Injuring the wild boar bare-handed was out of the question.
Zhao Jun had a small handaxe, but it had flown from his grasp when the boar knocked him down, and now he had no idea where it was.
There was definitely no time to look for it now.
Besides, the Zhao Jun of today wasn't that same reckless greenhorn. He possessed decades of hunting experience from his past life.
He knew full well that a handaxe alone wasn't enough to take down a beast like a wild boar.
If he had a gun in his hands, even the most primitive firearm, Zhao Jun was confident he could kill this boar in minutes.
But as it was, he could only hunt with a blade. His only option was to rely on Li Baoyu's Invasion Blade.
A moment ago, Li Baoyu had stabbed the boar right where its hide was thickest. The blade was fine, but the Fraxinus mandschurica Stick serving as its shaft had snapped.
The Invasion Blade was still lying in the middle of the fray between the boar and the two dogs.
To kill the boar, he first had to retrieve the blade.
But more important than killing the boar was saving Li Baoyu.
The kid had only fainted, but the brawl between the boar and the hounds wasn't taking place in some neat, marked-off ring.
As the dogs gave chase and the boar pursued, or the boar fled and the dogs nipped at its heels, their movements were completely unpredictable.
If the boar happened to charge toward Li Baoyu, a single stomp from its nearly three-hundred-pound frame would leave him crippled, if not dead.
Li Baoyu was Zhao Jun's dear brother. Their bond, forged over fifty years in his past life, was too deep to be described in a few simple words.
No matter what, Zhao Jun couldn't take any chances with Li Baoyu's safety.
So, Zhao Jun went to Li Baoyu's side first. He crouched down, lifted his friend's head, patted his cheeks, and then pinched the pressure point under his nose.
Li Baoyu's lips trembled. He let out a couple of groans and slowly opened his eyes.
"Brother... Brother." Li Baoyu's eyes opened, his gaze vacant for a moment before focusing on Zhao Jun.
"Baoyu, are you okay?" Zhao Jun asked with concern.
"Rest assured, Brother. Your younger brother is unharmed."
Zhao Jun: ...
'Zhao Jun was speechless. This brother of his... both father and son were "scholars," it was just that their reading material consisted entirely of comic books.'
And they were both huge bookworms at that.
Li Baoyu's father, Li Dayong, had read a couple of random volumes of *Dream of the Red Chamber* and decided that Jia Baoyu was the most handsome man in the world.
And so, his son was named Li Baoyu.
As for Li Baoyu himself, by the time he was old enough to read, his family's circumstances and the general environment were much better than during his father's childhood.
As a result, Li Baoyu read a great many comic books of *Three Kingdoms* and *Water Margin*.
Keep in mind, those comic books only had a few pages each, and a complete set of the *Three Kingdoms* comics ran to nearly one hundred volumes.
Given their circumstances at the time, it was impossible to read the entire series.
Back then, it wasn't like you could easily get the next installment. Plus, many of the comic books were simply passed around among the neighbors to be read.
So Li Baoyu ended up reading a jumbled, incomplete mess of it all.
Just like his father, Li Dayong, Li Baoyu became completely engrossed in his reading. Otherwise, he wouldn't have started calling Zhao Jun "Brother" at every turn, mimicking how Li Kui addressed Song Jiang, nor would he be spouting such semi-literary nonsense.
Zhao Jun helped Li Baoyu to his feet. Seeing him stumble a little but showing no signs of a broken bone, he finally felt relieved.
After helping Li Baoyu over to a large Daqing poplar, Zhao Jun jutted his chin at it and said, "Get in the tree."
Li Baoyu was still dizzy, his thoughts and actions sluggish.
But he had listened to Zhao Jun his entire life. Acting on pure instinct, Li Baoyu didn't have a second thought. He just did as he was told, hugging the Daqing poplar and starting to climb.
The Daqing poplar was thick enough that it would take two people to encircle it with their arms. Li Baoyu climbed up a little over a meter and settled himself, straddling a fork in the branches.
Once Li Baoyu was safely settled, Zhao Jun turned and headed back toward the fight.
He knew full well that in a hunt, the hunter must avoid facing a wild beast head-on at all costs. Otherwise, whether it was a boar or a bear, it didn't matter how many dogs were attacking it; the moment it saw a person, that person would become its primary target.
It might sound strange, but it was a fact.
Patiently, Zhao Jun kept circling behind the wild boar, slowly closing in on the fray.
The boar turned around several times during his approach, and each time Zhao Jun had to quickly dodge left or right to stay out of its line of sight.
The boar and hounds gradually moved down the slope, shifting the battlefield. This gave Zhao Jun the opening he needed to finally grab the Invasion Blade.
The Fraxinus mandschurica Stick, originally over two meters long, had snapped in two. The section still attached to the Invasion Blade was now just under a meter long. With the weapon in hand, Zhao Jun looked toward the clash of boar and dogs and let out a shout.
"HYUT! HYUT! HYUT!"
Zhao Jun's voice was short, coarse, and urgent, yet it was sonorous, carrying through the nearby mountain forest.
The sound acted like a magic spell.
Instantly, the two hounds nearby went into a frenzy, ferociously renewing their attack and relentlessly pouncing on the boar to tear at its flesh.
At the same time, up in the fork of the Daqing poplar, Li Baoyu heard the call. His spirits lifted, and the dazed look in his eyes vanished completely.
People have their language, and animals have theirs.
When a hound is locked in a desperate struggle with its prey, it won't understand if you just shout words of encouragement.
The sound Zhao Jun made was a hunter's call to rally his dogs.
Having grown up on his grandfather's hunting stories, the sound instantly snapped Li Baoyu out of his stupor. He remembered he and Zhao Jun were in the middle of a hunt. Loyal to the core, Li Baoyu couldn't help but worry for Zhao Jun's safety and immediately started to climb down.
But just as he looked up, he witnessed an incredible scene.
The boar fled, the dogs pursued.
The Yellow Dog had taken a blow from the boar's snout a moment before. It must have injured a hind leg on landing, because it was now running with a limp and had fallen behind.
But Zhao Jun's dog, Da Hua, was cunning. It never confronted the boar head-on, always specializing in attacking its rear.
Though Da Hua had only managed to bite the boar five times so far, each of those five bites had been excruciating.
As the boar ran down the slope, Da Hua caught up to it in a few quick bounds. The dog didn't bother trying to overtake it; it just lunged straight for the boar's rump and bit down.
That's right.
It was another bite right on the boar's anus.
Once it had a firm grip, Da Hua braced its legs, twisted its head, and yanked with all its might.
Meanwhile, the boar was still charging forward.
One force pulled forward, the other pulled back.
The force sent Da Hua stumbling, and the dog could no longer hold its grip, so it had to let go.
The boar, however, let out a bloodcurdling squeal.
The sound no longer had its previous, full-throated power. It was a sharp, horrifying shriek that echoed through the forest.
Under the combined force of the dog pulling and the boar surging, Da Hua's bite had torn the boar's anus to shreds. A small section of its large intestine had even been brutally yanked out.
Just then, the Yellow Dog charged in, once again sinking its teeth viciously into the soft flesh behind the boar's front leg, near its ribs.
Enraged by the pain, the boar swung its head to attack.
But before its head could connect with the Yellow Dog, the boar's massive body suddenly shuddered.
With the shudder, its body bucked violently, and it let out another agonizing "SQUEAL! SQUEAL!"
That Da Hua was vicious!
It had bitten down again, as if determined to rip the boar's intestines clean out.
The boar couldn't even be bothered with the Yellow Dog latched onto its side. It just spun its body violently, forcing Da Hua to release its grip, and fled for its life once more.
But as it charged ahead blindly, it once again left its rear exposed to Da Hua.
Da Hua lunged forward for another bite, and the boar let out a mournful squeal.
This was the definition of fleeing in a blind panic.
And that was exactly what the boar was doing now.
Ahead and to the left lay a large locust tree, snapped in half by the wind. The boar plunged straight for it, spun around, and slammed its rear down against the fallen trunk, finally protecting its backside.
Seeing this, Li Baoyu, still perched in the tree, felt a rush of blood to his head and roared, "Brother, the boar's cornered itself to die!"