The magnificent tiger strolled leisurely out of the forest, apparently drawn by the bamboo basket. After eyeing it for a moment, it began to amble toward the basket. Beneath it were scattered a few steamed bun crumbs — a trap set for pheasants. No one had expected a mighty tiger to wander into it.

Yu Jiuling muffled his voice and said: “Just getting it to come over — I already feel like we came out ahead. They say you can’t trap a wolf without sacrificing the child, and here we’ve used a handful of steamed bun crumbs to pull in a full-grown tiger…”

Fortunately they had been clever about it — their hiding spot was not very close to the basket, and crouching behind the boulder made it fairly unlikely they’d be spotted.

Still, with a fierce tiger nearby, being discovered would be too late.

And of all the moments for it to happen, the divine eagle stood up.

A divine eagle that was now over a year old already carried six or seven tenths of its father’s peerless bearing and presence. Honestly, raising it to this size may have been one of the reasons the Hand Organization had worked so desperately to earn money.

Earn too little, and there wouldn’t even be money to feed the pig.

This was the creature’s first time in the mountains, and it had never seen a tiger before. It swayed and stood, and Li Diudiu tried to push it back down — but couldn’t.

The thing already weighed more than four hundred catties at one year old, its body roughly matching the tiger in size. And since it had absolutely no concept of what a tiger was, it showed not the slightest trace of fear.

In its eyes, the only truly frightening thing was the dog.

Because the dog was sufficiently aloof — even now that the divine eagle had grown to such an enormous size, the dog still refused to give it a proper glance.

“Divine Eagle, lie down.”

Li Diudiu said softly.

The tiger snapped its head toward them. Yu Jiuling immediately snatched up his bow and arrow, then asked: “Now — do you think it’s hungry?”

Before the words were even finished, the pig charged.

Born knowing no fear, it lowered its head and trotted with a series of grunts right up toward the tiger. The tiger was startled by this creature suddenly bursting out, and probably concluded it had encountered a fool.

The divine eagle strutted forward threateningly, utterly unafraid. It reached the bamboo basket, lowered its head to sniff at the bun crumbs scattered below, then suddenly whipped its head around to glare at the tiger, a gleam of ferocity in its eyes.

“Oh my!”

Yu Jiuling said: “The divine eagle thinks the tiger is here to steal its steamed bun.”

Changmei: “We need to save it.”

Yu Jiuling said: “No one would believe this story. A wild pig thinks a tiger has come to steal its bun and is ready to pick a fight… Look at it — it’s like it’s even cursing the tiger out.”

The tiger seemed genuinely puzzled as to why a mere pig would dare bare its teeth and snarl at it. It opened its mouth and let out a roar, a tiger’s call that echoed through the mountain forest and sent prickling chills across everyone’s scalps.

The pig paid it no mind, lowered its head, and charged.

Want to steal my bun? Go howl at someone else.

This sudden assault startled the tiger. It raised one great paw and swiped at the divine eagle’s face. A tiger that size — it would be no exaggeration to say a single swat could kill a man.

But in the very instant that tiger’s claw was about to strike the divine eagle’s face, a white shape plunged down from the sky.

The dog had arrived.

The dog had also grown considerably from before, but compared to this massive fierce tiger, it still seemed somewhat small.

Yet it was ferocious.

Both its sharp talons raked down toward the tiger’s eyes. The tiger instantly reared up on its hind legs, both paws swiping at the dog.

The divine eagle slammed its head into the tiger’s belly, knocking the tiger tumbling backward.

The dog let out a sharp, piercing cry — the meaning of which was plainly: whatever kind of thing are you, how dare you bully my pet?

In its eyes, the divine eagle was probably its pet — same tier as Li Diudiu and the rest of that flock of pets. When it had nothing better to do, it would perch on the divine eagle and groom its feathers.

The tiger was knocked down. The dog immediately dove, raking its talons across the tiger’s face several times. The tiger adjusted itself and leapt back up, its two forepaws closing together as if to embrace and bring the dog down.

This tiger was probably just clapping its paws the way one claps with joy — but if those paws landed, the dog would not escape unscathed.

At that very moment, the divine eagle lowered its head and charged again — but missed, for the tiger had already leapt into the air. The divine eagle shot through beneath the tiger, plowing headfirst into a nearby mound of dirt. It shook its head — it had probably concussed itself.

The dog spread its wings and took flight, circling at low altitude, likely thinking… this cat is unusually large.

The academy had people who kept cats and dogs, so the dog probably figured this creature was just an oversized cat.

Seeing the tiger land, the dog dove in again. The tiger turned to face it, apparently waiting for the exact moment it came down to counterattack.

But then the divine eagle shook its head and came charging again. When it was small, the academy’s dogs used to come and find it — at first they bullied it, and later it bullied them. It had absorbed a good many tricks from watching dogs move.

Honestly, when it ran, it moved quite a bit like a dog — Li Diudiu and the others all found a pig bounding along like that rather an insult to the dignity of the pig king’s bloodline.

This time the divine eagle learned its lesson. It charged, then suddenly pivoted and slammed its rear end into the tiger. The tiger stumbled. It turned and swatted the divine eagle’s backside.

The divine eagle yelped in pain. Its defensive constitution was genuinely absurd — the swat left several bloody gashes on its rear but didn’t cut through hide and flesh.

In that instant, the dog plunged down, drove its talons into the top of the tiger’s head, lowered its beak, and began pecking furiously at one of the tiger’s eyes.

The tiger thrashed in agony, snapping and lunging wildly. The dog immediately beat its wings and flew off again, resuming its low-altitude circling.

The divine eagle, seeing the tiger drenched in blood, was for some reason startled, and turned tail to run — apparently frightened by the gruesome sight.

Yu Jiuling sighed: “You’re afraid of the sight of blood, so why did you start a fight?”

The tiger, finding the flying one impossible to catch and the running one having gone cowardly, channeled all its rage toward the divine eagle and came roaring after it.

“Now!”

Li Diudiu loosed an arrow. It arrived in an instant, driving precisely into the tiger’s other eye.

The tiger let out a howl of agony and thrashed onto its side.

The dog was about to dive again, but Li Diudiu called out and it soared back upward. Li Diudiu grabbed his heavy bow, stood atop the boulder, and sent arrow after arrow into the tiger.

He shot, Yu Jiuling shot, and Master Yan rose and shot too.

Such a fearsome beast — none of them dared rush it directly. They loosed volley after volley of arrows. Only when the tiger lay completely still did they venture carefully closer.

Yu Jiuling poked it with a stick. The tiger no longer had a single breath of life in it, its body riddled with more arrows than could be counted. Yu Jiuling let out a long sigh: “Such a fine pelt — couldn’t you have held back a few shots?”

Li Diudiu sighed: “Can we drop the pretense? Killing it is already the heaven’s blessing.”

Yu Jiuling crouched there, staring, and the more he looked the more struck he was.

“This thing is really something.”

Li Diudiu said: “I wonder if the meat tastes good.”

Changmei leaned in for a close look: “A sin, truly a sin — a lord of the mountain, killed by you lot in such a way. Dying so ignominiously, and now you want to eat its flesh on top of it. As I see it, if we’re going to eat it, we should braise it. Let it stew a good long time, and make the seasoning strong.”

Master Yan, hearing Changmei mention the word “ignominy,” couldn’t help nodding: “Truly ignominious. The cause of death was a pig who thought it was stealing its bun crumbs.”

“Drag it away, drag it away.”

Changmei laughed: “Even with the pelt riddled with holes, it’ll still fetch a good price. We’ll drag it back to Jizhou — sell the pelt, eat the meat.”

Cold as it was in the deep of winter, there was no worry about the meat spoiling.

“I…”

Yu Jiuling lifted his eyes to Changmei: “I want to taste it right now… why not stew it tonight?”

Changmei said gravely: “This is a fearsome tiger. We can’t eat it so casually!”

The group was still debating how to go about eating it when a contingent came down from the mountain — quite a few of them, a thousand or more.

Yu Jiuling was startled, and said warily: “Could this be someone’s pet they’ve killed?”

Master Yan said: “Who keeps a tiger as a pet?”

Yu Jiuling said: “There’s someone right next to you who keeps a wild boar as a pet. Is keeping a tiger really so strange?”

Master Yan considered it and conceded the point.

In this vast world, all sorts of people existed. Just a while ago in the streets of Jizhou City they’d seen someone walking a giant tortoise.

Changmei said: “If it truly is someone’s pet, when they come we’ll speak politely and offer to pay for damages… though I wonder — if we pay up, might they still give us a piece of the meat?”

They did not yet know that in the future a celebrated tale would be told: that the young hero Li Chi, when going to meet Yu Chaozong, had slain a tiger while ascending the mountain, and his fame had spread far and wide.

The actual cause of the tiger’s death — a pig… that of course could never be said aloud.

The ones coming down were none other than First-in-Command Yu Chaozong himself. He’d heard from Zhuang Wudi that it was Li Chi who had seen him home, and he’d given Zhuang Wudi quite an earful — his own savior had already arrived at the foot of the mountain, and the man hadn’t thought to bring him up for a proper welcome. How could that do?

So he immediately led men down the mountain to catch up, determined no matter what to find him. To leave things like this would have been unforgivably rude, and Yu Chaozong couldn’t live with it on his conscience.

“Is this Young Master Li?!”

Yu Chaozong shouted from a distance while still some way off.

His eyes landed immediately on the tiger’s corpse on the ground, and his expression shifted entirely. He called out loudly in admiration: “Truly a rare young hero of the age!”

Zhuang Wudi knew Li Chi far too well. He too saw the tiger’s body — but he also spotted the bamboo basket. So he thought to himself that things were probably not quite as straightforward as they appeared.

“Others would flee from a beast like this on sight — yet Young Master Li has hunted it down. What a spirit. Truly remarkable.”

Yu Chaozong urged his horse forward while heaping on the praise. His admiration for Li Chi by this point was absolute and total. He had already held his savior in enormous esteem. Now, seeing that Li Chi had hunted a fearsome tiger, his reverence swelled like a great river rolling on without end.

Zhuang Wudi still felt things were not quite as simple as they appeared.

“First-in-Command!”

Li Chi quickly cupped his hands in greeting.

“Benefactor.”

Yu Chaozong vaulted off his horse, strode forward, and bowed deeply: “Yu Chaozong pays his respects to his benefactor.”

Li Chi was startled, and hurried over to help Yu Chaozong up: “First-in-Command, this is truly too much. Don’t say it that way — what happened back then was nothing more than chance.”

Yu Chaozong said: “A life-saving grace cannot be repaid. Allow me first to give my thanks.”

And he moved to kneel.

Li Diudiu strained to pull Yu Chaozong upright and persuaded him at length before finally talking him out of performing a full bow.

“Why were you leaving like that?”

Yu Chaozong said: “You’ve arrived at my very doorstep, and yet you won’t come in to sit for a while.”

Li Diudiu said with some awkwardness: “We just happened to be passing through, thought we’d wander around and hunt some game for a meal before heading back.”

Every word he said was true, with not a trace of boasting — because they hadn’t come to hunt a tiger at all.

Yet to Yu Chaozong’s ears, these words only deepened his admiration.

He looked at the tiger’s corpse and murmured to himself: “Just wandering around… just hunting some game for a meal…”

Li Diudiu introduced everyone present, and Yu Chaozong greeted each person in turn. Yu Jiuling asked with curiosity: “First-in-Command, does this thing taste good?”

Yu Chaozong: “That… honestly I’ve never eaten it.”

Yu Jiuling said: “Perfect timing then — let’s eat together.”

While the others were talking, Li Diudiu moved quietly to Zhuang Wudi’s side and said in a low voice: “Has something gone wrong in the stronghold?”

Zhuang Wudi was taken aback: “How did you know?”

Li Diudiu looked at the soldiers and sighed: “In his own territory, First-in-Command still brought this many cavalry riders down the mountain. I don’t believe it’s just for appearances.”

Zhuang Wudi sighed: “You guessed correctly. Yanshan Camp… has a problem.”

—