Time Travel: My Comfortable Life After Going to the Countryside

"How many fucking people did you kill?"

"Master, this isn't human blood, it's bear blood. Your apprentice hunted a bear. Come with me quickly, I don't know how to skin a bear."

"You worthless bastard, coming to tease me in the middle of the night? You hunted a bear? Why didn't you fly to the sky?"

Liu Xiangyang approached Old Wang and stretched out his hand. "Master, smell this. Is this the smell of human blood? Take a sniff."

Old Wang brought his nose close to the clotted bloodstain and smelled it, then stared at Liu Xiangyang in shock.

"You damned bastard, you actually hit a bear! Where's the bear? Did you take its gall bladder? Did you take its heart?"

"I don't know how, and you didn't teach me. The bear's at my house right now, hurry up."

"Let's go, let's go quickly, wait for me to get the skinning knife, what are you going to do with all that meat?"

"I'll make a specimen of the bear head and hang it on the wall. This is the first time I've ever hunted a bear. I'll keep one bear paw at home, one for you, Uncle Wang, one for my Uncle Lu, and I'll keep one for myself to try. I'll use the bear skin myself. Xue Bingbing told me that her grandmother has poor eyesight, so I'll see if I can send it to her."

"This bear weighs only five or six hundred pounds. After deducting the internal organs and bones, there are only three or four hundred pounds of meat. I plan to keep about a hundred pounds of meat for myself and give the rest of the meat and internal organs to the village."

"Okay, good overall perspective, let's do it that way then."

"Oh, and go and call those three good-for-nothings, Zhang Tiejun, too."

When Liu Xiangyang arrived at his house with the three giants, Old Wang had already extracted the bear gallbladder and bear heart.

The three leaders looked at Liu Xiangyang with strange expressions when they saw the black bear carcass, which weighed at least five or six hundred pounds.

Zhang Tiejun: "Xiao Liu, you just said you hunted this bear all by yourself. Is this skill a family tradition?"

"Uncle Zhang, my family are all workers, we don't have this kind of skill. I only learned hunting from my master yesterday."

"You just learned how to hunt from my third uncle yesterday, and today you killed a bear all by yourself?" Wang Lixin asked.

"Captain Wang, it's all luck. I was just thinking of hunting rabbits and roe deer, but I didn't expect to run into this one."

"This kid is a genius. He killed this bear with one cut. The only cut on his body is on his neck, and the whole skin is intact."

Old Wang then looked at Liu Xiangyang and asked, "Where did you hunt the bear? How long did it take you to get back?"

"Uncle Wang, the bear is a little in front of that big tree on the mountain that takes three people to encircle. It took me more than an hour to get back. What's wrong?"

"Just asking where you hunted it."

Old Wang gave Liu Xiangyang a deep look, thinking, "It's been almost two hours and the bear bile and heart haven't spoiled yet. What did this bastard do?"

The three leaders were examining the knife wound around the big black bear. It really was just a single cut on the neck, and the cut was quite clean. The three of them had been hunting in the mountains before, but they had never seen a bear killed with a single stab.

Liu Xiangyang: "Uncle Zhang will soon be harvesting the autumn crop. The labor will be strenuous, and we need to make sure we get enough nutrition. So I've kept about 100 jin of pork belly for myself. I'll send some home to my family and keep some for myself. I'll give the rest to the village so that the villagers can have a better meal."

Liu Xiangyang repeated what he had just discussed with Old Wang to the three leaders.

Zhang Tiejun: "Logically speaking, since you hunted this bear by yourself and the village didn't contribute any manpower or effort, you don't need to hand it over to the village. But Comrade Liu Xiangyang, you have a very high level of awareness. I am happy with what you did, and I will commend you tomorrow."

Li Jianjun: "Village chief, I'll go broadcast it now and call people over to help."

"Go ahead, just call a few people from each surname to be witnesses, and bring a scale."

After Li Jianjun finished broadcasting, nine people entered the courtyard. They were all strong laborers from the village, people who usually had influence in the village.

The villagers, awakened by the broadcast that Liu Xiangyang had hunted a bear, all came to investigate.

"Wow, Liu, the educated youth, killed this big bear all by himself?"

"Take a closer look, the bear skin is all good, except for that one cut on the neck."

"Liu Zhiqing is really amazing. He took on a bear all by himself. I just saw it, and Liu Zhiqing didn't even get a scratch."

While the visitors were there, Liu Xiangyang took a shower to wash away all the bloodstains, using up almost half a bar of soap.

The villagers chattered amongst themselves, their eyes filled with admiration and a hint of fear as they looked at Liu Xiangyang—this was a fierce man who had hunted a bear single-handedly.

Old Wang: "Don't just stand there and watch! A few of you grab those four paws, I'm going to skin them and butcher them!"

After another flurry of activity, several villagers came out and grabbed the four bear paws.

Old Wang was seen kneeling on one knee next to the black bear, holding the knife handle. The blade traveled along the midline of the throat from the incision left by Liu Xiangyang, precisely separating the skin and muscle to reveal the white fascia underneath.

When he reached the waist and abdomen, Old Wang braced the bear skin with his elbow, leaned back, and with a tearing sound like cotton cloth, the entire bear skin separated from the scarlet muscle like a piece of clothing being removed...

Zhang Tiejun said to Wang Lixin, "Your third uncle's skills are still there."

Wang Lixin: "Of course, it's a craft that's been around for decades."

It took Old Wang almost an hour to peel off the entire bear skin.

The freshly skinned bear was laid out on the ground, with blood droplets still clinging to the dark blue fur. The whole pelt could make a bearskin cloak, making one impervious to the cold in winter.

Old Wang removed the breastbone again, divided the meat into two portions, and had the villagers take away the portion meant for the village.

Old Wang: "Are you planning to keep this bear head as a specimen?"

"Yes, Uncle Wang, this was my first time in the mountains, and I killed a bear. It's very memorable. I'll make it into a specimen to pass on to my son."

"Hey kid, take this bear head and hide to the county town tomorrow, I'll have someone tan it for you, I guarantee you'll be satisfied."

"You saw how I peeled the skin. Go get a few more peeling knives tomorrow, and you can do it yourself then."

Liu Xiangyang returned to his room, took two bottles of Huadu Erguotou from his spatial storage, and handed them to Old Wang.

"Thank you, Uncle Wang, for teaching me the craft. You can have these two bottles of wine; there will be more later."

"Alright, then I'll be waiting for your good wine."

After everyone was finally seen off, only four people remained in the courtyard.

Liu Xiangyang saw Xue Bingbing and the others yawning repeatedly, their eyes almost closed, and said something.

"You guys should go back and rest early, otherwise you won't be able to handle having to work tomorrow. We'll eat bear meat tomorrow."

Liu Xiangyang cut off a piece of meat with a knife and handed it to Xue Bingbing, asking them to take it over so they could have bear meat porridge tomorrow morning.

After the three women left, Liu Xiangyang used a shovel to remove all the bloodstains from the yard, piled them up, and planned to throw them away the next morning, otherwise he didn't know what kind of animals they would attract.

Liu Xiangyang then stored the bear paws, bear meat, bear skin, bear gallbladder, and bear heart into his spatial storage, returned to his room, and drifted off to sleep, lost in thought.