LSLFBW: Chapter 45

The snow-covered land seemed to have even tougher soil than before. In order to be safer during the coming winter, or every day that followed, the construction work of the Black Mountain Tribe was still going on in full swing. No one was afraid of the cold or difficulties.

Thanks to the experience of digging traps last time, everyone cooperated more tacitly this time.

Several people skillfully wrapped a thick straw rope around the tree and shouted towards the front. The horned beastmen, who had transformed into beasts, started to drag hard at the same time.

The towering tree, which had grown for an unknown number of years, leaned forward and was eventually uprooted, leaving only a deep pit in the ground.

Lang Ze walked in front of Qi Bai and Yang Luo before turning into human form. Qi Bai handed over the clothes he had been holding and said, “This is the last one. There are no other big trees along the wall. We can start digging the foundation.”

Qi Bai had already informed Lang Ze and Yang Luo of the purpose of the foundation in advance. Therefore, they had no objection to Qi Bai’s statement.

“How is your research on the mortar going?” Yang Luo asked.

Qi Bai’s eyes lit up when he heard this. He took out two red bricks that were completely glued together from the rattan basket beside him and said with a smile, “It worked! This mortar was made much faster than I thought.”

Qi Bai ultimately failed to remember the chemical composition of lime, but this didn’t stop him from trying. He smashed the limestone into small pieces and put them into the kiln for high temperature calcination. Then he ground the burnt quicklime into powder and added water. Heat rose from the white limb powder. At this time, he added some more fine sand and stirred it evenly to create the lime mortar he wanted.

The process sounded simple. But in order to find limestone, Qi Bai and Lang Ze almost searched all the surrounding hills.

Lang Ze nodded and said, “How do we need to dig the soil? Is it the same as the trap we made last time?”

Qi Bai shook his head. He took out a straw rope more than one meter long and tied a stone underneath to use as a weight.

Qi Bai put down the weight Due to the weight of the stone, the straw rope naturally hung down vertically to the ground. “Use this straw rope to measure it. You need to dig this deep vertically. The excavation needs to be consistent with the direction of the straw rope.”

Then he opened the weight horizontally. “You have to dig this wide horizontally.”

Lang Ze took the string weight and said, “We can dig the foundation before dark.”

Then Qi Bai said to Yang Luo, “Grandpa Priest, I have to teach you how to move stones.”

The tribe members had accumulated some stones when digging the cave. These stones had been discarded randomly around the tribe before. This time, they wanted to build the foundation, and these stones came in handy.

Unfortunately, there weren’t enough stones to build their wall or they could’ve saved a lot of time firing clay bricks.

Yang Luo waved his hand to indicate that he understood. His mind was still on the mortar that glued the two bricks together. He had just secretly exerted strength. Unexpectedly, the two bricks seemed to have grown together and couldn’t be separated by hand. He couldn’t wait to see the wall made of this mortal.

At the kiln, little Lu Xia followed Lu Guo closely. Once she saw Qi Bai coming back, she followed her mother’s footsteps while staring at Qi Bai timidly.

Qi Bai took out a piece of sweet potato chip from the pocket of his animal skin coat. He bent down and stuffed it into Lu Xia’s hand. “Hurry to the woodshed. It is too cold outside.”

Lu Guo had already poured several baskets of limestone onto the ground and was smashing the stones with a rock hammer.

Since broken pottery needed to be smashed into fine material and mixed with clay to prevent the pottery from cracking easily, sturdy stone axes and hammers were always kept in the wooden shed.

These days, people were needed everywhere in the tribe. The work at the kiln was basically only shared by Qi Bai and Lu Guo. Qi Bai naturally couldn’t let Lu Guo work alone. He hurriedly took a few sips of water and walked over with a stone hammer.

The reason why they smashed the stone into small pieces was because Qi Bai was worried that the temperature of their earthen kiln wasn’t high enough and that stones that were too large wouldn’t be burnt through. After all, they needed a lot of firewood to burn the kiln once. Compared with the consumption, their little effort was nothing.

Once the stones were smashed into palm-sized pieces, the two people stopped. They placed broken pottery pieces on the bottom of the kiln, spread limestone on top, and added enough fuel to calcine it.

What they were using now was the largest pottery kiln in the tribe. It was also the only one that was still vacant. All the other earthen kilns, large or small, were being used to burn clay bricks.

They also needed to save firewood now. The tribe members were pulling up trees and chopping them into pieces one by one, while they were consuming them in bundles.

Of course, such high consumption also meant high output. Now the tribe could produce at least 1,000 clay bricks every day. The side close to the mountain wall was already filled with red bricks. This made people feel at ease when looking at it.

Qi Bai silently calculated the output of clay bricks and the consumption of firewood from the small earthen kilns and large pottery kiln. It seemed that it was more cost-effective to use a large pottery kiln to make bricks.

Qi Bai took out a small piece of slate and a small charcoal pencil from his animal skin bag. He carefully wrote and drew on them.

There had been too many things going on in recent days. He was now in the habit of writing down his ideas to avoid forgetting them later and delaying progress.

Qi Bai looked at the small slate with some disdain. It was full after just a few words. There were already four slates in the animal skin bag around his neck, but it still wasn’t enough. It would be great if he had paper and a pen…

It must be known that they peeled off a lot of tree bark this time in order to make the gate of the tribe. Once done with this work, he could really consider doing some research on it.

Even if he could only make rough straw paper, he could still use it to wipe his butt, unlike now when he could only use stones and branches…

In short, looking at Qi Bai’s wild ideas, it could be seen that Qi Bai’s mind was never idle.

It was completely dark. Qi Bai and Lu Guo took out the limestone from the kiln. After being fired, the limestone was lightly ground into powder. They collected the powder in a rattan basket covered with animal skins. The two of them carried two large baskets full of quicklime and took Lu Xia directly back to the collective cave.

Everyone had to work hard recently, so Hu Xue and She Li started to take charge of cooking again. QI Bai once again lived a life of having food provided to him.

It was certainly fun to cook for himself, but it was also a good thing to come home after a busy day and eat a hot meal immediately.

Yang Luo waited until both of them sat down with their bamboo bowls before signaling for everyone to be quiet.

Seeing Zhu Zhu move the rattan basket full of meat to the stone platform, everyone already knew what Yang Luo was going to do next. After all, for most of the people present, this was already their fourth time to receive food for the winter.

In fact, most of the tribe members weren’t sensitive to numbers and fell asleep as soon as they returned to the cave in recent days. This meant they didn’t notice that the distribution of food this time was actually three days later than usual.

As for why it was three days late, the reason was very simple. Before winter, a rattan basket of meat could feed everyone in the tribe for five days. However, slaves were abolished in the tribe, so the distribution of food was messed up. Yang Luo suddenly felt at a loss as to where to start with the tribe’s food reserves.

In the end, it was Lang Ze who made the decision for him. He decided not to change the original food portions for ordinary beastmen. Instead, they would increase the portions of the tribe members who were originally slaves to the same amount as ordinary beastmen.

Lang Ze said it simply, but the amount of food that needed to be distributed wasn’t a small amount.

In addition, Qi Bai had been so busy these days that he couldn’t even be seen. Yang Luo couldn’t rely on anyone else. He could only stay in the collective cave and redistribute the food into baskets.

Of course, the results weren’t optimistic. Even with the wolf meat they acquired a few days ago, they still had nearly 20 days worth of food less than expected.

Lang Ze responded calmly after hearing this, “Just follow these rules and leave the rest to me.”

Therefore, if everyone’s previous understanding that there were no more slaves in the tribe was just the literal meaning, they now saw the meat in their hands and felt it was actually real.

Yang Ling happily pulled the equally excited sub-beastman called Quan Nan beside him. “I have never seen so much food before.”

The same was true for Quan Nan. The two of them quickly hugged their meat and ran to Qi Bai.

Every time this moment came, Qi Bai was surrounded by people. Currently, he was busy using a knife to divide the food of the tribe members into equal portions.

It all started with Shu Lin and Xiong Feng.

The two people who couldn’t count lived together. After only four days, they ate up all the meat that was given to them. Fortunately, Xiong Feng’s arm was no longer seriously injured, and he could occasionally catch some small prey. Otherwise, the two of them would’ve starved.

Starting from the second food distribution, Qi Bai would help them divide all the food they received into ten portions, telling them that they could only eat one portion a day. Once the last portion was eaten, the priest would give them new food.

This method really worked. The moment they got the food, everyone’s first thought was to find Qi Bai to divide the food.

Of course, the tribe members who were once ordinary beastmen were also very happy. It was because the wolf skins obtained from the wolf packs’ attack were also divided up in this food distribution.

Except for the children who were too young to participate in the battle, even Zhu Ya living in the collective cave got a large piece of wolf skin.

Zhu Ya could finally act proud. He ran to the side of Sun Qing with this animal skin to show off. This annoyed Sun Qing so much that he wanted to hit Zhu Ya again.

Winter wasn’t a good season to start construction. There were various hidden dangers in laying the foundations on frozen soil.

Qi Bai was fumbling around in the pit. Work would officially start tomorrow, but he was still a bit worried and came over to check it again.

Just as he was thinking about crawling up with his hands, a bony hand reached out to him.

Qi Bai didn’t look up and skillfully held the hand. Lang Ze’s arms were very strong, and he pulled Qi Bai up with just a bit of effort.

“Oh, this scene is so familiar.”

The two of them were currently sitting on a tree branch around three or four meters above the ground. Without the obstruction of many large trees, they could clearly see the two bright moons in the sky, as well as the Black Mountain Tribe quietly sitting under the moonlight.

“Don’t you think so? That is how you pulled me up the slope when we first met.”

Qi Bai swung his legs gently and suddenly asked, “Aren’t you curious?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you curious about how I know so much?”

“Rattan baskets, pottery, and lime mortar.” He counted on his fingers. “The priest thought he hid it well. In fact, I saw that he was full of curiosity, but he kept holding back and didn’t ask. Meanwhile, you never seemed surprised that I knew these things.”

Lang Ze didn’t answer his question but asked back, “You didn’t ask me either?”

Qi Bai’s eyes curved. “Yes, we all have secrets.”

Just when Qi Bai thought the topic would end here, Lang Ze suddenly spoke, his voice carrying the sincerity of a young man and a depth beyond his age. “No matter who you are or where you come from, I only see you in my eyes.”

“I don’t need to know about your past.”