The crowd turned toward the voice. On the outskirts, an old man with a white beard and a face etched with wrinkles walked over unsteadily, supported by a young man and leaning on a gnarled mountain-wood cane.
He looked to be in his nineties, if not older.
"It's Fifth Uncle!"
Someone whispered.
The old man was the village's oldest and most senior elder. In his youth, he had been an old hand at navigating the mountains and knew the surrounding forests like the back of his hand.
Fifth Uncle walked up, his cloudy eyes sweeping over the tracks on the ground before landing on Yang Qi. He began to speak slowly. "Years ago, there were indeed leopards in that old forest on the back mountain. I even saw one from a distance when I was young. But that was back before the Liberation, at least fifty or sixty years ago."
