Chapter 16

 "Today?" Daniel frowned.

 It could be done, but in that case, it would waste some time.

 He still preferred to wait until everyone had some free time before helping Du Mingna arrange these non-urgent things.

 Another villager laughed and said, "Daniel, let's be a bit busier tonight and get things ready for the young master now."

"Please." Du Mingna slightly bowed to the villager, "Tate, could you please help with this?" Tate was taken aback and quickly stepped aside.

 He blushed and kept waving his hands.

 "It's alright, young master, this is what we should do." Regardless of how the villagers felt about the Hall family, they knew that they used to be the vassals of the Viscount Hall, and their lives were at the mercy of the Viscount Hall.

 When the Viscount Hall gave Gray Rope Village to Du Mingna, they became Du Mingna's people.

 Although Du Mingna had been expelled from the Hall family and seemed to have no backing, their past mindset made them hesitant to truly rebel against Du Mingna.

 Outwardly, they might not show much dissatisfaction, but in action, they would unconsciously follow Du Mingna's arrangements.

 Unless Du Mingna's demands became excessive and threatened their survival, they would find it hard to truly oppose Du Mingna.

 And now, Du Mingna's good attitude towards them made them feel obligated to work hard for Du Mingna.

 Daniel widened his eyes like copper bells.

 "Teacher? Shouldn't I help Tate with this?" Daniel sensed a crisis.

 Du Mingna actually remembered Tate's name! When did this happen? When did Tate introduce himself to Du Mingna?

Or did Du Mingna remember during the villagers' introductions? And Du Mingna actually assigned the task of hanging the signboard to Tate, not him!

He even thought that as the top student of Du Mingna's school, he should be more likely to receive tasks from Du Mingna! Regardless of the task's importance, shouldn't it fall on him first? Du Mingna smiled faintly.

 "Daniel, if possible, I would like you and Mayor Gus to tell me about your trip to the mountain today."

"Our trip to the mountain?" Daniel scratched the back of his head, foolishly pondering for a moment. "Is there anything to say? What do you want to hear, teacher? We usually set traps in the mountains, but if we don't take you to the traps and just explain, it would be hard for you to understand how we set them up.

 It's too late today, it's not convenient to take you to the mountain.

" By now, Tate and the other villagers were already helping Du Mingna find suitable wood, make pillars, and hang up the signboard.

 While it was still not completely dark, it was suitable for outdoor work, and they needed to finish quickly! Gus then said, "Young master, do you want to see the game we brought back today? We haven't had time to process it yet.

" Gus glanced at Daniel again.

 Normally, Daniel would definitely join him, as they would continue working in the evening to clean up the game they had hunted.

 But now, Daniel was Du Mingna's student, and he said he had to come to Du Mingna's place for two hours every evening.

 Gus didn't know if Daniel would take a break tonight.

 Daniel was a skilled worker.

 Without his help, the efficiency of the work would decrease if they relied on other villagers.

 However, Gus was fine with it.

 Slowing down a bit was not a big deal, and the other villagers needed practice too.

 Daniel would only be away for two hours, so it wouldn't have much impact, and Gus didn't need to discuss Daniel's leave with him.

 Du Mingna nodded.

 "Alright, let's go see it together.

 How do you handle the game? Also, how often do you usually go to the mountain?"Gus led the way in front, guiding Dumina to the place in the village specifically for handling animal carcasses.

 Old John also wanted to follow, but Dumina considered that Tate and others would help hang up the sign, and he didn't know if he could come back before hanging the sign, so he let Old John stay.

 Daniel wanted to put down his daughter Dora and let Dora go home first.

 But Dora held onto Daniel's neck tightly and also wanted to go with Dumina to see how the villagers handled the wild beasts brought back from the hunt.

 In the end, Daniel could only carry his daughter.

 The place where the wild beasts brought back from the hunt were handled was located downstream of the river closest to the village.

 Different from the sturdy stone houses where the villagers lived, here was just a simple shed built with wood.

 The place where the villagers stored firewood, hay, and the like was also just a shed built with wood, with a grass cover on top to block the rain.

 When Dumina followed Gus and Daniel over, he saw several villagers busy at the edge of the river.

 They directly used river water to clean the carcasses of the wild beasts that had already been gutted, flushing away the remaining blood clots.

 They didn't want the internal organs.

 The internal organs of the wild beasts contained a lot of biological toxins, had a strong fishy smell, were difficult to eat, so it was better to just throw them into the river and let the river wash them away.

 Another person was holding a knife, chopping bones and removing meat by the river.

 The person's knife skills were quite good, and after removing the meat, the big bones were clean, with almost no traces of meat left.

 Next to this person were two younger-looking individuals also removing meat, but their skills were obviously inferior, with meat residue still on the bones.

 When Gus and Daniel came over, no one greeted them.

 But when the first person saw Dumina, he took the initiative to greet Dumina, and immediately someone stopped what they were doing to look for Dumina's figure.

 The people responsible for handling these wild beasts were the same ones who had gone up the mountain with Gus, Daniel, and the others before.

 Their combat power was higher than that of ordinary people, making them more likely to harbor rebellious thoughts compared to other villagers.

 They were not aware of what had happened in the village before, and were not very clear about Dumina making a writing board and preparing to hold a public class.

 But they didn't have much ill will towards Dumina.

 Just by observing Daniel and Gus's attitudes towards Dumina, they were willing to be a bit friendlier towards Dumina.

 Now that they saw Dumina, they felt more embarrassed.

 Dumina greeted the villagers with a smile and asked how today's harvest compared to usual.

 The big bones of the wild beasts would be used to make soup, and some of the meat that couldn't be stored would be cooked and eaten immediately.

 More meat would be made into jerky.

 As the wild beasts in the mountains grew older, their meat became less tender, with a mediocre taste that even those with poor teeth might struggle to chew.

 The villagers often hunted, catching more than they needed and releasing the young and females.

 Usually, only the young wild beasts that had been trapped for a long time, were too injured to survive if released, would be brought back by the villagers for slaughter.

 On the way here, Dumina briefly learned this information from Gus and Daniel.

 Gus also mentioned that maintaining a good number of wild beasts in the mountains was beneficial for avoiding monster attacks.

 For the monsters, if the mountains could provide them with sufficient food, they wouldn't be so eager to leave their familiar mountains.

 Even if they did leave, they wouldn't be as aggressive.

 This was the experience gained from generations of villagers from Greysteel Village interacting with monsters that came out of the mountains.

 Dumina agreed that the villagers' conclusions made sense.

 But now that he had arrived here and saw the number of wild beasts being handled or waiting to be handled by the villagers, he felt a wave of shock.

 "Mayor Gus, do you usually bring back so many game animals from the mountains?" Before Gus could speak, Daniel interjected.

 "No way! Today is a rare big harvest for us! Normally, even if we wait four or five days before going up the mountain to check our traps, we never find as many prey as we did this time.

 This time, we only caught prey through traps, we didn't actively hunt at all.

" The villagers rely solely on the crops grown in the fields, which cannot produce the strong physique they need.

 Their main source of energy is meat.

 This was expected by Dumina.

 On the way here, he learned about the villagers' frequency of going up the mountain, and considering Daniel's urgency to deal with today's harvest, he felt that their harvest today must be exceptionally large.

 This prompted him to propose his own speculation.

 "So, Daniel, Gus, have you ever encountered a similar situation before? One day when you go up the mountain, you find a particularly large number of wild animals caught in your traps?

If you continue to go up the mountain during that time, you will find that you almost have such a harvest every day, and even more?" Daniel shook his head in confusion.

 "It doesn't seem like it, right? We rarely go up the mountain frequently for this kind of thing.

 If the traps catch more prey at once, we can't eat them all quickly, so why rush to go up the mountain again?" Gus thought a little more than Daniel.

 Through Dumina's words at the moment, he guessed the true meaning Dumina wanted to convey.

 His expression became more serious.

 "Young master, are you suggesting that this could be a precursor to a monster attack?" Gus recalled the time when he went up the mountain with the villagers and found a large number of wild animals trapped in the traps, which indeed could lead to a monster attack in a few days.

 But it was not certain.

 Sometimes after a good harvest, it was not easy to catch wild animals through traps for quite some time, even if they went hunting on the mountain with tools, it was difficult to kill many prey.

 It would take some time for the number of wild animals on the mountain to gradually return to normal levels.

 Gus thought Dumina was overthinking.

 But deep down in Gus's heart, another voice quietly sounded.

 Perhaps, he could really hear different information from Dumina.

 Perhaps, they really had a chance to determine whether monsters would attack their village by capturing the number of wild animals through traps.

 In this way, they would have a chance to prepare in advance and reduce the village's losses.

 Dumina looked up at Gus, whose eyes were full of determination.

 "Yes, I think it's very likely.

 Capturing more wild animals than usual in traps indicates that there is an anomaly in the mountains, and the animals are trying to escape.

 We should prepare for a monster attack.

"