Volume 1: Farming Chapter 9 The protagonist
The 200-pound wild boar meat was just enough for the Snow Wolf tribe to have a meal. That wasn’t all the tribe members. There were still seven or eight people watching the cattle and sheep on the pasture while enjoying the northwest wind. In addition to the wild boar meat, they also ate more than 20 pounds of wild vegetables, more than 10 pounds of freshwater fish, and more than 10 pounds of wild fruits…
——This bunch of animals! This was Xiao Yun's first reaction after he silently estimated the cost of dinner; I can't afford to feed them! This was his second reaction.
"...Wait, the original owner didn't eat so much every meal in his memory. The body of a snow wolf is very good at storing calories. If he eats a full meal, as long as he doesn't turn into a wolf and endures it, he can survive for two or three days..."
Xiao Yun breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of this. When the temperature drops, the calories consumed by the snow wolves will be higher than usual, but at least it won't be so high that they can't survive without eating up all the cattle and sheep - if that were the case, next year would be even more difficult.
"Tonight, we should have eaten so badly that we can relax our appetite after eating something decent every now and then." Xiao Yun silently observed the tribesmen who were walking to their tents with their hands on their stomachs in satisfaction. "It shouldn't be so scary if we get used to eating like this in the future... Well, we should try to increase the amount of side dishes. We can't eat meat all the time. Several people's gums are bleeding. We can see blood when we chew wild fruits. This is not good for health."
The wild fruit that Ah Shan brought back was a kind of unnamed fruit with a thick earthy yellow skin. After biting open the skin, there was a three-finger-wide flesh and a thumb-sized core. Xiao Yun also got one and tasted it. He found it was sour and astringent. It had no other advantages except that it was full of water. But even though it was so unpalatable, the Snow Wolves all looked very cherished when they ate it... It was also sad and painful.
After eating, the snow wolves who did not use tableware went back to their homes to sleep, without the worry of washing dishes. The only one who used ceramic bowls, Thrall, had to wash his own bowl, and at the same time wash the ceramic pot for cooking wild vegetables - when Xiao Yun was frying fish before, the ceramic pot exploded, which almost heartbroken Thrall. It was only after he switched to frying fish that he felt better.
Of course, Xiao Yun was not so great as to help Sal wash the pot. When he was on Earth, he rushed to cook at home just to avoid washing the dishes after dinner... But when most of the tribe members had dispersed and Xiao Yun felt sleepy, he suddenly discovered a century-old problem: his and his uncle Ashan's tent collapsed, where would he stay at night? !
Xiao Yun was confused as he found himself falling into a trap. A Shan and Niu Jiao came over with their arms around each other and said, "A Yun, let's sleep together with Niu Jiao tonight!"
"..." Xiao Yun glared at the two guys who probably had never taken a bath since they were born. He subconsciously took a half step back, and then another half step back.
Big crisis! If I spend the night in the same tent with these two, the tribe will have to hold a funeral for me tomorrow!
Uh... snow werewolves don't seem to be fond of funerals?
Shit, it’s a big crisis!
The skin of the Snow Wolf Man dissipates heat when in human form, so he must sleep in a place that is shielded from the wind, otherwise his body will not be able to keep warm. Given the Snow Wolf Man tribe's protective mentality towards their cubs, Xiao Yun didn't think the tribe would accept him sleeping by the fire - there was no other choice! Xiao Yun took a few steps back and slapped Sal's shoulder as he was washing the pot, with a very firm look on his face: "No, uncle, Sal and I will sleep."
"Huh?!" Sal's whole body trembled.
"Ah?" A Shan scratched his head, looked at Sal and then at Xiao Yun, "That's fine. Just don't bite him when you sleep at night."
"Ah?!" Sal sat down on the ground.
"Don't worry, I don't sleep that badly." Xiao Yun quickly comforted Sal.
"..."Sal gave a dry laugh as if he was about to cry.
In fact, if Xiao Yun had a choice, he didn't want to spend the night with Thrall, who looked like Sharp Brother and whose body odor was not as exaggerated as that of the Snow Werewolf but was a little bit ecstatic. However... among the 20 or 30 tents in the tribe, Thrall's tent was the only one that didn't look like a garbage dump...
Half of the square-top tent with a relatively large interior area is used to store various furs, which are the property of the tribe. The other half is Thrall's activity space. A small fire surrounded by stones for heating is piled closest to the door. A layer of hay and a few animal skins are placed on the ground inside. This is Thrall's bed.
Thrall doesn't have a body as strong as the snow wolf, so it's especially difficult for him to make a living on the grassland. The snow wolf can just lie down and sleep, so he has to light a fire, grab a handful of insect-repellent grass, burn it into ashes, and then spread it around the bed - this insect-repellent grass looks like some kind of dried chrysanthemum from Xiao Yun's perspective. According to the original owner's memory, this kind of pyrethrum grows a lot in the south of the grassland. Every summer, the snow wolf will go on a long journey to collect it for Thrall... In order to feed this guy, the snow wolf has also taken a lot of effort.
Xiao Yun could see that Sal was a little scared to spend the night with him, so he didn't squeeze into his bed. He really had no interest in getting close to the bed that was filled with the stench of adult male sweat. He took a piece of animal skin, spread it on the ground and lay down on it. Anyway, without a mobile phone or computer to affect his sleep quality, there was no difference between a Simmons mattress and an animal skin bed.
In the middle of the night, Xiao Yun suddenly opened his eyes and turned to look at Thrall who was snoring softly in the dark. He realized belatedly why Thrall was suddenly so afraid of him. The snow werewolves did not believe in supernatural powers, but humans did.
The Snow Wolf people turned a blind eye to his (Ayun) changes. As long as he (Ayun) was still one of their tribesmen, the Snow Wolf people would not treat him as an outsider. Complex things like time travel, soul possession, and substitution had nothing to do with the simple-minded Snow Wolf people. However... humans, who gave birth to various worships of gods due to fear of nature, would think of these idealistic things and would firmly believe in them.
Xiao Yun clearly remembered that when he just woke up, Thrall was very friendly and flattering to him. However, after he took Yangmao and a few others to collect a lot of wild vegetables and induced Niujiao and him to go to the river to process wild boar meat and catch fish, Thrall began to distance himself from him... He probably realized at that time that he was too different from the original Ayun, and therefore began to make all kinds of speculations - in short, Thrall began to doubt his origins.
A drop of sweat slowly seeped out of Xiao Yun's forehead...
To be honest, based on the contact throughout the whole day and the sorting out of the original owner's memories, Xiao Yun was not too worried that Thrall would spread his abnormality to his tribesmen - there was no use in spreading the news, the Snow Wolf People were absolute materialists and only believed in what they could see, or in other words, the entire grassland nation was not a supporter of idealism... The individual combat power of the Tiger People was stronger than that of the Snow Wolf People, the Cat People were first-rate hunters, and the Minotaur people knew how to use farming to obtain food in their ancestral period, and they also had strong survival abilities; these tribes on the grassland were not afraid of the power of nature like humans, and the idea that seeing thunder was the wrath of God was not something they had anything to do with.
Their poverty and backwardness lies only in the fact that their ethnic group is limited by the means of survival and cannot grow to the level that can give birth to urban or even national civilization. When the main ethnic group cannot grow, they naturally cannot touch upon the three steps of civilization progress: understanding nature, conquering nature, and transforming nature.
In such an internal small social environment, even if Thrall spread the word that Ayun was possessed by the devil, the tribe would not agree with him or even expel Ayun, because the grassland tribe did not know or care what the devil was... Compared to the weird and supernatural things that they did not know what kind of bird it was, protecting the cubs of their own tribe was their instinct rooted in their genes.
It was because Xiao Yun saw from the original owner's memory how the snow werewolves protected their cubs that he decided to return to the tribe from the beginning - the snow werewolves would raise any human of different species as long as they were useful to the tribe, let alone their own people.
But... Although he was confident that he would not be treated as an alien, Xiao Yun still couldn't help feeling a little scared... If he was not thrown into the grassland where the backward tribes of non-believers were the main body, but was thrown into the human kingdom in the south or the orc empire in the east with a country scale and main belief, then he would definitely be killed if he could not survive three days - the skill of perfectly disguising oneself as another person and blending in is something that only specially trained agents can do, and ordinary people can just forget about it.
"The leading role, the leading role..." Xiao Yun patted his chest and stopped scaring himself. He closed his eyes and fell asleep again. There were still a lot of things to do tomorrow. It was a complete waste of energy to imagine things that didn't exist.
Before daybreak, the chief had already gone out with the tribesmen in charge of herding. He did not even think of testing Ayun, the tribesman who was behaving "abnormally". He just ordered the three young men who stayed behind to work hard to collect wild vegetables as a snack for the tribesmen who would be taking a break tonight... This shows the pragmatic way of thinking of the snow wolves.
After waking up, Xiao Yun didn't have the time to talk to Sal to resolve the misunderstanding between the two sides. He went directly to his collapsed tent, pinched his nose and searched for a long time, and found the two leather bags of black beans that belonged to his private property.
Rather than saying it is "private property", it is better to say that it is the maximum reserve food given to each tribe member by the tribe leader when the black beans are harvested... When the roads are blocked by heavy snow and there is no food at all, the tribe members have to rely on these two leather bags of black beans to survive. As for the black beans that are kept for seeds and for public use, they are all piled in the tribe leader's tent.
The original owner who participated in the planting had a relatively clear memory of black beans. Xiao Yun also had an image of black beans before the harvest in his mind: the plant was about half a meter tall, the leaves on the plant were oval, the flowers were small purple butterfly-shaped corollas, and the pods were a bit like green beans. The size of the black beans themselves was slightly larger than that of soybeans, the bean skin was smooth and plump, and they needed to be dried when harvested.
This black bean is not the same as the horse feed beans that Xiao Yun had seen in the countryside when he was a child. The number of pods on each plant is not as many as that of horse feed beans, but it is not the original soybean either. After searching the original owner's memory, he remembered that the seeds of this soybean were given by the Minotaur. In other words, this black soybean had been domesticated by the Minotaur before it was planted by various tribes on the grassland as emergency food.
"Even if it was domesticated by Yuan Longping on the grassland, it would have degenerated after being raised so roughly for so many years. It would be best to persuade the tribe leader to send someone to ask the minotaurs for some more seeds before the beginning of next spring."
Recalling the memories of the minotaurs who almost never refused requests for help from outsiders, Xiao Yun gave a high evaluation to those vegetarian brothers...
The taste of this black bean when cooked is quite delicious. Xiao Yun himself doesn't want to eat it a second time after having eaten it once. However, if it is processed into bean sprouts, Xiao Yun feels that the snow wolves who can even eat wild vegetables made of mud with relish will definitely not refuse it.
Bean sprouts can be grown in modern families, but they will still be a problem in this poor and poor Snow Wolf Tribe... The first difficulty is that there is no container for growing bean sprouts. The only two wooden barrels in Sarna are the water collection tools for everyone in the tribe, so Xiao Yun cannot occupy them.
There was nothing he could do... Xiao Yun put the leather bag away and went to look for Brother Niu Jiao.
Niu Jiao had gone out for hunting and patrolling. His tent smelled even bigger than A Yun's original tent. Xiao Yun only took a look inside and gave up the idea of going in. He stood at the door and looked around for a long time with a sly look, and he actually found the tool: a real Niu Jiao knife, about 40 centimeters long, curved, with a sharpened blade on the top.
Xiao Yun rushed in with his nose pinched and took out the ox-horn knife, then continued to look for helpers... the three men named Yangmao who were weaving trawl net mats with rattan grass.
Although the snow werewolves have to DIY all their tools, they do have some hands-on skills. The vines that can be found everywhere on the grassland are the most commonly used processing materials for the snow werewolves. They can be used for trawl nets for dragging cow dung, straw mats for food, mattresses for sleeping, and even for tying wool felt when setting up tents.
Yangmao and the other two were sitting cross-legged on the ground, tearing off the skin on the vine. Xiao Yun also squatted down and took a look. This vine looked a bit like an old bean vine, as thick as a little finger, with a relatively straight and tough body. After removing the rough skin, the exposed body was relatively smooth.
"Hmm..." Xiao Yun pulled it with his hand to test the toughness of the vine. Suddenly, he thought of something and stood up and rushed towards Sal's tent.
Sal, who was sitting in his tent nibbling on cheese for breakfast, was startled by Xiao Yun rushing in: "Ah, Ayun..."
Xiao Yun ignored him and ran directly to his bed, stretched out his claws... pulled out a handful of hay, and rushed out again holding the hay.
Sal: “?!”
Xiao Yun sat down next to the three men with hay in his arms. He took away a piece of rattan that he had worked hard to remove the skin from, and used his hands to carve out a rough shape similar to the sole of the shoe. He made a knot around it, and then wrapped it around again and again to fix the shape to make the sole. He then used the remaining length to pull out the upper frame - thanks to his elder sister who liked to watch TV making handmade cloth shoes at home. He had watched how handmade shoes were made countless times since he was a child.
The rattan cannot be woven too densely, and there is a large cavity in the middle. At this time, Sal has to rely on the hay that he specially collects and dries to use as a bed. He pinches a few pieces of hay and twists them into a rope shape, which he carefully and densely wraps around the frame made of the rattan. After a few minutes, a pair of primitive straw sandals made of rattan and hay, which are one size larger and ugly in shape, are born.
The three young men, Yangmao, had no idea what Xiao Yun was doing and just stared at him with blank faces the whole time.
Xiao Yun admired his own craftsmanship, then looked at his dirty feet. Hmm... He despised the three-foot-thick mud on Ashan's feet. In fact, he was not much better. It was a waste to wear new shoes on such dirty feet.
So he ran into Sal's tent again and took out the two buckets of water that he had brought early in the morning...
There was no footbath, so I stood on the stone I used to sit on and carefully washed off the mud on my feet. Don’t say it, you won’t know until you wash it, once you wash it… the water is so dirty that it’s unbearable to look at…
Two buckets of water were enough for Xiao Yun to wash his feet clean. He lifted his feet and dried them under the wool and the confused looks of Sal and others, and then put them into the straw sandals he had woven. When choosing straw stalks to use as a bed, Sal chose the softer, more resilient and smoother ones. Although they were not as comfortable as cloth shoes, they were definitely much better than stepping on the ground directly.
After walking around the tribe in his straw sandals, Xiao Yun felt that there was still room for improvement, so he went into Sar's tent again...
As Thrall was the leatherworker of the tribe, he actually had some scraps of leather cut off from processing leather in his tent. Xiao Yun found a wider piece of leather from the pile of scraps, padded it into his shoes and put them on - very good, the soles of his feet were so comfortable!
Wearing this pair of shoes and running around the tribe, not only Yangmao who doesn't wear shoes, but also Thrall who wears shoes will stare - the shoes Thrall wears are just a whole piece of animal skin wrapped around the feet, which are not breathable, and there is no layer of vines underneath, so his feet will still hurt when stepping on hard objects.
Xiao Yun, who had accomplished his mission, flirted with Yang Mao and the others and said, "It won't matter if you step on stones and bones when you wear this. How about it? Do you want it?"
"Ayun, teach us quickly!" Yangmao said with shining eyes.
"No problem, but I will teach you how to weave shoes, and you have to help me do something too." Xiao Yun grinned like a weird uncle who was seducing a little loli.
"No problem!" the three young men said in unison.
Sar watched everything happening in front of him: "..."
Not offending any snow werewolves is Thrall's survival purpose. He is very clear about the gap in martial arts between him and the snow werewolves (even the cubs). So even after discovering that something was wrong with "Ayun", Thrall's choice was to stop eating the wild vegetables collected by "Ayun", and to resist touching the wild boar meat and fish that had become delicious, and to just bury his head in eating the black beans he cooked. If possible, Thrall still hopes that this "Ayun" can coexist with the tribe... He cannot live without the protection of the snow werewolves, otherwise he cannot survive even half a day on this grassland. Only by sleeping among the snow werewolves can he not be afraid of the roar of beasts in the distance that he can hear every night.
"...From the current perspective, 'He' should not want to disrupt the peace of this tribe."
Thrall looked at Xiao Yun, who was coaxing the three young men around, with a melancholy look, and returned to his tent to sit down and work on leather. In the human society, he was not a person who loved work, anyway, he would not starve to death if he was idle, but now the situation is different. He has lost the home where he grew up and enjoyed a superior life for more than 20 years. Now, in order to survive, he must make the Snow Wolf people think that he is worthy of protection.
Whenever he thought of the past, Sal couldn't help feeling lost, depressed and sad. The monsoon on the grassland not only wrinkled his face, but his heart was also riddled with holes by the cold wind that lasted for at least four months every year.
Sar was just feeling sorry for himself when suddenly, Yang Mao and his men rushed into his tent like wolves and tigers...
Sal looked over in surprise, only to see these young men took away the hay he used to make his bed without saying a word, and ran out like a gust of wind...
Sal: “…”
Author's words: On the religious beliefs of the Snow Wolf People
In fact, if we look at our own history, we can find that the less a nation's ability to withstand survival risks is, the more it is fond of superstition.
What kind of religious mysticism and the sublimity of totemic beliefs that these idiotic young intellectuals promote are all fantasies of people who are shivering in the long night and have a mental breakdown and have to find something to rely on.
If it were the prosperous Tang Dynasty or the wealthy Song Dynasty in Chinese history, you would believe in it and just live a good life.
So based on this premise, I set up a non-human grassland people in an uncivilized and barbaric era in another world. I really don’t think they can be so crazy about worshipping gods...
