“What kind of traps?”
Xiong Yue, who had come out behind him, asked, not understanding. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep right away last night either. He had worried and feared for a long time before finally dozing off, which was why he couldn’t get up this morning.
Lu Xuan explained to them one by one: “Dig traps around the area where we live. That way, if any other beastmen come to steal or launch a sneak attack, they’ll shed some blood at the first line of defense.”
Xiong Yue scratched his head: “Aren’t we supposed to build the house first? If we dig traps too, will the few of us be enough?”
“Let those two dig along with us.”
Following Tian Xuan’s gaze, they saw two gaunt gray foxes, covered in mud and matted fur, passed out on the grass.
Lu Xuan was startled: “They’re not dead?”
He had thought they would have been killed by Xiong Qi and the others last night. He had worried over all sorts of things.
The flash of light in the sub-beastman’s eyes made Tian Xuan’s brow darken slightly. He was too kind. In the wasteland, kindness could be fatal.
Then he remembered, the reason he had saved him back then was also because of the way he protected the cubs and those innocent, naive eyes.
He didn’t expect that the other party would bring such a big surprise to their group. Without Lu Xuan, his leg wouldn’t have healed. He might have died long ago.
He would just have to watch over him more in the future.
“We’re short on hands. Keep them to do the digging.”
Lu Xuan’s eyes lit up: “Free labor! That’s a great idea.”
“What’s so great about it? We still have to feed them.”
Xiong Yue sized them up with dissatisfaction: “They’re too skinny. How much strength can they have to work?”
“Then less food for less work, and more food for more work.” Lu Xuan asked Tian Xuan with confusion: “Why aren’t they awake yet?”
They had been standing here talking for quite a while. Given a beastman’s keen ears and eyes, they should have woken up the moment their group stepped out of the animal hide shelters. Why were they sleeping like logs?
Tian Xuan’s voice turned cold: “If they want to sleep so much, let them sleep forever.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the two foxes, whose colors could barely be distinguished, instantly scrambled up from the ground and shifted into beast form.
The two were dirty from head to toe, with only the whites of their eyes looking somewhat clean. They smiled ingratiatingly but said nothing.
Lu Xuan’s pupils shrank. He saw several bugs crawl out from their hair and then burrow back in. He subconsciously felt an itch on his scalp, where his own hair roots had just begun to grow.
“First, first, make them go wash in the river. And their hair, shave it off, all of it.”
Lu Xuan stood behind Tian Xuan, genuinely afraid that the bugs from the fox beastmen’s heads might jump onto him.
There was no helping it, on this beastman continent, even lice came in magnified sizes.
The sub-beastman’s reaction to the filth was truly amusing. Tian Xuan’s brow relaxed considerably. He looked at the two fox beastmen and said, “Go quickly.”
After they left, Lu Xuan asked Tian Xuan, “Aren’t we going to watch them? Aren’t you afraid they’ll run away?”
The river was quite close, but foxes could run fast.
Tian Xuan was confident: “They won’t run.”
“As long as they have any sense, they definitely won’t run,” Xiong Yue picked up the conversation. “Look how skinny they are. Who knows how badly they were bullied before ending up here? When they saw food, they recklessly tried to steal it. We haven’t even tied them up. If they were going to run, they would have done so already. They’re probably scheming about how to mooch off us.”
Lu Xuan suddenly understood. Right, they hadn’t tied up the fox beastmen. Even if they had been knocked unconscious, after waking up, they should have run. Instead, they had pretended to be unconscious.
Tian Xuan asked at this moment, “The wooden plow you wanted to make yesterday, when should we go make it?”
Xiong Yue blinked, full of curiosity: “What wooden plow?”
Lu Xuan explained with a smile: “It’s a tool for loosening the soil.”
Then he said to Tian Xuan, “Let’s go after breakfast.”
Because of last night’s unexpected incident, everyone had woken up late this morning. They were still cleaning up the things damaged in the fight.
Tian Xuan said, “Let’s go make it first.”
Xiong Yue also agreed: “Right, right, right. You two go make it first. I’ll make breakfast and call you when it’s ready.”
He knew that whatever Lu Xuan wanted to make would surely be something greatly beneficial to them. The broken cages and clotheslines didn’t need so many people to clean up. What Lu Xuan was making was more important.
So Lu Xuan and Tian Xuan went to the foundation site of the new house to make the plow.
“Everything else is fine, but this plow beam has a curve. Can you make it?” Lu Xuan pointed at the plow beam with a small stick and asked.
Tian Xuan looked at the diagram, thought for a moment, and said, “I’ll give it a try.”
Considering that beastmen were generally close to two meters tall, the overall wooden plow needed to be made larger and longer. After Lu Xuan selected the lengths, Tian Xuan partially shifted his bear claws, first cutting the tree trunk, then shaving it down to the appropriate width, and finally smoothing it with a short stone flake.
After breaking three plow beams, Tian Xuan got a feel for it and succeeded on the fourth try.
The plow bottom, plow standard, and plowshare were much easier to make. The plowshare came in two shapes: pointed and round. The round type was for dry land, and the pointed type was for paddy fields.
Since there were no paddy fields for now, they made a round plowshare.
After all the parts were made, they drilled holes in the designated positions and hammered them together for assembly.
“Let’s carry it over there and try it out.” Lu Xuan grabbed the tail of the plow handle with both hands. He couldn’t wait to test it in the future vegetable garden.
Tian Xuan simply picked it up with one hand and carried it.
Well, beastmen were naturally strong. Lu Xuan followed behind with a smile.
“Place it flat on the ground. You hold the plow handle and push it forward. I’ll watch the depth of the soil.”
Tian Xuan followed Lu Xuan’s instructions and slowly walked forward. When the soil was turned over, and even some deeply rooted grass roots were flipped out, he was genuinely amazed by this thing called a wooden plow.
He asked, “Do we have to turn the soil before planting?”
Every large tribe planted some things to eat. The more careful ones would pull out the weeds, pick out the larger clods of dirt and stones, and then scatter seeds in the ground or plant seedlings brought back from the wild.
The lazier ones would just scatter seeds casually on the ground, letting the growth depend entirely on nature.
Lu Xuan nodded: “Yes. It loosens the soil and improves aeration. Turning the lower soil up to the sun can remove things and bugs that are harmful to seeds and seedlings. It also improves the germination rate of seeds. But you can’t go too deep, if it’s too deep, the seeds won’t be able to break through the soil.”
“I didn’t know there were so many details to planting.” Xiong Yue’s voice sounded. Lu Xuan said in surprise, “When did you get here?”
Xiong Yue laughed: “I came to call you for breakfast. I wanted to call you a long time ago, but seeing how absorbed you two were in making that soil-turning tool, Xiong Yuan told us to wait a bit longer. Now you’re turning the soil again, aren’t you hungry?”
Mentioning it, Lu Xuan realized his stomach was empty. He touched his belly and said sheepishly, “I really am hungry.”
A glint of amusement flashed in Tian Xuan’s eyes: “Let’s go eat.”
Given the position of the sun, today’s breakfast was almost becoming lunch. Lu Xuan held his bowl of meat soup and found it hard to ignore the burning gazes on his back.
After a silent sigh, he asked, “Should we feed those two fox beastmen?”
After shaving their heads and washing their entire bodies, the two were now wrapped in animal hides only around their vital areas. Judging by the style of the hides, they were probably not their own.
Their ribs were clearly visible. As soon as Lu Xuan returned, he saw the two staring at the cooking area as if trying to shoot lasers at it.
Tian Xuan gave each of them a large bone and some potato and meat soup. Although the bones were large, they had almost no meat on them, and the soup was mostly potatoes.
The two fox beastmen immediately shifted into their beast forms, tilted their heads back to pour the soup into their mouths, and gnawed on the bones as if wanting to chew them completely and swallow them.
The sound of teeth grinding against bones, creak, creak, made Lu Xuan subconsciously touch his own cheeks. His teeth ached.
After the meal, Xiong Qi and Xiong Yan took the two fox beastmen to the foot of the mountain to transport the mud bricks and processed timber.
Xiong Yue was very interested in the wooden plow and clamored to turn the soil. After letting him try a few times, Lu Xuan let him continue doing it.
Xiong Xuan went hunting but didn’t go far. This time, he focused mainly on small animals to prepare for the salt trade in a few days.
Tian Xuan was pulling weeds. For stubborn roots, he would partially shift his bear claws and dig them out. Lu Xuan thought it was time to make a hoe.
Making a hoe out of stone and fitting it onto a wooden handle, he felt it would be difficult. Sigh. Why hadn’t he thought of it two days ago? When Xiong Yue and the others were using processed stone tools to dig weeds, he should have thought of it.
He squatted in front of Tian Xuan, tilted his head, and said, “I have an idea. Can you help me?”
The sub-beastman’s eyes held a hint of slyness. Perhaps because he was resting his head on his arm, there was actually a small dimple at the corner of his mouth.
Tian Xuan’s fingers itched slightly. He wanted to poke it. He turned his face away, suppressing the sudden impulse.
He said in a low voice, “I can.”
Lu Xuan had expected Tian Xuan to agree. As soon as he finished speaking, he placed a stone and a wooden stick in front of him. While gesturing, he said: “The handle can be made a bit longer, so the bending angle is smaller. As for shaping the stone, I’m sure with your skill it’s no problem. The issue might be that the connection when assembling could be a bit weak. But that’s fine, we’re not in a hurry. We can try a few times.”
Tian Xuan thought for a moment and said, “We can tie the hoe head to the wooden stick. We just need to create a corner.”
Lu Xuan didn’t quite understand at first: “Tie it with rope? Wouldn’t that be unreliable? Friction would cause it to break quickly.”
Tian Xuan said, “Do you remember the puddle we came across on our way here? The water snake in it?”
The magnified version of an earthworm?
Lu Xuan nodded: “I remember. Its mucus is very sticky. You want to use its mucus?”
That probably wouldn’t work either. Sticking animal hides together was very different from attaching a hoe head.
Tian Xuan: “No, it’s its sinew. Inside the skull of the water snake, there is a sinew, very short. Usually, no beastman would bother to extract it alone. I happened to discover that this sinew is very tough, even bones are not easy to cut through with it. Using that sinew to bind things is very suitable.”
Lu Xuan’s eyes lit up, and he clapped his hands: “This is doable!”
Once the stone hoe was made, weeding became much easier. After trying it out, Tian Xuan went on to make two more hoes, using up all the water snake’s sinew.
At that moment, Xiong Yuan came over carrying the two little bear cubs. After watching for a while, he said in surprise, “This tool is so convenient for digging out weeds. What’s it called?”
Lu Xuan smiled and said, “Hoe, or stone hoe, both work. It’s specifically for weeding.”
Xiong Yuan said gently, “You thought of this too, didn’t you? You’re really smart.”
Lu Xuan gave an embarrassed smile: “I didn’t think of it.”
He was just benefiting from the past life he had been given.
Just then, the mud bricks and timber arrived. Lu Xuan quickly found an excuse to slip away. If he kept talking, his face would turn red.