That night, like always it was dark when Big-eyes and Sa rushed back, but this time Wu Chen didn’t say anything.
Big-eyes and Sa saw that Wu Chen didn’t ask much and thought he got used to it. They were relieved, and gave Wu Chen the yellow-purple fruit in an attempt to make him happy.
Wu Chen didn’t want it at first. Later, he thought that he should show this fruit to Priest-daren, so he accepted them. He pretended to finish them all, but in fact, he hid two of them.
The next morning, Big-eyes and Sa went to Yan Mo’s class with Wu Chen. They had learned addition and subtraction within a hundred digits and all the phonetic symbols Yan Mo made according to how people pronounce words in this world.
Yan Mo asked the grass shoes he assigned to Big-eyes were finished. Big-eyes hummed and hawed for a long time before saying no.
Yan Mo didn’t rush him, even more didn’t scold him. He just asked him if the homework was too difficult for him. If it was, he could change to another one.
Big-eyes hesitated a bit, but then shook his heads and stammered that he would definitely finish the grass shoes.
The reason why Yan Mo made him weave grass shoes was just to temper this child’s mind. This kid’s a little crafty, but he couldn’t sit still, he’s easily distracted and didn’t have the persistence to finish tasks. He also loved to play around.
As for Sa who loved to play even more than him, Yan Mo didn’t intend to train his temperament. He found out that the child was more interested in becoming a warrior. He also considered that the three children should not only learn knowledge from him, but also exercise their bodies. In this primitive society, just being smart doesn’t guarantee your survival.
In fact, children have softer bodies and the beginner training method would work better on them. However, he didn’t intend to teach the three kids for the time being until the side effects were determined. He only asked them to do some gymnastics-like stretching movements before class every day.
“It’s a nice day out today. I’ll teach you another method to light fire. Follow me out.”
The three children didn’t understand few of the words, but they still knew it was related to fire. They were very interested and walked out of the tent behind Yan Mo.
Yan Mo told the three children to bring some hay and asked them to rub them to be softer and thinner.
Then he plopped out the ice he had made in a wooden bowl yesterday, called the three children to his side. He rubbed the ice’s edges with his hands and ground the ice into a convex lens that looks very smooth, round, without any rough edges. The edges were thinner and the middle of the circle was thickest.
He stood the ice up between two stones, then told the three children to put their hay on the ground.
He looked at the sun and readjusted the position so that the sun would shoot directly through the middle of the ice and onto the hay.
It’s going to be noon soon, the sunlight was just right. The three children didn’t understand what Yan Mo wanted to do. When they saw the hay they put on the ground suddenly lighting up, they shouted in surprise.
The A’wu warriors who stayed to guard the tribe and are not currently on patrolling duty at this time also came together curiously when they heard the shout. They had wanted to come over and have a look ever since they saw the priest’s actions, but they’re too embarrassed. Now there’s a valid reason for them to come over.
Yan Mo saw the warriors coming and explained it to everyone present. They didn’t need to understand the language to understand his explanation, just by looking at his movements, you could basically understand what he was doing and what the result would be.
Yan Mo told Wu Chen to find a piece of ice with a thickness of about ten centimetres. Wu Chen quickly dashed and soon came back with an ice cube as big as a brick.
“It’s faster to make the convex lens with a bowl, but if you’re in the wilderness and don’t have suitable tools around you, you can look for a big ice piece like this. Break off the rough edges on four sides, and leave only a piece of ice close to a circle shape. It should be a little thicker. As thick as this one in my hand would be fine. If it’s too thin it might melt off, if it’s too thick it’ll be difficult for the sun to pass through, 5-10cm is the ideal number. ”
Yan Mo said as he drew a circle on the ice with his scalpel. He told the warrior next to him to use stone to remove the ice around the circle. It’s not the first time everyone saw him use his scalpel, they were no longer as surprised as when they first saw it, but everyone still envied that Priest-daren had such sharp small knife in his possession. Some people have imitated the knife and made a similar thing from a stone, but they can never make it as sharp as priest’s knife.
The A’wu warriors he selected was very happy. He gently hit the ice with a stone pick to remove excess ice around the corners while his companions watched on with envy.
Yan Mo was speechless. What’s there to envy? In just few moments everyone would have a try too.
When the ice was carved out, Yan Mo endured the cold and rubbed the ice with his palm to remove the rough edges and make the ice into a round shape.
“This is the most important step. You need to make all the surrounding edges of the ice thin. You have a try.” Yan Mo demonstrated then immediately passed the ice to another warrior who was eager to try.
The warrior grinned, showing an uneven and incomplete set of teeth. He followed Yan Mo’s instructions and rubbed the ice again and again with his palm. Even if his palm felt frozen, he didn’t want to let go. Others wanted to help him, but he wouldn’t let it go.
After it was done, Yan Mo did like before and stood the ice between two stones. He arranged the sun, ice lens and hay in an angle.
This time they needed to wait a little longer, but they still succeeded in lighting up the hay.
“Waah!” Shouts of surprise and joy came from the crowd. They didn’t understand the principle, they just thought it was one of the magical witchcraft Priest-daren taught them.
Yan Mo didn’t need them to understand the principle, as long as they know the method and can remake them.
“If you know how to make this, you don’t have to worry about not being able to make fire when you journey outside during winter. If you want to be quicker, you can carry a wooden bowl with you. Put water in it at night and use the frozen ice the next day.” Yan Mo let Big-eyes bring the two wooden bowls over from the door of his tent and plopped out the ice to show everyone.
“You can experiment by yourself.” Yan Mo waved to show that the class time was over and let everyone do what they have to do.
The crowd didn’t disperse at all. Both the adults and the children were happily experimenting using ice lens to make fire. Whenever one of them succeeded, that place would be noisy with exclamations again. This was too magical for them.
Yan Mo had only thought about how they would make a fire in the wild after Yuan Zhan had led the team out yesterday. Then, he thought of a video he had seen on how to ignite fire with ice. Too bad that the team had left, he had recalled this one method but didn’t get to teach them.
In order not to lose face in front of his students, he had tried it out himself yesterday and determined it could be down, before taking it out to teach people today.
While no one was paying attention over here, Wu Chen followed Yan Mo. “Daren.”
“Ah, little Chen. What is it?” Yan Mo turned back.
Wu Chen looked around and made sure that Big-eyes and Sa couldn’t see them, before he rummaged through his clothes and took out the two yellow-purple fruits, “Priest-daren, look at this.”
Yan Mo was surprised, there were plants willing to bear fruit in such a cold weather? He knew that there were plants like winter pears, winter jujubes, mandarins, oranges and lemons that would mature in winter, but he had never thought he’d find those fruits on this land.
“What fruit is this?” Yan Mo received the fruit and took a closer look at it. He had never seen anything like this small fruit before. Things don’t always look the same between the two worlds, “Can you eat it?”
This sentence was easy, Wu Chen understood it. He nodded, “Can.”
Yan Mo didn’t put it into his mouth right away. He called out the guide, opened it to the second organic material guide, and then touched the fruit with his right hand.
Soon, a sentence appeared in his mind:
Inquired item: Plant. Under the range of the second guide. This item entry requires +1 scum points for a brief description and +3 scum points for a full entry. Please choose between the two options within five seconds.
The amount of scum needed this time was less than the last inquiry, Yan Mo thought. However, he still chose a brief description.
—— Sea-buckthorn fruit variant. Sea-buckthorn fruit, also known as the seaberry, highly nutritious. Small berry plant, deciduous shrubs or small trees with a developed root system. It acts as a windbreaker and sand-fixation plant, retains water and soil, and improves the soil.
It was a sea-buckthorn!
Yan Mo didn’t expect that Wu Chen would bring him such a pleasant surprise.
Although the guide’s description was simple, how could he not know the effects of sea-buckthorn fruit? This thing was not merely “highly nutritious” as the guide said. In terms of medicinal value, sea-buckthorn is full of treasure. The fruits, leaves and seeds can:
• promote blood circulation and eliminating blood stasis,
• strengthen the spleen and stomach,
• Stimulate saliva production and quenching thirst,
• clearing heat and resolving phlegm.
At the same time, sea-buckthorn paste is incredibly effective treatment for scalding, burning, frostbite and knife injury, and will not leave scars. Sea-buckthorn seed oil can protect and nourish the skin, protecting liver and nourishing stomach.
The sea-buckthorn fruit in his original world was usually yellow-orange to reddish orange, but here it was yellow-purple. Moreover, the sea-buckthorn fruit in his original world was very small, with a diameter of only 4-6 mm, while this one was bigger, about the size of the phalanx of his little finger.
Wonder what it tastes like?
Yan Mo took one and put it into his mouth. Umf, it’s sour with some sweetness. The taste was alright. It’s not the same as the one he had eaten before, the sourness was more intense.
When written it’d take many paragraphs, in fact, less than ten seconds had passed from Yan Mo’s inquiring about the fruit to putting it in his mouth.
Wu Chen hesitated whether to tell Priest-daren about Big-eyes and Sa’s strange behaviour. He was afraid that he was overthinking it and they actually didn’t do anything bad.
As a result, before he spoke up, Priest-daren asked him, “This fruit is very good. Where did you find it?”
Wu Chen guessed what the priest meant, he honestly shook his head and said, “I didn’t find it. It was Big-eyes and Sa.”
“Oh? Can I ask them to take me to it? ” Yan Mo tried to make his words as concise as possible, and pointed at the two devils happily playing with ice in the distance.
Wu Chen scratched his head and decided to tell the priest the truth.
After listening to the other party’s explaining with his body gestures, Yan Mo roughly understood what was going on, “Ask them first, see if they’re willing to say where they picked the fruits. If they won’t tell, we’ll follow them and check the situation.”
Comments