Rebirth in a Courtyard: I Am a Little Hunter

After finishing work in the evening, Wei Chen didn't go straight home. Instead, he used the excuse of checking the traps he had set a few days earlier and went into the mountains with his bow and arrows. Following the path he remembered, he quickly found a hidden thicket where a simple lasso trap had been set up.

"Good luck!" Wei Chen crouched down and found a plump wild rabbit hanging from the snare, already dead. He skillfully took the prey, and just then, it seemed that another blue light flashed before his eyes, but when he looked closely, there was nothing there.

"Strange..." Wei Chen shook his head, tied the rabbit up, and hung it on his waist. He decided to come back tomorrow to examine the forest more carefully, hoping to find more prey.

Back home, Wei Chen handed the rabbit to his mother. Wang Xiulan excitedly took the prey and immediately began processing it. Wei Ran circled around her brother, chattering away about the hunting experience.

"Brother, when will you teach me archery?" Wei Hong asked, tilting her head up.

"Wait until you grow a little taller." Wei Chen smiled and patted his younger sister's head. In his memory, the original owner doted on this younger sister, often bringing her wild fruits and small animals from the mountains.

At dinner, a pot of fragrant rabbit stew with potatoes filled the simple house with laughter. Looking at his mother and sister's satisfied expressions, Wei Chen felt both warm and heavy-hearted. He knew that these good days wouldn't last much longer.

"Xiao Chen, your uncle told me today that they might be setting up a communal canteen soon," Wang Xiulan said while serving food to the children. "With a communal canteen, meals will be free."

Wei Chen's heart tightened. Historically, the commune canteens did initially provide enough food for everyone, but they quickly fell into trouble due to mismanagement and natural disasters.

"Mom, I think we still need to save some food ourselves; we can't just hand it all over," Wei Chen said cautiously. "What if..."

"Silly child, would the country let us starve?" Wang Xiulan smiled dismissively. "Your father sacrificed himself for the revolution, and the organization has always taken good care of our family. But you're all grown up now, so Mom will listen to you."

Wei Chen didn't say anything more. He knew it was too early to say anything now; he had to prepare with actions.

Wei Chen didn't say anything, but his mind was racing. He needed to carefully plan his next steps: on one hand, he needed to continue hunting to increase his family's income; on the other hand, he needed to secretly stockpile food to prepare for the coming difficult period; perhaps he could also try to find a job in the city...

Wei Chen was a little absent-minded during dinner. On his first day in this era, he had been working in a daze all day. He quickly ate the last few grains of rice in his bowl, put his chopsticks on the table, and scraped the bottom of the bowl clean.

"Mom, I'm a little tired and want to rest early." He said as he got up, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the rim of the bowl. There was a small chip on the edge of the rough porcelain bowl, which made his fingertips itch.

Wang Xiulan was tidying up the stove when she heard this and turned around. The dim light of the kerosene lamp danced on her face, making the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes appear even deeper. "What's wrong? Are you tired from working today?" She lifted her apron to wipe her hands and was about to touch Wei Chen's forehead.

"N-nothing." Wei Chen tilted his head subtly. "I'm just sleepy." He glanced at his younger sister, Wei Ran, who was looking at him with her head tilted to the side, holding half a cornbread in her small hand, with sesame seeds stuck to the corner of her mouth.

Arriving at the west room of the main house, Wei Chen's room, he quickly bolted the door shut. This small room, about ten square meters, was his little world. In the corner were piles of hunting bows and arrows and ropes, and several tanned rabbit skins were nailed to the wall. Moonlight slanted in through the small skylight, drawing a pale square on the floor.

"System? Xiaobai?" Wei Chen called out in a low voice, his eyes fixed on a certain spot in the void. The only response was the chirping of crickets outside the window. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sketched the flashing game interface in his mind.

Suddenly, the world spun around him. When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in a brightly lit room.

"This is..." Wei Chen's pupils suddenly contracted. Snow-white walls, gleaming wooden floors, and a minimalist ceiling light overhead—this was clearly a modern decorating style. He stumbled and fell to the window. Outside, there was a neatly trimmed lawn, and in the distance, the green mountains stretched out like dark eyebrows.

Aside from the rooms, it was a three-story building. Turning to look at the door, a small wooden sign hung on the metal doorknob: "Hunter's Lodge." Back in the building, several landscape paintings hung on the corridor walls, and the paint on the stair railings was smooth and cool. On the first floor, the living room had a fabric sofa, a glass coffee table, and a fully equipped modern kitchen. The second floor had bedrooms and a bathroom, and the third floor had a gym and entertainment room, all of which made him feel as if he were in another world.

"I'm back?" Wei Chen asked, half-believing, as he pushed open the villa door and was greeted by a refreshing mountain breeze. Before him lay a small village nestled against the mountainside, with wooden houses scattered along the stone-paved road and a vast expanse of white in the distance.

The scene was so familiar it made his heart clench – it was the initial screen of The Revenant game that GG had pushed to him.

"So I'm... in a game?" Wei Chen pinched his arm; there was pain, but it wasn't intense. He tried silently saying "quit," and in a flash, he was back on his wooden bed in his room.

After entering and exiting several times, Wei Chen finally confirmed that what he had brought into this world wasn't a system, but a complete game space. He was excited but also somewhat disappointed—everyone else was reborn with a heaven-defying system, while he got a single-player game?

"It's better than nothing," he consoled himself, and re-entered the game world.

This time, he noticed that the interface deep within his consciousness had attributes, items, and skill toolbars, just like in a game. He clicked on the new player guide information panel:

【Hunter's Lodge】The Hunter's Private Territory

Gain experience points by killing monsters

The backpack can store physical items.

Opening the inventory reveals 99 slots. The first slot holds a book, the second a bow, the third an arrow, and the number 999 is displayed in the bottom right corner. These are all gifts from the game.

With a thought, Wei Chen conjured an ancient book shimmering with a bluish light in his hand. The five seal characters "Nine Heavens Sun-Shooting Technique" on the cover were written in a flowing, elegant style. The moment his fingertips touched it, the pages turned to the first page without any wind.

"Boom!" A deluge of information flooded his mind. Wei Chen saw ten suns in the sky in ancient times, with warriors drawing their bows and shooting down nine suns with nine arrows. The scene shifted to countless diagrams of human meridians, with golden energy circulating along specific routes...

"Ugh!" Wei Chen clutched his head and knelt on the ground. After the excruciating pain subsided, he discovered that he had memorized the entire page. Even more miraculously, a wisp of heat appeared out of nowhere in his dantian and slowly flowed along the route he had just learned.

[Learned: Arrow Through the Willow Branch (Minor Mastery)]

As Wei Chen stood up, he found the world had changed. He could see the trembling of every feather of the sparrow in the treetop thirty paces away; the babbling of the stream in the distance was so clear it seemed to be right next to his ear. He picked up a pebble and threw it, hitting the tree trunk accurately ten meters away.

That book lies deep within my consciousness. Calling to it again will not bring it to a response.

Wei Chen's eyes lit up. He took out a bow and arrows from his backpack and strode towards the village entrance. A dozen speckled pheasants were pecking at the grass, their feathers glistening in the sunlight. This scene perfectly matched the game GG he remembered.

Wei Chen nocked the arrow and drew the string. Strangely, his previously clumsy movements now flowed smoothly, as if he had practiced it hundreds of times. The bowstring vibrated, and the arrow whistled as it pierced the neck of a rooster.

"Cluck-cluck!" The wounded rooster ruffled its feathers and lunged forward, its eyes red. Wei Chen hastily fired two more arrows before the rooster finally fell. At the same time, a notification appeared below his vision: [Experience Points +1]

But the rooster didn't disappear like in the game. Wei Chen walked up to it, and with a thought, the rooster vanished from his sight and was put into his backpack.

For the next hour, Wei Chen circled the village, eliminating the chickens, both roosters and hens. With each one he killed, a subtle warm current surged through his body. When the tenth rooster fell, a warm current suddenly swept over his entire body.

[Level upgraded to Level 1!] [Gained: True Essence +1 year]

Wei Chen felt a faint cracking sound from his bones, as if his muscle fibers were being rewoven by an invisible hand. He tried jumping, and his previously heavy body felt much lighter. He brought up his attribute panel:

Name: Wei Chen (Hunter)

Level: 1 (0/100)

Cultivation Technique: Nine Heavens Sun-Shooting Technique

True Yuan: 1 years

Skill: Piercing Arrow (Minor Mastery)

"This..." Wei Chen trembled with excitement. After the upgrade, he clearly felt an improvement in his physical fitness and strength. The energy flowing within his body also felt very real.

He quickly exited the game and returned to his room.

The energy within my body hadn't disappeared, just like in the game. The acquired cultivation technique, "Nine Heavens Sun-Shooting Technique," was clearly etched in my mind. Following the technique, the energy within my body flowed clearly; this must be true essence.

Remembering the chicken in his backpack, a fat hen appeared in Wei Chen's hand with a thought, but he put it back after a second thought.

Wei Chen trembled with excitement. This wasn't a simple game; it was a game world where players could bring their in-game skills and items into the real world.

Having calmed himself down, Wei Chen pulled a ceramic jar from under the bed—it contained twelve eggs that his family had saved up. The moment his finger touched it, the eggs and the jar disappeared together, and at the same time, a ceramic jar appeared in the first slot of his game inventory. He put it out, and the eggs inside were intact.

"It really works!" Wei Chen tried putting the kerosene lamp on the wooden table into his backpack again. This time it occupied another slot, showing as [Kerose Lamp (1/1)]. Even better, the wooden bow he brought from the game could also be used in reality, and...

He nocked the arrow, drew his bow, and aimed at the swaying branches outside the window. What would normally require three seconds of charging was now completed in an instant. The moment the arrow left the bowstring, a surge of heat from his dantian automatically flowed to his arm, and the arrow flew so fast that it left a blur.

"Snap!" The tree branch thirty paces away snapped in two. Wei Chen's mouth dropped open—this power was comparable to the composite bow from his previous life! Keep in mind, he was only using a homemade bamboo bow!