Flip the table and divide the family property! Take his wife and daughter into the mountains and eat

The wind whipped up the white snowflakes, tearing out shrill, ghostly cries from the branches of the old red pine.

Han Laowai ran wildly through the dark forest like a blind wild boar.

The sprawling branches lashed at his face like whips, leaving streaks of blood, but he didn't even flinch.

The moment he closed his eyes, the dark muzzle of the gun and the deafening gunshots seemed to explode inside his skull.

He didn't know how far he ran until his already limping leg kicked an old tree root buried under the snow, and he fell forward violently, plunging headfirst into a pile of rotten leaves up to his waist.

"Huff... huff..."

He lay on the ground like a broken bellows, gasping for breath. The violent running caused cold air to rush into his lungs, and he coughed up only white breath with a bloody smell.

Once the adrenaline subsided, the excruciating pain that felt like it was hitting my heart all at once came crashing down on me.

Han Laowai raised his right hand, trembling.

In the pale moonlight filtering through the gaps in the trees, that hand could no longer be called a hand.

The index, middle, and ring fingers were severed at the base, with the flesh turned inside out and the pale bone fragments mixed with mud and blood, from which black blood was seeping out drop by drop.

In this cold spring night, if the blood continues to flow like this, a person will freeze to death in less than half an hour.

A fierce glint flashed in his eyes. He gritted his teeth and used his intact left hand to grope inside his tattered sheepskin coat, pulling out a small, palm-sized cow horn medicine tube.

That was a hemostatic powder used by the hunters in the old forest to save their lives, mixed with Panax notoginseng and the ash from the stove pit.

But medicine alone isn't enough; the wound is too large.

Han Laowai roughly ripped off the lining of the dog-skin hat and poured the half-tube of medicine powder onto the rotten cloth strip that smelled of sweat.

He opened his mouth, which was full of yellow teeth, and bit down hard on the piece of wooden gun barrel that had just been broken off. With his left hand, he gripped a rag covered in powder and smeared it onto the bloody, mangled stump of his right hand, then strangled it.

"Waaah—"

A muffled howl, unlike any human voice, rolled out from deep within his throat.

The veins on his neck bulged as if they were about to burst, his eyes bulged, and cold sweat mixed with mud and blood etched two murky furrows on his face.

He thrashed violently in the snow like a dying catfish, fainting from the pain for half a second before being jolted awake by the biting cold wind.

After being bandaged, he slumped against the rough trunk of an old pine tree, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.

Outside the woods, it was deathly quiet.

The sound of the foreign-made rifle stopped, and the sound of the hunting dogs pawing the ground also ceased.

Han Laowai knew that the living Yama hadn't chased them in.

Safe.

But just as the tension eased, Da Long's half-exploded skull, like a bald spot, slammed into his brain.

"Big Dragon..."

Han Laowai's withered lips trembled, and a hissing sound came from his throat.

He didn't cry.

Having spent half my life in this Laoyagou, tears are the cheapest form of urine.

He simply gripped the tree bark behind him with his only remaining left hand, not even noticing his fingernails splitting and bleeding.

He buried his deeply lined old face in the cold snow, and like a dying old wolf, let out an extremely suppressed dry howl.

Dalong was the only hope for the Han family to establish themselves in Laoyagou, and the support for this old man with no descendants for the rest of his life.

Now the mountain has collapsed, and the roots are gone.

Even Er Kui, whom he treated like a dog and who took a bullet for him, is probably long gone by now.

"You beast, I'm going to kill you!..."

Han Laowai suddenly raised his head, his eyes no longer showing any fear of fleeing, but only a venomous resentment that seemed to want to skin someone alive.

The grudges in Laoyagou have never been resolved; they can only be settled when one side is completely wiped out.

Han Laowai did indeed run out of quick-draw guns, and even one of his hands was crippled, but he had plenty of hard currency.

Before Er Kui died, he didn't shout nonsense. In the abandoned mine in Xiazigou, there were a few large yellow croakers and Yuan Shikai silver dollars that he had saved up by acting as a dog for the Japanese devils and by exploiting the land before the land reform.

With this money, he could bribe the most notorious gangsters on the black market and recruit a whole bunch of desperate criminals armed with repeating firearms.

He wanted to capture that foolish brat alive, skin him alive inch by inch, and burn him alive.

The wind and snow intensified.

Han Laowai struggled to stand up, leaning against the tree trunk. He glanced at his right hand, which was wrapped up like a blood gourd, and then looked back at the south slope for a long time.

He dragged his lame leg, step by step, like a venomous snake lurking in the abyss, disappearing into the deeper shadows.

The road to Xiazigou is extremely difficult to travel. It is a dead mine that collapsed during the War of Resistance against Japan. Even hunters who hunt badgers usually avoid it because they consider it bad luck.

The snow was above knee-deep, and every step Han Laowai took with his lame leg required immense effort.

Blood loss made his body grow colder and colder, and his mind began to feel dizzy.

In a daze, he seemed to smell that pungent smell of blood from more than ten years ago again.

Back then, he was a notorious ruthless man in the surrounding area, leading a squad of Japanese soldiers armed with pistols into Blind Man's Gully. The mine pit housed over thirty laborers digging for gold, all recruited through deception.

One Japanese machine gun shot, and more than thirty lives were lost in the mine, but in return, Han Laowai received a heavy bag of hard currency in his arms.

Later, things changed. The Japanese surrendered, and the work team went into the mountains to settle old scores.

Back then, many landlords and traitors from the surrounding villages with deeper roots than him were tied to the stage and burned like lanterns or shot, but Han Laowai was the only one who survived.

On what grounds?

Because he's cunning and ruthless, cruel to others, and even more ruthless to himself!

Two months before the liquidation storm began, he sensed that something was amiss.

He secretly sneaked into the home of a one-eyed, crippled old man with no relatives or friends in a neighboring village.

He strangled the sleeping old bachelor to death with a hemp rope, then chopped up the body under the cover of darkness and threw it into a dry well deep in the mountains.

In order to make this disguise seamless and usurp the throne, he hardened his heart, heated the stoker in the kang (a heated brick bed) until it was red-hot, and burned half of his face, ruining his original appearance.

Immediately afterwards, he bit a tattered rag, picked up a broken stone roller weighing several dozen kilograms from the yard, and smashed it down hard on his right leg bone.

A dull cracking sound.

He transformed himself into an unrecognizable ugly man, a real cripple.

During the subsequent massive denunciation meetings, he, bearing the name of that old man without a son, dragged his still-healed broken leg, wearing a tattered coat with black cotton wadding showing, and lay down on the platform, crying more miserably than anyone else, his forehead banging against the blue bricks with loud thuds, his face covered in blood.

Who would have thought that this blind, lame old man who couldn't even straighten his back was the ruthless traitor leader back then?

Once the storm had passed, he took this ill-gotten gain and plunged into the desolate and impoverished Laoyagou, where he remained for over a decade.

He made himself into a monster, living like a maggot in a gutter. He didn't even dare to openly raise his own son, Da Long, for fear of attracting attention.

He endured his whole life, living a life of hardship, all for the sake of waiting until the storm completely died down, so that Da Long could take the money and live a life of luxury, and continue the Han family line in glory.

But he never dreamed of this.

He had braved the Japanese devils' knives and dodged the work team's bullets, even risking his own face and legs in advance, only to have his leg severed by some unknown rogue.

The family line has ended.

"Little beast..."

A mouthful of bloody saliva spilled from Han Laowai's throat. The despair of having schemed his whole life only to be uprooted in the end transformed into a fire a hundred times more insidious than the late spring chill, burning wildly in his withered chest.

He didn't know how long he had trekked through the wind and snow, until a faint gray-white, like the belly of a dead fish, appeared on the horizon. Finally, Han Laowai's eyes, which were almost covered by frost, saw two huge, intersecting weathered rocks ahead.

We've arrived at Blind Man's Gully.

He suddenly perked up, a dry, hoarse sound coming from his throat, and quickened his pace toward the half-person-high dark hole behind the weathered rock.

The mine was filled with a strong smell of bat droppings and rotten, moldy wood.

Han Laowai scrambled inside, pulled out a match from his pocket, lit it, and, using the dim yellow light, groped his way in.

Reaching a broken load-bearing wooden pillar deep within the cave, he abruptly stopped, threw down the matchstick, and collapsed onto the rocky ground.

"Untouched...everything is still here..."

His only remaining left hand frantically dug through the mud and rubble at the base of the pillar like a dog. His fingernails were cut by sharp stones, and blood mingled with the dirt, but he felt no pain at all.

When his fingertips touched a cold, hard metal box, Han Laowai suddenly shuddered.

He gasped for breath as he dug out the iron box, which was wrapped in three layers of oil paper. Using his teeth and left hand, he roughly tore off the moisture-proof oil paper and yanked open the iron lid.

In the darkness, though there was no light, the heavy weight in his hand and the dull thud of the silver coins clashing filled Han Laowai's empty chest.

He grabbed a handful of silver dollars covered in years of dirt and grime, then pulled out three gold bars hidden at the bottom and pressed them firmly against his old face, which was covered in cuts and bruises.

The cold, metallic touch was more effective than any painkiller from Laoyagou.

"Ha ha ha ha……"

Han Laowai let out a strange, grotesque laugh in the pitch-black mine. The laughter echoed through the empty cave, just like a demon crawling out of hell.