It wasn’t noon yet. Those who remained in the tribe faced even more arduous work.
They needed to slaughter and pickle the five dead wild boars in the shortest possible time, except for the one wild boar that was kept as food. Of course, the other six live boars were dying after a night, so they were now very pressed for time.
The vacant land that was cleared just yesterday made a big difference today.
In the open space of the square, three wild boars were being skinned and having their meat removed at the same time.
Qi Bai had secretly touched the wild boar’s fur before. Unlike the shabby fur of domestic pigs, the wild boar’s body was covered with long bristles. In addition, wild boars liked to get their fur covered in mud. This meant their fur was harder than that of ordinary wild beasts and wasn’t very comfortable to touch. However, such a large amount of animal skins was what the Black Mountain Tribe urgently needed right now. Not a single bit could be wasted.
The skinning work in the tribe could usually only be done by the most experienced beastmen, but the wild boars were too large and it took too much time to rely solely on one person. This meant there were many people around each wild boar. An experienced beastmen led several young beastmen.
Normally, a priest like Yang Luo wouldn’t do the menial work of handling prey. Unfortunately, there weren’t many people in the tribe who could do this job. Yang Luo could only take off his attire and go into battle himself with a bone knife.
Yang Luo was seen directing everyone to lay one of the wild boars flat on the ground. He climbed onto the boar’s back and used a bone knife to cut a long cut from the boar’s neck to its tail.
Once Yang Luo confirmed it, Tu Ya and Niu Xi stepped forward with bone knives. They followed the cut made by Yang Luo and separated the fur from the wild boar bit by bit. Even the wild boar’s limbs weren’t violently destroyed. Instead, the cuts were made in one direction to keep the fur intact as much as possible.
Many people in the tribe now had bone knives. Some like Qi Bai and Yang Luo, carried their bone knives with them when they fled. However, more of them sharpened their bone knives after arriving at the Black Mountain Tribe.
The development level of the tribes in the beastmen world was still relatively chaotic.
For example, the current Black Mountain Tribe lived a life of public ownership. Everyone worked together and enjoyed the fruits of their labor together. However, the members of the Black Mountain Tribe were gathered from many different tribes after all. In fact, many tribes outside were dominated by private ownership. This meant it was hard to completely implement public ownership in the Black Mountain Tribe.
Therefore, Yang Luo turned a blind eye to the bone and stone tools that the tribe members polished in their spare time. He never took the initiative to inquire about them, nor did he ask them to hand the tools over to the tribe.
Of course, due to the current food shortage in the tribe, it was impossible to use the bones of the prey brought back by the hunting team to make bone knives. However, in the mountains, they just had to pay attention, and they could always pick up some animal remains. Many people brought back such bones to the tribe and grinded them into bone knives.
The bone knives brought by these bones naturally couldn’t be as sharp as Qi Bai’s bone knife, but they were more than enough for cutting meat and skinning.
After everyone’s busy work, the entire wild boar skin was finally spread out on the ground like a huge blanket, exposing the wild boar’s lean body.
Skinning the wild boar was just the beginning. Tanning the hide and pickling the pork were the more difficult tasks that everyone would face.
This time, what needed to be tanned wasn’t just the boar skin obtained today. Yang Luo had already taken out all the furs he had saved before. He wanted to take this opportunity to tan them together.
This was the first time that Qi Bai saw the tanning of animal skins in the tribe. Since everyone came from different tribes, everyone had a different tanning method. Yang Luo didn’t have time to figure out which tanning method was better, so he simply divided the animal skins into several parts and asked several older sub-beastmen to make them separately.
Qi Bai saw all types of strange tanning methods. Some used wood ash, some used sand, and some used grass juice like Lang Ze. It just seemed that the grass juice used by each person was different. He found it very interesting and started to look forward to the finished products of animal skins tanned by these different methods.
As everyone was processing the wild boar skin, the children kept picking large fresh leaves from the forest and spreading them on the space in the square. This was in order to place the pork that would be cut off later.
Qi Bai wasn’t idle either. He sat under a big tree in the middle of the square with Shu Lin and Hu Huo, weaving straw ropes without stopping for a moment. These straw ropes would be used to dry the pickled wild boar meat in some time.
These few horned beastmen who were less seriously injured followed Quan Lie to the bamboo forest to cut bamboo. This made Xiong Feng, who was seriously injured but still staying in the tribe, feel uneasy. Finally, Shu Lin couldn’t stand seeing such a big guy swaying in front of him, so he said, “If you have nothing to do, go and pick some vines for us. We need more vines.”
Once Xiong Feng heard this, he hurriedly agreed. At this time, Shu Lin warned him again with concern. “Be careful of your injured hand.”
“Okay, okay,” Xiong Feng responded repeatedly as he walked.
Hu Huo laughed at the interaction between the two. Shu Lin glared at him and said unhappily, “What are you laughing at?”
Hu Huo wasn’t annoyed. “I just love to laugh. Do you want to control me too?”
Shu Lin pursed his lips. “Hmph, who cares about you? Just laugh if you want to laugh.”
Hu Huo smiled and blinked at Qi Bai, causing Qi Bai to laugh as well. After Xiong Feng came back, he saw Shu Lin sulking alone while the other two had smirks on their faces. He put down the vines he just picked up without knowing why. He thought for a while before sitting down and using his uninjured left hand to help the others twist the straw rope.
Qi Bai was very happy watching them play around, especially Hu Huo. In fact, Hu Huo wasn’t very old. He looked to be less than 30 years old. However, compared with Shu Lin, who was a few years younger but very cheerful, Hu Huo seemed very dull and restrained. He didn’t communicate much with the people in the tribe. After such a long time, the heavy shell on his back seemed to finally show signs of loosening.
At this time, Quan Lie and Huan Ping returned to the tribe while dragging long bamboo.
Quan Lie held up one end of the bamboo with one hand and said, “We are afraid of wasting your time, so we cut it faster. We will give these two bamboo first.”
Yang Luo didn’t have time to care about these trivial matters now. Besides, the method of using bamboo for drying was originally proposed by Qi Bai. Therefore, Yang Luo had already instructed Quan Lie to hand over the bamboo directly to Qi Bai after they cut it down.
Qi Bai hurried over. “Grandpa Quan Lie, you guys are back just in time. I think the boar skin has been almost completely processed. You brought this back in time to put it to good use.”
Quan Lie smiled innocently and asked, “Where are you going to put this bamboo? Do you need us to bring back a few big rocks to press it down?”
“No need.” Qi Bai already had a plan.
What they needed to pickle this time wasn’t just a few dozen or hundreds of catties of meat. It was a full 12 wild boars. Even if one of them was kept as their food, the remaining 11 could still produce several thousand catties of meat.
Therefore, the small rack that Hu Huo usually made for drying animal skins was no longer sufficient at this time.
The reason why Qi Bai asked Quan Lie and the others to cut bamboo was because bamboo had strong load-bearing capacity and each bamboo was 20 to 30 meters long.
Qi Bai pointed to the branches of the two remaining large trees in the middle of the square. “Grandpa Quan Lie, I have to trouble each of you to climb a tree. We will hand you the bamboo under the tree, and you can just place the whole bamboo on the branches of the two trees.”
Quan Lie looked at the tree, smiled, and agreed, “It isn’t difficult.” Then he climbed up the tree.
Qi Bai looked at Huan Ping. Huan Ping just waved at him, holding one end of the bamboo in one hand and climbing the tree with the other. He climbed straight up the branch three or four meters above the ground.
After Huan Ping stood firmly on the tree branch, Qi Bai quickly handed over the other end of the bamboo to Quan Lie. The two of them adjusted the angle on the tree, and the bamboo was steadily placed across the two big trees.
Hu Huo was watching from under the tree. He couldn’t help saying happily, “Bao Bai, you are really smart. This way, it will be much more convenient to dry the pork.”
Qi Bai was also quite satisfied. He had originally been a bit worried that the bamboo would be unstable on the tree branch. He had already prepared to use some straw ropes to fix the bamboo in place. Now it seemed that the two big trees could hold a lot of bamboo poles.
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