Rebirth in 1972: Redemption in Changbai Mountain

"Damn!" Gu Shaofeng reached up and scratched his neck, his fingertips brushing against a burning red mark. "I really want to burn this meadow down."

"Burn? If we burn it, we'll all be buried here, and the surrounding forests and farms will suffer too," Gu Jiacheng couldn't help but retort.

The dry, hard stubble of thatch made his arms and legs itch all over. The more Gu Shaofeng scratched, the more the itch on his back seeped into his heart.

"Ahem, just something I said offhand. It's dry and the words just slipped out."

Gu Shaofeng knew the importance of things, but after wandering around in this swamp for most of the day without finding a single clue, he couldn't suppress the restlessness in his heart.

"Ruiwa, do you think this pack of wolves is really here? Could there be a mistake?" Gu Shaofeng asked Zhou Rui in a low voice, with a hint of barely perceptible wavering.

"From the moment I saw that whistle wolf, I knew I was right."

Zhou Rui stomped heavily into the mud, splashing the dark, murky water high into the air.

"Last night I looked closely at the points that the uncle and the others circled on the map. This place is too far from the other three places."

"If the wolf pack is resting elsewhere, it doesn't make sense to leave the sentry wolf alone in this location."

Gu Dayong walked at the front, listening silently to the boys talking behind him, completely undisturbed.

Once he set his mind on a certain direction, not even eight oxen could pull him back. From the moment he stepped into this swamp, he had no intention of stopping his pursuit.

Gu Dayong's gaze swept over the crisscrossing grass tracks under his feet. Suddenly, he squatted down and gently brushed aside the layer of broken grass covering the mud with his fingertips.

Several faint yet clear claw marks were embedded in the half-dried mud shell, the marks from the toes as sharp as if they had been carved by a chisel.

"Found it." He pointed to the edge of the paw prints with his fingertip. "These are footprints left by wolves this morning. If the wolf pack wasn't here, there wouldn't be any footprints left."

"Uncle Dayong, there's a tree up ahead. Let's go over there and climb to the top to take a look."

Zhou Rui had already sensed the wolf pack. He knew that if he followed the footprints, he would soon see the wolves, but he might also be detected by them first.

The only way now is to let Gu Dayong see the wolf first, so that we can formulate a subsequent battle plan.

Zhou Rui climbed up a large tree in the swamp, then quickly climbed down and handed the binoculars to Gu Dayong.

"Uncle Dayong, a pack of wolves has appeared in the northeast corner, about 1,200 meters away. There are more than a dozen wolves in sight, and the number of wolves resting in the grass is currently unknown."

Gu Dayong was the leader of their squad, so naturally he needed to verify it personally.

Gu Dayong climbed up the big tree and then saw a high grass depression in front of him. There was no water around it, and it was all hard soil.

A dozen or so grayish-yellow shadows were sitting and resting, while several half-grown wolves were nursing next to their mother.

Two adult wolves guarded the entrance to the depression, their ears standing up like sharp knives, not missing even the slightest sound of the wind rustling through the grass.

A gentle breeze swept by, scattering some blades of grass and revealing glimpses of wolf bodies.

Gu Dayong continued to survey the terrain, searching for a favorable firing position.

After a while, Gu Dayong finally climbed down from the tree: "Zhou Rui, there's a rock in the southwest corner of the wolf pack's habitat, about 300 meters away from the wolves. Are you sure you can handle it?"

Zhou Rui agreed without hesitation, as the distance was within his firing range.

"Okay, Uncle Dayong."

Seeing Zhou Rui agree, Gu Dayong nodded in relief.

"Jiacheng and Shaofeng, follow me to raid the wolf den. Kill as many wolves as possible and try to expose the wolf king."

The four men immediately crouched down, gripping the willow wood probes and groping their way along the grass toward the wolf pack.

The coolness of the muddy water seeping into my rubber shoes went straight to my kneecaps. Before each step, I would first poke my body three times with a stick to make sure that I was on a solid rock before I dared to slowly put my weight down.

To avoid making even the slightest noise from the grass, Gu Shaofeng even suppressed the urge to scratch his neck. The itching on his back felt like countless tiny ants crawling on him, but he didn't dare to even furrow his brow.

After walking about seven or eight hundred meters, Zhou Rui separated from the three and headed alone to the stone that he had already marked in his mind.

The stone surface was extremely cold. Zhou Rui lay on it, using his scope to capture the direction of the wind and the rhythm of the swaying grass.

Three hundred meters away in the wolf hollow, the wolf king had not yet shown its face, and more than a dozen wild wolves were still resting quietly, without making the slightest noise.

Zhou Rui turned the mirror around and saw that Gu Dayong and the other two were still following the wolf's footprints, but their speed had slowed down to that of a snail.

They were getting closer and closer, and Gu Dayong did everything he could to avoid alerting the wolves.

In the end, Gu Dayong even made Gu Jiacheng and Gu Shaofeng lie down and crawl forward with him through the mud.

Zhou Rui moved his aim back to the depression and slowly adjusted his breathing.

He knew in his heart that the wolves on the outskirts were not his target.

What he needed to do was, after Gu Dayong and the other two launched their attack, quickly find the wolf king in the chaotic wolf pack and kill him with a single shot.

The wind suddenly paused for half a second.

The gray wolf on guard at the entrance to the depression suddenly prickled up its ears, its nose twitched three times in the air, and a very low growl rolled out of its throat.

Zhou Rui's heart jumped into his throat. It wasn't that they had been exposed, but that the wind had suddenly changed direction, carrying the scent of Gu Dayong and the other two right to the wolf's nose.

Before the sentry could stand up and give a warning, gunshots rang out from eighty meters away.

It was Gu Dayong's water-spraying bullet that fired first, the bullet blowing half of the wolf's face off. The wolf's body crashed heavily onto the muddy ground, not even having time to howl.

Immediately afterward, Gu Jiacheng and Gu Shaofeng fired their guns. The bullets swept across the grass at the edge of the depression, and two or three adult wolves, caught off guard, fell to the ground in pools of blood.

The entire wolf pack was instantly thrown into chaos, and many previously unseen wolf shadows suddenly appeared.

The low howls, the shrieks of the wolf cubs, and the screeching of wolf claws digging at the ground all blended together.

Sixty or seventy grayish-yellow shadows darted around in the depression, but not a single wolf rushed out of the depression.

They seemed to be held firmly in place by something, only daring to circle around the tallest patch of grass in the middle.

The wolf king did not appear as expected, nor did the long howl that commanded the pack of wolves sound.

Zhou Rui's finger was on the trigger, and he scanned the entire depression three times, but he couldn't find the Wolf King.

The shooting continued. Gu Dayong and his two companions fired in a very rhythmic manner. Although the gunfire was not dense, it was almost continuous.

Several half-grown wolves panicked and burrowed under the mother wolf's belly. Some other wolves also began to fight back, but they all died under the men's guns.

Just then, Zhou Rui suddenly noticed a wolf shadow appear behind Gu Dayong and the other two. Its fur was silver-white, but its size was about the same as other adult wolves.

"Watch out behind you!" Zhou Rui shouted as he turned his gun.