Chapter 58: Gun Prices and Qin Xiaodong's Crisis

Zhang Huacheng opened the case of Mauser C96 pistols and inspected them one by one. There were fourteen Mauser pistols in total. Aside from one that was slightly rusted and three that required maintenance before use, the other ten were in perfect condition.

"Tomorrow, get some gun oil and give all of these a thorough cleaning. Take this one; once a pack of wolves charges right at you, this thing is way more useful than a Type 54 rifle."

Zhang Huacheng handed a Mauser C96 pistol to Er-gou.

Next, he picked out one and gave it to Tie-zhu. Even someone who had never touched a gun before could just fire wildly and still hit something with this.

Zhang Huacheng took two pistols, loaded them to full capacity, and brought several spare magazines for quick reloading. Combined with his Springfield rifle and ample ammunition, he was actually quite looking forward to encountering a wolf pack.

"Come on, raise your gun and aim at that tree ahead."

Zhang Huacheng raised his pistol, aiming at a tree a dozen meters away, while signaling Er-gou and the others to follow suit.

Er-gou and Tie-zhu raised their guns as well.

"This is the safety. Flipping the safety off means you're ready to fire at any moment. Watch out for the recoil—this boxed-cannon has quite a kick."

"Bang!"

"Bang, bang, bang, bang..."

Zhang Huacheng fired a single shot first.

Then he emptied the rest in one breath. All ten rounds were cleared in less than five seconds. If it were a fully automatic variant with a large-capacity magazine, emptying ten rounds would take a mere second or two.

The frost hanging all over the tree came crashing down in a flurry.

Er-gou and Tie-zhu's pistols soon joined in.

For a moment, the sound of gunfire shattered the mountain's silence as if bullets were free.

"We'll leave the flatbed cart here and go hunt wapiti!"

After teaching them how to use the pistols, Zhang Huacheng distributed a bayonet to each of them. It would take over an hour to reach the area where the wapiti were located, so they needed to hurry.

Along the way, when they ran into pheasants and hares, Zhang Huacheng let Er-gou and Tie-zhu practice their shooting, unsurprisingly coming away empty-handed.

As they neared their destination, however, they encountered two silly roe deer. Er-gou killed one and Tie-zhu killed the other, both after taking multiple hits. These overly curious yet poorly alert deer practically delivered themselves as meat.

"Why are we wasting bullets on these things? The meat isn't worth much, certainly not as much as wapiti meat."

Er-gou had already lost interest in roe deer.

After all, wapiti meat and wolf meat were the most valuable; roe deer meat and wild boar meat were priced about the same.

Together, the two deer weighed about a hundred catties, and that was with them being fully grown. Once gutted and processed, there would only be seventy or eighty catties of meat left.

"Roe deer meat we can keep and divide to eat, but the wapiti we can sell," Zhang Huacheng reminded them.

A wapiti was too massive, averaging three hundred catties per adult, and dividing the meat among too many people wasn't practical. Roe deer were much more suitable for that.

Besides, everyone knew roe deer were easy to hunt. If Chen Biao didn't let them head into the mountains, the elders of the Chen family would likely raise a fuss.

Soon, they arrived at the wapiti's habitat. After searching for a little while, Zhang Huacheng spotted several wapiti grazing on the vegetation beneath the snow.

"I'll handle this," Zhang Huacheng said, shaking his head when he saw Er-gou raising his gun.

With a swift motion, he raised his Springfield rifle. A shot rang out, and the largest wapiti in the group crashed heavily into the snow.

The other wapiti scattered and fled, their continuous cries echoing through the air.

"It ran away!" Tie-zhu shouted anxiously as he watched the surviving wapiti escape.

"One is enough. This one must weigh around five hundred catties. If we kill too many, they'll just relocate." Zhang Huacheng walked up to the wapiti with his rifle. The unlucky animal had been hit squarely in the head and died instantly. Although the beast was terrifyingly robust with antlers weighing around ten catties, it was ultimately a carbon-based lifeform and couldn't withstand a 7.62mm bullet.

Er-gou immediately stepped forward to gut it, filling the air with a gamey odor. Tie-zhu pulled out an axe and soon chopped the wapiti into three large sections. Aside from the antlers, the head, hooves, tail, and all the internal organs were buried deep in the snow.

"This wapiti even has a layer of fat." Er-gou noticed a thin layer of fat beneath the deer hide, a rare sight for a wapiti.

"Older wapiti are like that. Let's head back to the cave base first."

An older wapiti's activity level dropped, but it still ate plenty, so having some fat was normal.

When they returned to the cave base, they loaded the wapiti and roe deer meat onto the flatbed cart. Zhang Huacheng and the others partially blocked and camouflaged the cave entrance so effectively that even someone walking right past it would struggle to realize a cave was there.

He planned to take back a few Type 54 rifles and Arisaka rifles. Such common items circulated easily on the black market, whereas a Springfield rifle was quite rare.

As for what price the guns would fetch on the black market, he would have to ask Qin Xiaodong.

Qin Xiaodong had been living quite comfortably lately, eating meat by the mouthful and drinking wine by the bowlful with his gang of brothers. He no longer slept in; the moment he opened his eyes, he headed straight to the market early in the morning.

When Qin Xiaodong arrived at the morning market, he saw only a single wapiti for sale, which felt a bit unusual to him—there were no wolves today.

"Big Brother!" Qin Xiaodong ran over enthusiastically to greet him.

"Hmm," Zhang Huacheng nodded.

"Hehe, Big Brother, here is the money for the wolf meat." Qin Xiaodong immediately pulled a thick stack of cash from his pocket, which included two large-denomination ten-yuan bills, clearly having sold all the remaining wolf meat from yesterday.

Zhang Huacheng took it and glanced over it briefly. It came out to around a hundred and a few tens of yuan. After a moment of thought, he pulled out one of the ten-yuan bills and pressed it into Qin Xiaodong's hand.

"Take this to buy some drinks, you've worked hard. There's something hidden under the plastic tarp on the flatbed cart. Take a quiet look and see if you can offload it for me." Zhang Huacheng motioned toward the cart.

Hearing this, Qin Xiaodong perked up instantly. Forgetting any formalities, he tucked the money away and hurried over to the flatbed cart.

When he pulled back the tarp and took a peek, he couldn't help a gasp of shock.

"Big Brother, where did all these come from? Nowadays, these things aren't easy to move. You know Northeast China isn't short on guns; the market price for firearms is around fifty yuan, but those are mostly heavily worn old guns like the Arisakas. Yours all look brand new. On the black market, they'd probably fetch sixty or seventy yuan each. Back during the peak a couple of years ago, they could go for a hundred yuan a piece."

Qin Xiaodong explained the current market rate.

Even at those prices, he felt he would be losing out if he sold them.

Seeing that Zhang Huacheng remained silent, Qin Xiaodong quickly added, "Of course, these guns could still sell for 100 yuan each, but we'd have to wait for a sucker, or take the risk of finding a middleman to sell them in another province. In other provinces, people mostly pay two to three hundred yuan for one. But middlemen take half the commission, and the risk is high—they can skip town anytime. It's much better to sell them right here, or should we wait a couple of years and see?"

Sixty or seventy yuan?

Zhang Huacheng naturally didn't want to wait two years. Even though regulations would tighten starting next year due to the Cultural Revolution, causing the prices of firearms and ammunition to double, it wasn't worth the wait; by then, he probably wouldn't even care about such pocket change.

"No waiting. Sell them all for me, and we also brought a few hundred rounds of ammunition—get rid of those too. Be careful; once these items are seized, under the current interim firearms management regulations, the maximum penalty is the death penalty."

No waiting, convert them to cash first!

Zhang Huacheng reminded Qin Xiaodong that the penalties under the current interim firearms management regulations were extremely severe, with the death penalty handed out readily.

"Alright, later I'll pull the flatbed cart to my doorstep and carry them inside to hide them. As for the laws you mentioned, no need to worry about that—they won't pin it on us."

Qin Xiaodong didn't care in the slightest.

He knew that whatever he sold for Zhang Huacheng, he would never be treated unfairly.

"Got any good items coming in over the next couple of days?" Now that Tie-zhu knew how to sell meat, Zhang Huacheng had become a hands-off manager, letting Tie-zhu handle the sales as a way to train him.

Qin Xiaodong shook his head.

"Let me know if anything good turns up."

In this era, too many things were scarce, but Qin Xiaodong always managed to surprise him with something.

"No problem!" Qin Xiaodong nodded. Suddenly, a thought struck him, and after a moment of hesitation, he said, "Big Brother, we might not have anything good right now, but someone else just might."

"Who?" Zhang Huacheng asked curiously.

"A gang of southerners—the very same group we shook down before. They even sent word telling us they'll be coming to find us around here soon. They're train-robbing thieves with tons of good stuff on them. Big Brother, are you interested?" Qin Xiaodong's eyes darted away nervously.

How could Zhang Huacheng not understand what he meant? They were probably coming back to save face. Since Qin Xiaodong's local snake gang was outmatched, the other party was clearly no pushover.

"How many people do they have?"

Zhang Huacheng knew that roving bandits usually kept their valuables right on their persons.

As for danger, it didn't really register as such for him.

"There were only seven last time, but this time there will probably be a dozen or so, and they will definitely bring guns. Last time Luo Ceng broke the rules and used a gun, so they suffered a loss and aren't going to let it go. I can rally a dozen or so brothers here too. If you and your men are willing to help out, Big Brother, then I won't be afraid of those southerners at all." Given Zhang Huacheng's martial prowess—having effortlessly knocked down their entire group before anyone could react—if he was willing to lend a hand, why would they fear those southerners?

Qin Xiaodong dared not hide anything.

"I saw several of them wearing wristwatches!"

"Plus, last time some of the things they wanted to sell us included controlled medicines and ration coupons from our Northeast Province. They're all good stuff."

Seeing that Zhang Huacheng remained silent, Qin Xiaodong grew a bit anxious.

"Is there a specific time?"

Zhang Huacheng was genuinely tempted.

"Within a week!"