Forty Hunting (Revised Draft)

  When Yang Sicheng was 10 years old, he received a gift that made everyone in the village envy: a brand new Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle! It was personally selected by Ivan, and his father took out an eight-year-old treasure to give it to him. Yang Sicheng also learned from Ivan and gave this gun a Russian name "Katya".

  Although Yang Sicheng didn't know what Kaya looked like, but hearing Ivan say that Kaya was like the common lover of Russian people, he took the name for his beloved gun without hesitation.

  In the Northeast, there is a saying: "Seven liang is for guests, eight liang is priceless!" This means that ginseng weighing over eight liang is truly invaluable. Although "priceless" might be an exaggeration, it's still enough to exchange this ginseng for a sniper rifle, which was also extremely expensive at the time.

  Yang Sicheng's father was also reluctant to exchange the precious eight-tael ginseng for that sniper rifle, thinking that an ordinary rifle would be enough. But he couldn't resist Ivan's constant persuasion and finally went to the small town to make the exchange, after all, every father secretly loves his son.

  When Yang Sicheng was about to turn 10, Ivan said to him: "Kid, I've taught you all that I know. From now on, it's up to you to walk your own path. It's been a long time since we left our hometown, and I'm starting to miss it."

  As expected, he quietly returned to the Soviet Union after Yang Si-cheng completed his first hunting trip under his protection.

  Yang Sicheng followed Ivan to learn sniper techniques and the story of Ivan's hunting foxes was never known to others, they only knew that Yang Sicheng often followed Ivan to learn Russian, in this place close to the Soviet Union and North Korea, learning Russian and Korean was simply too important.

  Ivan gave Yang Sicheng not his "Bielinna", but a brand new Mosin-Nagant 191/30 sniper rifle with 200 rounds of m1908 rifle ammunition. (This cartridge is so excellent that after liberation, China copied it and named it the Type 53 rifle cartridge. The famous Type 56 assault rifle family also uses this cartridge. Not surprisingly, this cartridge will be used at least until around 2030!)

  The gun is equipped with a 4x Pｅ sight, although the field of view is relatively small, it can be seen more clearly and farther away. When Yang Sicheng shoots, his left eye that can still open can make up for the loss of reduced field of view.

  Yang Sicheng's father was overjoyed when he first saw the prey that Yang had shot, a 130-kilogram male wild boar that was killed with one shot. The bullet, fired from 200 meters away, pierced between its eyes and turned its brain into mush. Even Yang Sicheng's father admitted that he couldn't have done it himself under the same visual conditions at the time.

  That was the summer when Yang Sicheng was 10 years old, a large wild boar ran into their village, not only destroying many sweet potatoes outside the village but also digging up and trampling a large area of sweet potatoes, leaving no harvest for the villagers. Once, it even broke into the village and kicked down the villagers' pigpen, trying to take away the mother pigs as its "concubines".

  All the adult men in the village went hunting in the mountains, and Yang Sicheng couldn't sit still when he saw the anxious look on the faces of the village's elderly women. When he went to ask Ivan for help, Ivan refused, "Kid, just go and get rid of it yourself, such a big clumsy thing, one shot will do. Do I need to bother myself with this? Go, do it nicely."

  That night at 9 o'clock, Yang Sicheng took "Kajia" and quietly left the village. Wild boars are only active at night. Wearing a "lucky suit", Yang Sicheng lay quietly under a small tree outside the village.

  This camouflage suit was carefully "dressed" by him for half a day, and the grass dotted on the clothes came from the grass around the small trees. It can completely guarantee that people will not be discovered when walking by his side. The wild boar's sense of smell is very keen, so Yang Sicheng's current position is 250 meters away from the only path from the mountain to the village outside the fields.

  At 1:15 in the night, people in the village had all entered a quiet dreamland, but Yang Sicheng remained motionless here. Two years of training had made him very patient. Every now and then, he would quietly put his left index finger into his mouth to moisten it with saliva and gently lift it up. A gentle breeze softly swept over the wet fingertips. "The wind speed is 0.2 meters per second, the direction is southwest, I am in a downwind direction, there's no need to worry that the wild boar will smell my scent." Yang Sicheng thought.

  He quickly calculated the effect of wind on targets 200 meters away, a habit developed through years of rigorous training. Although the current wind speed's impact can be ignored, if it were a strong wind, failing to correct for wind deflection would astonishingly result in bullets flying off in unknown directions.

  A short and sturdy figure appeared at the distant intersection, Yang Sicheng, who had received special training in night shooting, had already made out that it was his target for tonight. The wild boar was currently about 450 meters away from him. Yang Sicheng quietly opened the safety catch and waited quietly for it to enter the 200-meter range of his telescopic sight. (The optical sight could not be used at night.)

  "Wild boars run fast, are agile and ferocious, highly vigilant, with sharp tusks that can cause great harm during high-speed runs. Due to their fondness for bathing in muddy water and rubbing against pine trees, a solid 'armor' made of tree resin and mud forms on their fur and skin, making it difficult for shotgun bullets to penetrate and cause damage. When encountering an enraged wild boar or a group of them, one must be extremely cautious!" Yang Sicheng recalled his father's previous warning.

  Yang Sicheng knew that the enraged wild boar was terrifying, but he had confidence in his marksmanship. The boar drew closer and closer, and under the faint moonlight, its appearance could be clearly seen. Its weight should be over 100 kilograms, with stiff bristles standing out all over its body, two long snow-white tusks menacingly exposed outside its mouth, like two sharp daggers. The wild boar glared at him with its blood-red eyes and came walking over, humming and snorting along the way.

  "Relax, relax." He muttered to himself, making a psychological suggestion. For the first time hunting a large ferocious animal, he couldn't help but feel a little tense. He took a light breath in and slowly exhaled.

  "Tell yourself: you only have one chance to shoot, when shooting, don't think about anything else, just do what you should do!" Yang Sicheng recalled the words Ivan said to him.

  The wild boar had walked to a place 200 meters away from him. After Yang Si Cheng confirmed the distance and wind direction and speed for the last time, he gently pulled the trigger between the eyes of the wild boar.

  With a "bang", Yang Si-cheng's left eye saw that the boar's forehead had burst out with a large blood flower, the boar was stunned for a moment, let out a huge and mournful scream and then fell down heavily, this scene made Yang Si-cheng, who was ready to shoot again, shocked and bewildered.

  Is that the end? Although he had carefully filed the bullet head with a rasp during the day, so that the bullet would enter the target body irregularly due to loss of balance and cause greater damage, he still did not believe that such a huge object could be knocked down by a small bullet.

  "Good job, kid! The bullet hit the brain's motor nerve reflex area right between the eyes. Although a boar's head is big, the only lethal spot that can kill it instantly is a small area with a diameter of no more than 6 centimeters. It's the same for humans and animals - this is the only place where you can be killed instantly! If someone gets shot in the heart, they can still survive for 12 seconds, during which time their arm nerves and muscles may twitch uncontrollably and cause unavoidable and irreparable harm to you or others!"

  Ivan emerged from nowhere, carefully examined the wild boar's body with his "Berina", then turned to Yang Si Cheng and said, before disappearing into the night again. Before leaving, he didn't forget to teach him a lesson, it seemed that Ivan had been secretly following Yang Si Cheng all along, ready to protect him at any time, and Yang Si Cheng felt an unparalleled warmth in his heart.

  "I don't have much left to teach you, to be honest, you're really excellent, in many ways you've already surpassed me." Ivan said seriously to Yang Sicheng.

  These years of strict training have made Yang Sicheng a calm and composed hunter. In Ivan's words, he can only be considered an excellent shooter now, but not yet a sniper, because Yang Sicheng still has the most important hurdle to overcome - truly killing people. Ivan said: "When your gaze can calmly see the brain shattered by bullets, blood and brains splashing everywhere, and your hand can still steadily aim at the next target and pull the trigger, then you are qualified."

  Yang Sicheng felt all this was cruel, after all life is only once, isn't it?

  Ivan sneered at him, "Yes, cruel! But after the '9.18 Incident' in 1931, the Japanese occupied your three northeastern provinces, looted countless properties, slaughtered countless unarmed civilians, and raped countless women. Don't these count as cruelty?"

  "Why are they invading us?"

  Because they want the land, and your country's military is too weak, just like a small child occupying a mansion with countless gold and silver treasures inside but no adults to guard it, while a villain on the side covets the child's treasure and naturally hopes to kill the child and move in himself. They want to permanently occupy these lands, so they must wipe you out! When others have already raised their butcher knives high, you either choose death or resist, there is no other way.

  Yang Sicheng was stunned, he had heard of the "9·18 Incident" from adults, and in recent years, the Japanese had been slaughtering Chinese people at will. The horrific news that made one's hair stand on end, I also heard people talking about it in the small town at the foot of the mountain. But his little brain really couldn't understand why humans would commit such large-scale slaughter of their own kind, something even beasts wouldn't do?

  Yiwan has returned home, and Xiao Yang Si Cheng has also grown up...

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