Limited by tools and strength, the bellows Bai Shuo made turned out fairly crude, but it had already taken basic shape. That evening, he took the bellows to have the Feather Clan members who shaped pottery clay copy it, and quickly got a few larger clay molds, once dried and fired, these could be used on both the pottery kiln and the brick kiln.
Only the material for the blades still needed improving, leaves were only suited for short-term use, and he needed to find something more durable. Bai Shuo first thought of wood or bamboo slivers, but only very sharp tools could split bamboo and wood into thin sheets.
The stone and bone knives the Feather Clan used were mostly rather crude, only the few knives used for cutting meat were somewhat sharper. Bai Shuo went to find the tribe’s elders and told them he wanted a small knife even sharper than the meat-cutting ones, and that it would need extra time to sharpen.
Hearing that he wanted a sharp knife, the elders hesitated a little, the knives the chicks normally used were kept fairly dull, partly because they didn’t want to spend too long sharpening them, and partly out of fear the chicks might cut themselves. Actually, at first no one had dared let the chicks carry something as dangerous as a knife at all, it was only recently, with the chicks taking on more work, that for the sake of efficiency they’d allowed some of the older chicks to use knives.
But the stone knives used day-to-day were nothing like the ones used for cutting meat, the latter had been sharpened many times over, to ensure they were fast enough for butchering, otherwise, with a whole animal to portion out, if it wasn’t finished in one night, it would go bad by the next day.
Bai Shuo saw the elders’ concern and explained. “The knife isn’t for me to use. It’s for my father, I need him to help me make something.”
Hearing this, the elders let out a breath of relief, as long as it wasn’t the chick himself carrying and using it, that was fine.
The elders already had knives made previously, only they were too large, what Bai Shuo needed was a smaller size. Two of the elders sorted through a pile of bones and stone flakes for quite a while before finding the material Bai Shuo needed.
They shaped the raw material by breaking or smashing it into the right size, then began grinding it down.
Sharpening tools took a great deal of patience, only the elderly in the tribe had that kind of patience, sitting for an entire day, grinding the material back and forth with stone until it grew fine and long.
Two days later, Bai Shuo got the finished product, a bit wider than he’d expected. He picked out the narrowest one from the batch, found a finer-grained stone, and gave it a few passes whenever he had a spare moment.
Others noticed and grew curious, but Bai Shuo never said what he was up to, only telling Bai Xun to hurry up and split the wood slivers he needed.
Bai Xun scratched his head, he’d already failed at this task several times, every time he applied force, the wood would simply snap. There were plenty of thick and thin, long and short scraps of wood lying around nearby, but hardly any met Bai Shuo’s requirements.
Wu Yan had been off to the side shaping the axle housing Bai Shuo needed, a job that required Bai Shuo to check in on it periodically, so he’d taken it up himself. Having just finished one batch and set it aside to dry, he heard the commotion and picked up a knife to try it himself.
Having helped Bai Shuo often lately, and having used a knife frequently while gutting fish, Wu Yan was far more careful than Bai Xun. With a light downward push, then a slight shift of the blade, a thin, evenly cut sliver of wood peeled cleanly off the log.
Hearing the sound, Bai Shuo immediately abandoned his father, who kept failing over and over, and went to ask Wu Yan for help instead.
Wu Yan nodded and kept splitting off the next piece.
Bai Shuo picked up a bamboo sliver and tried it out, it really was better than using leaves directly. He decided then and there that from now on, wood slivers would replace leaves for this purpose.
Even with Wu Yan’s help, though, Bai Shuo didn’t let Bai Xun off the hook either, he had Bai Xun practice cutting meat with a small knife more often, insisting it be sliced thin without touching the stone slab underneath.
So while their family used to make a steady thumping noise before meals, things had gone quiet instead, and the other Feather Clan members nearby, not understanding why, unconsciously softened their own movements too. Within just a few days, the whole tribe had grown noticeably quieter when cutting things.
Bai Shuo had no idea what was going on until the day Hua Duo got scolded by his father for cutting meat too loudly and came to ask Bai Shuo why they couldn’t make noise. Only then did Bai Shuo learn this had spread, he immediately explained that this wasn’t something to be copying.
Hearing Bai Shuo’s words, the tribe’s adult Feather Clan and chicks alike let out a breath of relief at the same time, asking a race born with such strength to make no noise at all, how was that any different from asking someone to walk on tiptoe? Bai Shuo actually knew perfectly well that practicing this kind of light-handedness was genuinely difficult for his fierce, battle-hardened father, but it wasn’t something he could easily ask an unfamiliar Feather Clan member to do either, his father would just have to bear with it.
Once Bai Xun’s technique had gotten reasonably good, Bai Xun moved on to the next step. When the tribe portioned out game that evening, he asked for a piece with the skin still on, and had Bai Xun practice cutting a fixed-size opening in the hide.
Bai Xun uncomplainingly did whatever his chick asked, still behaving as usual back at the tribe, only the other Feather Clan in his hunting party noticed the change. Bai Xun had grown increasingly ferocious while catching prey lately, like a warrior who hadn’t hunted in days suddenly laying eyes on game.
After four or five days of Bai Xun practicing, Bai Shuo stopped looking for new implements and simply tied up a small oink-beast.
“Are we eating a small oink-beast today?” Bai Xun’s mood brightened at once, and he decided, unilaterally, to forgive his chick’s earlier behavior, small oink-beast tasted so much better than the big ones, and it seemed his chick had thought of him after all.
Bai Shuo, utterly unaware that his father had ever been upset in the first place: “…” If it wasn’t wanting small cluck-birds, it was wanting small oink-beasts, clearly the Feather Clan had nothing on their minds besides food.
But this particular small oink-beast really wasn’t meant to be eaten. Under his father’s expectant gaze, Bai Shuo shook his head and began explaining to his father what castration meant.
Bai Xun was stunned, unable to believe his ears, and asked again. “Shuo, what did you just say you wanted to cut?” Surely he’d misheard, surely!
Bai Shuo pretended not to hear and continued. “Once it’s done, the oink-beast’s meat will taste much better, it won’t have that off smell like the male oink-beasts do.”
Hearing this, Bai Xun immediately picked up the small oink-beast in one hand and reached for a knife with the other. “Tell me again how to cut it.”
Bai Shuo quickly stopped him and went to fetch the tools he’d already prepared.
The hunting party preferred catching female oink-beasts, partly for the chance of small oink-beasts, and partly because male oink-beast meat wasn’t very tasty. Really, after eating so much unrefined, minimally seasoned meat over the years, everyone’s tolerance for gamey flavors had grown quite high, they’d simply gotten used to it, but being used to something didn’t mean they liked it. Given a better option, people still preferred meat that tasted good. Among oink-beasts, popularity ran small oink-beast greater than mother oink-beast greater than father oink-beast.
A couple of days earlier, Bai Shuo had tried father oink-beast meat too, and that smell absolutely wasn’t something a bit of chopped scallion could mask. Even pan-fried, the taste still wasn’t great, and so, from the moment they’d started raising oink-beasts, he’d been thinking about the question of castration, this was simply the first attempt.
With no iodine, no anesthesia, and certainly no scalpel, everything had to rely on themselves. Bai Shuo fed the small oink-beast a bit of herb that would make it drowsy, then prepared wood ash and the sharper small knife, and now all that was left was to wait for his father, who’d been practicing his knife technique for days, to begin.
This small knife was the smallest one Bai Shuo had picked out from the tribe’s elders, and he’d sharpened it further over the past few days, it was much sharper than what everyone else used, and by now it had already been boiled in hot water and was ready to use directly.
Bai Xun’s hand moved swiftly, and in the blink of an eye had opened a cut on the small oink-beast, then followed Bai Shuo’s instructions from there. Once finished, Bai Shuo quickly sprinkled wood ash over the wound and had Bai Xun put the small oink-beast into a separate pen.
For this first trial, Bai Shuo fed the herb to three small oink-beasts in total. After finishing with one, the “scalpel” would be boiled again for about ten minutes before starting on the next. All the castrated ones were kept separately, to prevent them from bumping their wounds.
The next day, Bai Shuo observed them for the whole day and found all of them in fairly good condition, so he started selecting the next batch.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the hunting party members were curiously asking Bai Xun what he’d done with the small oink-beast the day before. After watching Bai Xun cut meat so carefully last time, they’d tried imitating him, and had wasted two days’ worth of effort as a result, they no longer dared to blindly copy him now, but were curious all the same.
Bai Xun: “Castrating the small oink-beast.” He then repeated what Bai Shuo had told him the night before.
Hearing the first half, the group edged a bit further away from him, but at the latter part, castrated ones taste better, and grow faster besides, the group quickly moved right back. “Do you need help again tonight?”
…
Unaware of everyone else’s shift in attitude, Bai Shuo fed the small oink-beasts some herbs with anti-inflammatory properties, then went to check on the drying progress of the brick molds.
He planned to fire bricks first, then use bricks and mud to build the new pottery kiln, if things moved fast enough, he could fire some to take along and trade for supplies before this year’s market gathering.
There were fewer than twenty days left until the market. They had to pick up the pace.
Two more days passed, and to Bai Shuo’s anticipation, the brick molds had finally dried through completely. That same day, Bai Shuo led the tribe’s members in building the new pottery kiln.
This time, the new kiln could hold far more clay pieces, though Bai Shuo didn’t fill it entirely with pottery, some of the more out-of-the-way spots he filled with brick molds instead. Those positions definitely wouldn’t fire pottery well, but bricks fired there would still be usable, even if not as hard as ones fired specifically, they could still be used to build other things, so nothing would go to waste.
With the bellows, the odds of successfully firing pottery went up somewhat. The ones working the bellows were still the chicks, anything new and fun always caught their interest, and with all that boundless energy they had nowhere else to put, they made the perfect helpers.
The new kiln had four air-intake vents in total for the bellows, so the chicks split into three groups, taking turns working the bellows for a while before going off to do other things while another group took over. Since pottery wasn’t fired every single day, the chicks adapted well, never once complaining of being tired.
Five days later, they’d fired two full kiln-loads of pottery. Bai Shuo calculated the success rate and found that the new kiln not only held more, but had a higher success rate than the old small earthen kiln, and saved quite a bit of fuel besides. This discovery made Bai Shuo very happy, even with plenty of trees around, they couldn’t draw on them without limit, so saving wherever possible mattered.
As for the pottery to bring to market, Bai Shuo’s choice was clay jars, clay jars could be used for cooking food or holding water, and he’d asked the tribe’s adult Feather Clan members about it too, apparently containers like clay jars had shown up at the market before, so bringing them wouldn’t attract too much attention.
Bai Shuo wasn’t the only one preparing for the market, everyone else in the tribe was thinking about what to bring along this time too. Many tribes would gather at the market, and everyone tried to bring as much surplus as possible, hoping to trade for whatever they needed, meat, stone tools, and the tools they’d woven could all be brought along.
They wouldn’t normally start packing this early, but this year they’d started preparing ahead of time so they could see just how much they had total, if there was too much, they’d need to weave more backpack-baskets.
Backpack-baskets weren’t just for carrying things, once at the market, the baskets themselves could be traded too, killing two birds with one stone. There was also the matter of pottery being fragile, even though it could be traded for a lot, they had to be careful carrying it, since it would be a shame if the goods broke before they even got there.
Earlier, Bai Shuo had had everyone put plant seedlings in baskets, then put the baskets into backpack-baskets, this had given everyone the idea, and later, with a further suggestion from Bai Shuo, they’d developed an even better storage method.
First, they’d weave a basket sized to fit the pottery, line the inside with dry grass, place the pottery in the basket, add a lid on top, then place a second basket around it. This way, there were two layers of dry grass and two layers of basket between each piece of pottery, so there was no need to worry about them knocking against each other.
Aside from pottery, meat was also an important item to bring, but at this stage everyone found themselves stumped, not that the tribe lacked food, but that most of the tribe’s food right now was alive.
Before, whenever prey was caught, it would be killed on the spot and portioned out, and the leftover meat would be smoked into jerky by the tribe’s elders, before heading to market, they’d simply take all the tribe’s jerky and fruit along. But now, the tribe had been catching live prey for over ten days straight. Prey that got hurt during capture, or that they hadn’t managed to net in time, would of course still be killed and eaten, but more and more of it was now being kept in the enclosures.
Aside from the two male oink-beasts that definitely had to be killed, everyone was not sure which of the other animals to choose for slaughter.
Once killed, game couldn’t just be brought along right away, it needed to be smoked first, or it would go bad on the road, so preparations had to begin now.
With no one sure which animals to pick, the question kept coming back to Bai Shuo, and everyone decided to just let him decide which ones to slaughter.
Bai Shuo asked how many they needed, and in the end decided to keep only one male of each kind of livestock, and take all the other males along, after all, once these animals reached adulthood, they basically wouldn’t put on any more meat, so keeping them longer would just be a waste of time. Each of them had a huge appetite, and they couldn’t be kept several to a pen either, since they’d fight, they had to be housed separately, which made raising them far more trouble than raising the young. The cost-benefit just wasn’t there.
But once it came time for everyone to cut up the meat for smoking, Bai Shuo had a new idea. “How about we trade for some different wood?”
The tribe’s method of smoking was fairly crude, basically light a fire and hang the meat somewhere thick with smoke.
Bai Shuo always felt it was a shame to smoke good meat into a blackened lump like that, better to make fruit-scented smoked meat instead. That way, even if they couldn’t trade all of it for the salt they needed, whatever was left over would still be worth eating on the way back, rather than being stuck with something they had to force down.
Since firing pottery required large amounts of fuel, most of the branches in the tribe these days were brought back by the adult Feather Clan members, bigger pieces, more varieties too. When the Feather Clan chopped wood, Bai Shuo would bring the chicks along to sort it once, purely for convenience of later use, for instance, hardwood was good for making charcoal, while fruitwood with a faint fruity scent made for better-tasting roasted meat.
Actually, Bai Shuo felt that if this meat were salted, then steamed and dried, or roasted and dried, into something like beef jerky, the taste would be even better, and they’d get more salt for it too. But it was a shame that their tribe’s salt was too scarce, the salt they’d traded for last time had nearly all been eaten already, and what remained was barely enough for their own use, so this idea would have to wait. Trading for more salt this time meant they could try it before the next market.
Bai Shuo turned the idea over in his mind, then led people to fetch fruitwood. He didn’t interfere further during the smoking process, but there was something else on his mind.
He wanted to go see the market for himself. Although the whole of God-Blessed Continent shared broadly similar weather patterns, subtle regional differences meant some places were colder, and some had longer dry seasons, which meant different tribes had different kinds of food. If he went along, chances were good he’d see things their own tribe’s surroundings didn’t have.
But how should he bring this up with the chieftain? Although there were two fixed markets a year, and Bai Xun and Bai Yun had both been several times, that didn’t mean the road there was completely safe.
Every year, there were people who ambushed others right as they set out from their own tribes, hoping to take without earning. So each time they went to market, they always chose members of the hunting or gathering party, to make sure that even if they ran into people trying to snatch their food, they could still protect it.
Bringing along one more chick wasn’t just a matter of a little extra weight, if it came to a fight with another tribe, someone would have to be specifically assigned to shield the chick.
No one would show mercy to a chick from another tribe. Back when Bai Shuo had fallen from the mountain and been caught by Wu Yan, his first reaction upon seeing an unfamiliar Feather Clan member had been fear of being eaten or killed, precisely because that was what a great many people would do. Encounter a chick that wasn’t from your own tribe, and eliminating it counted as one less future competitor. Some Feather Clan would even let their own littermates kill each other, let alone an unfamiliar chick.
To chicks, Feather Clan from other tribes were extremely dangerous, which was also why the market was located so far from every tribe. No tribe wanted others coming near their own territory, and no Feather Clan would let a stranger get close to their own chicks.
The market had originally just been an out-of-the-way spot two tribes chose to trade goods, since both feared the other might pose a danger to their chicks, they’d picked a location far from both territories to trade. Later, other tribes discovered how safe this arrangement was, and more and more tribes joined in, eventually forming what was now the market.
The precondition for the market staying peaceful was that everyone had the ability to defend themselves, if a chick was brought along, the entire tribe could become a target, essentially advertising to everyone else that this group had a weakness.
But Bai Shuo really didn’t want to waste this once-every-six-months opportunity. Leaving everything to others just didn’t sit well with him, even if he explained things carefully, there was no way everyone else would bring back every single item from the market for him to look over, and not everything would be useful anyway.
Bai Shuo wanted to go, but worried that tagging along would cause trouble for everyone, and found himself caught in indecision. With something weighing on his mind, Bai Shuo’s spirits weren’t very high, even though he tried his best to act normal, those who knew him well could still see the change clearly.
Bai Yun, noticing her own chick had been quieter than usual, and looking as if the light had gone out of his eyes, felt a pang of worry and asked, “Shuo, what’s wrong? Are you not feeling well somewhere?”
It had been so many days since the chick had shifted into human form, and this was the first time she’d seen him in such low spirits. Bai Yun ran back through everything that had happened that day and couldn’t find anything wrong.
Bai Shuo hesitated, then decided to speak his true feelings after all. “Amma, I want to go see the market.”
Bai Shuo had done the math, if he encountered a useful plant or seed at the market this time, bringing it back would let him plant it this same season. But if he left it to someone else to bring back whatever they came across at the market, and he picked out the useful things from that batch, that would mean waiting until the next big trading trip to get more, and planting them wouldn’t happen until next year, a full year wasted, back and forth.
Bai Yun didn’t expect this was what had been troubling Bai Shuo. She thought it over. “I’ll go ask the chieftain.”
Bai Yun understood her chick, if he wanted to go, there was surely a reason behind it. The tribe normally wouldn’t bring chicks along, but that was under ordinary circumstances. If their family’s chick genuinely had a reason he had to go, or could bring some kind of change to the tribe by going this time, that was a different matter entirely.
Before Bai Yun could even go ask, Bai Xun, who’d been silent beside them, spoke up with his own opinion. “If you want to go, go. Shuo, shift into feather form and Father will bring you along!” Their chick’s body was so small that, tucked against him, no one else would even notice, no need to worry about being discovered.
Actually, Bai Xun wanted to add that even if someone did spot him, so what, with him there, no one would dare lay a hand on his chick. But afraid his partner would hit him for saying it, he swallowed the words back down.
Bai Shuo froze, he’d forgotten about this angle entirely. Although his combat ability was low, he was easy to hide! As long as he didn’t want to be found, no one could discover him.