Chapter 51: Tit for Tat, Kill the Bear, Kill the Bear, Kill the Bear!

Struggling...

Looking at Chu Feng's retreating back, Du Dahai was in deep turmoil. He did not want Chu Feng to keep moving forward. Yet now that the government runner had given Chu Feng a direct order, he had no choice. Du Dahai could only let out a long sigh. Lifting the runner onto his back, he shouted toward Chu Feng, "Come back alive! Otherwise, how am I supposed to explain this to your wife?"

Chu Feng did not reply, as if he could no longer hear him.

The sky gradually grew brighter. The annoying wind, frost, rain, and snow began to die down.

On Chu Feng's head sat a hat made of wolf fur. Zhou Xiaoxiao had salvaged some leftover scraps from those wolves, successfully crafting a wolf fur hat. The sizing matched Chu Feng's head precisely, and the tailoring fit impeccably. Amidst this heavy snow, he felt not a shred of chill.

Chu Feng no longer held an axe or a hoe in his hands; those two implements were utterly useless against bears and tigers. Instead, he carried a bow in his grip and a matchlock firelock slung across his back. He had no idea where the other constables and runners were stationed, and he knew that if they were to lay eyes on the weapon strapped to his back, the consequences for him would be severe. But for the sake of survival, none of that mattered anymore.

A snow leopard followed silently behind Chu Feng's footsteps. At first, Chu Feng had felt somewhat uneasy, constantly suspecting that the snow leopard intended to ambush him. Yet when he turned his head back a few times and saw the leopard strolling with leisurely, graceful strides, it hardly looked like it wanted to attack. Consequently, Chu Feng simply ignored it.

The two of them could be considered old acquaintances by now. From their initial mutual hostility of trying to kill each other, to later encountering the grizzly bear where the snow leopard saved Chu Feng, to the leopard entrusting its cub to Chu Feng because its own injuries prevented it from raising the little one, and finally to saving Chu Feng once again on the Second Peak—by now, Chu Feng had essentially repaid that life debt by saving the beast in return. He simply had not expected this snow leopard to brazenly cling to his side ever since.

"You can tag along if you want, but remember one thing: if any other people show up, you must run away immediately, understand?" Chu Feng said to the snow leopard.

"Awooo."

The snow leopard could not understand a word Chu Feng was saying, nor did it care. Sniffing the scent in the air, the next second it scrambled up a tree, startling a pheasant into flight.

If not for the assignment at hand, Chu Feng would have definitely hunted a couple of pheasants. Suddenly, the snow leopard darted in front of Chu Feng, its entire body blocking his path forward. It pressed its massive head against Chu Feng, seemingly trying to force him to turn back.

"What are you trying to do?" Chu Feng asked. Of course, he did not expect a snow leopard to answer his questions. The beast merely continued pressing its weight against Chu Feng's thigh, desperately wanting him to retreat.

The next moment, the snow leopard raised its head and stared straight ahead. Every single hair on its body stood completely on end, making it look as though it were experiencing extreme stress. Chu Feng had kept cats before; when the cats at home experienced stress, they looked precisely like this.

"What is it now?" Chu Feng raised his head as well.

The next instant, the hair on the back of his neck stood up too. Ahead of them, a massive brown bear was slowly approaching. It was still missing one ear; it still bore a blade scar across its face. It was undeniably that exact same grizzly bear.

Yulong Mountain was vast—so vast that two different nations used it as a border line. Yet Yulong Mountain was also tiny—so tiny that one could run into the exact same blind bear repeatedly. One had to remember that this was already the Third Peak. A grizzly's natural territory was deep in the dense forests, while the Third Peak had its own native apex predators. How on earth could a grizzly bear casually shift its territory like this? Could it be that the beasts of the Third Peak were not formidable at all?

However, this was hardly the time for Chu Feng to ponder such matters.

"Leopard, don't worry about me, you go on first—"

Before he could finish speaking, Chu Feng realized that the snow leopard had already vanished without a trace. "Fine, fine. You really are a creature of utmost loyalty."

"ROOOAR!"

The grizzly bear stood up on its hind legs, let out a fierce, earth-shaking roar toward the heavens, and charged straight at Chu Feng. For reasons unknown, Chu Feng fancied that he could see pure rage within the grizzly's eyes—not at all the look it gave when encountering ordinary humans. Could it be that it had been wounded by that group of government runners earlier?

As if to verify Chu Feng's conjecture, when the blind bear started running, it actually began to limp slightly. Sure enough, the beast's hind leg was injured.

At that exact moment, a daring idea suddenly flashed through Chu Feng's mind. Why couldn't he attempt to hunt a bear?

Dropping his bamboo basket and clutching his bow and firelock, Chu Feng turned and bolted. Yet even with an injured hind leg, a grizzly bear was not something a human could outrun. Watching the distance between the two creatures rapidly shrink, Chu Feng finally spotted a suitable tree and scrambled up it without a second thought.

Chu Feng's tree-climbing speed was exceptionally fast, but the grizzly's was even faster. Contrary to what ordinary people might imagine, a bulky and heavy-looking brown bear moved at a startling speed—not only fast, but far more agile and swift than a human. Within moments, the blind bear brushed against Chu Feng's foot, though by then Chu Feng had already hauled himself up onto a sturdy branch.

Without turning around, he immediately unslung his bow, drew an arrow as he moved forward, whirled about to pull the bowstring to its maximum tension, and released his grip. From beginning to end, Chu Feng did not spare the brown bear a single glance. Every motion flowed together as smoothly as moving clouds and flowing water.

The arrow struck true, piercing squarely into one of the blind bear's eyes.

The blinding pain caused the beast to instantly lose its balance, sending it crashing down from a height of five meters. Brown bears possessed thick hides and formidable defense; a single arrow was certainly not enough to kill it. Knowing this, Chu Feng leisurely drew out his matchlock firelock.

"Roar, roar, roar!"

The arrow drove the grizzly into an absolute fury. It began slamming its massive frame against the tree trunk with violent thuds. True to its reputation as the largest land carnivore, its sheer impact actually caused the thick trunk to tremble.

Yet Chu Feng remained entirely unfazed, acting as though he had drilled this procedure a thousand times over. He rammed the gunpowder down the barrel, adjusted the fuse, lit a flint cord to ignite it, and calmly raised his weapon to take aim at the blind bear.

Five meters—the distance was extremely close. The matchlock in Chu Feng's hands was held with absolute steadiness. This time, he aimed directly for the grizzly's neck. Targeting the head carried the risk that the bear's skull was too thick for a bullet to pierce, but the neck presented no such concern.

Two seconds later, the matchlock discharged. The projectile bored into the grizzly's neck at blinding speed. The bear initially felt only a prick like an insect sting and paid it no mind, but the pain rapidly escalated, growing fiercer by the second. Soon, gouts of fresh blood began spraying from the wound holes.

The brown bear lifted its head, halting its assault on the tree. It glanced up at Chu Feng in the branches above. The fury in its eyes was gradually fading, replaced by a lingering confusion. Clearly, whatever weapon Chu Feng held was neither bow nor arrow, nor did it look particularly lethal; why, then, did it hurt so dreadfully?

The next moment, the blind bear crashed heavily to the ground.

This tyrant of the dense forest, a grizzly that had claimed countless lives over the years, finally breathed its last beneath Chu Feng's firearm.

Before Chu Feng could even jump down from the tree, the snow leopard leaped back out of nowhere, clamped its jaws onto the dead grizzly's neck, and began tearing at the flesh with low growls as if venting lingering wrath. Within moments, the carcass was drenched in fresh blood.

Chu Feng dropped down from the branch but did not approach immediately. Only after the snow leopard grew tired of tearing at the carcass did he step forward. The grizzly was exceptionally heavy, and Chu Feng had to exert every ounce of his strength just to drag the creature's bulk.

Having slain such a massive bear, Chu Feng no longer had any appetite to continue patrolling the Third Peak. He only wanted to rush back to the village and see if this dead bear could fetch a handsome sum of silver.

Yet as he dragged the grizzly's heavy carcass aside, the thick snow accumulated underneath was swept away along with it. Gazing down at the crushed green ferns exposed beneath, Chu Feng stepped forward and muttered in astonishment, "White River Gully?"