Chapter Twenty-Five: The Tiger Hunt

I didn’t bother to check on Wenbin. The feeling of a teammate vanishing and then reappearing was so overwhelming, I couldn’t contain my joy and shouted toward the woods, “Fatty Shi! Where are you?”

From within the grove, Fatty Shi’s voice responded, “Come over here!”

“Hey, it’s him! He’s calling us!” I shook Wenbin’s shoulder excitedly, but he pulled me down sharply and barked, “Shut up!”

I couldn’t understand why Wenbin would say that to me. Though we had met as children, in recent days he’d always struck me as a quiet person, hardly ever raising his voice. Yet his words, muffled in his throat, carried unmistakable anger.

“Are you crazy?” I yelled back. “Fatty’s calling us from over there, what are you waiting for?”

Wenbin grew agitated, stood up, and shouted, “That’s not Fatty!”

As we began to argue, Fatty Shi’s voice came again from the woods, “Come over here!”

I could hear it clearly—it was Fatty. But Wenbin gripped my wrist tightly, refusing to let go, and the voice kept calling us, “Come over here.” Growing impatient, I kicked him hard in the stomach. He doubled over in pain, and I seized the opportunity to dash toward the grove.

“Fatty, Fatty!” I called out, slapping at the shoulder-high brush on either side. The rain was so heavy it nearly blinded me. The darkness was absolute, and thorny branches scraped my face like knives. I carried a spear with a red tassel, using it to push aside the dense foliage as I moved forward with difficulty.

I’d barely taken a few steps when a pair of hands clamped down on my shoulders. Before I could cry out, a hand covered my mouth and pressed me to the ground. I struggled hard, but the grip was astonishingly strong—someone climbed onto my back.

“Shhh…”

It was Fatty!

I wanted to ask him why he did this, but he pinned me down so tightly I could hardly breathe, let alone move, and soon I quieted.

“Don’t make a sound. Something’s wrong,” Fatty whispered, rolling off me and crawling into the grass.

My waist felt like it was about to snap, and I complained bitterly, “What’s your problem? You called me over just for this?”

Fatty quickly covered my mouth again and whispered into my ear, “That wasn’t me calling. I don’t know what’s mimicking my voice. And listen, keep quiet—we’re surrounded!”

“Surrounded by what?”

“Tigers, damn it—three or four of them just outside. I saw them as soon as I came in. I only have this lousy gun, I’d never dare move. I was thinking maybe I could crawl out, but then you came in.”

I was stunned—three or four tigers? Forget us kids, even a herd of bulls would be doomed. “Why are you just sitting here, then? Run! You’re really not loyal, you knew about the tigers and didn’t tell us?”

Fatty wiped the sweat from his brow. “With things like this, how could I dare make a sound? I thought the voice sounded so fake you wouldn’t fall for it. They’re trying to lure all three of us into the trap. There’s still one outside, right?”

Now I finally realized my mistake, and my concern for the one still outside grew. Silence fell, and in the quiet, I could hear a low, heavy breathing from the grass around us—a sound I’d never heard before, breathing that rumbled like a growl.

“Fatty, do tigers smell musky?” I asked. Oddly, despite the heavy rain, I seemed to catch a faint whiff of musk.

Fatty pressed his head low into the ground. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen one before.”

I saw Fatty quietly raising the barrel of his gun in segments. “What are you doing?”

“When I shout one-two-three, you run. Better one of us escapes than all three ending here.” Without waiting for me to respond, he stood up abruptly and yelled into the woods, “Damn you!”

A tiger’s roar answered, clear and true, making my legs tremble. Then Fatty began shouting, “One! Two! Three! Run!”

I sprang to my feet, and the scene before me is burned into my memory forever—a striped tiger leapt through the air, jaws gaping wide, lunging at us. Whether from instinct or shock, I didn’t turn to flee; instead, I raised my spear with the red tassel and thrust it forward.

The immense force bent the spear in my hands, searing pain as friction heated my palms, and the butt of the weapon slammed into my chest. As I fell back, Fatty’s gun sounded—a blast, and a massive weight crashed down on us. The tiger, weighing hundreds of pounds, flattened us both to the muddy earth. Blood, thick with the scent of predator, mixed with rain and dirt, staining the ground red. My spearhead pierced its throat, Fatty’s gun fired point-blank into its mouth.

It died instantly, utterly still, pinning us beneath its massive body as rain battered our faces. At that moment, I thought we were done for—its companions could easily tear us to shreds.

How powerful can sheer presence be? Perhaps it can't be described; facing two fierce tigers alone and remaining standing is no feat for ordinary people.

Later, I asked him, “Weren’t you afraid?”

He said, “No, nothing to fear. No matter how vicious a tiger is, could it be fiercer than those who drove my parents to their deaths?” I never understood what happened to his parents. He was nine years old that year.

A frail boy with a hatchet in hand, his left arm hung limp against his side, blood dripping from his hand—drip, drip. His shoulder was soaked in red, the stain spreading across his shirt. Two tigers clawed at the earth, digging a pit. When I entered the woods, he had already circled behind them. Three tigers—he faced two for us.

The standoff lengthened, each second crawling by. The boy moved, taking a step forward, and the tigers growled low warnings, as if they might pounce and tear him apart at any moment.

He stepped forward again, raising the hatchet and advancing like a puppet. Between the two tigers crouched a white fox, as large as a calf, its tail fanned out like a peacock—noble and bewitching, immaculate as if painted by a celestial hand.

Its eyes locked on the boy, and suddenly the fox shrieked, a cry like a woman’s. The two tigers stretched their necks and roared at Wenbin. Fatty and I, thinking it was the end, struggled to shove the tiger’s corpse off and staggered to our feet.

We saw the two remaining tigers turn and retreat into the forest. The white fox bowed its head gently to Wenbin, then looked up at him once more before slipping away into the rain-soaked woods. As it turned, I glimpsed a patch of red staining its hind leg.

Fatty drew a sharp breath—the wound on its leg must have been from his shot earlier that afternoon. “Heavens, it really was a fox. What’s going on?”

I tugged Wenbin, who stood unmoving, “Come on, let’s get down the mountain—we can’t stay here.”

Wenbin didn’t answer but kept staring in the direction where the fox had vanished, rain streaming down his face. After a long time, he spoke, “I feel like I’ve seen it before.”

“Seen what?” I asked.

He turned, clutching his shoulder with a sigh. “That fox.” At the time, I couldn’t fathom the meaning behind his words, but truly, he had already grown beyond our years, in both speech and action.

The three of us couldn’t budge the tiger—it was far too heavy. Huddled together beneath the stone cliff, we spent the night in silence.

At dawn, we returned to the village. News of the children who had hunted a tiger spread like wildfire. A crowd followed us up the mountain; the beast was a full-grown Amur tiger, large enough to devour all three of us without complaint.

None of us revealed the details of the hunt to the villagers. Officials came to investigate and we claimed it was self-defense—who would believe three children deliberately hunted a tiger? Fatty got his wish, trading the pelt for several new coats, including ones for Old Miao and Miao Lan. The remaining money bought him a pair of ox-hide boots and a dog-skin cap. At least that winter, we survived.

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