Racing against the coming winter, they didn’t build this stone house to be too big. The whole house looked like a tall rectangle, 5m x 4m in size and the inside area is 20m2 in total.
The door and the only window were both square-shaped. Yuan Zhan and Meng both thought there was no need to have windows, but Yan Mo insisted on having at least one, so they reluctantly made one.
The roof was the hardest to make. Although they had put the beams up, they were lost on how to keep it from caving in, leaking, or sliding down. Yan Mo was at his wits end. He had only seen triangular tiles and rice straw roofs. He really couldn’t figure out the construction method if they had to depend on only his brain to think of a way. So he drew several types of roofs as reference for the other two, leaving it to them to figure out.
Yuan Zhan stared at the main beam overhead for a long while. One structure gradually took shape in his mind. “If we make the triangular structure on the left and right sides of the wall like that ladder thing you said. Put wood on each flight then add in thin slates of stones between the pieces of wood, won’t it make that tightly fitting structure?”
Yan Mo imagined this structure, put it into drawing, and felt that it was feasible. He didn’t worry more on whether it could actually be built or not — If they can’t build it that way, they’d tear it down and rebuild. He ran off to the woods with Meng to find the right trees at once.
Yan Mo running off so energetically into the forest was not because he wanted to cut down the trees, of course. He had found that cutting down trees will add scum points to himself, but pulling out a weed won’t add any.
For that reason, he had tested it specifically. He pulled out only one plant on purpose. The plant was a mature and fruiting seepweed, but it hadn’t naturally dropped its seed. He didn’t get scum points added for pulling it out.
However, when he pulled out more than one hundred in a row, he got little scum points increase. The reason was mild destruction of natural vegetation on purpose.
Next, he picked mature seepweeds that had already dropped their seed and were wilting. He pulled out one hundred in a row, but the guide didn’t react at all.
Finally, he tested it on ordinary weeds. The results were the same.
It can be inferred from this experience that the guide implanted in him wasn’t only man-oriented. It also paid attention to this whole planet’s environmental and various ecological balance, simply put, it’s an environmentalist system.
Yan Mo had a headache. Just when he thought there was some hope for the future, this new discovery told him that not only did he have to be a good humanitarian, he was also forced to become an environmentalist.
Luckily he had never killed any animal except for blood-sucking bugs since he came to this world. He now heavily suspected, if he dared to kill even one animal, the guide would add many scum points. Or, the guide will judge according to his needs. Did he take an animal’s life to survive, or was it for profit and other purposes?
This can’t be verified for the time being, he can only put it aside.
Returning to the story, the reason why he went into the forest was for the medicinal plants and other useful plants, because he found that this woods was much more valuable to him than he had imagined.
His studies allowed him to recognise medicinal plants, he remembered a lot of characteristics of large trees that can be made into medicine, such as cypress trees, along the way.
And this forest was basically composed of Cypress(Chinese Arborvitae) and Thorn Hazel trees(Tibetan Hazel).
The entire cypress tree is valuable. Its resin, fruit, twigs and leaves can be made into medicine, while the trunk has always been one of the best trees to make into beams and furnitures. When he saw them, he knew the beam problem was solved. Many of these trees grew over 20 metres.
Cypress’s various benefits were self-evident, but right now Yan Mo was more interested in the other tree, the thorn hazel.
The hazelnuts had fallen over time, covering the forest floor. Meng’s foot was pricked by some. This fruit made him want to maintain a wide distance, just from the appearance.
Yan Mo, on the other hand, almost cried when he saw the thick pile of hazelnuts on the ground. He finally found something other than meat and fruit! These days it’s so cold, he didn’t even have fruit to eat, everyday it’s meat, meat, meat!
Both Yuan Zhan and Meng felt that this life of eating meat everyday was very blissful, but he can’t stand it.
Moreover, hazelnuts will also provide him with the nutrition he direly needed after falling sick.
These thorn hazel trees were not much shorter than cypress trees. Leaving aside the young trees, the shortest mature trees were at 5 to 6 metres high, the highest around ten metres high. Luckily for him, he didn’t need to climb up the trees, just these ripe nuts that had naturally fallen down was enough for him to eat all winter.
Yan Mo prayed these trees have high kernel yield.
“Are you okay here on your own?” Meng worried.
“It’s fine. I’ll only walk around here, I won’t go in too deep.”
“Okay then.” Meng felt reluctant to leave the boy’s side, not because he wanted to touch him, but because the boy really knows a lot. This made him feel their current priest disciple Qiu Ning was way behind the boy, he even had a faint feeling that the current priest Qiu Shi-daren is not as good as the boy.
This woods they’re in was the closest to the rock mountain and not that dense. The other forest on the other side of the valley was more like a dense forest. Despite that, they did not dare to go too deep in, only moving within the periphery.
There were a lot of birds and small animals in the woods. One time, Meng had casually grabbed two pheasants from this forest. Jiu Feng saw him with the birds and slammed Meng with a wind attack, almost throwing him off the cliff.
After Yan Mo tried his best to communicate with Jiu Feng, they learnt that all of the birds and animals in the woods belong to the big boss mountain god Jiu Feng. No one can take them.
Jiu Feng took the two pheasants, didn’t eat them himself and instead gave them to Yan Mo.
Yan Mo made them into roast pheasants, smeared salt on them and finished both pheasants all by himself. Jiu Feng didn’t let Meng and Yuan Zhan touch the two pheasants and didn’t bring them food that day, making them hungry for the entire day.
But once Jiu Feng took Yan Mo back to the nest on the cliff, two starving boys immediately sneaked back into the woods. They quickly caught a white-eared pheasant while the sky was still bright, secretly roasted and ate it. The bones they can’t chew down, they buried deep in the soil.
After this incident, Yuan Zhan and Meng knew to eat smart. They usually try to not do anything to the animals in the woods. Even if they did, they’d do it when Jiu Feng was not around and immediately destroy the evidence after they have eaten.
“Remember, cut one tree after every five trees you see. Don’t cut all the trees in one area. It’s best if you can cut a big tree near a little tree.” Yan Mo instructed Meng.
“Why?”
“Because small trees can grow in that space left after cutting.” Yan Mo explained patiently, “You don’t need too long, 5 metres is enough. Do you remember how long a ‘metre’ is? I explained it to you yesterday.”
Meng nodded and patted the rope wrapped around his waist, “I remember. A metre is the length between the first knot and the second knot on the rope.”
Yan Mo was gratified. He finally remembered. He had to keep teaching this for ten days, Yuan Zhan took on the concept faster but Meng would always forget. Later, he simply made a few plant ropes, marked out the commonly used centimetre, decimetre and metre length on the rope and made them carry the markers around.
This not-very-accurate length ruler would be used for a long time in the later Jiuyuan tribe, until someone else made a more accurate scale rod with this rope as the base.
“Also, pay attention to the direction of the cut. Don’t do it like last time, you almost dropped the tree on us.” Yan Mo reminded repeatedly.
“I know, little priest-daren! You also have to be careful when looking for herbs. Just shout if you need anything.” Meng smilingly tossed out a casual reply, waved to Yan Mo and left with a stone axe propped on his shoulder.
Only after Meng had left and Yan Mo had repeatedly determined the surroundings were safe, did he crouch down and start picking up those thorn hazelnuts on the ground.
His fixed mindset trapped him in his own lack of imagination, thinking that the healer pouch only accepts traditional chinese medicines. 1 When he remembered that hazelnuts can supplement the spleen and stomach, increase energy, strengthen eyesight and had other health effects, he suddenly felt enlightened and tried to put hazelnuts into his healer pouch.
He did it!
Since thorn-hazel can be put inside, then can he put in salt, seepweed and other seeds in the future?
Having broken through his fixed mindset, Yan Mo quickly took the opportunity to tie the healer pouch to his waist. Just think. How many edible things in the world have no medicinal and health effect whatsoever? Even grains have some tonic and supplementary effects.
At this moment, he truly felt just how useful this healer pouch was for him.
A space of 5m3. As long as he paid attention to what he stored inside, even if he encountered another situation like before, thrown in prison away from everything else, he wouldn’t easily starve or thirst to death.
*Bang, bang* The sound of woodcutting echoed through the woods.
The sun gradually sank. Meng shouted from the other side, telling Yan Mo it’s time to return to the stone house. At this time, he had picked up more than 15 kg of hazelnuts.
To cover it up, he walked back with a pile of hazelnuts in an animal hide.
As long as they have something to bury themselves into and is filled with hope for the future, humans can always grit their teeth and bear with difficult circumstances.
Yuan Zhan spent everyday making bricks, but he still took out the time to make a stone pot, a large water tank, two stone knives and a stone saw at Yan Mo’s request.
Meng worked with woods day in and day out, to the point he taught himself how to saw the thick log into thinner pieces of wood with the stone axe.
Yan Mo seemed the most idle but in fact he was not so relaxed. Apart from being in charge of all the skin-tanning work, he was also responsible for boiling water and roasting meat for everyone, and pacifying Jiu Feng.
Beside those, he was always gathering useful stuff and adding them to his collection.
Although there was a lot to do, Yan Mo felt rather good with his work. Especially when he found that he and Jiu Feng are getting better at understanding each other.
Yuan Zhan and Meng were also very happy, because in the third afternoon after the first snow fell, they could finally enter a shelter with a roof.
Meng entered the house and was so elated he did about a dozen somersaults in the rather spacious room.
Yuan Zhan wanted to keep the fire pit outside of the house like before but Yan Mo advised against it. “You should dig a fire pit inside the house. It’ll bake the house dry, dispel the cold air and make the inside warmer.”
The three of them went into the stone house. Jiu Feng circled the stone house several rounds then stretched his feathery head into the window, calling out quite cheerfully, “Keeh, keeih. Kruuru, ruuru.”
Inexplicably, Yan Mo felt like he understood his bird noises. It sounded like the big bird was saying: this cave looks fun, make me one of these too!
Yan Mo swatted his head, feeling that he was overthinking. How could he understand what Jiu Feng was saying? It must be his imagination. He’d been too tired recently and the weather was too cold, making some nerves inside his brain frozen.
“What’s wrong?” Yuan Zhan happened to catch this scene.
Yan Mo immediately put down his hand, “Nothing, I was thinking of a good layout for the space.”
“Layout?”
“En. We don’t need to actually make partitions, but it’s better to separate the area based on functions clearly from the beginning. That way we can refer to the floor plan to put the household items and set up the fire pit.” Yan Mo didn’t care if they could understand that or not. He walked around the room, thinking how to arrange the space.
He wouldn’t be staying here for the time being, but during the day he will often spend time here. He had to carefully consider how to arrange it so that he can feel more comfortable here. What’s more, he intended to use this house as prototype to learn which structure was the most practical. Then taking advantage of lack of activity in winter, dupe Yuan Zhan and Meng into making him another house just for him.
Meng was flitting around the room excitedly, and suddenly exclaimed. “Zhan!?”
Yan Mo turned around and saw Yuan Zhan, who was just talking with him, was falling backwards.
Meng darted over and caught the falling Yuan Zhan. He shouted anxiously, “Zhan!”
Edited by Silversun
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