Many animals entered heat shortly after their young were weaned or lost. When a male lion took over a pride, the first thing he did was kill the previous lion king’s cubs, precisely so the lionesses would go into heat and bear his own bloodline.
Bai Shuo remembered that in his past life, at some pig farms, sows would give birth two to three times a year. In other words, if properly cared for, these few oink-beasts could probably give birth to another litter of small oink-beasts before the dry season arrived.
Even setting that aside, even if an oink-beast’s gestation period turned out to be longer than a pig’s, that was fine too. This year the tribe would be storing some plants to use as feed for the livestock, plus there’d be wheat bran left over once the wheat was ground into flour, and oil-cake left over from pressing oil-bearing plants, there’d be plenty for them to eat.
The only problem right now was that the male oink-beast caught two days ago had kept crashing into things, so instead of being kept in the enclosure, it had simply been killed outright, and now the tribe had no male oink-beast at all.
So the question was, could the hunting party catch another one today?
Perhaps sensing Bai Shuo’s prayers, the hunting party really did catch one.
As Bai Shuo had mentioned before, oink-beasts had larger litters than other prey, so whenever there was a choice, the hunting party would prioritize catching oink-beasts. On top of that, oink-beasts really were, aside from moo-beasts, the most reckless and headlong of all the prey. In the roughly ten days since they’d started this method of capture, they’d already caught several litters.
Today one hunting party spotted an oink-beast again, and was delighted at first, but once they’d caught and bound it, they realized it was male. A male meant no small oink-beasts, and the group was rather disappointed.
Before, when they caught prey, they hadn’t looked closely, as long as it was edible, that was enough. But things were different now. If they caught a female oink-beast, there was a good chance small oink-beasts would be nearby, but if they caught a male, that would clearly be the only one, and its meat wasn’t as good as other game besides.
Being unhappy with the catch, the hunting party members were in low spirits as they brought it back to the tribe, and were surprised to find Bai Shuo actually quite pleased at the sight of it.
Although they couldn’t understand why Bai Shuo was happy, everyone followed his instructions all the same and put the oink-beast into the enclosure.
But that oink-beast didn’t get to stay in there long, after just a day and a night, it started chasing the other oink-beasts around wildly. After observing how the other oink-beasts reacted, Bai Shuo had the hunting party pull it out and put it alone into another enclosure.
After they started raising oink-beasts, Bai Shuo had the tribe’s members dig pits whenever they had free time in the evenings, in preparation for raising other game as well. The newly dug enclosures varied in size, the large ones about a hundred square meters, the small ones only a dozen or so.
Different game required different methods of raising, for something with good jumping ability like the baa-beast, a net would be added on top.
The small separate enclosures were something Bai Shuo had prepared to guard against special situations like fighting among the animals, and this counted as a special situation now too, until the next oink-beast was caught, this one would live alone.
The number of animals in a single enclosure couldn’t be too large, partly out of concern they’d fight, and partly because with too many crowded together, if one got sick, it could spread to the others. So besides dividing them into separate pens, Bai Shuo also had the Feather Clan clean the enclosures regularly.
Each cleaning involved several Feather Clan members using sticks to drive the oink-beasts into a corner, then a few more going down to quickly sweep out the bottom before everyone came back up together.
After watching this process once, Bai Shuo thought it over for a long while, then began redesigning the enclosure layout.
The current pens were each separate, and the ground where they’d been dug sat somewhat higher than the surroundings, this stretch of low hills was quite large, more than enough to hold all the game they’d need to raise. Bai Shuo had considered drainage and other factors before choosing the site, and based on how things were developing, they clearly wouldn’t be relocating for a year or two, so it was worth planning things out properly.
Bai Shuo wanted to dig a somewhat smaller pit beside each enclosure, so that when it needed cleaning, the animals could be driven over to the smaller side, with a fence blocking the passage in between, once the dirty dry grass at the bottom had been cleared out, the passage could be opened again to let the animals back through.
This method would also work when they needed to catch an animal, driving the one they wanted into the small pit was safer than grabbing one out of a large crowd.
There were also the composting pits, he wanted to dig several more of those, since the game population would only keep growing, and having them in batches would make it more convenient when it came time to fertilize.
Bai Shuo turned over one consideration after another in his mind, designing according to the terrain, trying to make the most of elevation differences to reduce the workload. Things were manageable enough right now, but the main concern was the rainy season, when the rain would fall in an unbroken stream, sometimes not letting up for a day or two at a time. If drainage wasn’t handled properly, all these animals could drown right here, and Bai Shuo certainly wasn’t willing to let all his effort so far go to waste, so he took the matter seriously.
Fortunately, the tribe’s people trusted him a great deal by now, and even with so much extra work, no one complained.
Bai Shuo liked the life he had now. He wanted to make his life better and better, and the cooperation of his family and the tribe was an indispensable part of that, relying on the strength of just one person alone, none of these changes could ever have been accomplished.
Once the enclosure layout was planned, Bai Shuo used ground-up charcoal to mark out the design on the ground, so others could dig according to the boundaries he’d drawn.
At the same time, Bai Shuo began upgrading the mother oink-beasts’ living quarters. Before, they’d been kept purely for eating, dig a pit, wall it with stone, smooth it over with mud, and put the oink-beast in. But now these were meant to bear young, so their quarters naturally needed some renovation.
The first issue was shelter from rain. It rained every few days now, not heavily, but staying out in it too long would leave you soaked. Adult game had strong enough resistance that Bai Shuo hadn’t bothered with it, only preparing shelters for the small cluck-birds and small oink-beasts, but now the mother oink-beasts needed one too.
Bai Shuo had the gathering party cut bamboo, and once brought back, the bamboo was arranged in a grid pattern, the intersections bound tightly with rope, then laid over the enclosure to cover it, with large tree leaves added on top. The frame tilted slightly outward, so that when it rained, the water would flow along the leaves down into bamboo drainage pipes set to the side. A leaf canopy was easy to make and the materials easy to come by, but it had a drawback too, the leaves needed replacing periodically, to keep them from withering and warping and letting the roof leak.
The rain shelter wasn’t just for keeping off rain, during the day when the sun came out, it also provided shade. The oink-beasts adapted well to the environment here, and these creatures that took whatever came their way soon began enjoying a life where they no longer had to search everywhere for food.
The small oink-beasts adapted well too, though compared to the small cluck-birds, they were stronger, even without meaning to escape, their play alone had broken quite a few fences. Watching how well the rain shelter was working, Bai Shuo decided to wait another month before moving the small oink-beasts over to the enclosure area as well.
The small cluck-birds could be moved over too. Down at the foot of the mountain, Feather Clan members frequently passed by the fence, and at first the small cluck-birds would play dead or hide foolishly in corners, but over time, perhaps realizing these people weren’t going to hurt them, the small cluck-birds grew bolder, quite different from how they’d been raised up on the mountain.
And now, if new small cluck-birds were caught, after a couple of days down here their courage would grow too, perhaps because having more of their own kind gave them confidence, or perhaps small cluck-birds had their own unique way of passing along information.
While thinking about moving the small cluck-birds and small oink-beasts, Bai Shuo noticed the mound of earth not far off. This was the soil dug out from the enclosures, piled up here, they’d dug so much that it had nearly become a small hill.
With this much soil, plus the large quantity of firewood they’d been gathering lately, Bai Shuo felt they could start firing bricks.
Actually, firing bricks and firing pottery worked on similar principles, both relied on high heat. Now that they’d already succeeded at pottery, bricks would be even less difficult, it was just that pottery had been the more urgent need before, so brick-firing had been put off.
Bricks had many advantages, waterproof, heat-insulating, wear-resistant… perfectly suited for building stoves.
Before firing, they needed to make the brick molds first, similar to making clay molds, mix clay and sand together, add in some wood ash, then pack it into a form. A layer of wood ash was spread on the ground to prevent sticking, the brick molds turned out onto the ground, and left to dry naturally.
Aside from mixing the mud and making the molds, the chicks could handle the rest of the steps too, it wasn’t especially difficult.
The chicks were greatly looking forward to this business of playing with mud together. They’d already taken part when Bai Shuo shaped pottery clay before, and again when planting things, so hearing that Bai Shuo wanted to mix mud and play, they were waiting at the foot of the mountain first thing in the morning. Bai Shuo had told them, today they’d get to play the whole day!
Before, whenever the chicks got impatient, they’d run to the mouth of the cave to call out for people, but Bai Shuo worried it wasn’t safe for a dozen or so chicks to crowd together going up the mountain, if one accidentally fell, the others would suffer for it too. There was an open space at the mouth of the cave, but with so many gathered there, it wasn’t safe either, so he’d asked them to gather only at the foot of the mountain instead. The chicks stared up at the mountain expectantly, one after another, hoping Bai Shuo would appear before them soon.
After a while, amid the chicks’ anticipation, the two brothers Bai Shuo and Bai Su, along with Wu Yan, each carrying a basket, walked out of the cave where supplies were stored at the foot of the mountain.
Seeing the chicks all staring up the mountain, not even noticing they’d already come up behind them, Bai Shuo made a gesture and spoke up. “Let’s go!”
The chicks, who’d been expecting Bai Shuo to appear on the mountain, all turned their heads at once, their movements perfectly synchronized, thoroughly startled that he’d suddenly appeared behind them.
Bai Shuo: “…” How to put it, this was a shared flaw across the whole Feather Clan, too straightforward for their own good, going out into the world like this, they were bound to get taken advantage of.
Along the way, many of the chicks were curious what was in the three of their baskets, and one chick tagged along behind Bai Shuo. “Bai Shuo, what did you all bring?”
Bai Shuo turned to look and found it was the liveliest of the chicks, named Hua Duo, the youngest son of Chieftain Hua Yong, several years younger than his older siblings, a bit of a little tyrant at home, and something of a little tyrant among the chicks too, though he lost all sense of himself the moment good food appeared. He was practically vibrating with anticipation now, and Bai Shuo could guess right away that he wanted to know if there was food inside.
Bai Shuo kept him in suspense. “You’ll find out in a bit.”
This only made the chicks more curious.
Ever since they’d started raising livestock, there’d been more back-and-forth crossing of the river, with Feather Clan members coming over to work every evening. At first, everyone would shift into feather form and fly across, then shift back to human form on the other side, but this wasn’t friendly to the chicks at all, even the near-adult Feather Clan members, close to fourteen and already following the gathering party around in search of food, couldn’t manage to fly across in feather form, let alone the younger chicks.
So that the chicks could move freely between the two sides of the river, Bai Shuo had selected some longer bamboo poles while everyone was building the rain shelters, and bound them together with rope, building a small bridge at the narrowest point of the river. With so few types of raw material, the bamboo bridge’s load-bearing capacity was only middling, but it was more than enough for the chicks to walk across.
Even so, Bai Shuo remained quite cautious when crossing the bridge, not letting the whole group go up at once, but dividing them into three groups to cross one at a time.
Once across the river, at the spot where the adult Feather Clan had mixed mud the day before, Bai Shuo had the chicks line up in three rows, then opened the lid on top of the baskets.
Inside was neatly cut bark from the thousand-layer tree.
The thousand-layer tree was something Bai Shuo had discovered within their territory not long before, true to its name, the bark had many, many layers and was very thin, and could be used as paper. Its branches and leaves, once distilled, yielded tea tree oil, a natural disinfectant. Bai Shuo hadn’t tried extracting the tea tree oil yet, but had already made use of the bark. Each piece in the basket had a mark he’d made on it, and he’d covered them just now for fear of the wind blowing them away.
The chicks, who’d looked so eager just a moment ago, were bitterly disappointed to see Bai Shuo pulling out what looked like completely useless bark.
“Once you make a brick mold, come get a card from me,” Bai Shuo said, pointing at the basket in front of him. “If you do it well, you’ll get two, and if it’s not done well, you’ll only get one. Ten cards can be traded for a snack, snacks include meat slices, dried fish, dried fruit…”
At this, the chicks’ eyes lit up at once, everything Bai Shuo mentioned, they’d all tried before, and every bit of it tasted wonderful!
Seeing that the chicks had understood, Bai Shuo nodded. “Good, now go learn how to make brick molds from Wu Yan.”
Bai Shuo had actually planned to teach them himself at first, but quickly realized a problem, he was too weak. The molds the Feather Clan used were bigger than the bricks he’d seen in his past life, and once filled they weighed roughly a dozen or so jin. He could lift them all right, but flipping them over cleanly to release the brick without damage was a struggle. Meanwhile, the other chicks could carry a dozen or so jin without any trouble at all, so teaching the chicks got handed off to Wu Yan, while he and Bai Su watched to see where the chicks were going wrong and gave guidance.
Beside where they were making the brick molds, quite a few had already piled up, these were what the tribe’s adult Feather Clan members had made the day before, tribal property, whereas the brick molds the chicks made were meant for Bai Shuo’s own use.
After making three or four alongside Wu Yan, the chicks gradually got the hang of it, and watching the brick molds the chicks turned out, Bai Shuo nodded in satisfaction. Doing one kind of work for too long got tiresome, and switching between tasks often made a real difference, the chicks were happier for it too. Since the brick molds were somewhat heavier, Bai Shuo no longer split up the reward the way he had before, and instead chose to pay by the piece.
Bai Shuo had always felt this method was more fair, chicks who did more work got more snacks, it was just that before, it had been hard to calculate everyone’s individual output. Now that there were more tools, it was worth putting this on the agenda. When people worked collectively, some inevitably slacked off, and one person slacking would spread to the next. Left unchecked, the longer this went on, the lower the efficiency would get, but if all work could be exchanged for snacks, things would be different.
Once the chicks had gotten the hang of things, Bai Su stayed behind to keep an eye on them, while he and Wu Yan pulled up the fish baskets set down two days before, though most of the time it was Wu Yan doing the hauling, with Bai Su acting as his assistant.
Bai Shuo had already come to fully appreciate the gap between himself and the other chicks, so wherever he went, he brought along one or two helpers, sometimes Bai Su and Bai Le, sometimes Wu Yan and Caihong. Bai Le was, after all, several years younger than the rest of them, so Bai Shuo generally didn’t bring him to places like the riverside, bringing along Wu Yan, who was both strong and good at gutting fish, was the most convenient.
Wu Yan moved quickly, hauling the fish baskets one by one to the shore, tipping out a few fish before starting to process them.
Bai Shuo poured out the rest, still mostly fish and crabs, with the occasional river shrimp.
Fish had already become one of Bai Shuo’s staple foods, prepared in ways including but not limited to deep-frying, pan-frying, and stewing, and so far the chicks loved every version.
It could even be said that aside from food cooked directly over open flame, there was hardly anything the chicks didn’t like. After feeding the chicks for so long now, Bai Shuo had noticed, every one of them was about the same as Bai Le, with an enormous appetite, and no matter how many snacks they got, it never got in the way of their regular meals.
But with the chicks eating so much, the changes were quite obvious too, lately, quite a few Feather Clan members in the tribe had remarked that the chicks seemed to be getting a bit plumper.
Chicks in growth season were naturally a bit plumper than in snow season anyway, and this year, with Bai Shuo having fired pottery and improved the tribe’s cooking methods so that food could be put to full use without waste, plus a set extra meal added every day, the change was even more noticeable.
Actually, in Bai Shuo’s eyes, the chicks still weren’t healthy enough, probably because in his past life he himself had gone hungry too many times as a child, Bai Shuo was especially afraid of food shortages, afraid of the feeling of hunger, and whenever he saw the chicks, he couldn’t help wanting to feed them even better.
No wonder they said blood siblings were alike, what Bai Shuo didn’t realize was that the expression on his face when feeding the chicks was almost identical to the one Bai Su and Bai Le wore when feeding him, and there was no telling whether his own feelings had influenced Bai Su and Bai Le, or the other way around.
Wu Yan gutted fish at remarkable speed, aside from the larger fish, he handled the small ones himself too, refusing to let Bai Shuo lend a hand at all. Once the fish were cleaned, he pulled soap out of the small basket hanging from the backpack-basket and started washing his hands.
The soap Bai Shuo had made had turned out a success, only because there wasn’t much oil to spare, the soap produced wasn’t enough for everyone to get a piece, so it had to go first to whoever needed it most, someone like Wu Yan, who gutted fish often, or the hunting party captains responsible for delivering the killing blow to game.
The soap cut through grease well, and unlike wood ash, wasn’t nearly as alkaline, it won over anyone who used it the moment it came out. Bai Shuo had recently asked the gathering party to help look for soapberry trees or other cleansing plants, but so far hadn’t found any. Ever since Bai Shuo started asking for odd, unfamiliar plants, the gathering party had been setting out earlier and earlier each day, even checking places they’d never gone before, including spots the hunting party had already been through.
By the time Bai Shuo and Wu Yan brought the fish back, Bai Le was already up, sitting at the foot of the mountain helping wind hemp rope onto shuttles, another one of the chicks’ regular jobs. Once the elders finished twisting the hemp rope, they’d wind a length onto the shuttles used for weaving fishing nets, and leave the rest for the chicks to help with while they went to twist more.
Oink-beasts were strong, and the large nets needed mending every so often. Hua Yong had also asked them to thicken the hemp rope to make sturdier nets for catching oink-beasts, so the elders weaving fishing nets lately had been especially busy.
Every single person in the tribe was busy these days, even the few sub-adult Feather Clan members who used to rest often had grown noticeably more diligent lately. Bai Shuo lit the fire and watched the branches burning steadily, and couldn’t help but sigh.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the only idle one left in the whole tribe now.
“What are you thinking about?” Wu Yan set down his backpack-basket and helped carry over some firewood, everyone knew Bai Shuo was weak, so people always prepared any work requiring strength ahead of time, leaving it within Bai Shuo’s easy reach. Having just carried some over, he heard Bai Shuo’s sigh, and assuming something had happened, hurried to ask.
“I feel like I’ve got too little to do,” Bai Shuo said honestly. “Everyone’s working, and I’m the only one just sitting here idle, not doing anything.” The plants he’d discovered recently had all been planted already, the ones planted before weren’t ready to harvest yet, and there were no new plants that needed planting, and making brick molds wasn’t work he could take part in either. Bai Shuo sighed again, he’d been busy nonstop for a while, and now that there was suddenly nothing to do, he wasn’t at all used to it.
Wu Yan glanced at the fish in the basket, then at the clay jar used for cooking beside it, and finally turned his gaze toward the cluck-birds and oink-beasts on the other side, genuinely unable to understand how Bai Shuo could think this way. Even though he hadn’t been in the tribe long himself, Wu Yan knew perfectly well that every change in the tribe had come from Bai Shuo, how was this supposed to count as doing nothing?
Wu Yan opened his mouth, then closed it, at a loss for what to say.
Before he could speak, Bai Shuo suddenly remembered something that needed doing right now, upgrading the pottery kiln.
Before, for convenience, they’d built the simplest, most basic kind of kiln, an updraft kiln, simple to build and relatively easy to fire, but it had a drawback too: the flames rose straight up, and heat was lost too quickly. Now that the tribe had fired quite a lot of pottery already and accumulated plenty of experience, it seemed like a good time to upgrade the kiln and increase output.
The pottery made so far was mainly for cooking, aside from his own family, other households only had a piece or two of pottery at most. If output could be increased, they could fire a batch of storage jars, ready by the time the first planted crops began to ripen.
Before, most food couldn’t be stored through to the snow season, because in between there was a relatively humid, high-temperature rainy season to get through. Storing food in clay jars would, to some extent, seal it off from the outside air, and since the jars sealed tightly, they’d help ward off insects too.
Thinking this over, Bai Shuo began recalling material he’d read before, there were several kinds of kilns: updraft kilns, downdraft kilns, semi-downdraft kilns, dragon kilns… many varieties, and among them, the one with the highest output seemed to be the dragon kiln?
Of course, he probably couldn’t build a dragon kiln a dozen meters long in one go, but he could make a smaller version, the main point was to fire more pottery at once, saving on fuel.
As for fuel, it also seemed possible to fire a large batch of charcoal, compared to plain wood, charcoal provided more heat, and they could also build a bellows.
Bai Shuo mentally listed off everything the kiln needed for its overhaul, and noticed that many of the improvements would also apply to the brick kiln, the bellows, for one.
The bellows’ purpose was to speed up airflow, provide oxygen, and raise the burning temperature. It could be made from branches and relatively thin wood boards or leaves, the raw materials were right there nearby, just needing some processing.
Bai Shuo picked out a branch to serve as the axle and had Wu Yan help sharpen the bottom into a point, then split the top evenly into three cuts, wedging in thinner branches to serve as spokes, giving the bellows blades their support. Then he needed material for the blades themselves, tree leaves were everywhere, and there were plenty that were both airtight and large. Bai Shuo picked out a few, folded them, and wedged them onto the spokes, securing the leaves in place with fish bones to keep them from coming apart.
This bellows was only part of the assembly, but it could already stir up wind. Bai Shuo braced the axle against the ground and spun it back and forth, and with each of his motions, the fire beneath the clay pot grew steadily larger.
It worked. All that was left was making an outer shell for the bellows out of mud. Bai Shuo simply used what was on hand, mixing water into some botched clay pieces, shaping them into an outer casing, a lid, a vent, and an axle housing, then baked them dry and assembled everything for a test, air pumped through the bellows and into the stove below, and the flame shot up all at once.
Effective, but not quite perfect, the kiln’s bellows obviously couldn’t be turned back and forth by hand. Better to make a bow, with the bowstring wrapped around the axle, though the bow alone wasn’t enough, a frame to hold the axle steady was needed too, to make sure it wouldn’t shift out of place while being pulled.
Bai Shuo mulled over how to refine the design, entirely unaware of the change coming over Wu Yan’s expression beside him.
Wu Yan’s eyes were full of bewilderment, how could there possibly be someone who wanted to make everything and actually managed to make it?