Wild Boar

In the evening streets of the village, hunters come home holding mountain pheasants, wild boars, and other animals. ^{ch. 31} Villagers can eat pork occasionally because hunters hunt wild boars in the mountains. ^{ch. 64}

Fang Yuan sets out to kill wild boars, which are often found around the village’s periphery, or the village hunters could not catch them at all. Qing Mao Mountain is periodically cleared out, so a wild boar is hard to find on the mountain itself. Wild boars are not reared pigs, and when a mature wild boar fights a tiger the tiger may not win. Fang Yuan finds one that has fallen into a huge pit with a sharpened green bamboo at the bottom, bleeding but still struggling, whimpering and howling, and kills it with a moonblade. ^{ch. 65}

The beast skin map marks five spots with wild boar herds, two small, two medium, and one large with a giant red cross in the middle of it. ^{ch. 68} Fang Yuan reads the red cross as a forbidden zone surrounded by wild boars and probably home to a wild boar king that would kill him if he met it. ^{ch. 71} The wild boar king, almost as huge as an elephant, lies in a mudpit, its fur dark black, its belly white, and its tusks clean and shining like sharp blades. Fang Yuan judges that a king beast normally carries Gu worms in its body, Boar Gu such as Pink Boar Gu or Flower Boar Gu, and perhaps Beast Skin Gu or Spike Fur worm, and that not even an average rank two Gu Master could kill this one. ^{ch. 77} Sickly Snake group’s red lava python fights the wild boar king, a spider web envelops the king, and Fang Yuan grabs its two tusks and pins it down until the strength he puts on them suddenly vanishes and the boar throws him aside. A second sweep of its tusks catches Hua Xing, a Gu Master of the group, and breaks her body in two, killing her on the spot. ^{ch. 94} The wild boar king falls to Sickly Snake group’s attacks, and when a lightning wolf pack arrives and feasts on its body, Fang Yuan hides inside its cut-open stomach. ^{ch. 95} With most of its flesh eaten, its two snow white tusks are the most valuable spoils, and Fang Yuan receives one of them by the clan’s rules. ^{ch. 99} The king the group hunted was a thousand beast king that ruled over a thousand wild boars, and thousand beast kings need three teams working together to be killed, which the group managed mostly because it was injured beforehand. ^{ch. 114}

A wild boar is an omnivore that eats worms, steals bird eggs, and is adept at hunting wild rabbits, mice, and even snakes and scorpions. It has a greyish black coat, a strong firm body, short rough limbs, a long stiff mane on its back, and sparse needle-like fur standing up on its ears. Its sense of smell is acute: it finds well hidden bird nests, and it can smell a man from around a hundred meters away even if it hears nothing. When agitated it raises the white fur on its neck, digs the ground with its hooves three times, lowers its head, and charges, and a charge breaks a tree as thick as a human arm in two. Its weakness is that it cannot easily change direction, so every charge runs in a straight line, and a Gu Master who stays attentive can dodge it. Fang Yuan has to spend twenty percent of his upper stage primeval essence to kill a normal wild boar. When Fang Yuan kills one, his White Boar Gu eats most of its meat. A wild boar’s body holds three things of value, its pork, fur, and teeth, and its pair of tusks can feed Gu worms that eat teeth or serve as a catalyst for a Gu worm’s advancement. ^{ch. 70} A dying wild boar is at its most dangerous, using the last of its insanity and tenacity. ^{ch. 71} Fang Yuan notes that wild boars and bulls go into a frenzy when injured, unlike more cunning beasts that retreat. ^{ch. 116} A black coloured wild boar rushes at Fang Yuan with its mane pricked up and two snow white tusks, and he meets its charge head on and kills it with blows to its skull. ^{ch. 80}

The academy’s midyear examination has students hunt wild boars and collect their teeth, each tooth exchangeable for ten primeval stones, while on the market one primeval stone buys twenty of them. ^{ch. 72} A youngster lures a wild boar out while four others hide in the bushes and trip it with a rope, and after moonblades cut its body it collapses from blood loss half an hour later. ^{ch. 73} Gu Yue Chi Cheng hands in the best count, sixteen tusks, after luckily finding two wild boars fighting each other. ^{ch. 77} Fang Yuan then takes first place with dozens of tusks, saying he hunted only a dozen himself and found the rest in a bag hunters may have hidden, though the bag in fact holds teeth from his own earlier kills. ^{ch. 73 ch. 77}