Chapter 24 Extra 6: The Blackboard Bulletin’s Second Story

This is the blackboard bulletin’s second story.

Poker-Face once dictated a story about Changbai Mountain, but I couldn’t remember when he did it.

All I knew was that the story happened in modern times, when people were still alive. At that time, there were two hunters, which we’ll call Wang Yi and Zhang San for the time being.⁽¹⁾

Both of them were employees at the forest farm. They usually liked to hunt and both worked well together. One used pellets in their gun while the other used marbles, but both guns required gunpowder before they could be shot.

The area all around Changbai Mountain was full of primitive forests that had been closed off for many years. There were a lot of wild animals inside these forests, so the two men went deeper and deeper, hoping to gain something. Their main target was actually a roe deer, but on that day, they saw an elk.

It was still summer at that time, so everything could be seen clearly. The two men raised their guns at the same time and fired, the marbles aimed towards the elk’s neck while the pellets were aimed towards its legs. Their habit was to shoot at the same time so that they could basically kill their prey in one shot.

But on that day, neither of the two men’s guns fired.

The elk didn’t seem to notice them, so they immediately reloaded the gunpowder carefully. But the second shots still misfired.

At that time, Wang Yi already felt that something was wrong, but Zhang San thought that the problem was with the gunpowder. He especially took out the gunpowder at the bottom of the bag which he thought was dry, checked it first to make sure it was effective, and then reloaded the gun for the third time.

The third shot from both guns was also a dud.

Wang Yi found it all very strange. When he looked at the elk in front of him, he felt that it wasn’t normal, but Zhang San just continued reloading his gun.

Wang Yi had no other choice but to help Zhang San continue. Indeed, they had gone too deep into the forest. If they didn’t manage to kill this elk, he’d actually have to go back empty-handed. He was also hoping to gain something.

They needed to look down when reloading—this time, they loaded everything very carefully—but when they looked up again, they found that the elk had already arrived in front of them.

Wang Yi was so scared he almost peed his pants. In his words, the elk in front of them was as big as a wall.

It was a huge animal that was many times larger than a normal elk. It covered the sky like a walking wall.

Even if it was an herbivore, if it looked like this, it would definitely be enough to scare people out of their minds. As a result, Wang Yi and Zhang San immediately dropped their guns and ran, stumbling and crawling their way back to Erdao Baihe.

Wang Yi was fine, but after that day, Zhang San had a fever for a month.

After this incident spread, it was said that they had met Changbai Mountain’s mountain god. This was now a legendary story of Changbai Mountain, and many people had heard of it.

I asked Poker-Face what he thought about it and whether he had ever met a mountain god in Changbai Mountain.

Poker-Face told me that he had heard of such stories, but they were from some strange people.

If you lived in Erdao Baihe at the foot of Changbai Mountain for a period of time and talked more with the locals, you would find a certain kind of people who would tell you that they had been living and cultivating on Changbai Mountain for hundreds of years. But you normally wouldn’t see them when you headed into the mountains.

These people were very inconspicuous, and some of them had foreign accents. When they said “hundreds of years”, they were referring to their own age.

“Are they part of your Zhang family?” I asked Poker-Face.

Poker-Face shook his head and said no, those people weren’t Zhang family members. The Zhang family was visible while these people were invisible.

I was actually very confused by the idea that there were still some long-lived people on Changbai Mountain who weren’t the Zhang family.

Poker-Face told me that those people were just making self-proclamations and that he hadn’t verified anything.

In addition to all that, in the ancient county annals near Changbai Mountain, there was a legend about a water monster in Changbai Mountain. It was supposedly a deer with a dragon’s face.

In fact, in ancient legends, that thing was a Qilin. It usually lived in the water, but it would sometimes be seen by people who were standing at the water’s edge. The record had been written by a forest guard in the Qing Dynasty.

All the above records are true.

Changbai Mountain had many tiny crevices that were covered by dead leaves. A lot of them were big enough for a person to fall through, so it was very dangerous to walk on Changbai Mountain’s wild paths. Under the crevices were cliffs, which were dozens of meters high. These strange crevices looked very inconspicuous on the mountain, so once someone fell in, they’d disappear completely. There were many disappearances in Changbai Mountain in those days, so Poker-Face also speculated that there were many corpses in the mountain that had accumulated over time.

Legend had it that the god of Changbai Mountain was a relatively gentle mountain god, so anyone who respected nature would be blessed. But Changbai Mountain was actually a dormant active volcano, which may erupt again at any time.

Qilins nestled in fire, so it wasn’t like everything was based on groundless information. Fatty believed that the mountain god would definitely be found at the bottom of Changbai Mountain, but Poker-Face didn’t answer. Instead, all he said was that with our physique, we couldn’t reach the true bottom of the mountain.

I also speculated that based on the position of the bronze door, there must be something down there, but there wasn’t enough room left on the blackboard bulletin so I had to write it here.

Group 2 Helpers—Written by: Wu Xie, Illustrated by: Your Dad, Dictated by: Your Father

<Chapter 23><Table of Contents><Chapter 25>

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TN Notes:

(1) Fun fact: Zhang San is the name for an unspecified person. Kind of like “John Doe” in the West.

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