Chapter 21: He Said He Wanted to Grow Vegetables
Even though the civilization stage of the beastmen is still in the simple stone age, their hands-on skills are powerful. There is Luo Zhen, the instructor who provides ideas, and the person with experience in production, Luka. After an afternoon of learning, Jiao Zhu and Hei Ya immediately learned how to make a bone knife, and even A-Shui could take a small bone and make himself a knife.
Beastmen and normal people who do not have hunting and gathering tasks are very idle. Some fighters will meet to learn and practice their fighting skills while ordinary people will care for their tents, look after children, and prepare daily meals.
Luka was called away midway. It was said that Da Wu wanted to entertain the foreigner who had come from afar. So only Luo Zhen and Lu Zhan were left for dinner at night, probably because they had two meals in a row. With Jiao Zhu and his family, Luo Zhen felt a little lonely after they left.
“Is there only grilled meat tonight?” Without outsiders, Lu Zhan started wandering around the house again.
After polishing the bone knife for a day, even though he got a satisfactory product, Luo Zhen still felt that his entire arm was sore and numb so naturally, he didn’t have the cook anything else to eat.
“There is bone soup there. You should drink more, it is nutritious and good for your wound healing.” Luo Zhen pointed to the stone pot that was still boiling the bone soup and motioned to Lu Zhan to get it by himself.
“Are you tired?” Lu Zhan saw that Luo Zhen had been rubbing his palms and put a bowl in front of him, while he picked out the bones inside. He liked to drink this meaty soup sparingly but he liked to crush the bones and eat the smooth and tender bone marrow inside.
Luo Zhen gave the other party a blank eye. Lu Zhan handed the task of polishing the bone knife to Luka and maybe it was because there were many outsiders but he didn’t become too energetic and instead he slept for most of the day. He only woke up after they left, and he was full of energy right now, if he were to be asked to hunt prey right now, Luo Zhen estimated that the other party would really be able to fight the beasts without saying a word.
“Didn’t Jiao Zhu give you a piece of stone salt? Why do you still use salted fruit when cooking meat?” Lu Zhan picked the salted fruit dregs into Luo Zhen’s bowl and asked curiously.
“That piece of rock salt has too many impurities, I want to refine it before using it.” Luo Zhen handed the bone knife to him and motioned for Lu Zhan to make a few strokes on the barbecue, then he squeezed a little green pear juice into it. The green pear tasted sour and astringent, it can not only increase the taste but also relieve the greasy taste of barbecue.
“Refine?” Lu Zhan was a little puzzled when he heard this word for the first time.
“I’ll just pick out the things that are not salt in it so that the salt will taste better.”
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.
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“Is there such a thing?” Lu Zhan threw away the bones and went to cut the barbecue. At noon, because there were outsiders, he did not eat enough. “He is different from you. Da Wu likes the outsiders across Changfeng Mountain?”
Luo Zhen was taken aback, “Why?”
Lu Zhan shook his head. He was also not liked by Da Wu. He had heard the old warrior who had taken care of him mentioning it before. This had something to do with his father leaving the tribe and going to the opposite side of Changfeng Mountain. However, he had never seen anyone over Changfeng Mountain come here so he didn’t know if that was truly the reason.
“Changfeng Mountain is guarded by human-faced birds. How do you head to the Tiger Lion Tribe to exchange stone salt?” Luo Zhen asked something he had been curious about for a while now.
“Don’t you know? Human-faced birds enter their estrus period every three years. They are busy incubating their offspring and will not come out for hunting throughout the spring. We take advantage of that time to climb Changfeng Mountain to the other side. Your tribe should’ve also been sending their warriors out to exchange.” Lu Zhan once secretly went to the foot of Changfeng Mountain with the warriors who went to exchange for salt, and he saw people from other tribes.
Luo Zhen nodded, skipping the unspoken question behind Lu Zhan’s answer, and asked another question, “Is it still a long time before winter comes?”
Lu Zhan bit the bones while Luo Zhen felt his toothache when he heard it, “It’s not too long now, it will come in about two months. In a while, there will be the last large hunt led by the tribe, and the hunting team will leave for a month. Around the time they come back, winter would be approaching.”
“They really go hunting for that long?”
“Of course, they want to hunt enough prey for the entire tribe in winter.”
Luo Zhen frowned, “Would you not go out to hunt again in winter?”
Lu Zhan gave him a look as if he was looking at an idiot, “Let’s not talk about human-faced birds, even other wild beasts will become several times more fierce than usual when they are hungry in winter. In addition, the fierce beasts in the southern foot plains will also come out here if they are hungry enough. Going out to hunt, do you want the warriors to be their food in winter?”
Luo Zhen touched his nose, feeling a little silly for asking. Lu Zhan saw that Luo Zhen had only drunk a little soup before he had time to eat. The big beef leg that was roasted was almost eaten by himself, leaving bones. Lu Zhan looked at his hands and took the last piece of meat, thought for a while, cut off the remaining meat, picked a few blades of grass nearby, and handed it to Luo Zhen, then turned back to the tent and took the catfish that had yet to be cut opened and eaten.
After being wrapped with animal skins for a day, the catfish’s body has changed a bit. Lu Zhan put it under his nose and smelled it, his face was immediately full of disgust.
Luo Zhen looked at him funny. Seeing that the other party wanted to skewer it directly with wooden sticks and put it on the fire, he hurriedly stopped him, “You should clean out the guts of the catfish first.”
Before Jiao Zhu left, he helped Luo Zhen fill up the water in the big makeshift wooden buckets so now they still have enough water to use. Lu Zhan obediently stroked the catfish’s belly with a bone knife and swept his hands into the fish’s belly as it’s internal organs slipped out.
After washing the whole fish with water, Luo Zhen continued to use the sour green pear juice to smear the catfish for marinating. Although the seasoning is simple, it can at least cover up the fishy smell of the catfish and the taste of the catfish that has been wrapped for a day and has been a bit spoiled.
Lu Zhan dug a deep pit by the fire, buried the unwanted fish viscera, and then filled it with soil. After finishing it, he found Luo Zhen staring at him in a daze so he couldn’t help but explain, “If these things aren’t buried, the beasts with sensitive noses will be attracted.”
Their tent is located on the outermost periphery of the tribe. Although the surrounding beasts have been cleaned up by the warriors, no ones dares to take them lightly. The beasts that can come near the tribe are much more cunning and fierce than the ones they take the initiative to hunt.
Luo Zhen came back to his senses. In fact, he was not curious about Lu Zhan’s act of burying the fish’s entrails but was thinking about another question. There are still about two months before winter. This time is not long, but it is also not too short. Although it’s a bit too late for some plants that need to bloom and bear fruit, some wild vegetables that can be eaten as long as they grow has enough time for him to be able to harvest a batch.
Luo Zhen patted his forehead. Why didn’t he think to plant a batch of wild vegetables? In the past few days, he found two kinds of wild vegetables more suitable for planting near the tribe. One is plantain with a relatively large amount and the other is wild lettuce.
This wild lettuce is not the same as those sold in the supermarket and Luo Zhen only found two trees near the tribe. They were more than two meters tall and the leaves were big and long. Luo Zhen always cooked them every time. He always needed to tear the leaves into several pieces as the middle leaf stem is hard and unsuitable for eating.
When Luo Zhen first discovered this wild edible vegetable, he didn’t dare to pick it and eat it because he was not sure. After observing it for a period of time, he found that some birds occasionally flew down and pecked at it, and he had seen a few hares eating the vegetable leaves. Only then did he dare to pick up some of the plant.
Although there are more plantains than wild lettuce, the surrounding weeds grow too lush, which completely inhibits their growth. It is also very troublesome to search for plantains in the grass. The main reason he picked these two is that these two things are very easy to grow. As long as there is sunlight and water, they can grow quickly so for Luo Zhen, a novice who barely has any experience growing plants, it is the best practice material.
Even if his planting is unsuccessful, there is no loss other than a little time wasted, but if it grows then at least there is no need to worry that there will be no wild vegetables to eat throughout the winter.
Luo Zhen did as he thought of it. He planned to open a piece of land next to the tent.
Lu Zhan: “…”
Why did the person who was preparing to make grilled fish suddenly run to the side to pull at grass?
“What are you doing?” Lu Zhan casually wiped the dirt from his hands with grass leaves and walked over.
Luo Zhen put the pulled weeds aside. The weeds here are almost knee-high and can be burned directly as firewood after they are dried. Now the firewood they have is still being used sparingly by Lu Zhan and it will probably last about two or three days so Luo Zhen did not intend to waste these weeds.
“It’s not enough to till the soil with a bone knife.” Luo Zhen looked at Lu Zhan, his eyes intense, so Lu Zhan, who hadn’t been sharpening the bone knife, was caught by Luo Zhen for work at night. The smaller stones were thrown out while all the soil in the place where Luo Zhen cut the weeds was turned over.
When Jiao Zhu came over the next day, what he saw was a piece of land that had been turned over at the door of Lu Zhan’s house that night. The soil was loosened, and the large stones were carefully picked up and piled aside. Luo Zhen was sleeping next to the fire pit and there were a few more red spots on his body that were results of being bitten by mosquitoes.
He was already used to this itching, so a few red dots existing were impossible to wake Luo Zhen, who has been tired from working all night.
Jiao Zhu: “…What are you doing?”
Jiao Zhu walked into the tent and saw that Lu Zhan had woken up and was leaning against the slate bed gnawing wild fruits.
“He said he wanted to grow vegetables.” Lu Zhan touched the leaves tied to his wound without a change in his expressions. Yesterday’s soil tilling made his wound a little bit painful. Did he behave too normally, or was it because the idea of farming that Luo Zhen came up with made him so excited that it made the other party forget that he was still a seriously injured patient?
Haha, Luo Zhen! 😂