Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains

After helping Aze deal with the wound, Chen Qi took the small dish of hot water and went outside to scrub himself. He hadn’t bathed for more than two days. Since Aze was injured, it was inconvenient for them to go to the river. Thus, Chen Qi could only simply clean up like this.

When he returned to the room, he saw Aze sorting out the contents of the backpack returned by Ake. The fruits that were brought back filled a large pottery dish. There were five large laiche fruits, four bright red apple-like berries, and a big bunch of grapes.

Chen Qi leaned over and picked off a grape. After wiping it with his sleeve, he plopped it into his mouth. It was a little sweet and a little sour. It didn’t taste much different from what he’d normally have bought in a supermarket.

“Would you like to drink laiche fruit juice?” Aze picked up a laiche fruit and asked. The laiche fruits that Ake brought back were yellower than Chen Qi had seen before.

Chen Qi nodded. With his fingernails, Aze cut open the top of the laiche fruit. Chen Qi took it and had a sip. Smacking his lips, he commented. “It seems sweeter than before.”

“This one’s a completely matured laiche fruit, so it would taste sweeter. Look at the liquid inside. Don’t you think it is clearer than before?”

Chen Qi only then noticed that the liquid in the laiche fruit was not completely milky white, but was more like water. Chen Qi mused at the laiche fruits in his hand.

Aze cleared the contents of the other backpack into another pottery dish, sighing, “I always thought that the potterywares exchanged from Uncle Ali were useless, but I didn’t expect that almost every one of them would be put to good use now.” These days, everything Chen Qi did needed some potteryware. Almost all the potteryware in this room had been utilized. If he wanted to place new things, he could only go to the sundries room to get the stored potteryware.

“Ali made these potterywares?” Chen Qi really couldn’t address a person who looked not much older than himself as an uncle, so he just called Azhang and Ali directly by name.

“Yes, Uncle Ali is the only one in the tribe who can make pottery now.” Seeing that Chen Qi was only holding the laiche fruit but not drinking it, Aze felt it was a little strange. Hadn’t Chen Qi been really happy about eating those super sweet red berries? Could he not like the laiche fruit now that it was sweeter? “What’s wrong? You don’t like such sweet laiche fruits?”

Crossing  to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP)  is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.

“No, I just had a new idea.” Chen Qi said while taking out a smaller pottery dish. Then he used the simple cloth filter he’d used to filter the salt stone to filter the laiche fruit juice, and then put the pottery dish with the filtered juice over the fire, heating it while stirring with a clean wooden stick. Chen Qi did not take the pottery dish out of the fire until the juice had thickened and was about to be burnt. Then he put it on the side of the fire and let it continue warming with the residual heat from the glow of the fire. That’s right, Chen Qi wanted to try to make sugar.

Unlike salt, sugar didn’t separate out once the water had evaporated. After processing the syrup, Chen Qi left it alone. Then he took out several flat stone slabs and began drawing on them with a thin piece of charcoal. While drawing, he tried to recall the processes he’d seen from others who had built houses before.

Aze finished putting things away and brought out several bundles of firewood from the sundries room. Seeing Chen Qi still immersed in his thoughts, he thought for a moment then decided to take the warthog out from the corner and carry it outside to clean it. Although he could ask Ake or Ali to help with it tomorrow, the warthog had taken its last breath a long time ago, and if left overnight, the quality of the meat would change. Moreover, if he were to let Ake think that he couldn’t even process prey due to such a small injury, he could imagine how much he’d be laughed at.

However, Aze did not blame Chen Qi for fussing so much over his injury. On the contrary, he was actually secretly delighted that Chen Qi cared so much about it. He was so happy thinking about this, his actions couldn’t help but speed up a lot.

After Aze finished handling the warthog, he went back to the house and saw Chen Qi staring at the slate in a daze, a distressed expression on his face. “What’s the matter?” Aze asked, worried.

“I’m wondering what should be used instead of glass for the windows. If wooden windows are used, I’m afraid that once the windows are closed during the winter, the house will be dark again.” Chen Qi habitually wanted to bite the head of the pen, but when he realized that he was holding charcoal, he quickly stopped himself.

“Glass?”

“It is a very hard and transparent thing.” Chen Qi explained.

Crossing  to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP)  is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.

“Like the eyes of a locust dragon?”

“Yes, like a locust dragon’s…” Chen Qi paused and suddenly looked up at Aze. “Did you say a locust dragon’s eyes?”

Aze wondered, “Is that not it? The locust dragon’s eyes are hard and transparent, and even after death, they will remain unaffected for decades.”

Chen Qi just remembered the corpse of the locust dragon that they’d come across on their way here. “Aze, you are too amazing! Why didn’t I think of that?” Chen Qi excitedly wrote down the words ‘locust dragon’ next to the prototype drawing of the window on the stone slab, then asked, “Are the locust dragon’s eyes easy to get?”

“By now, the locust dragons mostly would’ve entered deep into the forest. It would not be so easy to find a locust dragon. Also, the protective film over their eyes can only be removed after the locust dragon has been dead for a period of time.” Aze leaned over to look at what Chen Qi had drawn on the slate. En, he couldn’t understand it.

Chen Qi was a little discouraged, “Can’t we get them now? Would the locust dragon corpse we saw before still be in the same place?”

“You want it? I can go and bring them back.” Aze suggested.

Chen Qi hesitated a bit. The place where they’d encountered the locust dragon was too far away.

Aze saw through the other’s worry. “At my speed, I can be back in two days and a night. I slowed down my speed because you were with me before. You can stay in the tribe for one day and I will be back the next night.” Since Chen Qi was with him last time, Aze had chosen a relatively safer route. Naturally, he’d needed to take a few detours. If he was going alone, he would have no worries at all. What did concern him though, was that the locust dragon’s eyes were too large and it may not be possible to bring back all six eyes in a single trip.

Chen Qi was somewhat convinced by what he said. After all, the windows in a house were still very important. After thinking about it, he nodded and agreed, “But tomorrow you still have to rest another day and you can go after the wound is healed.”

“En. My wound will be just about healed tomorrow.”

Just then, Chen Qi discovered the processed warthog beside him. This time, Aze had left the warthog’s heart, liver, spleen, lung and kidneys. Only the troublesome intestines were discarded. Chen Qi gave him a pointed look, but then rolled up his sleeves and planned to cure all of the meat. He’ll save the viscera for tomorrow.

A lot of salt would be needed to cure a whole warthog. Aze noticed that the amount of salt had decreased a lot. It seemed that he’d have to go to the Lion-Wolf Tribe’s next gathering, which will be held in a few days. He began trying to figure out how many animal skins he had that he could trade for salt.

Chen Qi washed some pig bones, and set up two large pottery dishes of bone soup to simmer over a small fire. Then he added some chopped up pig lungs and wild ginger into the soup, so that they could drink it directly in the morning.

Crossing  to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP)  is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.

Chen Qi was driven back to the slate bed tonight. No matter how much he protested, Aze was unmoved. Later, Aze found a round ball of hides, rolled it out by the fire and laid on it to sleep. Before falling asleep, he seemed to hear Chen Qi’s low laughter coming from behind him.

Upon waking up the next day, Chen Qi went to check the boiled laiche fruit syrup from last night. A whole laiche fruit’s juice only produced a thin layer of syrup. Chen Qi stirred it with a wooden stick. It was sticky. After thinking for a moment, he picked up the pottery dish of syrup and went out of the door. The sun was very good today. He was going to let it bask in the sun. He didn’t know if it would be easy to precipitate the sugar crystals.

Today, Ake still carried Ka Luo over, while Azhang came carrying Ali. Ali’s backpack was bulging. Upon arriving, he greeted Chen Qi, went into the house, neatly took out everything from the backpack then handed the empty backpack to Azhang.

Ake also carried a thick stegosaurus bone over his shoulder. After letting Ka Luo down, he took the stegosaurus bone to yesterday’s cleared area.

After sending Azhang and Ake off, Ka Luo skipped over to Chen Qi and asked, “Chen Qi, what are we going to do today?”

Ali also came up from behind, “You seem to have hung a lot of meat in the room. Wouldn’t it go bad if you just hang it like that? Don’t you need to take it outside to dry out in the sun?”

“The meat strips were smeared with salt so they will not deteriorate so easily. It is too hot outside right now, so it is not suitable for curing meat. The salted meat is best left to dry in the shade.” After Chen Qi said this, he then turned to Ka Luo. “Today, we can go check if the traps have caught any hares. Then, I will draw the basic plan of the house.”

Today, there were only the two backpacks Chen Qi had made. Chen Qi gave one to Aze to fetch water with, and the other was carried by Ka Luo. Since they would be with Ali, Aze was able to rest assured about letting the two males move around nearby.

The traps also yielded two fat rabbits today. Ka Luo happily tied up the rabbit’s limbs and stuffed it into his backpack. Yesterday he’d learned how to tie up the rabbit. Now he just did it again and he was much more proficient at it than yesterday.

After returning home, Chen Qi brought out a lot of cooled charcoal, as well as the thick rope he’d especially made yesterday to measure the distance. Then, he sized up the ground and took out the few slates with the house designs. He roughly determined the positions, before Ka Luo and Ali were allowed to help.

Chen Qi’s house was very simple. It had four symmetrical rooms with a hallway down the middle. Initially, he wanted to build something following the standards of a modern house. Unfortunately, after much consideration, he was defeated by reality because he did not know how to build a house. The beastmen houses were square, four-walled rooms. The sundries room at the back of the house looked like it was connected to the front room, but, in fact, it was actually separated, with just a fist-sized gap. Therefore, to build a house, not only did it need to be well planned, but issues such as load-bearing also needed to be considered.

Chen Qi, who had never built a house before, considered the simplest and most possible solution, making it symmetrical and using the walls that separate the hallway and the rooms as the load-bearing wall.