Lin Wuchen did not go straight into Blackridge Mountain.
Only fools and heroes did that, and he had never mistaken himself for either.
He circled first, cutting behind the last row of fields where the soil turned stony and weeds grew thin. From there he could see the village from above: the smoke lines from cooking fires, the square by the stone bridge, the gray-robed man's cart still parked like a threat that hadn't decided whether to leave.
If the sect man decided to take him early, Wuchen needed to see it before it happened.
Nothing moved in the square now. People had gone back to pretending they could live.
Good.
Wuchen adjusted the rope bundle on his back. It was not much: a coil of hemp, a flint pouch, two dried pancakes, a small knife with a chipped edge, and a cloth bag of powdered chili mixed with ash. Old Gao had once taught him that ash made eyes water even when it didn't burn. Old Gao had taught him many things.
Old Gao had also just offered him up like meat.
Wuchen didn't waste anger. Anger made you loud. Loud made you easy to find.
He waited until the light began to tilt toward afternoon, then slipped into the pines.
The path he took was a hunter's path, not the trail the village men used when they went in groups to cut wood. This one ran along a ridge line with loose stones and thorny brush, a narrow route that kept you above the gullies where boars and wolves liked to feed.
He moved quietly, stepping where the earth was packed, where needles muffled sound. Every few dozen steps he stopped and listened.
Not for mystic signs.
For breath, claw-scrape, branch snap, the stupid cough of a man who thought mountains were empty.
After half an hour, he saw the first sign that he was no longer in village territory.
A broken carcass.
Not fresh. Maybe two days old. The ribs had been cracked open, and the marrow licked clean. The flesh had been stripped in a way knives couldn't do. On the ground beside it were hoof prints, deep and wide, pressed into mud that had already dried.
Horned boar.
Big.
Wuchen crouched and studied the prints. The spread of the hooves told weight. The depth told momentum. The way the edges were sharp told it had passed after the last rain.
He ran a finger along the track and smelled it. A sour animal musk, thick and oily.
He stood and looked ahead.
The ravine Old Gao mentioned was two ridges away. If the boar was already this close, then either it had wandered out of its territory… or something had pushed it.
Wuchen didn't like either possibility.
He kept moving.
An hour later, he heard running water.
The stream that fed Shiqiao Village began higher in the mountain, squeezing through a ravine before it widened into the village's shallow cold ribbon. The ravine was narrow, its walls steep and black with old damp. Moss grew in thick mats where sunlight rarely reached.
If a beast wanted to ambush something, it would choose this place.
Wuchen didn't go down into the ravine yet. He climbed to a ledge above it and followed the edge, keeping the drop on his right and the pine trunks on his left. From there he could watch without being seen.
That was when he saw the bones.
Not scattered. Arranged.
A circle of small animal skulls set around a flat stone, as if some hunter had tried to ward something off. The skulls were old, bleached, but the arrangement was recent. Someone had been here.
Wuchen's eyes narrowed.
If villagers had tried to hunt the boar before, they had either died or learned to leave offerings. Neither made him feel better.
He moved on.
As the light faded toward dusk, he found a place to hide.
A hollow under a fallen pine, half-covered by brush. He crawled in, pulled needles over the entrance, and lay on his side with the knife in his hand and the rope near his fingers.
Sleep would be stupid. He closed his eyes anyway, forcing his breath to slow, because the body had limits and tomorrow would be worse.
Minutes passed. Then an hour. Then the forest changed its sound the way it always did when something heavy entered it.
Birds went quiet first.
Then insects.
Then the faint noise of small animals moving away through brush.
Wuchen opened his eyes and did not move.
A smell drifted in, thick and hot, like wet hide and old blood.
Footsteps followed. Not the soft pad of a cat. Not the quick skitter of a fox. These were slow impacts that made the ground answer with tiny shifts.
The horned boar entered the ravine below his hiding place.
Wuchen could not see it from where he lay, but he heard its breathing: a wet, impatient snort, then a long pull of air through nostrils that sounded almost like a laugh.
He waited.
The boar moved along the ravine floor, hooves clacking against stone. It stopped near the running water.
There was a scraping sound. Tusk against rock.
Wuchen's grip tightened on the knife. He counted the scrapes to measure time. He needed to see it, but he did not need to die for curiosity.
He crawled an inch forward and pushed two pine needles aside.
He saw it.
The beast was bigger than he expected. Shoulder height nearly to a man's chest, black bristled hide marked with old scars. A thick horn rose from its snout like a broken spearhead. Its tusks curved outward and forward, pale and polished, each as long as Wuchen's forearm.
It lowered its head and gouged the stone by the water, leaving bright fresh scratches. It was marking territory.
Wuchen's mouth went dry.
He needed one tusk.
Taking a tusk meant the boar had to die. Or someone had to already be dying and drop one. Boars didn't shed tusks like deer shed antlers.
He watched the beast move, testing the space. Its ears twitched toward every sound. The bristles along its spine lifted and lowered with its mood.
Then, suddenly, the boar's head snapped toward the ravine wall.
It froze.
Wuchen froze too, even though the boar wasn't looking at him.
Something else was there.
A faint rustle higher up the ravine. A stone dislodged and clicked against another stone. The sound was small, the kind of sound a squirrel made.
But the boar reacted like it had heard a threat.
Its nostrils flared. It snorted once, loud enough that Wuchen felt it in his ribs. Then it charged.
Not at Wuchen.
At the ravine wall.
Hooves struck rock. The boar slammed its horn into the stone face like it was trying to break through, tusks scraping, bristles standing.
And a figure dropped from above.
A boy. Roughly Wuchen's age, maybe a year older. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up with a spear in his hands. The spear was cheap, wood shaft, iron head.
Not a sect disciple's weapon. A village hunter's desperation.
The boy's eyes met Wuchen's ledge for half a heartbeat as if he sensed he was being watched.
Then the boar hit him.
The boy tried to dodge, but the ravine was narrow. His foot slipped on wet stone. The boar's tusk caught him in the thigh and lifted him like a sack.
He screamed.
Blood splashed against the ravine wall.
Wuchen's body tensed, ready to move, ready to run, ready to do something, and then he stopped himself.
If he jumped down, he would die.
If he did nothing, the boy would die.
The boy wasn't his friend. The boy was a chance.
Wuchen hated himself a little for thinking it.
He watched with sharp eyes as the boar threw the boy against the rock. The spear clattered away. The boy slid down, leaving a smear of red.
The boar lowered its head, horn aimed at the boy's chest, ready to finish.
Wuchen took out the cloth bag of chili ash. He tied it quickly to a stone with a strip of cloth, making a crude sling weight. Then he looped his rope around a pine root, anchored it, and slid down the ravine wall slowly, using the rope to control his descent.
Not heroic.
Calculated.
His feet hit the ravine floor with a soft scrape.
The boar's head snapped toward him instantly.
Its eyes were small, black, intelligent, and full of rage.
Wuchen lifted both hands and took one step back, as if he had stumbled into the wrong place by accident.
He let his face show fear.
Real fear, because it was real.
He also let the fear make him look stupid.
The boar snorted and charged him.
Wuchen ran.
He sprinted toward the stream, splashing water, making noise, making the beast commit. At the last second, he swung the stone weight with all his strength and released it at the boar's face.
The cloth bag burst midair.
Chili and ash exploded into the boar's eyes.
The beast screamed.
Not like a pig. Like something furious and wounded.
It shook its head violently, smashing into the ravine wall. Its horn cracked stone. Its tusks gouged deep grooves.
Wuchen didn't stop.
He ran past it, snatched the fallen spear, and drove the spearhead into the boar's flank as it thrashed.
The iron head bit shallow, not deep enough.
The boar swung its head blindly and clipped Wuchen's shoulder with a tusk.
Pain flashed white. Wuchen spun and hit the ground hard, shoulder numb, breath knocked out of him.
He rolled away as the boar stamped where his head had been, hooves striking sparks off stone.
The boy on the ground coughed weakly, eyes wide, trying to crawl.
Wuchen crawled too, but not toward the boy.
Toward the rope.
He grabbed it and yanked, forcing the anchored line to snap taut across the ravine at knee height.
Then he ran again, dragging the rope into position as the boar charged blindly toward noise.
It hit the rope.
The beast's front legs tangled. Its momentum carried it forward. It slammed onto its side with a bone-jarring thud, horn cracking against stone.
For one heartbeat, it lay stunned.
Wuchen didn't waste it.
He jumped onto its neck, grabbed the spear, and drove it down with both hands into the soft spot behind the jaw where thick bristle met flesh.
The spear punched deep.
The boar convulsed, kicking, trying to throw him off. Wuchen clung like a parasite, teeth clenched, shoulder burning where the tusk had grazed him.
The beast's thrashing slowed.
Its breath became a wet rattle.
Then it went still.
Wuchen slid off and lay on the stone, chest heaving, staring at the ravine ceiling like it might fall on him next.
He sat up slowly.
His shoulder throbbed. His hands were slick with blood, some of it his, most of it not.
The boy stared at him from the ground, face white as paper.
"You… you saved me," the boy whispered.
Wuchen looked at him without warmth.
"No," Wuchen said, voice rough. "I saved myself."
He stood, staggered toward the boar's head, and gripped one tusk with both hands.
It didn't come free easily. He had to use the spear as a lever, twisting until the bone cracked loose with a sickening sound.
He held the tusk up in the dim light.
Heavy. Pale. Worth a pill.
Worth his life, if he got out alive.
Behind him, the boy tried to sit up and failed. Blood soaked his thigh.
Wuchen turned and looked at him.
The boy's eyes were pleading.
Wuchen's expression stayed blank.
He could leave him. He should leave him. A wounded stranger was a burden, and burdens got you killed.
But leaving witnesses alive had costs too.
Wuchen crouched and picked up a strip of cloth, then pressed it hard against the boy's wound to slow the bleeding.
The boy gasped.
"Listen," Wuchen said quietly. "If you tell anyone you saw me here, I'll come back and finish what the boar didn't."
The boy stared, shocked, then nodded quickly, fear replacing gratitude.
Good.
Fear was more reliable than thanks.
Wuchen stood, slung the boar tusk over his shoulder, and began climbing out of the ravine with the rope, moving fast now, because the smell of blood would draw other things.
And in Blackridge Mountain, the second predator was often worse than the first.