Chief Armaments Master of the Ming Dynasty

The next day, he began to try hunting.

Lacking a bow and arrows, he sharpened several relatively straight hardwood sticks with a knife and made them into rudimentary javelins.

He lay in ambush where it might be an animal trail, and waited for a long time before finally seeing a grayish hare hopping warily towards him.

His heart was pounding as he threw the javelin with all his might!

The javelin missed, grazing the rabbit's hind leg. Startled, the rabbit darted into the withered grass and disappeared.

failure.

Lin Fan, panting, picked up the javelin, undeterred.

This requires practice and also requires improving the tools.

He remembered those crude gunpowder powders.

Could you make something simple... like an explosive trap?

He quickly rejected the idea.

Too little gunpowder would make setting traps too risky and could expose one's own abilities.

He changed tactics and tried to make a lasso using thinner branches and the barely usable tough grass stems he found.

This is a job that relies more on experience and patience.

He spent the entire day setting up makeshift snares in several areas where animals might be present.

On the morning of the third day, when he checked the snares, he was pleasantly surprised to find that one of them had caught a plump wild rabbit!

The guy was still struggling.

Lin Fan finished it off with a knife, his hand trembling slightly.

This was the first time he had ever hunted an animal with his own hands.

Peel and clean them, then skewer them on branches and roast them over a fire.

Without salt, it tasted fishy and rancid, but the aroma of the sizzling oil on the fire almost drove him crazy.

He forced himself to eat slowly, drying most of the meat to save for later.

The food crisis has been temporarily alleviated.

He continued to improve his tools, trying to make more durable fire-starting tools with the newly found flint and hardwood, although the success rate was very low.

He was also looking for a more reliable water source. Exploring downstream along the gully, he discovered a small but relatively clean stream of water seeping out from under a crevice in the rocks. He used tree bark and stones to make a small water storage pit.

The days passed by in extreme hardship and slow adaptation.

Lin Fan's face was roughened by the wind and sun, and his hands were covered with small cuts and calluses.

But the panic in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by a calm focus on survival, and a deep contemplation belonging to another soul hidden in his eyes.

He would occasionally climb up the higher ridges and cautiously observe his surroundings.

The desolate mountains were deserted, with very few signs of human habitation.

But he noticed that the dust and smoke in the direction of the official road in the distance seemed unusual, not like that of a caravan, but more scattered and hurried.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, the wind carries a faint sound, like many people crying out, or like the sobbing of the wind blowing through a specific mountain valley, indistinct.

Until one afternoon about two weeks later.

He was on a sunny slope, trying to scrape a slightly larger thin stone slab that could be used as a pot, when he suddenly heard voices coming from the other side of the mountain ridge. It wasn't just one or two people, but a small group!

Lin Fan immediately lay prone on the ground, carefully peering through the gaps in the withered grass.

There were seven or eight people, dressed in rags and looking pale, hurriedly climbing up a path from the foot of the mountain.

They carried the elderly and helped the young, with tattered bundles, their expressions panicked.

Judging from their attire, they seem to be farmers who have fled from disaster.

They stopped to rest on a slightly flat slope not far from where Lin Fan was hiding, took out their dark, dry rations and ate them while talking in hushed tones.

The wind carried their fragmented words over intermittently.

"...It's over, the estate has been looted..."

"...I heard things are even more chaotic in Mizhi; Wang Jiayin has already mobilized tens of thousands of people..."

"...The soldiers have all run away, who cares about our lives..."

"...Go north, into the mountains, hide..."

"...How's it going at Yinchuan Post Station? I heard the postmen killed all the tax collectors?"

"That's not all! I heard they even killed their creditors, robbed wealthy households, and went to join the heroes in the north!"

"Really? That's a capital offense!"

"These days, being beheaded is better than starving to death! I heard that the courier Li Zicheng, the one who led the group, killed the officials and then gathered a bunch of men and fled into the mountains. I think... he's called something like 'General Chuang'?"

Li Zicheng, the rebel leader!

Lin Fan's heart skipped a beat, and his ears perked up.

The sounds that followed were even lower and were carried away by the wind, making them difficult to hear clearly.

But those keywords pierced his heart like nails.

He killed the creditor.

They robbed the wealthy.

They gathered in the mountains and forests.

path-breaker.

He clearly remembered that the title "Chuang Jiang" in historical records should have been given to Li Zicheng around the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign, after he joined the "Chuang Wang" Gao Yingxiang.

Yet at this moment, this title has already begun to circulate prematurely in the whispers of the refugees in this desolate mountain.

It seems that from the moment his soul unexpectedly fell into this world, the river of fate had already changed course.

This butterfly, which should never have existed, may have accelerated, or even rewritten, the prelude to certain events with the force of its flapping wings.

The trajectory of Li Zicheng's fate was propelled to a more intense and potentially earlier beginning due to his presence and escape from Yinchuan Post Station.

Therefore, all the "historical materials" he knew thereafter could only be vague references, not a definitive script.

What he truly has to face is a real world that is rapidly boiling over and full of variables because of his intervention.

……

The group of refugees rested for a moment, then hurriedly headed north into the deep mountains, soon disappearing behind the peaks.

Lin Fan remained lying in the same spot, not moving for a long time.

The setting sun cast his long, solitary shadow onto the cold, barren yellow earth.

Li Zicheng indeed rebelled.

He was forced from a lowly courier to become a "rebel general" who led a band of outlaws in the mountains.

What about yourself?

This lost soul, who unexpectedly stumbled into this era, struggles to survive in these desolate mountains with only a little rudimentary knowledge and luck.

He touched the nearly empty gunpowder pouch in his pocket, then looked at the stone slab being polished beside him.

Wilderness survival is only temporary.

The world is collapsing, and war will engulf everything.

Hiding in these mountains might allow me to live a few more days, but it's certainly not a long-term solution.

Li Zicheng became known as the "rebel general".

He, the former post station stable boy whom Li Zicheng picked up from the roadside and personally sent on his escape route, held a spark of "skill" that transcended this era.

This kind of fire, in this desolate wilderness, can only ignite a wisp of smoke.

But can it... ignite more?

Lin Fan raised his head and looked towards the deep northern mountains where the refugees had disappeared.

That place is more wild and likely to hide the forces struggling to survive in the chaos of war, and even those who covet the world.

Perhaps it's time to make a choice.

……

The fire went out, and Lin Fan carefully covered the embers with damp soil, leaving no trace.

The traces of the cave entrance were also carefully erased.

After these days of rest and limited fodder, the chestnut horse has recovered somewhat, but its frame remains hunched.

Lin Fan carefully wrapped up the last bit of dried rabbit meat, along with the remaining gunpowder pouch, the waist knife, and the makeshift tools he had made over the past few days—

Several sharpened wooden spears, and a few carefully selected flints—

Together, they were properly tied up.

He took one last look at the dry ditch and shallow cave that had sheltered him for more than half a month.

This place bears the marks of his struggle for survival and witnesses his transformation from the panic of escaping from the post station to his current wild-man-like resilience.

Then, he mounted his horse, gently pulled on the reins, turned the horse around, and rode slowly northward toward the place where the refugees from yesterday had disappeared.

He knew that this journey meant truly throwing himself into the boiling, bloody torrent of that era.

Though the wilderness is harsh, it has relatively clear rules for survival—

Fight against the heavens, fight against the earth, fight against wild beasts.

What they are about to step into is a battlefield of carnage in the human world, a more complex, bloodier, and more unpredictable struggle.