Chapter 6- Punishment Always Comes the Moment You Forget
By the time Yan Mo unskillfully finished skinning the vole, the sky already turned dark. The sunset hanging from the west side emitted a gorgeous red color in the sky.
Many people had already eaten dinner or currently making dinner. The rich smell of cooked meat lingered around in Yan Mo’s nose.
He swallowed several mouthfuls of saliva. Next door, the quick handed Cao Ting already finished grilling the meat. When her master was called out to eat, she even came over to help Yan Mo with the other vole.
“Haven’t you been hungry for a long time? You look like you have no energy.” Cao Ting twisted the neck of the vole. Using the stone knife to carve out a circle from the open neck, cut off the tendons and muscles connected to the skin and pulled off the skin.
Just like that, the entire vole’s skin peeled off.
The strength of the people here was not small. Yan Mo looked at his own pair of hands, did he lack strength because he was hungry? He was 90% sure.
Yan Mo felt bad for having Cao Ting do everything for him. He took a stone knife to the skinned vole and cut open its chest. To quickly settle down and get to work was a quality asset he had from his previous life. Having changed bodies, although it still feels strange, but all his skills were still there.
He was quite slow dealing with the internal organs of the first vole, but by the second one he improved a lot.
When Cao Ting discovered this, he had already evenly divided the body.
“Don’t need to mince it, it’s more convenient to roast such a small prairie rat.”
Yan Mo stopped his hand, out of habit he usually cut up the meat to braise or stir fry. He forgot that the concept of braising or stir fry didn’t even exist here.
Cao Ting helped cut open the other rat with a knife. She sprinkled coarse salt then put it on the fire pit.
“Minced can only be used for boiling. Remember next time, it’s best not to boil meat. The salt that we use will turn it bitter if boiled in water. Using the fire to roast won’t give it such a bitter taste.” Cao Ting sighed, Yan Mo didn’t even know how to cook. The priest’s disciple, perhaps doesn’t have to cook for himself?
“The salt is bitter because it still has other minerals inside it. You just need to boil it a couple more times and it’ll get a lot better.” Yan Mo pointed out.
Cao Ting looked at him strangely, “Boil it a couple more times? Isn’t that wasteful? Don’t you know that salt, water, and grass to burn is precious? The Yanshan people cannot be THAT wasteful. Yuan Zhan must have a good heart to let you use that much salt, water, and grass without scolding you. If it was any other master, you would be beaten and starved for several days.”
It turns out that it wasn’t that people here did not know how to get better tasting salt, but they weren’t willing? No wonder that he taught the knowledge but the Exile Transformation Guide did not respond.
Even in the 21st century, many poor areas in China were still living extremely primitive lives. It’s not that they don’t know how to live a better life, but can only suffer through not having the proper requirements.
Yan Mo is thick skinned and blushed for no reason.
If the guidebook’s Water Geography article could be used right now it would be great. In this climate and environment, maybe you’ll find natural salt ponds and salt lakes. The temperature here is so high and the sun is so strong during the day. Boiling salt could not compare to the sea salt method. And drying sea salt is more environmentally and economically friendly as well.
But before his scum points have even dropped to 100 million, these are all useless thoughts.
Yan Mo originally wanted to use the cut up vole to make kebabs but realized there was nothing suitable to use as skewers so he stopped.
Yuan Zhan carried a full tank of water back. Seeing that Yan Mo was about to cook, put down the water tank and kicked him with one foot.
“You’re not allowed to boil meat from now, there’s not that much water for you to use as you please.”
Cao Ting did not dare to say a single word, she hung her head and left.
Yan Mo endured silently. He needed to change his ideas and methods completely. In a place where everything is lacking, instead of trying to figure out how to make life better, it would be better to figure out how to live longer.
Yuan Zhan ate half a rat by himself, leaving half a pot of boiled meat to Yan Mo.
Yan Mo felt that Yuan Zhan was not full yet and reluctantly offered him the pot of meat.
Yan Mo almost just ate it himself and as soon as Yuan Zhan agreed, immediately climbed to the side of the stone pot, reached and fished out the already cold meat with his hand.
He was so hungry. Not scared of the bitter taste from boiling salt with the white meat, he ate like he’d never seen meat before and even drank the broth until it was completely gone.
The sky was already dark, Yuan Zhan carefully covered up the fire pit.
Yan Mo licked his fingers then asked, ”Don’t need to leave the tinders?”
“There’s a firepit in the tribe. There are slaves who specifically watch over it. Remember from now on that every morning you need to go to the fire pit to get fire and start cooking. When you sleep at night, the fire must be extinguished.”
“Why don’t we just leave our own fires?”
“How would we do that? Let the firewood burn the entire night?” Yuan Zhan looked at Yan Mo as if his brain was broken.
Yan Mo shut up again. He remembered that when he was little his grandfather and grandmother would leave the furnace on. In the evening they would use coal to cover the fire, small fire like eyes would poke out , and let the coal inside be incompletely burned. This kind of fire could be kept until the next morning.
But this method is obviously not suitable here. He was also not very familiar with this method and would have to study it again.
It seems that reducing scum points would be a lot harder than he expected.
As Yan Mo was thinking about flipping his middle finger at God again, Yuan Zhan directly dragged him into the tent by his arm.
Throwing down Yan Mo’s arm, Yuan Zhan pointed at a stack of “garbage” in the corner. “You sleep there from now on, those furs are for you to use.”
There was no glow of fire in the tent, almost like black paint. It took a long time for Yan Mo to adjust and vaguely see anything.
Yuan Zhan turned around and brought in a torch. He went to the middle of the tent and stuck it into the ground next to the stone table.
Yan Mo clearly saw small insects on the ground run to 4 different sides. Then looked again at the dark corner. Would he be sleeping with bugs from now on?
Yuan Zhan let down the curtains to the entrance of the tent and placed stones to weigh down the corners. He turned and looked at Yan Mo’s injured leg, “Using wooden boards to help the broken leg. Doesn’t let the bones shift? Not a bad idea, I’ve never seen our priests do that, did the Yanshan priest teach you that?”
Yan Mo nodded his head. Stretching out his hand to pick up a ragged fur……He pledged that when he picked up a fur, it absolutely cannot have more then five bugs fall off and crawl away.
Yuan Zhan walked to his own bed, untied his leather skirt, threw it on top of the stone table, then just sat on the bed just like that.
Yan Mo saw in the shadow that there was a big lump. Silently speechless… Are all the people here developing so well?
“What’s your name?”
“Yan Mo.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Younger than me by three years, Not even a Rank 1 soldier, really useless.” Yuan Zhan scratched his lower abdomen, sparing no effort to attack his own slave. “When I was 13 I was already a Rank 1 warrior, at 15 I rose up to a Rank 2 warrior. If there was more training and fighting, I would most certainly become a Rank 3 warrior. Then I can have two slaves. I would carefully pick out my second slave and pick a beautiful fertile slave.”
Yan Mo’s expression cracked a little. So this guy who claims to be his master is actually still just a kid? Primitive men are really precarious, He thought this kid was already twenty something.
But looking at his memories, the people here are all precocious. 13 to 14 year olds could already support their own family. Many people at his age would already look for a wife to have children. To the modern people, the age of the people here are still children. But for the locals here, he was already considered an adult. So the 17 year olds are already a strong labor force.
“Master, if that is the case, why didn’t you get a slave girl right at the start? Like the neighbor, Master Yuan Diao.” Yan Mo lightly stabbed at his master. Enduring the fierce pain from his leg, pulled out the decaying furs one by one, shook it clean, then spread it on the floor.
Yan Mo did not expect Yuan Zhan to actually respond to him. “Female slaves are expensive. And if it’s a slave girl they’ll have children, I’m afraid I won’t be able to support them.”
After awhile, Yuan Zhan depressedly said, “I don’t want to eat my own children, and I also don’t want other people to eat my children.”
Yan Mo’s hand paused. When this tribe approached winter, would survival be that harsh? Not only eat slaves, but also eat the dead children of the tribe?
This kind of thing did not exist in the Yanshan tribe. Although Yanshan tribe also ate people, but because they had an abundance of salt mines, the winter was not too difficult. In the memory of the 14 year old youth, Yanshan had never eaten a single person. Probably because of this, his people preferred to just abandon him instead of turning him into food.
“But if I become a Rank 3 Warrior, then I can take care of my own children.” Yuan Zhan laid down, his tone getting colder. “Tomorrow is my turn to go hunting. I’ll be out for at least five days, longest is 10 days. The house doesn’t have a lot of storage. I’ll talk with Yuan Diao, let Cao Ting take care of you. Don’t eat a lot, When I come back I’ll give Yuan Diao back all the rations you ate. While I’m not here, don’t go running around randomly. You still don’t have my mark. If you’re caught by other people, it’ll be troublesome!”
“Yes master.”
Not long after, Yuan Zhan gave off small snoring sounds. He used up all his energy in the daytime, so he slept quickly at night.
Yan Mo used the light of the torch and reluctantly spread out a bed. Struggling to support himself with both arms, dragged his body to lay on top of the ragged furs.
Additionally these decaying furs also had a horrid stench. The pokey fur was also not comfortable but it was better then sleeping on the cold ground.
There were lots of ragged fur, but they weren’t big. It was also stacked for a long time which resulted in lots of rot and mildew. Yan Mo looked for a long time before he finally found one to cover his stomach.
Laying down on the bed, Yan Mo let out a long sigh. He can finally have a good sleep.
Once it was quiet, the surrounding noises suddenly became amplified, just a layer of a fur pitched as a tent could not block the sounds. There was no entertainment at night here, every household eats dinner then goes into the tent and does what?
Yan Mo listened to all the sounds of the natural environment and slowly closed his eyes.
The physical and psychological fatigue made Yan Mo forget about his harsh environment and quickly fell asleep. Even if he was hurting in his dreams, he was not willing to wake up.
As the darkness deepend the temperature also dropped a little.
The climate here was really similar to a desert. The daytime was so hot you wanted to die, the night was so cold you wanted to die. Careful not to twist his injured leg, Yan Mo was so cold he curled up into a ball. Holding both hands tightly to his chest, he tried to resist the pain and cold.
Suddenly!
“AH!” Yan Mo suddenly screamed. His whole body hurt so much that he suddenly woke up.
Yuan Zhan was startled awake. Cursing then opening his eyes, he got up and walked to Yan Mo’s side, squatted down, grabbed his hair, and angrily asked, “Why are you screaming?”
Yan Mo held his injured leg, he was in so much pain his whole head was covered in sweat.
He actually forgot about the punishment from the guide, that damn fire burning pain!
Just now in his dreams, the old priest held up a burning stick and burned his leg.
The dream isn’t real, but the pain is.
Yuan Zhan saw him like that, frowned and asked, “Wound hurt?”
Yan Mo was slowly losing conscious and did not answer.
“Troublesome.” Yuan Zhan left him, took the stones off the curtains and went outside, got a scoop of water and came back in, holding his head he thrust the ladle to his mouth. “Drink!”
The sweaty Yan Mo was extremely thirsty. Holding the water ladle in Yuan Zhan’s hand, he tried his best to drink.
“Go back to sleep, no more screaming or else I plug your mouth.”
Yuan Zhan tidied up. There was a finely tanned fur hanging on the wall. He threw it on Yan Mo, didnt say anything, and went back to sleep.
Yan Mo slowly tugged on the fur that was big enough to cover his entire body.
The broken leg continued to hurt in addition to the pain left over from the fire branding. For the rest of the night Yan Mo slept uneasily. He didn’t even know he was making small moaning sounds.
The moans of his own slave drove the young and strong Yuan Zhan internally crazy. Swearing, he turned over and and could only rely on himself.
Yan Mo woke up in the morning and smelled a special odor that hadn’t left the tent yet. Mouth drawn, 17 years old…. Isn’t this the age where people want to go around poking at tree holes? (1)
______________________________________________________________________
(1) It’s a sexual innuendo. He’s saying 17 is around the age where people want to go experiment with sex. It’s not an idiom.
TN:
Turns out it’s not iron branding, but just branding with fire in general. I’ll go fix the .
Comments