Plenty of wild plants could disinfect and relieve itching, Bai Shuo picked out a few of the most abundant kinds, crushed them, and boiled them in water. For boiling, he used the pottery he’d fired himself a couple of days earlier, heating water this way went much faster than with the stone pot, only it was a bit small, still not as big as their family’s wooden bowl, and could only hold a bit more than half a bowl of water at a time.
He used the boiled water to wash his arms and legs thoroughly. In fact, extracting the active compounds with something like alcohol or olive oil would have worked better, but current conditions simply didn’t allow for that, no alcohol, no olive oil, only moo-beast fat, and even that was nearly used up.
Once he’d washed with the mixture, his whole body carried a faint mint-like scent, and Bai Shuo moved on to preparing mosquito coils.
He peeled the softer inner layer of elm bark, dried it over the fire, and planned to grind it into powder, except the grinding step ran into trouble. The plants he’d used earlier had all been leaves, which turned brittle once dried and could be crushed with a bit of pressure on a stone. Elm bark, though, was much tougher, and even after drying it wouldn’t grind easily, he worked at it for a good while and still ended up with nothing but chunks, there was simply too much fiber in it.
But without elm bark powder to act as a binder, the mosquito coil would be very difficult to hold together. Bai Shuo thought it over and went to find Bai Liang, who was off today.
If the weather cooperated, the hunting and gathering parties would head out every single day, though not every member went along each time, some Feather Clan took a rest every few days. Anyone resting for the day could only claim fruit and leaf-greens in the food distribution, with no rights to any of the hunted meat.
Bai Liang had only just come of age this year, younger than most of the hunting party, so he took a day off every few days. Most of the time on his off days he simply slept in his cave, right about now, he should just be heading down the mountain.
Sure enough, Bai Shuo hadn’t even made it all the way to Bai Liang’s cave before spotting him already on his way out.
“Uncle Bai Liang, could you find me some stones?” Bai Shuo asked.
Bai Liang gave a yawn. “What kind of stones?”
“Any shape is fine, as long as it’s big,” Bai Shuo said, holding up his hands to sketch out a circle bigger than his own face. “It has to be really big, and it needs a hollow in the middle, about the same size as the stone pot, but thicker than the pot.” He was planning to make a mortar, since there were plenty of things that needed crushing, and once built, it would serve him well for a long time to come.
Seeing the size Bai Shuo had gestured, Bai Liang laughed. “Why do you need a stone that big? Aren’t you worried it’ll crush you? You’re such a little thing, if it hurt you, I wouldn’t stand a chance against your father.” Just picturing the scene made Bai Liang shiver.
Bai Shuo: “……” So being tall made it fine to mock a kid now?
Fine, it was fine, right now it was still only midday, and neither the hunting party nor the gathering party had come back yet, if he wanted to get his hands on a big stone quickly, Bai Liang was the only one who could help.
Bai Shuo walked up behind him and gave him a shove down the mountain, urging him on. “Go find one quickly, a big one!” The mosquito coil would still need to dry out before it could be used, and Bai Shuo didn’t want to waste an extra day on it.
“All right, all right, I’m going, oh, and I want some pan-fried meat. The meat’s in the cave, go grab some yourself.”
“Got it, got it.” Bai Shuo agreed and headed into Bai Liang’s cave to fetch the meat.
Every household in the tribe had its own cave, just varying in size, some lived together as families, others in shared communal caves. Bai Liang, having just come of age, had a fairly small cave, though plenty for one person, the food hung at the cave entrance where the air circulated. Bai Shuo grabbed a piece, along with a bit of salt and a few Redtop fruits.
Processing for others usually cost a piece of meat as the fee, but between friends helping each other out like this, he’d just supply the raw materials and Bai Shuo would help him process it for free.
It probably took some searching to find a stone both big and hollowed out just right, since Bai Shuo had nearly finished cooking by the time Bai Liang finally made it back, hauling a stone slightly smaller than the pot, and sure enough, there was a hollow right in the middle.
“Satisfied?” Bai Liang said proudly. “Took me forever to find this one.”
Cailin happened to be passing by and, spotting it, made a sound of surprise. “Bai Liang, that kind won’t work as a stone pot, it’s too thick, you can’t cook food in it.”
“It’s not for a pot,” Bai Shuo explained, “it’s for crushing things.” With that, he had Bai Liang bury the stone into the ground and started making the wooden pole, another job that needed strength, which meant Bai Liang again.
Curious what Bai Shuo was up to, Cailin didn’t rush off either, and stayed to help.
Bai Shuo handed off the job of boring a hole into a thick branch to the two of them, the tools were still fairly crude, but with the Feather Clan’s strength behind them, the end result still worked out fine.
By the time the chicks got back, Bai Shuo’s mortar was basically finished, with only the supporting frame above the foot pedal still needed. Using the principle of leverage, you’d press down on one end with your foot, and the wood on the mortar side would rise up, release your foot, and gravity would bring the wood crashing back down, crushing whatever sat inside the mortar.
Unsurprisingly, this quickly became another one of the chicks’ favorite play spots, the swinging pole could deliver a nasty knock if you weren’t careful, so the youngest chicks were only allowed to watch, not touch, and they eyed it enviously the whole time.
Operating the mortar took real effort, but with so many chicks around, by the time the elm bark had been fully crushed, they still hadn’t had their fill of it.
Bai Shuo simply added more material and let the chicks keep playing while he went off to make the mosquito coils.
He mixed elm bark powder, charcoal dust, mugwort, and mint together with water, shaped the mixture into long coils, wound each one up, and set them on a woven grass mat, then set some near the fire to bake dry. Once dried, he lit one, one coil stayed placed outside, one went inside the cave. He gave one coil each to Bai Liang and Cailin as well, and since there were so many chicks, he split half a coil among all of them, telling everyone to light it now, and put it out before going to sleep that night.
The mosquito coils gave off a faint fragrance of mugwort and mint, and the area around them did feel noticeably quieter, the buzzing of mosquitoes had vanished. Bai Shuo counted up how much elm bark powder the chicks had produced that day and figured he could make even more tomorrow, except that would use up all the mugwort and mint on hand, both of which had medicinal uses, Bai Shuo had already planted some cuttings down by the base of the mountain, but none had grown large enough to harvest yet.
Bai Shuo had no choice but to turn to Bai Yun for help: “Mama, could you gather more mugwort and mint tomorrow?”
Bai Yun nodded, the number of plants Bai Shuo had judged useful was simply too great, the gathering party couldn’t possibly bring back every single one they came across, so for now they focused on whatever Bai Shuo emphasized most. Mugwort and mint both grew in patches, so tomorrow they’d swing by wherever those two happened to grow.
By the next morning, no small number of people had confirmed just how effective Bai Shuo’s mosquito coils really were. The Feather Clan had thick skin and tough flesh, but that didn’t mean they were entirely immune to bites, chicks especially, whose skin was more tender than an adult’s, and far more vulnerable to mosquitoes.
Chicks reverted to feather form at night, but that didn’t stop the mosquitoes at all. Mosquitoes had a habit of targeting spots not covered by feathers, like around the eyes, chicks bitten there would wake up the next morning with swollen eyes, aching and itchy, and unable to scratch besides, since scratching only made the pain worse, and sometimes even broke the skin.
With the weather warming lately, plenty of people had felt the mosquitoes’ rampant presence firsthand, and no shortage of chicks had shown up with puffy, swollen eyes, treated afterward by Bai Shuo with herbal remedies, but yesterday, every chick had slept soundly through the night, no mosquitoes, no bugs, and woken up to find the whole cave still carrying a faint scent of mugwort.
Having already planned to scale up production, and finding the results this effective, Bai Shuo expanded on his original plan even further, deciding to increase the planting of mint, mugwort, and similar plants as well, it wasn’t just about mosquitoes now, either, the rainy season would bring even more of them, and there was no such thing as growing too much, even if their own tribe couldn’t use it all, they could always trade the surplus for other supplies.
For safety, Bai Shuo also shaped a special clay piece, something like a modern-day incense burner, a small pottery jar with a lid, the lid punched through with a scattering of holes. This kind didn’t need glazing, so it could be stacked together and fired in bulk, and even the previously cracked jars could be repurposed this way with a bit of reworking. You’d light the mosquito coil and place it inside, so there was no risk of accidentally bumping or stepping on it. In fact, an unglazed clay piece, simply air-dried, would work just fine too, both versions offered fire and wind protection, the only thing to watch for was keeping them away from water.
Bai Shuo also crushed several kinds of anti-mosquito plants into a paste and rolled them into balls, placing them inside palm-sized grass pouches for the chicks to carry around, the mosquito coils kept the mosquitoes out of the caves, while the carry-along ones were meant to protect them from bites while out in the woods.
The chicks had theirs now, and so the adult Feather Clan needed theirs too, except adult Feather Clan went to far more places, so besides handing out mosquito pouches, Bai Shuo also worked the mosquito-repelling plants right into the backpack-baskets themselves. He’d originally woven grass hats too, but wearing one felt stuffy, and plenty of people didn’t want to bother with it, to most Feather Clan, sun exposure barely registered as a concern, they’d long since grown used to it after all these years.
Fortunately, going without hats didn’t cause much trouble either, plenty of Feather Clan noticed that ever since they’d started using the mosquito pouches, they were rarely bitten anymore. Not entirely gone, but at least cut down by more than half.
Bai Shuo next turned his attention to making a topical remedy for the bites. Right now, what he had was a paste-like medicine kept in a bamboo tube, whenever someone got bitten, they’d scoop out a bit and rub it on the affected spot, and after a while, the pain and itching would ease up.
The trouble was, this kind of balm rubbed off easily, especially on joints like the arm that moved a lot, plenty of times it would get wiped away the moment it was applied.
After some thought, Bai Shuo decided to press some plant oil first.
The tribe’s territory had a few camellia oil trees, the seeds would ripen in a couple more months, and what he was seeing now were leftovers from last year that hadn’t fallen, not many left, fewer still once he discarded the moldy ones. He’d originally planned to wait until this year’s harvest to press oil all at once, but figured he might as well try it early now, as a trial run.
He cracked open the camellia seed husks, took out the kernels, crushed them in the mortar, steamed them in the stone pot, and once steamed, packed them into a grass basket, having Bai Xun and Bai Yun help press it between two stone slabs.
The pressed oil still carried some impurities, Bai Shuo made a simple funnel out of leaves to filter them out, ending up with relatively clean camellia oil.
He crushed mint, mugwort, and honeysuckle together, poured in the camellia oil, mixed it all up, let it sit for two days, then set it in a pottery jar to steam over water. Once steamed, he pressed the mixture to extract the liquid, and there it was: cooling oil. Adding beeswax would have let it solidify into a proper cooling balm, but sadly, he hadn’t come across any beehives yet.
Cooling oil, being liquid, wasn’t easy to carry around, Bai Shuo soaked clean cotton fiber in it until fully saturated, then stored it in small bamboo tubes with a stopper. Whenever someone got bitten, they could take it out and dab it on, much more convenient than before, and reusable multiple times too. Every Feather Clan member in the tribe got a small piece of the soaked cotton, the rest, Bai Shuo sealed up and kept in the cave, so anyone who ran out could come get more.
Over the course of a few days, the whole tribe received mosquito coils, mosquito pouches, medicinal balm, and cooling oil from Bai Shuo. From that day on, the gathering party made sure never to pass up any plant Bai Shuo needed, they filled their backpack-baskets and carrying-baskets to the brim every single day. The number of hunting-party members out looking for little cluck-birds grew too, whenever they found one, they’d bring it straight back and hand it over to Bai Shuo.
Before long, the things Bai Shuo received just kept piling up, on top of everything he’d already stockpiled before, the cave was already half-full.
The gathering season had only just passed the two-month mark, and looking at the cave now filled halfway with supplies, Bai Shuo felt he needed to ask the chieftain for another cave, otherwise, once it filled up completely, the whole family would have nowhere left to live.