"Thump, thump."
Ergou struck the rabbit on the head twice, deciding to kill it first to keep it from running away.
He picked it up by the ears, weighed it in his hand, and grinned. "At least twenty catties. Just this one rabbit makes this trip worthwhile."
True to his words, though the two of them busied themselves until the sun was directly overhead, checking seven or eight rabbit burrows, they failed to catch another. Exhausted, they decided to end their hunting trip and head back down the mountain.
The division of the catch was entirely uncontroversial. The dove went to Zhao Xuan, and they split the rabbits evenly.
Rabbits were meant to be sold for money, and a rabbit split in half was hard to sell. Considering that Ergou's father knew a lot of people, Ergou suggested that he take the rabbits with him first, have his father help sell them, and give Zhao Xuan half the money afterward.
Facing the risk of running out of food, Zhao Xuan found this too troublesome and proposed instead that Ergou's family buy out his share with grain at market price. A twenty-catty rabbit counted as ten catties of meat, making his share worth fifty catties of coarse grain.
In truth, a fat twenty-catty rabbit, once gutted and skinned, would yield considerably more than ten catties of meat. With the autumn harvest just past, grain prices dipped slightly, so a catty of meat would normally buy well over ten catties of coarse grain. Overall, Ergou stood only to gain.
Yet for Zhao Xuan, first, it saved him the time of selling the rabbit and then buying grain. Second, the two of them were close friends, and Ergou had helped tidy up the old house and taken him hunting—what harm was there in letting him make a little profit?
He kept the dove. Having transmigrated three days ago without tasting meat, he simply couldn't bear to trade it away for grain, and besides, it didn't weigh much.
Before parting ways, Zhao Xuan invited Ergou over to his house for dove porridge. Ergou readily agreed, but when the porridge was cooked, he was nowhere to be found.
Zhao Xuan was ravenously hungry and didn't wait for him; he set half aside and started eating. After two days of eating chaff, drinking meat porridge made it feel as though nothing in the world could taste better. Two bowls went down, and Zhao Xuan, still longing for more, reluctantly put the bowl down.
"You have consumed two bowls of nutrient-rich porridge. Your physical condition has improved, and your archery has increased."
"Basic Archery: 4/100."
With that sudden prompt, Zhao Xuan had another revelation. Did every action that contributed to a goal count as effort?
A single instance wasn't enough to prove it. To test this conclusion, Zhao Xuan didn't rush to practice archery. Instead, he went to the back mountain and chopped down a bamboo stalk. He planned to stockpile a supply of consumable bamboo arrows.
A single thick bamboo pole could yield ten polished bamboo arrows.
Zhao Xuan concentrated fully as he carved the first bamboo arrow, and sure enough, the prompt appeared once more.
"You carefully crafted a sharp bamboo arrow. Your archery has increased."
"Basic Archery: 4/100."
The progress hadn't increased, but it proved his guess was correct. As long as an action helped achieve the goal, it counted as effort and yielded positive feedback.
Zhao Xuan simply dedicated himself to producing bamboo arrows. Spending two hours, he whittled the entire bamboo pole into arrows, resulting in 65 spoiled pieces and 118 finished ones. When the finished count reached one hundred, the progress for Basic Archery went up by 1, becoming 5.
Yet Ergou still had not shown up.
A bad premonition arose in Zhao Xuan's heart, though he was reluctant to entertain it. It was just a rabbit, surely it wouldn't come to this. Besides, even if it had, so what? Fight to the death with a childhood friend? Don't be foolish—with this talent of his, improving himself mattered more than anything else.
Zhao Xuan used dead grass and branches to make a simple humanoid archery target and began practicing his archery. With his previous experience, every time he shot an arrow, he pulled the bow to its limit, aimed carefully, and then released.
Each shot triggered the prompt "Your archery has increased," but the progress meter remained unchanged. It wasn't until he shot a full hundred arrows, his arms aching, that the progress increased by 1 just as he hoped.
Diligence and hard training undeniably counted as a form of effort.
According to the methods he had tested so far, supplementing nutrition, crafting arrows, and practicing archery diligently could all increase his progress. At this rate, crafting bamboo arrows every day and then going hunting, using his catches to cook meat porridge—wouldn't his Basic Archery level up rapidly? At this speed, it would take him at most a month to max out Basic Archery.
A loud rumble interrupted Zhao Xuan's daydream. Crafting bamboo arrows was fine, but shooting them consumed an immense amount of physical energy. After two bowls of meat porridge, he was starting to get hungry again.
He glanced at the sky. The sun was slanting westward, roughly four or five in the afternoon. In other words, four or five hours had passed since he and Ergou had parted ways at noon to go home.
"I'll wait until dark."
Zhao Xuan said this to the original owner of the body.
Ergou was the original owner's childhood companion and close friend. Though Zhao Xuan had transmigrated here, while he hadn't intended to deliberately sever ties with the original owner's life, he also had no desire to sacrifice himself just to maintain relationships on the original owner's behalf.
Relationships were reciprocal. If others treated him well, he would treat them well in return. If they didn't—elder brother or best friend, they would all be strangers to him.
Taking advantage of his spare time, Zhao Xuan made two more bamboo bows as spares. To do a good job, one must first sharpen one's tools. Unsurprisingly, crafting bamboo bows also counted as a form of effort. It was just that Zhao Xuan lacked the materials for bowstrings, so two was his absolute limit; he simply couldn't gather enough scale to generate further progress.
By dusk, as Zhao Xuan was preparing to reheat the remaining two bowls of meat porridge, Ergou arrived empty-handed.
Zhao Xuan looked at him calmly, waiting for an explanation.
"Sorry, Er."
Ergou's reply neither surprised Zhao Xuan nor made it acceptable. Seeing Zhao Xuan remain silent, Ergou gave a bitter smile. "I went back and asked my dad for the grain, but he wouldn't give it to me."
"He said, he said..."
Ergou paused, then forced himself to say, "He said you hunted the dove, but I caught the rabbit, so I shouldn't give half to you."
"I disagreed, so he locked me in and wouldn't let me out. I just sneaked out..."
As he spoke, his voice trailed off.
In Dishan Village, Zhao was a minor surname. Including Zhao Xuan's household, there were only three families in total, numbering around a dozen people, and they weren't even related. By contrast, the Chen surname was a major one, with over twenty families and more than a hundred people, all connected by blood or marriage.
Therefore, for the sake of fifty catties of coarse grain, a major clan bullying a minor one with no backing—was there really anything wrong with that?
It wasn't that Zhao Xuan didn't understand; he just hadn't reacted in time. In the era of feudal dynasties, the law of the jungle was the norm, and true equality was a heresy that deserved to be burned at the stake.
He smiled faintly. "Your father's words aren't completely unreasonable. Thank you for taking me up the mountain to hunt today; I gained a lot."
What else could he say? Should he curse Ergou's father for being shameless, or berate Ergou for breaking his word? Should he ask Ergou to fall out and break ties with his own biological father in a patriarchal era, just for the sake of a childhood companion?
The former was meaningless, and the latter was unrealistic.
Instead, Ergou seemed somewhat conscience-stricken, gritting his teeth as he said, "I'll consider these fifty catties of coarse grain a loan. Once I'm settled and have my own household, I'll pay you back."
Zhao Xuan smiled and said nothing.
He was nearly starving to death—would he really live long enough to see Ergou get settled and establish a household? If you took a bottle of water from him in the desert and told him you'd return it once you were back in the city so you'd be even, would a bottle of water in the desert have the same meaning as a bottle of water in the city?
If someone truly cared, their family had ten mu of paddy fields and a dozen mu of dry land, yielding two to three hundred catties per mu, with thousands of catties of grain piled up right there. Missing fifty catties shouldn't even be noticeable.
Expecting a beneficiary to willingly part with a portion of what was already in his pocket truly was difficult.