“A house?”
“It’s a building like tent, but bigger, sturdier, and better as a shelter.”
“You can make it?”
Yan Mo bluntly said: “No.”
Yuan Zhan, who was just getting interested in stone houses: “……”
“But I can draw it. I’ll draw it, you guys look at the picture while you build it. I can tell you how. I should roughly remember the main points of building a house.” Yan Mo crouched on the ground, drawing a simple shape of a house with a twig. “I thought it’d be harder to make a stone house and it’s better to make a simple wooden house. But since you have the ability to shape stones, then we’ll try building a stone house that you can live in before snow starts to fall.”
Yuan Zhan and Meng crouched down, studying the appearance of the stone house drawn on the ground, getting more fascinated the more they looked at it.
Yan Mo was rather good at brush painting. He didn’t understand the art of drawing, but he had practiced his drawing skills just to the point he could render a true-to-life version based on memory.
He drew a four-sided stone house he had seen in his travels before, and added the ancient city walls around the house while he’s at it, encircling the house.
“This is the house you said, that people can live in?” His eyes shone. He looked at Yan Mo as if hating a puff of breath couldn’t make the drawing become the real thing.
“Oh my god! Turns out, aside from natural caves, we can also make square caves with stones. Zhan, why didn’t we think of this before ne? Say, do you guys think the holy temples in the three cities look just like this?”
“Could be, maybe more magnificent than this.” Yan Mo held back the urge to draw an actual temple. Yuan Zhan and Meng could accept this cube-like stone house because it looked quite simple, it won’t make them suspect much. But what if he draws a god’s temple? That would certainly arouse suspicion and amazement in them, so there’s no need to do that.
Meng ignored the strange words. Now, they could automatically ignore some of the boy’s words, just taking it as secret codes passed down by priests of the Yanshan clan.
“Xiaomo, have you seen this kind of house before?” Meng asked.
“I haven’t. My tribe’s priest drew this for me before, I kept it in mind.”
Lies! Yuan Zhan didn’t bother exposing the boy’s lies, he only curled his lips together.
Meng, on the other hand, believed it. He turned around to throw Yuan Zhan an envious look, “Why is it you who gets Xiaomo? If I’d known I would’ve gone out with you that day! Aaaaah! I regret it so much!”
Yuan Zhan acted like he didn’t hear Meng yelling enviously. He was using the drawing as a reference to think about how this house can be built. He was especially interested in that city wall. As a warrior, with just a glance, he understood what the encircling walls represented.
Yan Mo asked Yuan Zhan, “Can you make a rock like that, neatly flat at four sides?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“I can.” Yuan Zhan didn’t say that he will have to spend a lot of effort on it. So many stones…… Hopefully he can make this thing before snow falls.
Qlatbea atlcxlcu wemt, Tjc Zb jrxfv jujlc, “Jjc sbe fwqas bea atf lcrlvfr bo j uljca gbmx?”
Tejc Itjc rtbbx tlr tfjv, “P mjc’a vb la cbk.”
Ktfc atja wfjcr sbe klii yf jyif ab vb la lc atf oeaegf. Tjc Zb vfmlvfv ab ifa atlr qfgrbc ilnf obg j ibcufg alwf. Lf mbeiv atgbk jkjs jcsbcf, yea cba remt j ubbv rabcfwjrbc.
Yuan Zhan asked a question about the drawing while looking down at it, “Piling up stones one by one like that, is it easy to collapse?”
“That’s why you need to make a foundation before building.” Yan Mo explained what it means to make a foundation.
Yuan Zhan and Er Meng understood now, “That means, dig out a pit first, isn’t it? And the deeper it is, the better, right?”
“Should be ……” Yan Mo was not sure as well, “If the house we’re building is not high and the ground underneath is relatively solid, as long as the first layer of stones is submerged in the soil. Lay the stones following the shape of the house, bury it well and compact the soil, probably…… it’s okay.”
Cheerfully skipping over that whole passage, Meng soon asked the next question, “How do we stick the stones and stones together?”
“We need a binder. Mix water with lime, sand, plant ashes, or volcanic ash. Let me think what else can be used, clay seems to work as well?” After saying it, Yan Mo made a wry smile. “Shit. this is a big problem, how do we make the binder? Do you know if anything that is very sticky, can glue stones together and can withstand wind and rain?”
Meng and Yuan Zhan thought for a long time, before shaking their heads together.
Yan Mo felt a slight dismay, but with ‘as I expected’ mixed in. As expected, building a house was not that easy. “We should try using wood for the house, at least wooden houses can be held together by mortise-tenon joints.”
Yan Mo again explained what was called mortise and tenon structure.
After listening to it, Yuan Zhan rubbed his index finger on his cheek, “Maybe I can try making that stick and hole structure you said on the stones.” Although it’d be difficult for him who is now only a level two, he was also looking forward to how the house in the drawing would look like when it’s made into reality.
“That’s great!” Yan Mo finally felt that Yuan Zhan wasn’t such an eyesore — each project needs this exact individual-initiated cooperation!
“But…… how do we make the stone roof not slide down?”
“Uh, we can build a flat roof for now — no, no, no, I think triangular roof is better after all, I’m afraid the flat roof will collapse under the snow.” Yan Mo racked his brain for knowledge on building structures he had seen before. “We need a large beam here and many other beams for support. It has to be thick, long and straight wood logs. Line them up on top of the wall, then ……”
He explained the process one step at a time. Yan Mo, who only knew a smattering of things about house construction, finished talking. His feelings told him, don’t hope that this house will be built before snow starts to fall.
What he didn’t expect was for Yuan Zhan and Meng to be bursting with enthusiasm towards building a house.
Jiu Feng flew around the trio for a few days, still completely clueless as to what they were doing.
They can’t eat those stones anyway. Why do they carry the stones around and hit them?
Yan Mo, who was no help for building a house, was driven away to tan the pelts. These pelts the animal skins from Jiu Feng’s hunts.
Yan Mo sat near the stream, scrapping the pieces of flesh and fat left on the skins. From time to time, he plunged his hand into the icy stream. Whilst shaking from cold air and shivering from cold water, he recited the Yellow Emperor’s Internal Canon — He suddenly felt that he was now channeling both little miss cabbage and little matchstick girl, doubly miserable!
Jiu Feng walked unhurriedly to Yan Mo’s side, staring seriously at him.
Yan Mo turned his head and looked up at the big bird, “What? Is a flower blooming on my face?”
“Gruuru, ruuru.” Aren’t you cold? It’s so cold today, why are you still playing with water?
Yan Mo: “…… Achoo!”
“Gruru, gruuru! “ What is that? Do it again!
“Aachoo! Achoo! Achoo! “ Three sneezes in a row, Yan Mo proudly declared that he had caught a cold.
Ten days!
These ten days, all three of them were pushing their bodies to the limit. Especially Yuan Zhan, his body and mind were in a weird state of both hyperactivity and exhaustion.
He knew it’s not good to keep burning off himself, but they couldn’t find a cave they could use around here. The animal skins were finally dried in a rough manner, but the tanning process hadn’t even started. If they had to use these to make tents, one could imagine how cold the night will be.
House! House!
He must finish the house this winter!
Yuan Zhan found that when he started, it wasn’t hard to make the stone smooth and levelled, it wasn’t hard to dig out a neat groove on the stones either. The difficulty ramped up when he was making protrusions that completely aligned the grooves he had dug out.
What’s especially difficult was that he needed to make all the grooves and protrusions roughly the same size.
In order to see the end result as quickly as possible, he decided to make the stones as he built. Fortunately, as he kept going, his craft got better with all the practice and he worked faster.
Meng was digging the hole for the foundation, after finishing with that, he went to the forest with Yan Mo to find suitable wood for the beam.
Yan Mo had explained that the moist trees had to be cured before being made into beams, but they didn’t have the time. They could only improvise and wait until spring next year before making a new beam — To be honest, he didn’t know how to cure beams. He only knew the process needed to kill the organisms in the wood, baked and slow-dried.
At first, Jiu Feng was just watching them running around, but after noticing that Yuan Zhan was making the stones all roughly the same sizes, his interest came out of nowhere. He headed to the big stone that hadn’t been cut yet, wanting to use wind blades to carve out similar things.
*Puuht, puuht, puuht!* After trying more than a dozen times, Jiu Feng understood the trick to making it. Soon, he was cutting long rectangular stones that looked like the one Yuan Zhan’s making.
For his success, Jiu Feng made loud excited calls, “Cheeeihk—!” Flying and calling the little two-legs to come see the result of his work.
When Yan Mo walked over, Jiu Feng quickly took him to those stones. He kept purring while showing off to Yan Mo.
Yan Mo tiptoed to rub the bird’s lowered head, then turned to Yuan Zhan who was still struggling with his stones, “If I were you, I’d give him a pile of stones to play with.”
Yuan Zhan smiled faintly and humbly accepted this suggestion.
Since then, Jiu Feng had one more toy to play with and Yuan Zhan had one more labourer.
The biggest winner of this situation, Yan Mo, looked at the quickly piling-up bricks and lit a fire for everyone.
Yuan Zhan opened his mouth, waiting for Yan Mo, his slave, to feed him meat. His fierce eyes were even staring at Yan Mo — didn’t you feed me like this before? You could feed me before, why can’t you feed me now?
Yan Mo considered the fact that the other party was a highly contributing hard labourer, before finally stuffing a half-cooked meat into his mouth.
Meng leaned over, gesturing he also wanted to be fed. Yuan Zhan threw a brick over to correct his posture. Meng started howling!
“Cheeeihk—!” What is that?! Why are you guys playing with fire in my territory again?
This fire pile made Jiu Feng, who was originally happily doing hard labour, fume with anger.
“Keeh, keeih!” No fire allowed anywhere near me! Roasting meat is not allowed too! Put it out! Put it out now! *Pffuht!*
Yan Mo, who was about to bite into his meat, saw fire sparks flying and jumped up. He roared out, “Bird brother, the weather and surroundings are so dry, careful or you’ll start a prairie fire ah!”
When the first snow finally fell, there were four additional stone walls on the leeward side of the mountain. The stone walls had been piled up high. The right and left side had been made into a triangle shape, to make it easier to lay out the beams.
Thick straight logs leaned against the stone wall. The wood had not dried thoroughly, they had only removed the branches and leaves and stripped the bark away, but they could no longer wait. Yuan Zhan and Meng climbed up the wall, the two worked together to put the beams up in position.
Edited by Silversun
Thank you for the chapter !!!
Yan Mo literally needs in a house!~ Ahhhhh the Jiu Feng father is too good!~ I also want to be under his wings too QAQ
Thanks for the chapter<3
Forget Yuan Zhan, I’d rather Yan Mo go for Jiu Feng but it’s weird.
it is, isn’t it??
Translator-san, hello! Yeah its weird. But still Jiu Feng’s even better than Yuan Zhan.😂
Jui Feng is baby, not lover.
It’s cold anyways, the wood should not rot? Lol Idk, thank you for the update! I love this story! ❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for the chapter ❤❤
❤
Jiu Feng is such a good ‘pet owner’/father!
Aiyoh, the adventure web novel fan is boiling inside me! ฅ’ω’ฅ
Thank you for the translation 😊
This is already my 4th reading of this novel and I can say that Zhan is one of MLs that has the most character development. So happy to read BTAW with a much better translation.