LSLFBW: Chapter 143

The little ewe was wary of Qi Bai. She stopped around five or six meters from the thorny fence and refused to go any further.

Chuan Chuan clearly didn’t understand the ewe’s reasoning. He happily ran to Qi Bai, snatched the food from his hand and placed it in front of the ewe.

The ewe paced back and forth a few steps, hesitant to eat. Then Chuan Chuan pushed the food forward with his head, bleating as if to say it was delicious.

Indeed, Chuan Chuan’s food was much better than the other four-eared sheep.

The four-eared sheep within the thorny fence were fed fodder prepared in advance by the tribe. To prevent spoilage, most of the fodder was dry grass. Meanwhile, the food Qi Bai prepared for Chuan Chuan and the ducks included some fresh plants.

Even so, this food was unprocessed and would normally not be accepted by wild animals.

To Qi Bai’s surprise, the little ewe received Chuan Chuan’s enthusiastic recommendation and started to slowly and methodically eat the food on the ground. Chuan Chuan seemed even happier than if he had eaten it himself.

Qi Bai watched the interaction between the two of them with a smile.

At this moment, Tun Quan ran up from behind and said to Qi Bai, “Bao Bai, the stone sheepfold is ready. We can set off at any time.”

“Okay.” Qi Bai threw the last bit of hay between the two sheep. Once the hay was eaten up, he said to the horned beastmen waiting nearby. “Open the gate.”

The snowstorm had been getting heavier these past few days. The mud hut in the valley looked like it was on the verge of collapse, making it dangerous for the sheep to stay inside.

Moreover, Chuan Chuan seemed to have completely integrated into the flock. Everyone decided to take advantage of the relatively good weather today and try to guide the sheep to the stone sheepfold.

The gate of the thorny fence wasn’t level with the ground. If they wanted the sheep to leave, they would need to clear several short wooden stakes beneath the gate.

Several horned beastmen stepped forward, grabbed the wooden stake with both arms and pulled the stakes out of the soil with a shout.

Qi Bai waved to Chuan Chuan. “Come on, let’s go home, Chuan Chuan.”

“Baa~”

The members of the Black Mountain Tribe felt like shepherds for the first time.

However, this experience was quite different from what Qi Bai had imagined where Chuan Chuan would be the first to respond to the call.

Before leaving, Chuan Chuan did shout towards the middle of the valley and most of the four-eared sheep slowly followed when they heard Chuan Chuan’s voice.

That was all. After leaving the thorny fence, Chuan Chuan just walked forward on his own. He didn’t care what happened to the back of the group as long as the little ewes and main flock were by his side.

Chuan Chuan was very clear about the direction home. After all, he had been walking this path for almost a year. He didn’t need Qi Bai to lead the way. He just craned his neck and led the way.

Thus, the flock of over a hundred sheep stretched out quite far. Some were distracted by the wild grass under the snow, some stood there daydreaming and some naturally tried to escape.

Fortunately, Lang Ze had already formed an encirclement behind the flock with his men. They would drive back any sheep that was a straggler.

At the very back of the flock, Huan Ping watched a few four-eared sheep darting into the middle of the ground and exclaimed, “Bao Bai is truly wise. He has only raised one sheep yet he can tame so many.”

Xiong Feng followed behind while nodding in agreement. They were all horned beastmen with experience in herding sheep.

Not long ago, they had driven these four-eared sheep back to the tribe. Fifty horned beastmen transformed into their beast forms and struggled immensely in the snow to control their direction. In order to keep an eye on the flock, they could only eat a few bites of dry, hard jerky and chew on the cold snowflakes on the ground.

Unlike now, the flock moved forward slowly and the beastmen could even chat idly.

Quan Lie wiped the ice crystals from his eyelashes. “Now I’m starting to believe what Bao Bai said. If we keep these four-eared sheep domesticated for a long time, they will eventually be able to find their own food.”

Huan Ping and Xiong Feng laughed heartily. Xiong Feng waved his hand. “If that is the case, I’ll raise five hundred four-eared sheep all by myself and I’ll have endless mutton every day.”

Compared to the lighthearted conversation on the side of the thorny fence, the other tribe members were much more tense.

The sheep had to enter through the main gate of the tribe, so all the young beastmen were required to stay inside. No one was allowed to go out without permission to prevent the sheep from going berserk and harming the tribe’s young.

As a result, when the sheep entered the tribe, the windows of the first row of houses revealed countless little faces desperately craning their necks to look out.

Sun Qing patted Sun Yuan on the head and said excitedly, “Chuan Chuan is really impressive.”

Sun Yuan’s little face bumped against the windowsill. He looked up expressionlessly, trying to stand on tiptoe to see more clearly. He was obviously used to being hit by his older brother.

The wooden door of the stone sheepfold was wide open. What was originally a large room in the sheepfold had now been divided into two compartments, one large and one small, like a stable. Several ewes were already in the smaller compartment.

The low wall between the two compartments was only a bit over a meter high. This was enough to prevent the four-eared sheep from jumping over it while still ensuring that they could see each other.

The smaller compartment was a maternity shed specially built by Qi Bai for pregnant ewes. By separating the pregnant ewes from the two flocks, he ensured they had enough food. After all, besides being a food reserve, the most important reason the tribe raised these four-eared sheep was to obtain their milk.

Chuan Chuan stood at the entrance of the stone sheepfold, waiting for the four-eared sheep to line up and enter one by one. Anyone who disobeyed would be attacked by Chuan Chuan’s horns.

Lang Ze and Xiong Feng guarded the other side of the entrance, constantly watching the ewes’ bellies. If they found a pregnant ewe, they had to stop her and herd her into a separate cubicle.

Chuan Chuan, the last to enter the sheepfold, suddenly ran a few steps and charged straight at the four-eared sheep in the corner. This startled the leader so much that he buried his head in the wall and refused to come out.

Yang Luo leaned on his bear bone staff and surveyed the sheepfold in a somewhat forlorn manner.

Qi Bai followed his gaze to the stone trough in the sheepfold containing hay and water. “Grandpa Priest, is there a problem?”

Yang Luo sighed and shook his head. “These wild beasts are doing better than we used to.”

Qi Bai was amused by Yang Luo. “Why are you comparing yourself to them?”

Yang Luo thought for a moment and laughed as well. “Yes, what is the point of comparing ourselves to them?”

The group went outside together. Qi Bai took out the dagger he had been sharpening over the past few days from his pocket. “This is the iron we found in the stone.”

The dagger’s handle was carved from wood and the back of the blade was covered by a scabbard made from animal hide. Nothing could be seen from the outside.

Qi Bai drew the dagger. The cold light on the back of the blade gleamed in the sunlight, leaving Yang Luo stunned.

Qi Bai shook the dagger in his hand with some satisfaction. In order to achieve this effect, he had found five or six whetstones of varying coarseness and even polished them with an oilcloth.

He casually tore off a piece of dry grass and the blade easily cut through it.

Yang Luo tossed the bear bone staff to Hou Yan, caught the dagger with both hands and raised it high above his head. Then he prostrated himself on the ground, touching his cheek to the earth. “Beast God above!”

Hou Yan also lowered his head, his voice trembling as if he was about to cry. “Beast God above!”

Before joining the Black Mountain Tribe, neither of them could’ve imagined that precious pottery was made of clay. However, they accepted pottery well because it was still within their understanding.

Now Qi Bai was telling them that among the stones that everyone saw every day, there were iron tools they had never seen before.

Regarding these things they couldn’t understand at all, Yang Luo and Hou Yan could only conclude that they were the creations of the great Beast God.

Yang Luo thought much more deeply than Lu Guo and Niu Xi, who had been smelting iron with Qi Bai and were simply curious about what iron looked like in stones

He got up from the ground and called over Hu Meng and Niu Yong, who were far away. “Today the tribe is about to hold a sacrificial ceremony so that everyone in the tribe can see our Black Mountain ironware. You two go and tell everyone the news quickly.”

Hu Meng and Niu Yong didn’t understand what ironware was, but that didn’t stop them from being happy. After all, the subtext of holding a sacrificial ceremony was that the tribe was going to prepare a lot of good food today. The two of them bumped their fists together and said loudly, “Understood, Grandpa Priest!”

Yang Luo and Hou Yan, holding the iron dagger, hurriedly ran towards the tribe to discuss how to hold the sacrificial ceremony that night.

Qi Bai and Lang Ze stayed behind at the kiln. They and Xiong Feng and Shu Lin were next to the pottery warehouse, planning to build two rooms specifically for smelting and forging iron.

“The furnace should be as tall as possible and a ladder should be built next to it for people to climb up,” Qi Bai said, pointing to a corner of the open space. “There should also be neat square openings on both sides of the furnace to make bellows.”

Xiong Feng, the foreman of the Black Mountain Tribe’s construction team, was hearing such a complicated order for the first time. He looked at his partner Shu Lin, somewhat at a loss.

Shu Lin was holding a bamboo scroll with a diagram of an iron-smelting blast furnace drawn on it. He compared it to Qi Bai’s description and wrote and drew on the side of the bamboo scroll with charcoal. After a while, he looked up and said, “I think I understand, but what are bellows? Are you talking about the fan made of a clay pot? But that isn’t square, right?”:

The furnace itself wasn’t very complicated, but to send air into the furnace, they needed to make ventilation openings in conjunction with bellows. It was just that these bellows were completely different from the ones Shu Lin had seen before.

Qi Bai said, “I’ve already made small bellows. I’ll send it to you later. Once you see it, you will know how to make two bigger ones.”

In order to build a dedicated blast furnace, the fan Qi Bai had made on the spot couldn’t be used. Firstly, such a small fan couldn’t supply enough power to the blast furnace. Secondly, the hand-pulled straw rope fan was too inefficient. At this moment, Qi Bai thought of the bellows he had seen at his grandmother’s house when he was a child.

Before his grandmother replaced it with an electric blower, there was a wooden bellows next to the stove. It was very simple to use. Just pull the handle on the bellows and the air outside would enter the bellows through the air inlet, then through the air outlet embedded in the stove to the bottom of the stove.

This type of bellows still needed to be pulled manually. However, the air inlet led directly to the bottom of the stove, so the wear and tear on the bellows was greatly reduced.

The forging room was much simpler compared to the iron smelting room. The flame temperature required for forging iron blocks wasn’t as high, so only an ordinary blast furnace was needed.

After carefully listening to all of Qi Bai’s requests, Shu Lin patted Xiong Feng’s chest and replied, “Don’t worry, Bao Bai. We will have all these things ready for you before you come back.”