The forest was different at night.
Marcus had known this intellectually, had factored darkness into his calculations. But knowing something and experiencing it were entirely separate things.
The main trail, so clear in Chen Liang's memories and his mental simulations, became a treacherous maze in the absence of light. Tree roots that should have been easy to step over became invisible obstacles that caught his feet. Low-hanging branches materialized out of the darkness to slap his face or snag his clothing. The packed earth path, obvious in daylight, seemed to vanish and reappear at random, forcing him to feel his way forward with the butt of the spear.
His mental calculations had allocated ninety minutes for the journey.
Two hours in, he still hadn't reached the ravine.
Every sound in the darkness made his heart race. The rustle of leaves could be wind or something moving through the brush. The crack of a distant branch might be a tree settling or a predator stalking. Chen Liang's memories knew these mountains held dangers—wild boars, yes, but also wolves, the occasional leopard, and other things the villagers spoke of in hushed tones.
Marcus's hands were white-knuckled on the spear shaft, his breathing shallow and quick. The rational part of his mind tried to assert control, reminding him that most predators avoided humans, that he was statistically unlikely to encounter anything dangerous.
The primitive part of his brain, the part that remembered being prey, didn't care about statistics.
The hunger made it worse. His stomach had moved beyond cramping into a hollow, nauseating weakness. Each step required conscious effort. His legs trembled not just from illness-induced frailty but from genuine exhaustion. The mental simulation hadn't accounted for how much harder walking became when your body was actively starving.
He'd had to stop three times already to rest, leaning against trees while his breathing steadied and the spots in his vision faded. Each stop ate into his already constrained timeframe. Each delay reduced his hunting window and increased the risk of not making it back before dawn.
But stopping also meant sitting in the darkness, alone, listening to the forest breathe around him. Meant imagining eyes watching from between the trees. Meant fighting the urge to turn around and run back to the village, to the safety of his family's small house where nothing in the darkness could reach him.
Fear was exhausting in a way his simulations had never captured.
When Marcus finally reached the split where the trails diverged, he nearly wept with relief. The distinctive shape of the fork—one path climbing left, one curving right, one descending toward the ravine—was exactly as Chen Liang's memories had promised. A concrete landmark in the darkness, proof he hadn't gotten hopelessly lost.
He took the descending path, moving more carefully now. The ravine trail was steeper, rockier, easier to slip on even in daylight. In darkness, it was treacherous.
His mental map said the collapsed deadfall should be approximately four hundred meters ahead, near where the trail curved to follow the stream. Distance that should take maybe ten minutes of careful walking.
It took twenty-five.
When he finally reached it, Marcus stopped, frowning.
The deadfall was there—a massive fallen tree, its trunk easily two meters in diameter, stretched across the trail at an angle. But it wasn't quite where his mental image had placed it. Chen Liang's memory insisted it should be directly adjacent to the stream crossing, creating a natural blind with clear sight lines to the water.
Instead, it sat perhaps fifteen meters upstream, with thick undergrowth between the log and the crossing point. The sight lines he'd counted on were blocked. The careful positioning he'd planned was compromised.
It took Marcus a long moment to understand. Chen Liang's last visit to this spot had been over a year ago, before his illness. In that time, undergrowth had changed. Bushes had grown. The stream itself might have shifted slightly in its bed after spring floods. Memory, even perfectly recalled memory, was a snapshot of a moment in time. Reality continued moving.
His simulation had been built on outdated information.
Marcus stood there in the darkness, reassessing. He could try to position himself closer to the stream, but that meant moving through the undergrowth—noisy, likely to spread his scent, would alert any approaching game. He could set up behind the deadfall as originally planned, but the blocked sight lines meant he might not see his target until it was already at the water, leaving no time to properly aim and throw.
He settled for a compromise—a position roughly ten meters from the stream, using a large boulder for partial cover, with enough of an angle to see the crossing point while remaining downwind. Not ideal. Not what he'd planned. But workable.
Maybe.
He settled in to wait, the spear across his knees, and discovered another thing his simulations hadn't accounted for: cold.
Sitting motionless in the night air, his body still weak and his clothing thin, the temperature became almost unbearable. His teeth wanted to chatter. His muscles cramped from shivering. The cold seemed to seep into his bones, making the hunger worse, making everything worse.
He focused on his breathing, on staying quiet, on watching the dim outline of the stream crossing. Water gurgled over rocks, a constant white noise that should mask small sounds but also made it harder to hear approaching game.
And he waited.
Minutes stretched into an hour. His legs went numb. His hands ached from gripping the spear. The darkness pressed against his eyes until he couldn't tell if they were open or closed.
Nothing came.
Another hour passed. Or maybe less—time became strange in the darkness, elastic and unreliable. Marcus's mind tried to maintain its usual precision, counting heartbeats and breaths to estimate duration, but exhaustion and cold made concentration difficult.
Still nothing.
The sky to the east was just beginning to lighten—not true dawn yet, but the pre-dawn grey that warned of the sun's approach—when Marcus finally accepted the truth.
This had been a failure.
No pigs had come to drink. No game had appeared. He'd spent hours in the cold darkness, burning energy he couldn't spare, risking injury and discovery, and had nothing to show for it.
He stood slowly, his joints screaming protest, and began the long walk back.
The return journey was slightly easier—the growing light made the trail more visible, reduced the constant fear of unseen dangers. But it was also harder, because now he was fighting not just weakness and hunger but the bitter weight of failure.
His simulations had been wrong. Not completely wrong—the terrain was roughly as expected, the general principles sound—but wrong enough to matter. He'd failed to account for change over time. Failed to properly weight the psychological factors of fear and cold and hunger. Failed to appreciate how much harder real conditions were compared to mental models.
No amount of calculation could perfectly predict reality.
Marcus trudged through the forest as the sky lightened from grey to pink, his mind already working despite his exhaustion. The same hyperactive processing that had kept him awake, that had driven him to attempt this foolish hunt, now turned to analysis.
What had gone wrong? Multiple factors. Outdated information about the terrain. Underestimation of travel time and physical limitations. Possibly wrong assumptions about game behavior—perhaps pigs didn't frequent this crossing as often as Chen Liang's memories suggested, or perhaps they'd come earlier or later than his predicted window.
What could be improved? Better reconnaissance—actually visit the site during daylight to verify conditions before attempting a night hunt. Better physical conditioning—he needed to recover his strength before attempting something this demanding. Better equipment—a bow would have given him range and flexibility that the spear lacked.
More data. More preparation. More careful testing of assumptions against reality.
The failure stung, but it wasn't devastating. He'd learned things that no simulation could have taught him. The gap between theory and practice. The way fear affected decision-making. The importance of accurate, current information.
And he'd proven something important: he could do this. Not successfully, not yet, but he'd made the attempt. Had navigated the forest in darkness. Had set up a position and maintained it for hours. Had made it back safely.
Next time would be better.
The thought surprised him—that there would automatically be a next time, that he was already planning improvements rather than swearing off this foolishness entirely. But the hunger still gnawed at his belly. Winter was still coming. The fear of death still lurked in the back of his mind.
He would try again. Smarter, better prepared, with more realistic expectations.
But maybe after sleeping for about twelve hours.
The village came into view as the sun broke the horizon, painting the small houses in shades of orange and gold. Smoke was already rising from morning fires. His family would be waking soon, if they hadn't already.
Marcus quickened his pace, ignoring the protest from his exhausted legs. He needed to return the hunting gear before his father noticed it missing. Needed to slip back into the house and onto his mat as if he'd never left.
Needed to avoid awkward questions about where he'd been and what he'd been doing.
As he approached the house, he could hear movement inside. Too late to beat everyone awake then. He'd have to improvise an explanation—went outside to relieve himself, couldn't sleep, took a walk.
Weak excuses, but perhaps believable given his recent illness.
Marcus eased open the door as quietly as he could, spear held carefully to avoid knocking anything. His father's old hunting spot was across the room. If he could just return the equipment before anyone noticed—
"Liang?"
His mother's voice, quiet but alert. She stood near the hearth, tending the morning fire, and turned to look at him. Her eyes went from his face to the spear in his hands to the pack on his shoulder.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Lin Shu's expression shifted through a rapid series of emotions—confusion, realization, anger, fear, and finally something that might have been resignation.
"Come here," she said softly. "Sit down before you fall down. You look like death."
Marcus obeyed, too exhausted to do anything else. He sank down near the hearth, the spear clattering beside him, and waited for the lecture, the punishment, the consequences of his stupidity.
Instead, his mother disappeared briefly and returned with a small bowl of water and the last heel of bread from yesterday's meal.
"Eat," she said, pressing them into his hands. "Then sleep. We'll talk about this when you wake up."
Marcus ate the bread mechanically, drank the water, and felt tears prick unexpectedly at his eyes. Not Chen Liang's tears—he didn't think—but his own, born of exhaustion and failure and the simple unexpected kindness of being given food he hadn't earned.
When he finally lay down on his mat, the sun was fully risen and the household was stirring around him. But Marcus was already falling into sleep, his mind finally, mercifully quiet.
His last thought before consciousness faded was a simple calculation: next time, he'd need to account for variable weather conditions and their effect on game movement patterns.
There would definitely be a next time.