Qin Ming shouldered his hide sack and started back the way he'd come.
The haul was good — half a bag of dried nuts, a mutated red squirrel. Enough to keep him fed for a while. The snow hid hollows and rocks underfoot, but his mood held steady.
He was thinking about spring. When the exhaustion period passed, the fire springs in the dangerous zones would surge, earth-light would rise thick and warm, and the dead forest would put out new shoots. A different world entirely.
But that was months away.
Near the forest's edge, he stopped. Dropped the sack. Gripped his hunting fork with both hands and whipped around.
Red eyes in the dark. Two of them, burning crimson, closing fast.
His hair stood on end. The thing was big — he could feel it in the way the ground vibrated, the rank smell rolling in on the cold wind. He jammed the fork into the snow and grabbed his bow. His arms were powerful; he drew the heavy bowstring to a full crescent and loosed. The iron arrow punched into the blackness with a sharp twang.
The charging shape stumbled. Hit.
He fired again, and again — each arrow finding its mark in the dark. A low, guttural roar. The red eyes blinked out. Branches cracked as the beast veered behind a tree.
Qin Ming didn't relax. A wounded animal was more dangerous than a hungry one, and this one had enough intelligence to hide and wait.
He snatched up his sack and fork and bolted for open ground. He had no intention of staying in the dark woods with something that hunted by stalking rather than charging.
Behind him, snow erupted — the beast was following, crashing through the underbrush. He turned and drew. The arrow thunked into a thick trunk, shaking the tree so hard that snow cascaded down like a waterfall. The shape flinched back into shadow.
A normal predator would have fled or charged. This one circled. Waited. Looked for an opening.
Qin Ming held his ground, bow trained on the treeline. The black shape surfaced twice more — big, red-eyed, oppressive. But the arrows kept it at bay. Finally a frustrated snarl rolled through the trees, and the eyes vanished into the deep forest.
He'd seen enough. The thing had run upright. Some kind of mutated creature, though he couldn't say which.
He backed away slowly, watchful all the way to within a half-mile of the village gate. Old stories died hard in Twin Tree Village — a man had been killed here once, dragged off silently by something that followed him home. He'd been ten meters from safety.
---
Three figures waited outside the village, stamping and blowing white breath. Ice crusted their eyebrows.
They crouched in the snow-rut Qin Ming had trampled on his way out, talking in low voices.
"Damn cold. Let's just go. He's probably dead out there."
"What if he got lucky like Old Li and found a frozen carcass near the edge?"
The three were village loafers — Hu Yong, Ma Yang, and Wang Youping. Lazy, cowardly, but bold enough when it came to shaking down their neighbors for a free meal. They'd heard Qin Ming was going hunting and decided to wait.
"Qin Ming's quick and strong. We'd better not botch this."
"So what? He just got over a sickness. He'll be weak. Bag his head, take the haul, and don't hit him hard enough to kill."
They had no stomach for murder. Just theft.
Qin Ming saw them from far off. His eyes were sharp. He crouched into the snow — chest-deep, it swallowed him whole. He crept along his own tracks, silent, until he could hear their voices clearly.
His face went hard. He'd survived a corpse-faced vulture. He'd survived a mutated stalker in the woods. And these three wanted to rob him of food he'd bled for?
The trio dug themselves a snow hollow for a windbreak, hunkering inside. They'd guessed he'd go deep into the mountains and misjudged his return time — otherwise they'd never have talked so freely.
"Stay quiet when he comes," Ma Yang said.
"Fast and hard from behind," Hu Yong agreed.
Wang Youping grumbled. "Hope he shows up soon. I'm freezing."
The snow wall behind them exploded inward.
All three went under. Hu Yong clawed out first — a boot caught him square in the face. A hunting fork slammed across his shoulder, and he went down hard, bone-deep pain screaming through his body.
Ma Yang surfaced and caught a kick to the nose that split pain and salt-water through his skull. He screamed, tears and snot freezing on his face, rolling through the snow.
Wang Youping dove deeper into the drift. Then steel prongs punched through his coat and skin — shallow, but he felt blood. He shrieked.
"Don't kill me! Please!"
Qin Ming dragged him out by the fork and kicked him three meters into a snowbank.
"Qin — Qin Ming—"
"Brother Ming, we're from the same village! Show some mercy! We were wrong!"
They saw the steel fork gleaming in his hand and folded instantly. They carried knives and sticks, but the look on his face — cold, sharp, buzzing with killing intent — killed any thought of fighting back. Bullies always broke against someone who hit harder.
Qin Ming didn't want to kill them. He drove them to their knees with the fork and beat them thoroughly, working out the tension from the forest.
By the end the three were bloody, swollen, howling. He warned them once, then let them limp away.
---
At the forest's edge where Qin Ming had stood off the beast, a donkey came walking across the open snow. It moved with the ease of a creature that knew the road, heading toward the mountains.
On its back sat a weasel. Pure white, not a strand of off-color fur. In an age where the sun had died and white creatures were rare, it stood out like a bone on black water.
It wasn't fidgety like a wild animal. It sat cross-legged on the donkey's back — riding backward, facing the road behind. Its eyes were deep, unhurried, patient. It carried itself like an old man who had seen everything and found most of it tedious.
The mutated beast that Qin Ming had driven back saw the donkey and lunged. Then it spotted the white weasel. It stopped dead. Turned. Buried itself under the snow, trembling.
The donkey glanced at the hiding beast with mild disinterest and walked on into the mountains, carrying the silent weasel.
---
The fire spring glowed. The twin trees — one black, one white — swayed in the cold wind.
Qin Ming reached the village gate and let his shoulders drop.
"Qin Ming's back!" A man splitting wood looked up.
Doors opened along the street. His solo hunting trip had been the talk of the village — could he survive? Would he bring back anything?
Sunstones in every doorway cast rose light onto the snow. People came out and saw the red squirrel hanging from his fork. Silence.
It wasn't what they'd expected.
Lu Ze strode over, visibly relieved. He was a plain-spoken man. "They said you went after a bear. And you come back with... a squirrel?"
"I also robbed its house," Qin Ming said.
People noticed the hide sack on his back and understood. Envy flickered across their faces.
Then someone spotted the squirrel's fur — faintly luminous, a deep fire-red. Mutated. Worth real money.
"Safe trip and a good haul both," said Old Liu from the gatehouse.
Villagers asked if the outside was safe now. Qin Ming told them the truth — a dangerous mutated creature was prowling the forest's outer edge. He wouldn't mislead his neighbors. People could die from that.
He mentioned the three loafers' ambush. The village turned on them instantly — shameless, attacking a neighbor who'd risked his life for food. Lu Ze and the others found the trio limping in and beat them again at the gate for good measure.
Qin Ming handed out fistfuls of nuts to every child on the street. Then he saw Granny Zhou — pale, leaning on her gate — and pressed a bag of dried food into her hands without a word.
---
At Lu Ze's house, five-year-old Wen Rui was in raptures.
"Uncle, you're amazing! The wild walnuts are so good, and the pine seeds—"
Two-year-old Wen Hui sat with a bowl of mashed pitted dates, smacking his lips. He kissed Qin Ming's cheek with a wet smack.
On the hunting fork, the red squirrel woke up. Its black-gem eyes popped wide as it watched people sorting through its winter stores. Despair settled over its small face.
"Thirty-plus pounds of food," Liang Wanqing said, impressed. "What a diligent little creature."
The squirrel's eyes nearly caught fire.
Then Lu Ze's face went serious. "Xiao Qin. Your body's about recovered. It's time to think seriously about the New Life."