The wind blew in the mountains. The fine snow was blown up by the wind and looked like a hazy mist.
Qi Bai stood on the hillside, looking from afar at the flock of sheep huddled under the rocks.
They looked a bit like sheep except that they had a pair of short curly hair on their heads. Under the short ears were a pair of long, drooping ears. From a distance, they looked like they had four small braids on their heads.
The largest sheep among them was no more than two meters in size, which was considered to be a medium to small species on the Beastman Continent.
Qi Bai squinted and looked carefully at their fur-covered bellies. He found that some of them really did have bigger bellies, and they looked more lazy.
The little snow leopard nodded to the giant wolf. The two of them walked down the hillside and found the brown bear and honey badger hiding behind a large rock that was sheltered from the wind.
Xiong Feng stood up alertly when he heard the sound. He relaxed his guard only after he was sure that the people coming were Qi Bai and Lang Ze. Lang Ze threw the food in his mouth at Xiong Feng’s feet.
Xiong Feng hid the food under a rock and nodded while saying, “The wind is getting stronger. The sheep have been staying where they are and haven’t gone out to look for food.”
Lang Ze nodded and informed Xiong Feng and Huan Ping of the plan to drive the sheep away. “The tribe is building a fence. I will bring other beastmen here tomorrow.”
The two of them didn’t actually understand the plan to herd the sheep, but they had all participated in setting traps to hunt wild boars. Therefore, they just thought they were going to drive the sheep into a trap this time.
After saying goodbye to Xiong Feng and Huan Ping, Qi Bai, and Lang Ze carefully determined the terrain between the sheep flock and the tribe. Then they quickly returned to the valley they had chosen as the sheepfold.
The overall shape of the valley was an inverted pear with relatively smooth and steep stone walls inside. Therefore, the members of the Black Mountain Tribe only needed to fence off the narrowest exit of the valley.
Due to this unique shape, the mountain wind didn’t rage here. This was why Lang Ze and Qi Bai chose this place.
The flock of sheep wasn’t very close to them. After the two of them went back and forth, the tribe members had completed most of the world that Qi Bai had asked them to do.
At this time, the valley had changed greatly. The exit, which was about 50 meters wide, had been cleared horizontally to create a dirt part about one meter wide. On this path, a pit around 20 centimeters deep was dug every 20 to 30 centimeters. At this time, there were more than a hundred densely packed dirt pits on the ground.
Since there weren’t many tall trees in the valley, the beastmen started to cut wood stakes in the surrounding forest.
Qi Bai turned into a human form, found his animal skin coat, and wrapped himself in it.
He had confirmed with Lang Ze that in such cold weather, the smell of the beastmen would dissipate within a day. Therefore, he strolled around the valley without any psychological pressure.
As he had been observing the flock of sheep just now, he found that the sheep with thick fur also had to huddle together to keep warm in the mountains.
Qi Bai looked at the two trees near the mountain wall.
He wondered if the sheep would stop him if he built a warm home for them.
Qi Bai thought of this and told Lang Ze his idea. The two of them started working without much hesitation.
Lang Ze took a stone axe, chopped down two thick tree trunks, and buried them in front of the stone wall.
Qi Bai chopped off some branches about as thick as his wrist. He tied them together with straw ropes to use as the roof of the shed.
The branches of the two big trees and two thick trunks in front of the stone wall were used as the four support points of the roof. A small hut with two open sides and two sides against the stone wall was completed.
Since the tree trunks on the inside were higher, a small slope was naturally formed on the roof of the shack. Qi Bai made this slope mainly in the hope that the heavy snow could flow down the slope to prevent the snow on the roof from becoming too thick and crushing the shack.
Of course, after doing all of this, Qi Bai covered the roof of the shack with a thick layer of mud mixed with hay.
Qi Bai complained in his heart as he plastered the mud. He had originally planned to plaster the wooden shed in the tribe with mud today. He didn’t expect that in the end, he didn’t get to do his own work. Instead, he helped the sheep to plaster their shed.
The most important thing was that the sheep might not appreciate their kindness.
By the time that Qi Bai and Lang Ze finished building the shack, Yang Luo had already returned to the valley with the rest of the tribe members.
Each of the horned beastmen were dragging a huge tree behind them while the sub-beastmen found many thorny vines in the bushes according to Qi Bai’s request.
Yang Luo saw the wooden shed made by Qi Bai’s group. He didn’t quite understand why Qi Bai wanted to build a special shed from the sheep. After all, in his impression, the sheep in the wild lived directly under the mountain walls.
However, now he couldn’t comment on Qi Bai’s actions casually. He had a vague guess in his mind that if Qi Bai really came from the place he thought, then the things he couldn’t understand at this moment must be due to his lack of knowledge.
Qi Bai originally wanted to weave a few more straw mats before the tribe members came back. Then after seeing Hu Huo, he handed the dry grass he had scraped out of the snow pile to Hu Huo. Everyone had their own expertise. He might not be able to weave as many straw mats as Hu Huo could weave in an hour even if he sat here weaving for an entire afternoon.
“Time is too tight. We have no way to find trees of the same thickness,” Yang Luo said while pointing to the tree trunks brought back by the horned beastmen.
Thanks to the experience of polishing the gate of the tribe wall these days, it could be seen that Yang Luo had tried his best to find trees of the same thickness. However, time was too tight now. He naturally couldn’t be so particular.
Qi Bai shook his head. “Grandpa Priest, these are already very good. I have seen what the sheep look like.”
Qi Bai took a piece of straw rope and tied a knot around two and a half meters away. “This length should be enough.”
He scratched his head and asked Lang Ze uncertainly, “I have heard before that sheep that grow near mountain walls have the ability to climb mountains. Will the sheep we want to corral now be able to climb over the fence?”
“The four-eared sheep mostly live on grasslands. They can only run on flat ground and aren’t very strong. Trees like this are enough to stop them,” Lang Ze said. “Four-eared sheep have always survived due to their large population. I rarely see such a small group of four-eared sheep.”
It was good to have a large population. It sounded like they were very fertile. Qi Bai secretly clenched his fists and decided to thicken the straw mats to celebrate this excellent trait.
The next step was completely physical work. The tree trunk was cut in the middle with a stone axe and placed in the dug pit. Then the trunk was buried deep in the soil and compacted to make wooden stakes.
Once it was finally completed, there was around a 20 centimeter distance between each wooden stake. In fact, it would’ve been better to drive wooden stakes in between, but time was limited today. It could only be done like this for now.
Of course, there was a distance of around three meters on the edge closest to the valley. This was a small door they had reserved to drive the sheep into the valley.
The front of the sheep shed was covered with a straw mat and pressed down with branches. This way, only the right side of the entire shed was completely exposed.
Once the sheep accepted the shack and were willing to live in it, the open side would allow Qi Bai to observe the side of the sheep inside the shack.
After all, raising sheep wasn’t their only purpose. More importantly, they needed to find the ewes giving birth at any time and steal them to squeeze out their milk.
By the time the sky turned white, the last thorny vine was wrapped on the tree trunk. At this moment, the entire valley looked like a deep castle tied with thorns.
They made sure that the last few wooden stakes were in place and could be nailed down once the sheep entered the pen. Then everyone quickly left the valley.
Qi Bai really felt that there was no strange smell on his body. However, Lang Ze already said that the wild beasts were sensitive to the scent of beastmen. They shouldn’t leave any hope to chance.
If the sheep entered the sheepfold and resisted strongly or even decided to die, then most of their energy would be wasted.
There was silence in the Black Mountain Tribe early in the morning. It seemed that even the sound of falling snow could be heard.
Qi Bai lay on the animal skin and forced himself to close his eyes and take a nap. This way, he would have enough energy to deal with the plan to herd the flock in a few hours.
But perhaps it was the side effect of staying up late. Qi Bai felt that his eyes were sore, but his spirit was very excited. He couldn’t sleep at all.
After tossing and turning for a long time, Qi Bai simply gave up struggling. He stood up swiftly, dressed neatly, and gently pushed open the door. He walked into the nearby forest carrying a rattan basket without anyone noticing.
There were plants like lichens and mosses that grew close to the ground, slightly taller broad-leaved vegetables with a pointed tip poking out of the snow, and even some low pine needles. Except for those that he had confirmed were poisonous, Qi Bai pulled out all the plants he could see or dug them out with a stone shovel and threw them into the rattan basket.
Qi Bai also paid attention to searching for some withered straw. Beastmen definitely couldn’t eat this, but Qi Bai didn’t know if the sheep would eat it or not. He planned to try them all.
In short, it took Qi Bai more than an hour to get from the cave to the sheep pen when it was a short journey of more than ten minutes. He climbed to the mountain surrounding the sheep pen. Looking down from here, he saw a steep wall. Opposite it was the exit of the sheep shed.
Qi Bai tied several branches together horizontally to make two small rafts. He fixed one end of the rafts to the ground and tied a long straw rope to the end. Then he took some plants from his rattan basket and scattered them on the raft.
He ran far away and lifted the rope upwards. The raft tilted along one end of the rope, and the food on it rolled down the slope.
Qi Bai carefully approached the edge of the steep wall and made sure that the plants could fall smoothly into the valley before he scattered the remaining plants and pressed them down with another raft.
He couldn’t put these plants in the valley now. If it was as Lang Ze said and the smell of beastmen was eliminated in around a day, he would pull the straw rope to send the food down at this time tomorrow.
This wouldn’t be considered as him directly touching the plants. He had to take a closer look to see if these sheep were really so strong-willed.
Qi Bai returned to the tribe and saw that apart from Hou Yan and Lang Ye, who were seriously injured, there were 14-15 majestic beasts standing in front of the tribe.
The horned beastmen were of different ages and had different animal forms, but at this moment, they were all equally high-spirited.
They were like soldiers ready to go as they looked firmly towards Lang Ze, who was standing in front.
Lang Ze repeated the order to attack once again. Then he threw away his animal skin coat, and a giant gray-white wolf appeared in the same place.
The giant one-horned wolf howled to the sky and set off first.
All the beastmen stomped their feet and followed closely behind like an army of thousands.
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