In the trackless depths of the mountain forest, the wind let out a low, mournful cry, shaking loose the snow piled on the branches and sending it swirling through the trees.

With all the leaves long gone, the woods didn’t look dark at all. They were just too quiet. Dead quiet. Hardly any animals were around. Not even a woodpecker or a gray magpie showed itself.

This was the first big snowfall of the season. It had been coming down for two straight days, wrapping the whole mountain in silver. Now the snow had finally stopped. The wind was still there, maybe a level three or four, not exactly brutal, but enough to bite.

Two white figures swept through the trees more than ten meters above the ground, swinging from branch to branch like gibbons. From a distance, they looked almost unreal, like snow monsters straight out of some old mountain tale.

Each of them held a rope. At the end of each rope was a metal claw fitted with a spring mechanism. The claw bit onto thick branches, tightened under tension, and locked hard. The moment their swing started to run out, both men flicked their wrists. The spring snapped, the claws released, and their bodies shot forward in one smooth motion, one after the other, toward the next branch ahead.

They weren’t acrobats.

They weren’t martial arts masters either.

They were poachers.

One was younger, one was older. The younger one was Eliot Sherwood, only eighteen. The older one was Spencer Langford, though he was just twenty-two himself.

This place was close to the border.

Back in autumn, they had already turned this patch of forest into a hunting ground. They had dug hidden pit traps and set up all kinds of mechanisms across the area.

Those mechanisms weren’t the kind that triggered on their own. They had to be activated by hand when the two of them arrived. Otherwise the prey would wreck the setups ahead of time, and all they’d really be doing was making life easier for the wolves.

The cold wind picked up again.

They had come back hoping to score big this trip.

The two of them moved fast through the forest, swinging deeper in until they neared a stretch of tall oak trees.

At the end of one swing, Eliot let go of the claw. His lean body dropped lightly onto a cross-branch no thicker than an arm. He hugged the trunk in one motion. Snow above him shook loose and drifted down on the wind, but his footing was already steady.

Spencer, right behind him, made the same move and landed lightly on the fork of the neighboring tree.

Eliot let out a long breath of white mist. After catching it for a second, he turned his head and said, “Spencer, this should be the spot. Those two hanging trees over there are the ones we dropped in autumn.”

Standing on the branch, Spencer looked around carefully, then nodded. “Yeah. Should be right.”

Eliot pulled down his white neck gaiter to uncover his nose, then took off his goggles. He looked at a fallen tree hanging half-suspended not far away, and a grin spread across his face.

“Spencer, the trail’s been walked in good. There are quite a few of those dumb beasts.” His eyes lit up. “If we pull off a big one today, plus whatever’s already in the pits, Adrien’s food money for the next few years—and your wedding money too—will all be covered.”

Spencer looked over at Eliot standing in the tree and smiled too.

The two of them were risking their necks out here, but it wasn’t because they were greedy.

It was because Spencer’s younger brother, Adrien Langford, had gotten into Yanjing University.

Sure, college came with grants, and the tuition had been scraped together already. But living expenses were another story. One or two ten-thousand a year, easy. In this remote borderland, a strong laborer could work himself half to death and still only bring in about that much in a year. That kind of pressure was no joke.

The Sherwood and Langford families had been close for generations. Eliot and Spencer were even tighter than that. Eliot treated Spencer like a real older brother. That was why he had followed him into this dangerous old forest—to help Adrien finish school, and to help Spencer save enough to marry a wife.

Eliot glanced up at the sky and said, “Spencer, let’s get to work.”

He paused, then added, “The sun’ll be up soon. Once it’s bright, the big ones will head back to their dens.”

Spencer Langford shifted the tube gun hanging behind him and grinned. “Eliot, after we finish this run, we can coast for two years. By then, you’ll be old enough to get married. We’ll make one more trip after that.”

Eliot Sherwood swung lightly on the hooked claw, his body moving between the trees with easy practice. “Brother Wu, why think that far ahead?” he said. “My grandpa always says, if you keep walking by the river, sooner or later your shoes are gonna get wet. So yeah, once you get married, I’m heading to a big city to work. Wouldn’t it be nice if I brought back a city girl? Let some pretty city wife rub Grandpa’s legs. Man, that’d be perfect.”

Spencer snorted and laughed, moving closer to the fallen tree as he began setting the mechanism. “A city girl, huh? You’re dreaming big. Those city girls aren’t just pretty, they’re all rich landladies in your stories. If you really married one, you’d be so smug your nose would start blowing bubbles. Might even come with a few buildings.”

The two of them traded a few more jokes, then both went quiet.

Their hands never stopped.

They worked in silence, fast and steady, rigging the trap with the kind of skill that didn’t come from luck. Neither of them stepped onto the snow. They hung in the air the whole time, rising and dropping from tree to tree, like jewel thieves in some action movie, never leaving a footprint on the white ground below.

Both of them had lives that were hard from the root.

When Eliot was twelve, his father, Spencer’s father, and Spencer’s second uncle—who still hadn’t married—went out in the dead of winter. They did not come back until summer.

And when they did, only Mr. Langford’s brother came back alive.

He had lost an arm.

He brought back the ashes of both fathers, and the few belongings left behind.

After that, Spencer’s second uncle fell seriously ill. The treatment drained both families dry. By the time he recovered, he was a wreck, barely useful for anything. Spencer’s mother wore herself down caring for the family until her body gave out too, turning into a full-time medicine jar. Eliot’s mother couldn’t survive the blow at all. Two months later, she left behind Eliot and his grandfather, who was already past sixty, and died.

From then on, Mr. Sherwood seemed to age overnight.

He barely spoke anymore. Every day, he just sat there smoking his harsh frog tobacco in silence, or went up the mountain to forage, digging wild vegetables, catching whatever game he could, scraping together money to raise Eliot.

Eliot had always wanted to know what had really happened to them.

His father had been incredibly skilled. In Eliot’s eyes, the man had been like some wandering hero from old stories. Spencer’s father and second uncle had been experts too, and their marksmanship was no joke. So how had men like that ended up dead out there?

He never cried.

Not once.

It was like he had grown up in a single night.

After finishing elementary school, Eliot had still wanted to continue studying. But then his grandfather injured his foot in the mountains and couldn’t get out of bed. At fourteen, Eliot had no choice but to shoulder the family burden. He left school and started following Spencer up the mountains and down the rivers, hunting and scraping by.

In a flash, four years had passed.

In the whimpering wind, the two moved with practiced speed.

In less than an hour, they dropped from midair like great birds, landing lightly on both sides of the deer trail. Carefully, they pulled the trap ropes out from beneath the snow, then spread open the white cloaks behind them and slowly pressed down the edges with snow.

Their figures vanished into the wilderness.

The forest was silent, except for the wind.

At most, in three or four days, the snow smoke would start blowing hard. They had to get back before then. Once that weather hit, moving through the mountains would become brutally difficult.

Besides, the mountain would be sealed in by snow.

With the two men hidden, the old forest sank into stillness again.

About half an hour later, a long dark line appeared in the distance, winding through the trees.

A herd of red deer.

The locals called them “big dumb fellas,” or just “the big ones.”

At the front was a stag as large as a strong horse. The eight-tined antlers on its head were black, thick, and heavy-looking. It was a mature male in its prime, the clear leader of the herd.

Before the heavy winter snow locked the mountains down, they had to find several feeding spots suitable for the long cold season ahead.

Red deer weren’t aggressive animals. Even though the sharp tips of their antlers gleamed, they still couldn’t scare off hungry wolves. So compared with most beasts, they were extra wary, because the only truly useful weapon they had was speed.

They also had a habit.

Once they used a route, they would keep using it again and again. Over time, they trampled narrow slick trails through the mountains. Unless something unexpected happened, they rarely changed course.

The herd approached the trap at an easy pace.

Their sharp instincts told them nothing.

They had no idea they were walking straight toward death.

One by one, in a long line, the deer followed the stag into the trapped area.

Then suddenly—

the lead stag stumbled, as if it had lost its footing.

Its body lurched to one side. Right before it could fully lose balance, it sprang up with all its strength, kicking up a burst of shattered snow. The stag let out a cry of pain, raw and sharp. It staggered once, then stopped, holding its left foreleg raised off the ground.

The stag’s front hoof came down right into the hole cut in the middle of a wooden board, about half a meter square.

Sharp steel spikes had been driven in at an angle around the opening. The moment its hoof slid in, the spikes punched through hide and flesh and locked onto the hard outer shell.

This thing was called a foot trap.

Cheap. Simple. Brutally effective.

Any hunter with real experience knew how to read a deer trail and place one of these exactly where a stag was most likely to step. Once the hoof dropped into the hole, the angled spikes bit in and jammed the hoof fast.

A wire rope was fixed to the board, and at the other end was a length of drag log.

That was the nasty part.

The animal could still run, still struggle, still fight like crazy—but while dragging that chunk of wood, its strength would be drained little by little. By the time it finally burned itself out, forget an adult, even a teenage kid could walk up and slit its throat without much trouble.

The herd panicked for a second.

But under the lead stag’s pained cries, they still didn’t realize what had really happened.

A few of the stronger stags edged closer, letting out low, anxious calls as if trying to comfort it. They circled it, sniffed, shifted, stamped, but none of that could free it from the trap.

The foot trap was only there to hold the herd in place.

The real killer move came after.

Several big-bodied stags had drawn near. The does, with that year’s fawns, hung back in tight, nervous little steps, ears twitching, eyes scanning the woods.

Then, without warning, a fallen log hanging at an angle above the deer path dropped straight down.

It had been suspended only three or four meters off the ground. The deer below had no time to react.

Boom.

The heavy timber slammed across the waists of two stags.

The weight was monstrous, practically measured in tons. In one instant, it crushed both deer flat and smashed them into the snow beneath it.

The sudden disaster blew the whole herd apart.

The instant those miserable, agonized cries ripped through the forest, the deer scattered in total chaos, kicking up clouds of powdery snow as they bolted for their lives.

Under the snow, Spencer Langford yanked the trigger line for the mechanism.

Eliot Sherwood, though, didn’t get his chance.

Under his suspended log were only two young deer from this year—not worth much money, and more importantly, not worth wrecking the herd over.

No way.

You couldn’t slaughter the whole flock just for a couple of scraps. That was the kind of short-term greed that got you nothing in the end.

As the herd fled, four large red deer burst ahead one after another. Fast, powerful stags, all muscle and panic.

Then, while charging downhill, one after another they suddenly reared upright like warhorses, their forward momentum carrying them straight on as their hind legs blasted snow into the air.

Pff! Thud! Thud!

All four deer flipped beautifully—and horribly—through the air, crashing headfirst and back-down into the snow.

They struggled hard, kicking up sheets of white powder, legs thrashing, but they couldn’t get up.

Weak cries spilled from their throats, hoarse and strangled, like drakes being choked mid-call.

They kept fighting, but the life in them was fading fast.

They had run straight into the snares.

Once that happened, there was basically no coming back.

It was the deer’s own habits that ruined them. In normal times, sprinting downhill let them gain speed fast and escape danger in a flash. But today, in their panic, that instinct had driven them right into the loops prepared for them.

The lead stag, half-mad with fear, no longer cared about the pain in its trapped foot.

While the two crushed deer behind it let out desperate, hopeless screams, it lurched off the trail on three legs, dragging the attached log with it.

It had only one thought left—

Run.

Get away from danger.

Now.

Eliot Sherwood and Spencer Langford lay buried beneath the snow, motionless.

Neither moved a muscle.

Through narrow gaps in their cover, they watched the lead stag struggle away.

This was not the moment to show themselves.

If they stepped out now, the stag would go berserk. It might tear free from the trap and escape. Even if the hoof shell got ripped off and it eventually froze to death somewhere in the mountains, that would be useless to them. They wouldn’t be the ones collecting it.

A good hunter needed patience.

An injured deer—or one already dying—would often just slowly wait out the end so long as it didn’t see a person or a natural predator. But the second an enemy appeared, it would fight on pure instinct, crazily, desperately, with everything it had left.

So they waited.

Neither of them knew that, carried on the deer herd’s cries, the disturbance had already reached a spot several hundred meters away.

Five figures in snow-white camouflage had stopped dead in the distance.

Then they broke into a run and headed straight this way.

Every one of them carried an advanced assault rifle.

And one of them had a sniper rifle.