The smell of blood was left behind at midnight last night and it was not even twenty-four hours until the evening of the next day.

There is no extreme weather such as rain, snow, strong wind, etc., and the smell is not easily destroyed.

It is actually not difficult for the two dogs to follow the blood trail.

But it was really uncomfortable to lead the dog through the woods late at night.

Tall and short vines, branches and weeds block the view, and mosquitoes are constantly buzzing in the ears.

The four brothers of Yuefeng hunting team, each carrying weapons on their shoulders, followed Gouzi all the way.

After the four members of the Yuefeng hunting team went up the mountain first, the large group of villagers who set out from the village were a little slower but also quickly arrived at the foot of the mountain.

Standing on the side of the hillside and looking towards the village, the bright or dim flashlights project a large number of light spots. Once they reach the top of the mountain, these people will disperse and look for people according to the arrangements made in the village office.

After dark, Dahuang and Heilang went up the mountain to track the scent. They were very excited and sniffed here and there from time to time along the way, but Saolu kept following very closely.

If you look down from the air at the movement of the Yuefeng Hunting Team up the mountain, you can see that the four people and four dogs hardly took any detours and chased in the direction that the blind bear fled last night.

It was dark all the way, which made Yue Feng and his companions very tired.

Bears have thick skin and flesh, so they are not afraid of thorns, vines, weeds, and bushes when traveling. They cannot penetrate even thorny trees.

But the hunters and the dogs were not so lucky. There were several thorn bushes on the way, and Dahuang and Heilang were pricked and cried out. Yue Feng’s face and arms were also scratched by the thorns.

After chasing the dog for more than an hour, they finally came out of the dense forest on the sunny slope. The big yellow and black wolf led the men and horses to climb up the ridge and continued to chase along the ridge.

While tracking, Yue Feng was also keeping an eye on his approximate location.

When they arrived near Erguniang Spring and heard the sound of flowing water in the night, Yue Feng had a vague feeling that if he were a blind bear, he would come here.

“We’ve arrived at Erguniang Spring! The bear that was shot will definitely look for a place to drink water! I feel it shouldn’t be far away! Everyone take off your guns and be careful!!!” Yue Feng greeted everyone in advance.

“Fuck! No wonder Brother Feng didn’t let me chase that blind bear! It’s too much suffering to lead the dog into the woods at this time of year!”

Xiao Tao was walking at the front of the team with a hatchet in his hand, looking a little miserable at the moment.

There were two cuts on his pants from the thorns, and there was a blood mark on his face. The weak light of the flashlight was better than nothing in the dark forest.

“Third brother?? Liu Laosan!!!”

Yue Feng stood on the ridge and shouted a few times at the top of his lungs.

No response.

“This Liu Laosan has been blinded by money! I remember that in the winter two years ago, he followed Zhou Yuanchao’s hunting team to the mountain to help. He didn’t even dare to stab a wild boar with a knife!” Xiaowen muttered softly beside him.

“The gun represents a man’s courage. Otherwise, why do the village never lend out guns? With the Type 56 and a half, he feels more confident!” Xiaowu also echoed.

Several people were chirping when the black wolf walking in front suddenly stopped and barked a few times in the direction of the ditch or stream below.

“The dog has spoken! What’s going on? Has he spotted the bear? The black wolf?” Yue Feng asked.

The black wolf did not respond, but remained facing downwards, sniffing the air.

At this time, Dahuang also barked a few times. The two dogs had almost the same shape and stopped moving forward.

Yue Feng sniffed the air gently. In addition to the smell of grass and trees in the forest, a faint stench was faintly visible.

“Damn, can you smell a bad odor?!” Yue Feng asked the others.

“It seems to be real, the smell of shit buns fried in the sun!”

“Yes, there is a dirty and smelly smell,” Xiaowen also echoed.

Yue Feng felt something was not right at that moment, so he immediately opened the safety of his gun, loaded it, and then untied the rope of Black Wolf.

“Black Wolf, get down! Everyone, be safe!”

After untying the rope, the black wolf immediately rushed in the direction of the smell, keeping a distance of at least ten meters from the main force.

The smell was quite obvious under the mountain breeze at night, and everyone followed the black wolf down the sunny slope and soon reached the bottom of the ditch next to the mountain stream.

At this time, the stench was already extremely obvious. The black wolf stood on the bank of the mountain stream and barked at the opposite side.

When everyone rushed over and scanned the area with flashlights, they saw a huge black bear lying on its back no more than ten meters away from the opposite side of the stream, emitting a slight stench of decay.

“Bear! Brother Feng, a dead bear!!” Xiao Tao immediately called out after seeing the bear’s corpse on the ground.

Yue Feng: “Let’s go and take a look!”

Soon, the four brothers waded across the stream and carefully came to the bear’s body.

Yue Feng endured the stench and used a flashlight to observe the area.

This is an adult male bear, its head ripped open by a bullet. Under the dim light of the flashlight, a dense layer of black flies can be seen on its skull.

The main source of the stench is the abdominal viscera of the bear carcass.

The bear’s abdomen had been opened, but the internal organs were still inside. After being exposed to the sun for a whole day, the microorganisms in the internal organs began to multiply in large numbers, and they swelled up due to decay and deterioration. “Brother, what should we do with this blind bear? The disembowelment technique is quite neat, and the position of the cut is fine!

How come the chest is opened but the internal organs are not taken out?

Judging from the degree of swelling, it must have been rotting in the belly under the sun for at least a whole day. I guess there is no meat left, and only the bear skin is left!”

Xiao Tao usually does a lot of miscellaneous work such as skinning and gutting, so after seeing the bear carcass, he evaluated it with a relatively professional eye.

Yue Feng was not thinking about whether the bear meat was still edible. He frowned and said nothing for a few seconds, thinking hard and trying to sort out the information he had discovered so far.

The bear must have been beaten to death and disemboweled, but its four paws were intact, and its more valuable parts, such as the wavy fur and the bear’s nose, were all in relatively intact condition.

This means that the person who killed the bear actively or passively gave up the bear’s valuable carcass.

The purpose of opening the chest is definitely to remove the gallbladder. If the gallbladder is still there at this moment, it means that there is a high probability that something unexpected happened and it was not completed.

But if the bear’s gallbladder has been removed and the offal and internal organs are put back into the abdominal cavity after the gallbladder is removed, this is obviously abnormal.

According to Yue Feng’s intuition, there was something abnormal about this matter.

“Xiao Tao, find a stick, pick the waste out of the water and see if the gallbladder is still there!” Yue Feng said a beat slowly.

“Ah? Don’t do it, it’s too smelly! What if it breaks and gets all over me!!”

Xiao Tao felt a little resistant when he heard his elder brother’s arrangement. After all, no one wanted to poke into the stinking internal organs that had been exposed to the sun for a day.

“There’s something wrong here. I need to know whether the bear’s gallbladder has been removed! Touch the heart, liver, lungs, etc. Don’t touch the intestines!”

Yue Feng did not hide far away, but stood by and looked at the bear corpse on the ground.

“Alright! If you want to stink me, you all should stay away!”

Xiao Tao picked up an elm stick as thick as a child’s arm from the side, pinched his nose and started to dig the bear’s body with the stick.

Under Xiao Tao’s scraping, the smelly liver part was picked out, and the skin of the gallbladder and a small section of the bile duct opening above were all removed.

“The bear’s gallbladder was taken away!” Xiao Tao said with certainty.

Yue Feng nodded: “Alright, leave it where it is and don’t move! Xiaowu, follow the signal we agreed on before and fire your gun to call for help!!”

“What’s going on, brother?”

Xiao Tao threw the stick that was used to stir up his internal organs far away. He felt a little confused and had no idea what was going on.

Xiaowu was very obedient. He carried his gun and held a flashlight. After climbing up the ridge again, he pointed the muzzle of the gun at the sky and fired three bursts of two shots in a row.

In the silent night forest, the sound of gunfire could be heard from far away. After hearing the gunshots, several other groups of villagers who were searching the mountain immediately gathered towards the location where the bear’s body was found according to the signal agreed upon before departure.

It was too smelly to stay next to the bear carcass, so the guys washed their hands in the mountain stream and then moved to the upwind ridge and waited patiently.

Every ten minutes, Xiaowu fired a round of shots as a signal.

More than forty minutes later, Wang Jianguo arrived with people from two other neighboring teams.

“Uncle!! Over here!!!” Yue Feng signaled with a flashlight.

“Xiao Feng, what’s going on? Have you found the third brother?” Wang Jianguo asked with concern, not even bothering to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

“Third brother was not found, but the injured bear he was chasing was killed, and the bear’s gall was dug out. It is under the ditch below!!!
I think it’s very abnormal. If we still can’t find the third brother, we will have to go to the authorities!” Yue Feng said in front of everyone without hiding anything.

When Wang Jianguo heard the word “Jingguan”, his heart skipped a beat.

In this day and age, minor incidents in the village would not be brought to the attention of the officials.

Generally speaking, when people mention the officials, it is either a mass incident that is out of control, or a major event like a lawsuit involving murder.

“What’s going on? What happened to the bear?”

“That’s it, we…”

Yue Feng told Wang Jianguo roughly what happened after he followed Gou Zi here and found the bear’s corpse.

After listening to this, Wang Jianguo frowned.

The nearest village in Ergunianggou is no more than twelve miles away. Under normal circumstances, after killing a blind bear, there is no reason to just open its stomach and take out its gallbladder and discard the rest.

You know, a bear’s oil, meat, skin, etc. are all treasures to ordinary villagers.

Combined with the old wound on the bear’s shoulder, it can be confirmed that this is the bear that was injured and escaped from the No. 5 tree nest last night.

Now, Liu Laosan, who should have been the protagonist, has disappeared again. All factors put together are indeed abnormal.

There must be something wrong when something is abnormal. The clues we have discovered now cannot be explained by the logic of normal human behavior, so there must be something wrong.

Let’s take a broader view and assume that there was a person who killed Liu Laosan, stole the bear’s gallbladder, and then ran away, leaving behind the bear’s carcass which was difficult to move. This makes sense logically.

Based on this speculation, Yue Feng said the word “Jingguan”. (End of this chapter)