao.
"Uncle Wu, you guys go ahead, I won't go. I'll go back to the educated youth settlement after I've finished cleaning up the bayonets."
After Chen Tuo explained his reasons for not going, Wu Laowai finally realized why he had to drag him along.
"Kid, wolves are masters of feints. Didn't you say they'd seek revenge once they formed a large pack?"
Giving his reason, Wu Laowai pointed to the water beads belonging to Chen Tuo on the sled and said:
"With your marksmanship, you'd be easy prey if you ran into a pack of wolves. Even if you don't go, you'll have to go back and get a new gun."
"Mingjizi is much more reliable than Shui Lianzhu at close range!"
Although Wu Laowai said he was going back to change his gun, he was still thinking about the fourteen white-striped wolves in the Hetao region.
Give two heads to the armed forces department, leaving twelve heads. Six heads for each person. If they eat carefully, they can eat until the New Year.
The sleds at the educated youth settlement were too small to fit twelve white-striped wolves.
Chen Tuo made two trips, and when he returned, he even brought back a sled for firewood, which clearly indicated that he was treating the Hetao region as a long-term hunting ground.
Wu Laowai declined to comment on this.
He strolled along the riverbank, and didn't find a single hair on his head.
Chen Tuo suddenly had the idea to catch fish.
Mountain dogs, water wolves, Mongolian wolves, Ussuri brown bears, and Russian wolves came to their deaths like they were going to a fair; there was no reasoning with them.
After transporting the wolf back to the educated youth settlement, Wu Laowai still felt uneasy looking at the Mingjizi on Chen Tuo's shoulder.
"Kid, keep the good stuff on your person. There will be a lot of people around when you're hunting wolves, so don't let anyone steal it."
Upon hearing this, Chen Tuo did not argue, and went back into the house to put the ginseng fragments hanging on the chimney into his pocket.
He also casually slung the satchel containing five hundred bear-hunting slugs over his shoulder.
Pulling a sled full of pine branches and carrying two guns, they returned to the Hetao region. After cleaning up the bayonets stuck in the ice, they drenched them with wolf blood again.
After finishing all that, Chen Tuo didn't rest. He continued ice fishing in the ice hole he had opened yesterday.
Without the sturgeon thrashing about underwater, the catch for most of the afternoon was so-so, with only two large fish measuring 50-60 centimeters each being caught.
The remaining dozen or so were all ordinary items, about a foot in size.
Perhaps to mark the occasion of the wolf attack, the sky turned gloomy in the late afternoon, looking like it was about to snow.
When school was over, after feeding Sun Changkui's four half-grown boys at the educated youth settlement, Chen Tuo took the fish offal back to the river bend to feed the mountain dogs.
The two female mountain dogs arrived on time, but they seemed a bit listless, and kept whimpering and howling while eating.
At first, Chen Tuo thought the two female mountain dogs were just hungry, but the two of them became less and less focused on eating and would occasionally bare their teeth in a threatening manner.
"Damn it, you think you're something special just because you've had a couple of good days?"
Chen Tuo pulled the axe handle off the sled, but then realized something was wrong.
The two female mountain dogs weren't threatening him, but rather the dark Hetao region.
"Could it be that Wu Laowai's words have become law?"
Remembering what Wu Laowai had said about wolves using feints, Chen Tuo swapped the axe handle in his hand for the single-barreled shotgun he had obtained from Su Dao.
The heavy load of five hundred bullets slung over his shoulder gave him a strange sense of confidence.
With guns and cannons, what's there to be afraid of—a feint attack?