Volume 3: Fellow villagers, let’s farm together~ Chapter 78 Winter Study Plan
The structure of the oil press is similar to that of a forging press, except that it is soybeans rather than the raw materials that are pressurized by water: an oil outlet is left at the bottom of the straight cylinder body that is cast with cement on the outside and paved with steel on the inside, and the flat-bottomed cylindrical drill bit for oil pressing has spiral patterns on its column. When the water force is transmitted to the iron chain conveyor belt, the heavy drill bit rotates downward layer by layer, and the soybeans placed in the cement cylinder are squeezed, causing oil to seep out.
The pressing process requires someone to constantly adjust the height of the drill bit. When the pressing is completed, someone needs to untie the chain conveyor belt connecting the drill bit to the waterwheel winch, and use the pulley set to rotate and lift the solid iron drill bit weighing one ton upward to clean the bean dregs in the cylinder.
This job is actually not that troublesome. It just requires a certain degree of patience and carefulness. After all, there is only one set of components for this simple and crude press. If it breaks, you have to wait for the gray dwarves to send people to repair it, which is a waste of time. You must know that the rivers on the grassland will freeze in winter, and the waterwheel will be useless at that time. And now winter is not far away.
Xia spent half the morning figuring out the structure of the oil press and the pulley block, and then started to work on the oil pressing. The pressed oil was put into a covered ceramic jar, and the bean dregs were cleaned out and put into a tin bucket. A small part was fried into bean cakes for his own consumption, and most of it was fed to pigs. Before winter came and the river froze, he had squeezed out several thousand kilograms of soybean oil by himself. You have to know that the oil yield of purely physical oil pressing is very low, and the soybeans in this world are not the genetically modified soybeans on Earth. One hundred kilograms of beans can only produce five or six kilograms of oil. You can imagine the workload... He alone consumed nearly a quarter of the 500,000 kilograms of soybeans harvested by the tribe.
Xiao Yun naturally wanted to give back to Xia for his excellent work performance. When the temperature dropped to zero degrees during the day and snowflakes began to fall at night, Xiao Yun praised Xia severely at the work meeting in the mobile room with a candle symbolically lit. He praised Xia seriously and solemnly with high-class flattery that almost made Xia unable to raise his head...
Uh... candles are a by-product of making soap from lard. Chemistry is very interesting. If you are interested, you can even get nitroglycerin from this process... Since it involves dangerous goods, I won't go into details about the operation process.
The people on the grassland all have the ability of night vision, and there is absolutely no market for candles on the grassland. Considering that they will have to trade with humans next year, Xiao Yun made a batch of them.
After publicly praising Xia, Xiao Yun smiled and proposed a winter study plan:
The work plan of the Lan Guo engineering team for this year has been completed. The square area was built to a certain size before the summer. Currently, six more dormitories have been built, four more family houses have been built, two wool spinning mill buildings have been completed, and a three-meter-wide path from the square to the old site of the tribe has been repaired. The brick factory and cement factory do not need to rush to start construction this winter. The warehouse can be built next year, and the pig farm can also be expanded and moved to the old site of the tribe next year. Since the conditions allow, Xiao Yun is not a devil, so he will naturally not force the tribe members to continue to build infrastructure in the winter...
With less work to do, should we just sit around and do nothing for the winter? How can that work?
My bones are too lazy and loose, how can I carry out my work next year!
When people are idle, problems will arise!
So Xiao Yun laid out his long-planned winter study plan in front of everyone - he didn't insist on comprehensive development in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but knowing how to count and read was a hard requirement, and everyone, including the silly Niu Jiao, had to be able to skillfully use the elementary school math operations that fourth grade students were proficient in before spring. Everyone had to learn Chinese pinyin, reading and writing, and be able to write at least a 200-word essay before spring!
Everyone looked at Xiao Yun in bewilderment, their jaws dropped to the ground... In fact, except for Huo Yan and A Shan, most of the people present could do the four arithmetic operations, but even Hong Ye felt that Xiao Yun's proposal to let everyone learn to read and write was a trap...
"Ayun, do you mean that everyone should be able to write the same kind of words that you wrote on the cloth roll?" Hongye swallowed.
"That's right. You have seen the writing of us grassland people many times. It is square, neat and beautiful. How can it be that I am the only one who can write it? Everyone should know how to write and everyone can communicate by writing. That's what's right!" Xiao Yun said without blushing or panting.
"...Why do I feel that the characters written by the Minotaur are different from the ones you wrote?" Hongye questioned forcefully.
"Of course they are different. The Minotaur's language is the Minotaur's language, and our language is our language. Our language is much easier to learn than the Minotaur's. Saladin, the elder of the Minotaur, doesn't dare to say that he knows all the languages. What about our language? I'm sure I know it 100%. What do you think, isn't it better to learn our own language?" Xiao Yun said shamelessly.
"..." Everyone looked at him silently. Everyone felt that Ayun was definitely fooling people, but he seemed to make sense...
"Since everyone has no objection, let's discuss the next step, which is the organization of study groups." Xiao Yun, with a face as thick as a city wall, forced everyone's silence to be accepted, and happily continued to arrange his literacy project -
Excluding the green dragon Balk, who has a very different learning progress and has been stuffed into the sacred realm of chemistry by Xiao Yun and cannot get out, the tribe currently has 193 members. Excluding Xiao Yun, there are 192 people in the tribe.
These 192 people will be organized into study groups. The principle of organization is that the better students lead the worse students, and the good students lead the poor students. The goal is not to produce math geniuses or great writers, but only to require everyone to have simple reading, writing and calculation skills. After all, what the tribe needs most is not a few geniuses, but to complete literacy for all.
The 192 people were divided into ten groups according to the principle of the top students leading the bottom students. Their names were written on a cloth roll. This determined the study groups that would be tied together during the long winter of more than four months. Each group had at least two top students with superior IQs and a varying number of students with inferior IQs. The learning progress of each group was evaluated based on the low score, not the high score. In other words, the shortcomings of each group determined the group's overall score, and the overall score was linked to benefits (snacks)...
Xia and Hongye were grouped together. At first, he thought he was definitely not the worst one. But when Xiao Yun said that the group's total score would be based on the person with the lowest score in the group, Xia and Hongye shuddered at the same time, staring at the name "Niu Jiao" in their group for a long time.
Lan Guo, Cao Gen and Yu looked at Hong Ye with sympathy.
Xiao Yun and the others accepted the reality, and took out a glass bottle wrapped in animal skin and filled with amber liquid. "This is something I just made. It's made from newly fermented malt and rice. It's called maltose..."
The rice harvest is too small to be supplied freely for the time being, and people can only eat white rice every few days. With the rice, Xiao Yun naturally has to make sugar, which is extremely scarce on the grassland - wash the wheat grains and soak them in room temperature water for 24 hours, take them out and put them in a basket, and keep them out of light like bean sprouts. Water the sprouts with room temperature water two to three times a day. After three to five days, cut the malt that has grown two new leaves into pieces, the finer the better.
Then soak ten times the amount of rice as malt overnight, steam it thoroughly, spread it out and let it cool to about 40 degrees, not too hot to touch, add the sparsely crushed malt and stir evenly, put it into a container while it is still hot, and place it in a room with a relatively high temperature to ferment. After about ten hours, a large amount of liquid will appear in the container. Filter out the liquid, squeeze out the rice as much as possible with gauze, boil the filtered liquid over high heat, then turn to low heat and cook while stirring, and simmer until the water evaporates. The remaining thick amber substance is the sweet maltose...
He scooped out some maltose with a spoon for everyone to try. After receiving a lot of pleasant surprises, Xiao Yun closed the lid of the maltose in everyone's expectant eyes and patted the bottle: "This maltose is the same as the honey we collected. It is a reward for excellent study groups. Everyone should work hard to motivate the study enthusiasm of the group members. If someone fails, the whole group will have no sugar or honey cake to eat!"
“Nooo ...
Everyone suddenly started wailing and pounding their chests and the ground... Yes, Hongye was unlucky to be assigned to the same group with Niu Jiao, but who doesn’t have a few silly and cute guys in their group!
The Grassroots Chief turned her head stiffly and looked at Huo Yan, her facial muscles twitching... This guy is in her group!
She herself wasn't really craving for sweets...but there was a caracal in her study group, and if the caracal couldn't have any sweets, it would be very embarrassing for the grassroots leader!
Xiao Yun looked at the people who were eager to fight with their heads thrown to the ground with a smile, and touched his chin with satisfaction... It was a good thing that everyone knew that the solidarity of the study group was very important. He had scattered the snow wolves, cats, gray dwarves and goblins into various groups. He believed that after this winter, the entire tribe would definitely become more united and closer.
Xiao Yun had the idea of elevating the Snow Wolf tribe at the beginning, but now he has completely given up... It is too difficult for the Snow Wolf tribe to stand firm on the grassland alone, so it is more reliable to develop more of their own people. Anyway, these races will not be much better off without the Snow Wolf tribe as the main body. As long as the dates are given well and the whip is wielded beautifully, there is no need to worry that they will not take the initiative to unite.
Compared with nationalism, racism, nationalism and so on are still too backward! Which slogan has more political and strategic significance, the rise of the Han people or the rise of China? It goes without saying!
Xiao Yun didn't have any nationalist slogans to shout out now, so he just generalized it, "Grasslandism!" For the sake of the civilization, progress, unity and prosperity of the grassland people, wouldn't this slogan be more noble and more able to unite the majority than the tiger tribe returning to the empire, the snow wolf people dominating the grassland, etc.?
The height of ideals determines how far an interest group can go, and this is not just something I say to show off!
Hongye is a very foresighted person. As soon as the meeting was over, she immediately took Xia to hold a meeting with all the people assigned to her group.
There were a total of twenty members in Hongye's group. When they met, Hongye glanced at everyone's confused or puzzled faces, and immediately felt a tightness in her chest... In addition to Niu Jiao, there were thirteen other snow werewolves in her group, including Lan Guo's partner Xue Hua and the cub Yang Mao. Obviously, these fourteen people would become the source of her troubles throughout the coming winter...
The key to a study group is not how many people learn quickly and well, but how many people can't keep up with the progress! Hongye clearly understood this when Ayun told her how to calculate the total score of the group!
Taking a deep breath, Hongye explained the winter study plan formulated by Ayun, including the calculation of grades and the reward and punishment mechanism, to the group members. Snow leopard Rosemary, goblin Gar, gray dwarf Sally, Charles, and the caracal cub immediately looked at the horns in horror...
Niu Jiao, who looked confused, said: “???”
The caracal cub said in grief and pain: "Niu Jiao, whether we can have sugar and honey to eat this winter depends entirely on you..."
As soon as he thought of eating cow horns, his IQ rose sharply. He immediately understood what was going on and his jaw dropped to the ground.
Yangmao is sixteen years old this year, the youngest of the snow wolf cubs. She is not as cute as the caracal cub. She jumped onto Niujiao’s shoulder, clamped Niujiao’s neck with her legs, and used both hands to pull Niujiao’s big face: “Ahhhh, it’s over, ahhhh——!”
Niu Jiao: "It hurts, it hurts!"
Snowflake didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she took the wool down. "Stop it... We can just find a way to help Niu Jiao catch up. Don't just blame Niu Jiao. What would you say if you failed?"
"Uh..." Yangmao was stunned and shrank to the side silently.
Xuehua looked around at the tribesmen and sighed, "I think... we are not necessarily better than Niu Jiao . We often see the characters that Ayun wants us to recognize written on cloth rolls..." She paused, her face a little scared, "Ayun requires us to not only recognize, but also write."
"..." Now even the faces of the goblins, gray dwarves, and cats turned pale.
Xuehua is Lan Guo's partner. Xiao Yun has put a lot of effort into training Lan Guo over the past year. Xuehua has been influenced by her and has improved her IQ a bit. She also knows Ayun quite well. Lan Guo cannot see it outside, but Xuehua can see clearly how anxious, nervous and has headaches she gets at home.
Soon, everyone realized that the snowflakes were not trying to scare people...
Due to the drop in temperature, we couldn't sit on the ground in the square to hold a large classroom. The ten groups were divided into five batches. Two groups sat in the activity room at the same time to listen to Lan Guo or Ayun's class. Ayun also distributed paper and charcoal pencils to everyone - the paper was made of bark fiber, and the charcoal pencil was graphite sandwiched with wood chips. Both of them were produced by the gray dwarves. In addition to word of mouth, the traditional teaching method of the gray dwarves also includes graphic drawing. After all, they make a living as craftsmen.
Lan Guo teaches mathematics, and Ayun teaches Lan Guo's own study group during class. The two-hour class every day is half arithmetic and half literacy. Mathematics class has the foundation laid by Lan Guo's previous "open class". All the study groups need to do is to consolidate the foundation and work together to give special lessons to the stupid and cute kids in the group. Literacy is quite painful... The language system of this world is pictographic. Xiao Yun brute-forcely applies other people's language system to Chinese, which is also pictographic. There is no problem with this, but the key is that Chinese is far more complex than the more ancient writing system of this world. Many of the words that Ayun casually spits out do not exist in this world. It all depends on Xiao Yun's random fabrication to fool people and force Chinese into everyone's brains...
Every day, apart from the daily work in the tribe that cannot be put down even in winter, the rest of the time is spent on studying. After class, the study groups have to exchange experiences with each other and complete the homework assigned by Ayun. Every five days, they have to take a half-hour progress test. Once someone in the group fails, the entire group will not be able to get maltose and honey snacks in this round - although regular fried snacks can still be obtained, this is also a matter of life and death!
"I might as well work from morning till night like I always do...I hate winter!"
The tribesmen all cried out as above...
What’s even more annoying is that in winter, Ayun stopped telling stories. He wrote the stories on bark paper made by the gray dwarves and asked each group to read them by themselves - it was too much! Many of the words on it were unrecognizable, so how could they read them?
One day when it was snowing heavily, a scream suddenly came from dormitory No. 2 where Hongye lived.
"I've repeated the word 'ox horn' to you a hundred times, how come you still can't write it out from memory!" This heart-wrenching voice seemed to come from the snow leopard Rosemary. This guy who is usually a bit lazy actually has such a large lung capacity.
"Yangmao, you have mispronounced the pinyin again! Don't pronounce it as An, pronounce it as En!!"
"Snowflake, you used the wrong word—"
Xiao Yun was wearing a sweater and trousers inside and a fur coat outside. With his hands tucked into his sleeves, he walked leisurely through the path in the dormitory.
"The snow leopard in your group learns words very quickly." Xiao Yun said with a smile.
Hongye with a sad face: "..."
"Did you read the story of Little Red Riding Hood fluently last time?" Xiao Yun asked again.
"I've finished reading." Hongye said weakly.
"Okay then, give the sentences marked with red lines to everyone to recite. They are required to be able to fill in the blanks and write them out from memory." Xiao Yun said.
“……” Hongye was too lazy to say anything.
"What about the leopard? How has it been performing recently?" Xiao Yun asked again.
"Well...Rosemary still doesn't seem to want to pay attention to Xia." Hongye said.
"So, he gets along well with other people?"
Hongye nodded: "Xia's personality is much better than it was at the beginning. He used to ask others to listen to him without reason, but now he doesn't do that. He knows to ask for other people's opinions and consider other people's ideas before doing anything."
"But he still doesn't see how you lead this study group well, so it's too early for him to 'graduate'." Xiao Yun smiled indifferently, "If I'm not mistaken, he regards Rosemary as a competitor and is competing with Rosemary for who is more popular in the group, right."
Hongye squinted at me and said, "Isn't this what you suggested? Let those who are good at studying lead those who are lagging behind."
"You were the one who arranged it. The gray dwarf Sally is also a fast learner, so why didn't you let Sally go against the leopard?" Xiao Yun chuckled, "You can see that the leopard is too utilitarian when doing things, so you let Rosemary, who doesn't get along with him, stand up... Hongye, you have complicated feelings towards the leopard."
Hongye didn't beat around the bush and nodded directly: "He cares too much about personal gains and losses. He can't lead others like this. I hope he can find out that this is not okay. We all live together, who can live in disguise forever? And once people find that a person's disguise is broken once, they will lose trust. It is very difficult to rebuild this trust."
Xiao Yun pulled his hand out of his sleeve and patted Hong Ye's strong arm: "I feel relieved to leave him to you to train."
Hongye sighed, "Other people are not like him. Sometimes I don't know how to talk to him."
"Just let it go. The blisters on your feet are caused by walking. You have fulfilled your obligations. It is not your business whether others can keep up." Xiao Yun put his hands into his sleeves again, looking relaxed: "When people open their eyes and look at the world around them, there is always a process of cognition. Seeing a mountain is a mountain, seeing a mountain is not a mountain, and seeing a mountain is still a mountain. The first level of cognition can be achieved by everyone, the second level of cognition can be achieved by smart people, and the third level of cognition is the world that only truly smart people can see."
"Some people who reach the second level of cognition will be filled with awe for the world and explore it more cautiously. Some people, like the leopard, think they are very great and stay at this level of cognition, completely unaware that there is a third level of cognition."
Hongye chewed over these words slowly. When she reached the fourth row of dormitories, she stopped and looked sideways at Xiao Yun: "Then I'd better stay in the first level of cognition for a while. I think... the word 'reverence' you mentioned, Ayun, is very good. We should always be in awe of this world, the people and things around us."
Xiao Yun was a little stunned. He paused and looked at Hongye for a moment, then smiled and said, "Yes... you are right."
After watching Hongye walk into the group study room where Qingyan was, Xiao Yun stood in the snow for a while before leaving.
One of the reasons why he didn't educate Xia personally was that he could see his own shadow in Xia... arrogance, a problem he didn't realize until he was over 30 years old, and awe, a cognition he didn't realize until he was over 30 years old.
"If I hadn't traveled through time, the next clan leader would have been Hongye."
This thought paused for a second in Xiao Yun's mind before he destroyed it in the trash can of his sea of thoughts. It was true that Hongye could no longer be the chief of the tribe after he came, but Hongye's steps should not have stopped at the position of the chief of a small tribe.
Among the Snow Wolf people, Hongye and Lan Guo are both leaders that Xiao Yun has high hopes for. The pragmatic worldview of the Snow Wolf people, coupled with the cautious, generous and tolerant character of the Snow Wolf people, is the most solid foundation for leadership talents - let alone ambition, there are so many people with ambition, and if the ability cannot match the ambition, the greater the ambition, the faster the death.
Vision, experience, and knowledge can all be cultivated.
As for the backbone figures of auxiliary talents, Xiao Yun also has candidates in mind... Maomao, Qingyan, Dashui, Qingcao. These people need to be trained more, and when the core city is established, they can be paired with Hongye and Languo to form a team and send them out to build satellite cities. That will be a stable task.
"Next year, we will take advantage of Prince Carlisle's caravan to contact other tribes and gather some manpower... Well, the current scale of the tribe will be expanded several times, and we can call it a representative city on the southwestern border of our grassland." Xiao Yun, feeling a little proud in his heart, pushed open the door of Balk's dormitory while thinking about what name the city should be called.
In a dormitory piled with glassware and simple chemical equipment, Balke sat at the head of the kang, his hands resting on the edge of the low table on the kang, his face supported by his palms, staring in fascination at the 1:1 scale bust of the goddess of life placed on the table.
Xiao Yun: “…”
"I said you—"
"Stop making noises. I've finished my homework." Balke waved his hand and stared at the goddess with a smile as beautiful as a flower and as bright as spring, like a fangirl.
Xiao Yun's face twitched... Damn it, I should have known not to agree to this guy's request to burn this life-size bust. What's the point of creating a fetish?
"Wake up, this is just a ceramic statue, not a living person. No matter how much you like this face, it can't respond to you, do you understand?" Xiao Yun sat down opposite Balke with a gloomy face.
"It doesn't matter. I just like her." Balk looked mad and held his chin with both hands, mumbling, "Ayun, have you ever seen such a beautiful person? Otherwise, how could you make her so beautiful? What's her name?"
"..." Xiao Yun held his forehead and sighed. Fortunately, it was him who traveled through time and space and not this stupid dragon that traveled through time to Earth... Otherwise, this guy would have turned the scumbag named Chen into carbon with a breath of dragon breath!
