Volume 1: Farming Chapter 18 Chopstick Wars
As expected, the clan leader firmly disagreed with using the purple-glazed ceramic bowls. He even carefully wrapped the pots and water jugs with hay and hid them away...
Xiao Yun was too lazy to fight with him. Getting the previous batch of pottery bowls back from the tribe leader was considered a victory. That night, he asked the tribesmen to use the pottery bowls as tableware.
...So a group of snow wolves who were gathered around the campfire waiting to divide the meat gave him a dozen confused looks in response.
"It's no use being cute!"
Xiao Yun didn't care what these guys' reactions were. After handing out the bowls, he squatted next to the earthenware pot of bean sprout soup with a wooden spoon in hand. "From now on, you are not allowed to reach into the pot to grab the bean sprouts. You must bring the bowl over and scoop them out with a spoon and put them in the bowl before you can eat. If anyone violates this rule, he will be forbidden to eat the bean sprouts and drink the soup!"
The weather was getting colder, and the grass had turned half yellow. Not to mention fruits, even wild vegetables could not be found. Besides the usual roasted and boiled meat, only bean sprouts could change the taste. Xiao Yun, who brought bean sprouts to impress the tribesmen, stunned everyone on the spot...
Helpless, the patriarch took the lead and carefully held the earth-red ceramic bowl with his paws and filled it with half a bowl of bean sprouts. He ate the meat and drank the hot soup in small sips.
Barbecue with only salt and no extra seasonings can be eaten occasionally as a wild pleasure, but if it becomes a staple food, who knows how it tastes... Ancient Chinese tea was popular among northern nomads because it can relieve the greasiness of eating too much meat; there is no place to find tea in this place, but bean sprouts stewed in bone soup have a vegetable sweetness, and the function of relieving greasiness is much better than tea. After drinking a few mouthfuls of the barbecue soup, the tribe leader's eyes narrowed...
Seeing that the tribe leader had no objection, the others followed his lead and learned to use the sweet and refreshing bean sprout soup to go with the barbecue. At first, they felt a little awkward and unaccustomed to it, but as they ate, their expressions became noticeably relaxed, and that kind of comfort was visible to everyone who was not blind...
Xiao Yun watched his tribesmen eat with a smile. He deliberately did not ask them not to use their hands to grab the meat. He just waited for them to experience the pain of breaking the bowl because of their greasy hands. He did not make them wait too long. Niu Jiao, who was used to drinking soup with barbecued meat, stood up again to scoop soup and unconsciously changed his hand to hold the bowl. His greasy fingers did not hold it firmly, and the ceramic bowl slipped out from between his fingers and fell to the ground with a clang, breaking.
The tribesmen nearby: “?!”
The chief of the Muzumi clan: “……!!”
Niu Jiao: "...I, this?!"
"Hiss——" The tribesmen stared at the broken pottery bowl and began to gasp.
"Mo Fang!" Xiao Yun raised his hand to stop the tribesmen who wanted to scream, "It's okay, everything is fine. Come to Niu Jiao and get another pottery bowl. Just be careful this time." After saying that, he took out a clean pottery bowl from the stack of bowls next to him and handed it over.
Niu Jiao... No matter how thick-skinned Niu Jiao was, he would not have acted as if nothing had happened. He looked at Xiao Yun in horror, then at the remains of the broken pottery bowl, with his mouth half open, not daring to move.
"They all said it's okay." Xiao Yun stood up and stuffed the new pottery bowl into Niu Jiao's arms, then bent down to pick up the broken pieces of the bowl. "This can be reused if it's crushed into powder and rubbed into clay. It won't be wasted. Don't worry, ah."
Niu Jiao, holding the new ceramic bowl in both hands, looked confused...
Xiao Yun sat back and continued to watch over the bean sprout soup pot. He nodded to the tribesmen with a smile and pointed to the pile of ceramic bowls that he had specially placed beside him as spares: "Don't feel stressed. Even if you accidentally break one, there are still plenty of others. After all, these are the bowls made in the tribe, not replaced from outside. We can afford to break them. Even if these bowls are broken, the tribe leader still has better ones than this one."
The tribe leader didn't even bother to scold him for not taking good care of the horns. He just looked at him in horror...
"I, I didn't mean to do that, my hand slipped..." Niu Jiao felt aggrieved. He carefully held the bowl with his oil-free hand and rubbed it hard on his animal skin shorts with the other hand.
"I know, I know. If you eat barbecue with your hands, of course you will get greasy. This is inevitable. No one will say anything bad about your horns. Come, let me scoop out the bean sprouts for you and you can continue eating." Xiao Yun said in a wolf-like manner.
Since he had such an attitude, the clan leader naturally couldn't scold Niu Jiao. He could only glare at Niu Jiao fiercely and then looked at the others .
In fact, even without the chief's threats, the tribesmen began to get nervous... Including Niu Jiao, everyone silently lowered their heads to look at their hands, trying to remember which hand had grabbed the meat, and remember that they could not grab the bowl with the greasy hand...
Xiao Yun looked at his fellow tribesmen with satisfaction, whose eating manners had become much more "refined". He deliberately sat half a body forward, took out his homemade wooden chopsticks, and ate the meat in a cool manner. In order to ensure that the barbecued meat was heated evenly and absorbed the flavor, the young men who were now responsible for making dinner would try their best to cut the meat into long strips with their claws. Although it was still a bit big, there was no problem in eating it with chopsticks.
He usually used homemade wooden chopsticks, and the tribesmen never paid attention to him. But this time he started eating with great showmanship, and quickly attracted the attention of the tribesmen.
"Ayun, if you use a stick to eat meat, your hands won't get greasy." Daha, who was quick-witted and aware, noticed something.
"Yeah!" Xiao Yun nodded while chewing the meat, and deliberately showed his clean hands to Daha.
"Oh~!" The soldier Hongye suddenly showed an understanding expression. He carefully put down the bowl, rubbed his greasy right hand on his animal leather shorts a few times, pulled out a very sharp bone arrow from his animal leather quiver, tightly grasped the meat on the rattan mat, and began to eat it happily. He also threw a victorious look at Xiao Yun proudly.
"Hehe." Xiao Yun showed his contempt as he swallowed the meat on the chopsticks in one gulp. Then he picked up a few bean sprouts with his chopsticks and put them into his mouth with a relaxed look.
Hongye looked at her bone arrow, then at the thin white bean sprouts in the bowl, and the corners of her mouth twitched... Her bone arrow really couldn't do this.
Mengmengda Dahe looked at Hongye and then at Xiaoyun, blinked his eyes and said: "Ayun, your little wooden stick is very useful."
"This is called chopsticks." What Xiao Yun wanted was for his tribesmen to notice the convenience of chopsticks and imitate him spontaneously. "They are very easy to use. They won't get your hands greasy, and they are flexible. You can pick up anything with them once you get used to them. By the way, doesn't Niu Jiao like to eat fish? If you can use chopsticks flexibly, it will be very convenient to eat fish. You can easily pick out the fish bones, and you don't have to eat fish with fried crispy bones."
Obtaining animal fats was not a problem, but frying and pan-frying fish required too much clay pot. Everyone in the tribe knew that fish was delicious, but they had only eaten it once.
"Ayun, give me the chopsticks." Niu Jiao immediately reached out to Xiao Yun.
"Give it to me too, give it to me too." Da He also said.
Xiao Yun immediately followed suit... and took out a handful of prepared wooden chopsticks, all of which were standard wooden chopsticks that he had carefully trimmed with his claws, with a round top and a round bottom.
Everyone on Earth knows whether chopsticks are easy to use. In order to eat Chinese food, the foreigners are very good at using chopsticks. However, chopsticks are also difficult to use. Including the tribe leader, the tribesmen who received chopsticks from Xiao Yun, after a difficult trial, all silently abandoned this thing and continued to eat with their own claws.
Xiao Yun had long been prepared to fight a long "chopstick war" and was not discouraged by it. When the big pot meal was over, the increasingly low-key and silent human leatherworker Thrall took away the pots and bowls to wash them aside, and when the tribesmen were preparing to line up to take a bath and get on the kang, Xiao Yun took out a covered pottery jar and placed it in front of him: "Don't leave in a hurry, who wants to play a delicious game with me?"
"Delicious?" Niu Jiao looked at him with shining eyes.
"Game?" Dahe, Qingcao, and Yangmao, who were about to stand up, immediately sat back down.
Xiao Yun smiled slightly and opened the lid of the pot. An aroma of animal fat mixed with beans and pine nuts immediately spread out. He had been storing animal fat in a planned way since the tribe started preparing air-dried meat. Although the tribe's catering level had not yet developed to the point where they could cook (there were no iron pans, and the heat transfer of clay pots was not strong enough for cooking), animal fat could always come in handy. This time, he added the pine nuts he had picked up from the outskirts of the jungle and some of the smaller black beans he had picked out, fried them in animal fat until crispy, and sprinkled them with salt to make this large pot of crispy snacks.
Xiao Yun took out a few beans and pine nuts and asked the tribesmen who had returned to their seats to taste them first: "How is it? Is it delicious?"
"Delicious, delicious!" The eyes of the tribesmen who had never eaten snacks before all lit up. Although the ingredients are only oil and salt, fried beans also have a market in modern society, not to mention the aroma of pine nuts to enhance the flavor.
Xiao Yun smiled slightly, took a clean ceramic bowl and placed it on the ground, threw three beans and three pine nuts into the ceramic bowl, and then took out two pairs of chopsticks: "This game is called Chopstick Wars. Two people use chopsticks to pick up the beans and pine nuts in the bowl. Whoever can pick up more and eat more is the winner. The winner can get a handful of beans and pine nuts, based on the handful I grabbed. How about it, who wants to play?"
"Me!" Niu Jiao, who was the most clueless... uh, the one who could not resist the temptation of delicious food, immediately sat beside the bowl.
"I'll come too." Qingcao, who was often praised by Xiao Yun for his dexterity, sat down on the other side confidently.
Only embers remained of the bonfire, and the open space in the tribe was dark. However, the lack of light did not affect the snow werewolves with night vision, and a fierce battle for snacks began...
Just as the Snow Wolves were being seduced by Xiao Yun into playing after-dinner games, on the grassland less than ten kilometers away from the tribe, a lonely traveler was staggering through the overgrown brambles.
The heavy breathing and footsteps of varying heaviness could be heard dozens of meters away, alarming the night predators. Green eyes flashed through the grass, hiding in the darkness and spying on the staggering pedestrians who seemed like they would fall down at any time.
“Hoo…Hoo…”
The predator's ferocious mouth spewed out fishy hot air, and it smelled a slight smell of blood and rotten meat, which made it a little excited, but it did not attack rashly because the prey that seemed to be exhausted was larger than it.
Hunters on the grassland know better than anyone the consequences of impulsiveness, which often cost their lives. The hungry predator endured the rumbling in its stomach and patiently fell behind its prey, slowly chasing the scent of the prey; its patience was rewarded, as the prey with its size advantage was tripped by the thorns growing close to the ground, and after a slight struggle, it was unable to get up.
The predator decisively rushed out of the grass. Nothing could attract all kinds of hunters more than the smell of flesh and blood. It had to seize the time to have a full meal before the next group of hunters were attracted. If possible, it could also drag the remaining prey away, bury it in a safe place and enjoy it slowly.
The excited predator pounced on its prey, but... at the moment it opened its bloody mouth to bite, the motionless prey suddenly turned over, grabbed its drooling chin, and pulled it down hard - the lower half of its head said goodbye to the body.
The switching of identities between hunter and prey is not uncommon on the grassland, but... the pedestrian who killed the unlucky predator in seconds did not enjoy the meal . He still lay there, motionless.
After a long time, he moved, and his body shook even more violently when he got up again, but he still stood up firmly. He bent down, grabbed the predator that attacked him by the scruff of its neck, and threw it onto his shoulders. His already shaky body shook even more violently because of this movement.
"Ha ha ……"
The pedestrians set out on the road again, their steps becoming increasingly unsteady.
"A werewolf that is willing to take in even humans... ha... will take me in, too..."
"Um?"
The soldier Hongye had just taken a bath and went into the house to lie on the kang, but was attracted by the wailing of Niu Jiao and went out to watch the fun. He had just made a few remarks to mock Niu Jiao, who had lost several rounds and had not eaten a single bean, when Hongye smelled a faint scent of blood in the air.
The sense of smell of the Snow Wolf Man is unquestionable, and warriors like Hongye are even better at distinguishing smells. The blood smell was very faint, and Hongye did not alarm the tribesmen who were happily playing games. He quietly left, returned to his tent, took a bow and arrow, and quickly ran out of the tribe and ran towards the direction where the blood smell came from.
There is more than one warrior as sharp as Hongye, and Ashan, who also uses a bow and arrow, also chased out.
"There are two smells of blood." Ashan, who was faster, said softly after catching up with Hongye.
Hongye nodded: "One is fresh, and the other is rotten."
"There are no other tribes nearby. Could they be wanderers?" Ashan said.
Hongye frowned: "Even if he is a wanderer, he won't run around when it's almost snowing."
"If there is any danger, just drive it away." Ashan said.
After the two snow werewolf warriors ran quickly for several minutes, the smell of blood became stronger and stronger, and the smell that they could not smell before also began to be carried by the wind.
"Hey, this smell seems to be... from the cat tribe?" Ah Shan sniffed, a little surprised. "When the tribe migrated, the cat tribe we encountered was more than a month away from here. How could someone from the cat tribe come from so far away?"
"See, it's there!" Hongye pointed.
The other party seemed to have also noticed the snow werewolf approaching at high speed, stopped and looked over here... Suddenly, he fell forward and died.
Ashan & Hongye: "......?!"
