Chapter 39 – Cement
The mud pond is located in a mountain depression, inside a cave-like place. Many thorn trees are growing around that area and the salty fruit brought back by Lu Zhan mainly grows in this area. The hole that the hog deer fell into was still there. In order for Jiao Zhu to catch the prey, a lot of the weeds and such around the prey had been pulled out, which looked very obvious.
“Don’t get too close, be careful not to fall.” Hei Fu uprooted a sapling that was blocking his vision, threw it aside, and told the two behind him.
The mud pond and the place where they are standing are about half a meter high, and the mud on the pond has higher humidity than in other places. It is very slippery to step on, and it is indeed easy for people to fall into it.
Luo Zhen nodded, squatting down to the entrance of the cave and looking inside, probably because the surrounding vegetation was too lush. He can’t see how big this mud pond is, but from what he can see, if the mud were truly useful enough for building houses then the amount would be enough for them.
He picked up a little mud with a branch. The mud here is much thicker than the mud cleaned from Jiao Zhu. He touched it with his fingers a little, and the sensitivity of his touch was very light, before the mud could even fry, Luo Zhen could feel his fingers about to be glued together.
Lu Zhan had prepared a large stump of water and put it aside and Luo Zhen quickly cleaned his fingers with it. As long as the mud remained moist, it could be easily washed away even without hot water. This is what he learned from the mud test that he got off the hog deer yesterday, otherwise, he would not touch the mud with his own hands, after all, he had seen the viscosity of the mud.
“How is it?” Lu Zhan carefully wiped his hands clean with animal skins, making sure not to leave any traces of mud between the nails. These hands are for him to make all kinds of delicious food, and he is not willing to let it be stuck together somehow.
“It’s okay, I have to get some back to see if it can be used.”
“Then, shall we directly use a wooden stump to carry a little bit and bring it back?” Hei Fu asked.
Luo Zhen nodded, “Don’t fill it up, just fill it halfway, lest the mud on our way back will be splashed out, and it will be troublesome if we get it on our bodies.”
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.
The tool used to hold the mud was a large wooden stump that was hollowed out yesterday, which was used as a bathtub for Jiao Zhu. They also made a long wooden spoon overnight, which was more than one meter long, which was cut from a whole wooden board. Now as long as they stand by the side of the mud pool, they can easily scoop the mud inside into the stumps, which is very convenient.
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Taking advantage of Hei Fu’s effort to fill the mud, Luo Zhen circled and his eyes fell on the clusters of salty fruits.
The salty fruit trees are tall and big, and the salty fruit in the waist-high area has signs of being eaten. The salty fruit here is a bit different from the small handful Luo Zhen picked in the small forest before. Sparse things like hoarfrost cover the surface, and this kind of thing can easily fall off with just a light touch.
Luo Zhen lowered his head and looked below. Some black ants were roaming around the roots of the salty fruit trees. Once they found this kind of white frost, they would get up and move them back to the ant nest.
Luo Zhen observed it, curiously dipped a little hoarfrost with his finger, put it in his mouth, and tasted it. The taste was a bit salty, but it was lighter than the taste when he ate the salted fruit directly.
“These salty fruits are not ripe yet, they don’t have much taste.” Lu Zhan saw Luo Zhen looking at the salted fruits here, said, and then pointed to the salty fruit tree next to them, “Only the salty fruits there can be picked.”
Luo Zhen looked over. The salty fruit next to them was a bit bigger than the one in front of him. There was no trace of hoarfrost on the surface of the fruit. Luo Zhen picked one and put it in his mouth. It was the familiar salty taste, then he took a salted fruit with hoarfrost in it. The shaking caused most of the white frost on the surface of the salted fruit to fall off and only the place where the fingers were placed still had some remaining. He put it in his mouth and used his teeth to bite the peel. There is no familiar salty taste but it was a little bitter.
When Lu Zhan saw that Luo Zhen wrinkled his facial features together again, he knew that the other party didn’t like the bitter taste very much. He couldn’t help but feel that this was a little funny. He had never seen an ordinary person whose tongue was as delicate as Luo Zhen. In his original tribe, only those who had grown up without anyone caring for them were qualified to be sacrificed to the God of Water.
“Are these hoarfrosts salt crumbs?” Luo Zhen vomited the last bitter salty fruit and quickly picked another ripe salty fruit to remove the taste in his mouth. Among the sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy, he couldn’t bear the bitter taste the most.
Lu Zhan shrugged his shoulders, saying that he didn’t know. He only knows stone salt, can this kind of thing that grows on fruit also be salt?
There is not much hoarfrost on the unripe salted fruit. Even if the hoarfrost of the whole tree is collected together, it is estimated that it will be about the size of two salted fruits. It is not cost-effective to use salted fruit directly so Luo Zhen did not worry about hoarfrost anymore, but when he left, he dug up two seedlings of salted fruit and took them back. He planned to plant it next to the hayloft where he lives now. If the salted fruit can be planted successfully, he will not need to go to the mountains looking for salty fruit trees in the future.
After Hei Fu filled the required mud, the three of them went back to the tribe together.
The blisters on Luo Zhen’s feet hadn’t healed yet, and he was walking slowly on the mountain road. This time Lu Zhan didn’t have a large bag of things on his body, so he didn’t mind letting the other party carry himself back.
The people of the Black Panther tribe are still very quick to move. The three of them had already cleared a large area after they went out. The open space is next to the straw shed where they are now living, and the processed weeds are neatly cleaned and stacked together.
“Look if there are any edible weeds in these weeds.” A-Xue knew that Luo Zhen could distinguish many plants they didn’t recognize, so she deliberately asked people to pile up all the weeds that they did not recognize. When Luo Zhen came back to identify them, she would distinguish the weeds that he knew from the pile, which greatly reduced Luo Zhen’s effort to search for weeds.
Luo Zhen glanced at A-Xue slightly unexpectedly. He didn’t even think of using all of these weeds, probably because he hadn’t been worried about lack of food recently so his entire mind was temporarily occupied with the building of the house.
Not to mention, even though the weeds looked messy, Luo Zhen did find a few edible wild vegetables, but these wild vegetables looked a little bit different from his memory so Luo Zhen was not very sure. One of them was because there were only leaves and the root was no longer found, so Luo Zhen couldn’t tell whether it was a narcissus or wild garlic.
“When you see this weed in the future, it is best to uproot it. Its roots can be used as seasonings.” Luo Zhen picked out the leaves and told this to A-Xue specifically. If this thing is wild garlic, then it would be very useful, at least if they get injured in the future and they can’t find any substitutes then this thing can also serve as a disinfectant.
A-Xue collected those leaves and carefully noted what he said. She cannot go out hunting prey like a warrior, but at least she can follow Luo Zhen to learn how to find edible things among various seemingly useless plants. In this way, even if there is a lack of prey in the future, there is no need to worry about leaving the people hungry.
A-Xue loves this kind of food hunting. As a half-beastman, she eats a lot more than ordinary people and she has never had a full stomach since she was a child, except during the harvest, but since she decided to stay, she had to contribute her best. After staying, no one disliked her appetite, Luo Zhen would deliberately give her an extra portion of food, and Lu Zhan, who was in charge of hunting food, did not have any opinions.
A-Xue likes her life very much, and she wants to help Luo Zhen do more. What’s more, whether Luo Zhen wants to build a house or find edible plants from these weeds, these are also very good for them.
“What about these?” A-Xue pointed to the plant that Luo Zhen put aside on purpose.
Luo Zhen picked up those plants. One of them looked like the shape of something he vaguely knew but it also only had leaves, so he was not sure. He could not tell the common Chinese medicine between the leaves and the roots by just smelling taste. It’s not the same. The other two are plants that Luo Zhen has never seen before, but he instinctively thinks that these two plants are edible. This feeling is very strange, a bit like instinct. At least before he saw these two plants, he had never felt this way before.
“Feed these first to the cuckoos and see if there are any problems. If the cuckoos are fine, we should be able to eat them.”
“Can the cuckoo be able to tell which plants are edible?” A-Xue looked at Luo Zhen admiringly. She wondered why Luo Zhen would bother to bring two timid and quiet birds. Once, she was yelled at by those two birds and got a headache, but seeing Luo Zhen’s attitude towards the two cuckoo birds was very good, she didn’t say that Luo Zhen should throw away those two birds. Unexpectedly, those two birds play such a role.
“Cuckoo birds are omnivorous birds. They can eat everything. It is safer to give it to them for a try first. If these plants are poisonous, we can also avoid them in advance.”
A-Xue: “…”
Well, she took back what Luo Zhen had said before to those two timid and quiet birds.
After handling the weeds, Luo Zhen began to test the effects of the mud and because of the viscosity of the mud, Luo Zhen directly called this thing cement.
After drying, the cement will turn into an off-white solid that is harder than stone and because of its fine texture, the surface of the solid also looks smooth so it is a bit like cement.
After drying, the cement can be put in boiling water for more than half a day to change it back to the form of mud, or it can be used after being burned to ashes with a high-temperature fire and then heated with water to reconcile it, but the viscosity will be greatly reduced and the color will also be dirty black.
The original mud state can be directly diluted with cold water, and the viscosity of the diluted mud will be weakened, but the viscosity is enough for them to build houses, and the diluted mud is not as thick as before, and it is convenient to use. Luo Zhen has tried many times on the ratio of water to mud, and the final result is that a wooden bowl of mud can probably be added with about three bowls of water.
The various effects of the cement are sorted out, and the building of the house can be carried on immediately.
Yay, time for a new house ^^
Thanks for the update! (≧∇≦)/