Chapter One: A Unique Era

“Brother! Mother has fallen!”

A shout rang out outside a small wooden cabin nestled in a mountain hollow in the Guandong Mountains.

Zhang Tiejun stood inside the cabin, a chill running down his spine at the scene before him.

Only yesterday, he had been the ace commando of the armored brigade’s special task force in the northeastern mountains. While capturing a fugitive deep in the forest, he was pushed off a cliff by the criminal while trying to save a comrade.

When he awoke, it was no longer 2024 but 1960 in the Guandong Mountains. He had become another Zhang Tiejun with the same name, no longer a special forces soldier but the son of a mountain hunter, living off the land.

At the door lay a middle-aged woman, unconscious, and beside her a tearful girl of seven or eight. Upon seeing Zhang Tiejun, the girl cried out and rushed over, distraught.

“Brother, find a way. Don’t be afraid.”

Zhang Tiejun hurried to check on her.

The original Zhang Tiejun was the eldest son in the family, with a younger sister below and an elder sister above. The elder sister had been married off to another village in exchange for twenty jin of cotton batting.

Their father had been a renowned hunter in the mountains but was brutally killed by a gang of horse bandits before the founding of the new nation, when Zhang was only seven.

Before liberation, the two children had been raised solely by their mother through hard labor. Fortunately, the government’s land reforms had improved their lives somewhat.

But then a famine swept quietly through the Guandong Mountains. For a whole year, the Zhang family of mother and two daughters had struggled with hunger, often going without enough to eat.

Seeing that there was no food left, the mother had set out in the bitter cold to gather hazelnuts in the mountains, but she fainted soon after leaving.

“Mother!”

Perhaps out of filial piety or touched by the tragic childhood, Zhang Tiejun quickly helped her up and pressed on her philtrum.

The mother slowly regained consciousness, her face pale and drawn. “I’m alright. The path was slippery; just help me up.”

Zhang Tiejun knew well that years of poor health had left the woman’s legs swollen. Climbing the mountain in such a state would be a death sentence.

He helped her back inside the bare hut, where only a fire pit glowed with a dim red light.

The younger sister, Zhang Xiaohua, was obedient and brought the last half bowl of mushy noodles, thin and watery, barely filling the stomach.

“Mother isn’t hungry. You eat at noon,” she said weakly, shaking her head. Her lips, cracked from long lack of nourishment, barely whispered the words.

Xiaohua looked at Zhang Tiejun, who hesitated before swallowing the noodles in one gulp.

“Brother! What are you doing? That’s for mother!”

The girl’s rosy cheeks flushed with anger.

Zhang Tiejun understood that the original Zhang was not a responsible son. Lacking parental guidance, he had long been unruly and disliked by the villagers, even by his own sister.

Without much explanation, Zhang Tiejun picked up a sharp wood-cutting knife and a length of rope from behind the door.

“Little sister, wait here with mother. I’ll go out and be back before dinner.”

His mature and steady tone struck Xiaohua, who had always looked down on her brother, as something unfamiliar.

Zhang Tiejun knew that in the bitter midwinter, the only way for the family to survive was to go up the mountain.

To the original eighteen-year-old boy, the Guandong Mountains were a perilous place where it was easy to enter but hard to leave. But for Zhang Tiejun, a wilderness survival expert, it was a place where he felt at home.

He felt grateful to the original Zhang. Though he did not understand what had happened, if not for him, he would now be a drifting soul lost to this world.

His only way to repay this debt was to ensure the Zhang family survived.

A heavy snowfall provided Zhang Tiejun with an excellent hunting opportunity. Many animals emerge to forage once the snow stops, and their tracks serve as natural guides.

Without strong weapons, attempting to catch large game was impossible, so he focused on small prey.

At noon, he fixed his gaze near a stream that had not frozen over.

The lower altitude and proximity to human habitation meant no large predators lurked here. The dense forest attracted birds, and the stream was a perfect spot to lure prey and fish.

Using his knife, he carved two sticks flat, wedging them into the ground, then arranged three other sticks at angles around them. He tied a slipknot with the rope on a short stick, threaded it through a small bent sapling, and tied the other end to a horizontal beam. The bent sapling acted as a trigger.

When a bird stepped on the horizontal stick, the sapling would snap upright, tightening the rope into a noose around the bird’s ankle— a simple bird snare.

He scattered some wild berries he had found around the trap. Success depended on luck.

After setting the trap, Zhang Tiejun turned his attention to the stream. Upstream, he had seen ripples—signs of fish.

Walking two or three miles upstream, he found a small pool typical of mountain streams.

Without proper fishing gear, he fashioned a simple rod by cutting a small tree, stripping its twigs, and creating notches to hold a fishing line made by twisting a strand from the rope into a fine thread. He tied loops at both ends.

He anchored the rod in the ground with stones and set a trigger mechanism so that when a fish bit the worm, the notch would release, the bent rod would snap upright, and the fish would be pulled out.

In just an hour, he had set two outdoor traps. Without guns, nets, or hunting dogs, he dared not hunt large game yet.

With daylight still ample, Zhang Tiejun planned to gather some edible wild greens next.