Volume 1: Farming Chapter 6 Feeding All the Snow Werewolves
"Finally, I feel a little alive..."
Xiao Yun, who was eating grass silently, was in tears at the moment. The black mud residue-like salt was still salt after all. With the addition of salt, the dandelions and gray vegetables cooked in the venison soup gave the taste buds a much higher sensory enjoyment than raw and grilled meat without salt.
The sharp guy who was sitting opposite and watching him eating grass seemed to accept this setting after being shocked. After a moment of silence, the nanny man found his ceramic bowl and a long spoon carved out of wood, scooped half a bowl of boiled black beans from the ceramic pot, and handed it over in a flattering manner.
The snow werewolves naturally eat the black beans grown by the tribe. Not to mention the snow werewolves, wolves also nibble on grass or eat fruit. Of course, black beans are only a supplementary food. When meat is available, the snow werewolves prefer meat.
Xiao Yun did not refuse the bowl of black beans. After taking it, he also used the chopsticks to pick up the taste. Then his expression was hard to describe... Black beans are soybeans. What do soybeans boiled in water and only added with salt taste like? Basically no taste - soybeans are difficult to cook into salt, and the taste is quite bland.
"This is the third staple food of the snow wolves besides meat and dairy products. Sigh!" Xiao Yun swallowed the half bowl of boiled beans with great effort. His expression was as painful as if he was eating grass roots. He quickly picked up another bowl of wild vegetables for himself.
This time when eating wild vegetables, Xiao Yun noticed the tangled expression on Brother Xili's face...
"Wait, it seems that the Snow Wolf people don't have the habit of eating wild vegetables. The vitamins they need are all obtained from beans and seasonal wild fruits, dried fruits, etc." Xiao Yun was stunned, and his brain was a little confused. "Then humans always eat vegetables, right? Why is he reacting like this?"
Xiao Yun put down the bowl, took another ceramic bowl filled with some wild vegetables and handed it over: "Try it."
Sharp Brother seemed to refuse, but not offending the Snow Wolf People was his survival principle, so he took the bowl with a serious expression and used his homemade small wooden spoon to pick up the wild vegetables and stuff them into his mouth.
After just one bite, Brother Sharp's eyes changed. Needless to say, the gray vegetables that absorbed the soup and salt had a tender and delicious taste. Even the slightly old autumn dandelions were more delicious than beans. He looked at Xiao Yun in shock, then at the wild vegetables in the bowl, and without saying a word... he finished all the vegetables in just two or three bites.
"It's delicious!" Brother Xili said to Xiao Yun with a touched look on his face, "It's so delicious, Ah Yun, where did you find these wild grasses?"
"It's wild vegetables." Xiao Yun breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, the tastes of people in this world were not beyond his comprehension. "If you like it, give me some more."
"It's wild vegetables. Wild vegetables are good." Sharp Brother nodded hurriedly and wiped his mouth. "They are more tender and delicious than the fresh green leaves I ate at the Inland Sea Port. It must be very difficult for you to find these."
"Don't you humans eat wild vegetables either?" Xiao Yun looked at him in shock.
Sharp Brother replied with a bewildered look on his face: "...We eat cultivated greens and radishes. As for wild vegetables, I don't know what you mean, mushrooms? Or matsutake? Mushrooms cannot be eaten randomly. Only those approved by professional mushroom pickers can be eaten. Matsutake are too expensive. Most people can't afford them."
"Uh..." Xiao Yun didn't know how to respond to this. Well, at least the humans in this world have the technology to grow crops. If he could convince his tribesmen, he could buy some vegetables from the caravans and plant them back home.
Brother Xili didn't understand what Xiao Yun was up to. With a sacred expression on his face, he scooped himself half a bowl of wild vegetables and soup with a large wooden spoon. After eating it happily, he asked Xiao Yun earnestly: "Ayun, can you leave some wild vegetables for others to taste?"
...This Sharp Brother is really devoted to the Snow Wolf Man. Xiao Yun complained in his heart, nodded and looked at Sharp Brother's happy expression, he thought again: This guy is simply counting on other Snow Wolf Man to accept wild vegetables, and then bring them back frequently... It turns out that humans are more cunning than the original Snow Wolf Man.
Complaints aside, Xiao Yun actually had the same idea in mind as Sharp Brother, so he ate half of the pot of venison (he was full after only giving Sharp Brother a few pieces), leaving most of the wild vegetables in the pot.
After filling his stomach, Xiao Yun deliberately asked Brother Xili, who was busy with leather making, a question, pretending to be curious about how he lived in human society in order to find out the level of civilization in this world. Brother Xili was very flattered by Xiao Yun's "questioning" and told him everything he knew...
Xiao Yun remembered that in TV shows and movies, the protagonists had to follow certain rules when asking questions of others, but he never expected that it would be so easy for him... After admiring Sharp Brother's strong desire to perform for a long time, Xiao Yun vaguely came to his senses - it turned out that the Snow Wolf Man didn't ask about his background after taking this guy in, and no one cared about what he was like in the human kingdom, which made this guy feel suffocated.
Excluding some exaggerated and unrealistic parts, Xiao Yun judged that this human tramp who called himself Samuel Gregory must have offended a minor noble and had to choose exile, and as a result, his ship sank and was swept to this "northern grassland" by wind and waves... He was also very unlucky and was captured by the enemy's caravan as soon as he got ashore, and was locked in a cage as a slave.
Fortunately, the caravan was on its way into the grassland and had no time to sell him as a slave. The snow werewolves, tiger people, cat people, minotaur and other tribes living on the grassland looked down on human slaves who were as weak as babies, which gave him a chance to escape. He was then picked up by the snow werewolf tribe that had not yet migrated away.
As for why no one in the Snow Wolf Tribe that Ayun lives in calls him by his name... it's because the Snow Wolf Tribe thinks his name is too long and too difficult to pronounce. In the Snow Wolf Tribe, whose living habits are simple and rough, no one's name has more than three syllables...
Samuel, let's call him Thrall. Before he fled, Thrall seemed to be born in a middle-class family. He received a certain degree of literacy education and had a general knowledge of the history and geography of the continent. Although he could not clearly describe the specific location and had no idea what longitude and latitude were, he roughly knew that the northern grassland and the central human kingdom in the south were separated by the inland sea where he drifted from (Xiao Yun speculated that this inland sea was probably similar to the Mediterranean Sea or the Yellow Sea on Earth). There were many pirate groups composed of thieves of various races on the inland sea, specializing in robbing the caravans of the human kingdom in the inland sea and the orc empire in the east (the grassland tribes were so poor that they had no caravans going out to sea).
Further north of the grassland is the Samal Snow Mountain, which is the territory of the northern snow mountain elves. The legendary Elf King lives on the snow mountain. It is a restricted area for humans - not to mention getting close to the Samal Snow Mountain, the northern part of the grassland is covered with ice and snow for at least two-thirds of the year. Human caravans will freeze to death if they go in at the wrong season.
As for the west of the grassland, which was the direction the original owner chose to run away to commit suicide, the grassland bordered on continuous mountains and vast primitive jungles. This jungle directly crossed the inland sea and bordered the central human kingdom. There was also a very vast area in the middle. Anyway, no one knew how big this jungle was...
Xiao Yun drew a rough map of the power distribution in his mind according to what Thrall said. If Thrall's teacher hadn't cheated him, the powerful and arrogant Orc Empire he described would probably have occupied a powerful empire similar to half of the Asian continent. There was a sea between the Orc Empire and the central human kingdom, and the closest place was also an inland sea. If they wanted to pass through the inland sea, they had to borrow a road from the grassland. The grassland tribes obviously didn't allow others to trample on their grasslands, so they had been fighting on a small scale for so many years...
For this reason, many countries in the human kingdom have been working hard to maintain friendly relations with the grassland tribes, and the caravans that come in every year are not too unscrupulous...
The northern grassland occupies the southwest side of the continent dominated by the Orc Empire. According to the climate, it should belong to the cold temperate zone. After crossing the inland sea, the central human kingdom is roughly equivalent to the African continent which is moved up in latitude. From this point of view, the climate of the human kingdom's territory is quite good, either in the temperate zone or the subtropical zone. No wonder even with a backward civilization, it can reproduce a large human population.
"From this point of view, the grassland tribes are still very strong." After figuring out the general environment of this world, Xiao Yun felt a lot more at ease. Obviously, with the inland sea between them, the human kingdom could not send a large number of troops to invade in the era of low navigation technology. It would take hundreds or even thousands of years for them to go to war with the human kingdom. As for the relatively close Orc Empire, their territory is larger and the climate is better, so they may not look down on the poor grassland. Besides, there is the Elf Empire further north on the same continent to suppress them. Didn't the Orc Empire borrow troops from the grassland royal court when it fought with the elves?
"In the big environment, there is no all-out war. The danger lies in the smaller aspects... The Snow Wolf Tribe has a small population. According to the original owner's memory, it is hard to say whether there are more than 10,000 people in all the Snow Wolf tribes. The Snow Wolf people reproduce slowly. The current tribe has not recovered since it borrowed soldiers last time. Although the Snow Wolf tribes will not attack each other, there are not only Snow Wolf people on the grassland... This is probably why the tribe decided to migrate."
"The primary obstacle that prevents the Snow Wolf people from living together is the source of food. Herding consumes more land than farming. To feed the same population, nomadic people need dozens or even hundreds of times more land than farming people. The Snow Wolf people have an amazing appetite. If they live together in a tribe, they will eat themselves out... In other words, if they want to ensure their own personal safety and at least be able to be a peace dog forever, the first thing they have to solve is the problem of food sources."
"If we can gather the scattered snow wolves on the grassland and feed them all, then the war issue will no longer be a problem."
After determining his future life goals, Xiao Yun felt more at ease. Regardless of whether he could achieve them or not, it was better to move in a direction that he knew the general direction of the future in than to move in the dark...
"Wait..." Xiao Yun suddenly felt something was wrong. "The tribe originally migrated westward to avoid the covetousness of other tribes. The entire tribe, including Sal, walked for more than half a year until they found a tributary of the river. The new pasture they found was also next to the forest in the west. That means - did the autistic child of the original owner really take the wrong path?! He ran off the track?! Damn it, if it wasn't for my uncle Ashan who found me, I would have never thought of finding the tribe! I have become a stray dog!!"
"Meat - is there anything to eat?!"
A sturdy man, naked with only a piece of animal skin wrapped around his buttocks, lifted the curtain and looked into the tent. He also had a head full of messy white hair, which he had tied into a big ponytail using something like animal tendons. He was carrying a wild boar with ferocious fangs on his shoulder.
"Eat, eat, eat—"
Seeing the warm clay pot on the small fire , the eyes of the snow wolf man lit up. He threw the wild boar outside the tent and walked in ready to go. He sat down without any hesitation, and extremely heroically... stretched out his hands to grab the washbasin-sized clay pot and picked it up as if he was lifting a bowl.
"Why are there weeds in the meat... Gurgle Gurgle... PiaJiPiaJi... Ugh! Ah! Gurgle Gurgle... PiaJiPiaJi..."
He drank half of the soup in one breath, chewed up the remaining venison, and then held the pot in his arms and ate the wild vegetables at the bottom of the pot with his hands. He didn't care that he was covered in ash from the bottom of the pot, and nodded happily to Sal: "It's delicious. What kind of grass is this? Why is it so delicious?"
This guy is as tall as Yao Ming, with muscles like Dwayne Johnson. He is also quite big when he sits down. Sal, who dared to suggest to Ayun that we save some for others, didn't dare to snatch the food from this guy's mouth. He said in a flattering manner: "These are the wild grasses that Ayun brought back... wild vegetables. Yes, wild vegetables that Ayun found."
"Really? Ah Yun, you have good taste." The buddy grabbed the last handful of gray vegetables and was reluctant to stuff them into his mouth. He put them into his mouth piece by piece, "Anything else? It's not enough."
Xiao Yun, who had just made up his mind to feed all the snow werewolves: "..."
"Ayun, you left the tribe to look for wild vegetables. Ashan said you ran back because you missed your original place in the tribe. No wonder we couldn't find it." The buddy licked his dirty fingers while eating. "Next time you want to look for wild vegetables, ask someone else to go with you. I can go with you, too."
Xiao Yun: "..." So in the eyes of the original owner's uncle, he (the original owner) has such a sentimental style - goodbye! This style of painting cannot be preserved!
