Volume 3: Fellow villagers, let’s farm together~ Chapter 81 Working Warriors
Starting from the first winter after traveling through time, Xiao Yun began to consciously record the days, how many days were between the first snow and the last snow, how many days were between the melting of the snow and the temperature rising to the peak of the year, how many days were between the highest temperature and the vegetation on the grassland turning golden... There was no other way. Without a calendar, Xiao Yun did not know how to use the altitude of sunlight to calculate the diameter of the planet, the longitude and latitude, and to deduce the approximate solar terms based on this. He could only use the most stupid method to roughly estimate the time.
After cross-referencing and correcting the three winters, Xiao Yun can be sure that the winter on the grassland is about 130 to 150 days, which is four to five months. The spring and autumn seasons are relatively balanced, about 80 days, and the summer is relatively short, about 50 to 60 days... Roughly speaking, the four seasons cycle every 340 to 50 days, and a year is about ten to twenty days shorter than on Earth...
Astronomy was beyond Xiao Yun's scope. He was not an astronomer and had no idea what it meant when celestial bodies revolved faster than the Earth. He just wanted to have a general understanding of the climate laws and the length of the solar terms so that it would be helpful in his farming business.
It’s my third winter in this world. The last snow stopped on the 133rd day after the first snow. After that, the clouds in the sky faded, allowing the sun to penetrate. It was the last drop in temperature before spring. It’s common sense that the temperature will drop when the snow melts. It would take more than a day or two for such a thick snow on the grassland to melt.
The snow this winter is heavier than the previous two winters. Last year's snow was not enough to cover the swamps in the south of the tribe, but this winter, the swamps in the south were almost buried flat... This is the case in the southern part of the grassland, and the snowfall in the northern part of the grassland can only be greater. Xiao Yun knew with his knees that the water flow from the north this year would definitely have an impact on the entire grassland. During the melting period, he ran through the mud to the upper reaches of the Earth River 300 kilometers north of the tribe. The entire frozen upper reaches further confirmed his guess - the water source of the Earth River comes from the Samal Snow Mountain, and it is frozen into this state before it reaches the snow mountain. Is there any need to say what the situation is on the snow mountain?
Xiao Yun hurried back to the tribe and convened the tribesmen to hold a spring flood drainage mobilization meeting. In previous years, floods would not occur until the arrival of summer, when the average temperature rose to 27 to 30 degrees Celsius per day. This year was different. Xiao Yun suspected that floods might occur at the turn of spring and summer.
After eating the food grown in the fields for a year or two, everyone knew how serious the harm caused by floods was. After the mobilization meeting, without waiting for the ground to thaw, Languo's engineering team took their digging tools and set out to the upstream of the tributary of the Earth River, which provided water for the tribe but also brought hidden dangers.
Three adult goblins and half of the gray dwarves were temporarily recruited into the engineering team. This team had two things to do: first, to dig a new drainage channel from the upstream of the tributary to the exit of the underground world, so as to divert part of the river water to the underground world in case of emergency - the underground world is very large anyway, and the underground world next to the grassland is not inhabited at all, and it is connected to the groundwater, so there is nothing wrong with using it for drainage.
Secondly, continue to dig the artificial river channel built last year downwards and as far south as possible . Don't think about digging to the estuary, but at least dig to the canyon area near the Yellow Flower Plain of the Snake Vine. According to Balk's aerial observation, that canyon leads directly to the sea and seems to be a naturally formed estuary, but because there is a raised plain in the middle, it will only be useful during floods.
The first item is fine, but the second project is a huge one. Xiao Yun thought that the engineering team would not be able to complete it in less than half a year... But there is no other way. There are many things in this world that cannot be done just because they can be done. Regardless of whether they can be done or not, you have to try your best if necessary.
The construction team started work, and the brick factory and cement factory also had to be put into operation. The spring ploughing task was handed over to the work team led by Qingyan, Dashui and Qingcao... Fortunately, they had last year's experience in clearing land with a moldboard plow, so even if there were fewer people and they worked harder, they could still finish the work in time.
Of the sixteen Snow Wolf warriors, Hongye and Ayue went to the engineering team to work on water conservancy, Ashan was busy making bricks in the brick factory, Mumu was helping out at the cement factory of the Fire Chief, and Yu was left with only twelve people, including himself. Xiao Yun did not take these twelve warriors to farm, because they had more important things to do: during the period of snow melting, the beasts and demons that had been hungry for a whole winter would ravage them crazily, and the tribe could not afford to lose manpower with such a large scale, so the warriors had to step up patrols and drive away all dangers.
As for why they are driven away instead of hunted, this is a topic that hurts one's self-esteem... There is no point in hunting or killing them if you can't even catch them.
When the remaining snow melted away, the six tribes that Xiao Yun had personally contacted began to send migrant soldiers to look for them... It was not easy to find a tribe you had never been to on the vast grassland, but the snow wolves had their own ways. They would leave obvious signposts where they had passed, such as piling large stones into a special circle and inserting a broken tree inside. In the winter, the trees left signposts, and the soldiers could just follow the signposts to find their way there.
The number of warriors sent to work by these tribes varied, with some sending four or five and some sending three or four. After all, Xiao Yun provided each warrior with 100 kilograms of salt, 2,000 kilograms of wheat, 10,000 kilograms of soybeans, and as much alfalfa as the warrior could carry back. In addition, he also provided food and lodging during the working period. This treatment was indeed generous (ahem).
The most ruthless tribe sent the chief here to work... Xiao Yun blushed when he saw the chief who was smiling innocently but looked a little guilty.
Twenty-four migrant workers (including a clan leader) came from six tribes. Xiao Yun shaved their heads, washed them, disinfected them, fed them, and then... sent them all to work in the fields.
There are more than 6,000 acres of land that need to be plowed, and Xiao Yun is so short of manpower that he wants to hang himself. You guys came at the right time~!
As a result, many giant white-haired wolves appeared in the fields on both sides of the river, pulling plowshares and working hard...
This group of working soldiers helped to plow the fields for about half a month, and everyone became extremely calm. When they first came, they were a little worried about whether there would be any problems with such generous treatment. After working for a while, they found that they were really tired and even bald. Of course, they felt relieved. They dared to eat the delicious meals given by the Fire Tribe every day without worrying about being embarrassed.
Xiao Yun really liked the pragmatic style of the Snow Wolf Man. He let these working soldiers rest for two days to recuperate, and then immediately rushed to the engineering team to continue working hard... Yes, he recruited these soldiers under the name of hiring a commercial transport team, but the caravan hasn't arrived yet! Is he keeping them for nothing and not letting them do anything? That's impossible~!
It's hard for newcomers to get started with delicate work like sowing and fertilizing, but fortunately, tilling the field saves a lot of time, and they can take their time with flooding...
With the addition of this group of migrant workers, the progress of the construction team increased by a quarter. At the end of spring sowing, the drainage channel leading to the underground world upstream of the river was dug out. After installing the special steel gates made by the gray dwarves, Lan Guo pulled the construction team back to rest for a day, and continued to work, digging down based on the original artificial river channel.
Migrant soldier Ayan is from the Li tribe and is 32 years old.
Well... there is something fishy about Ayan's identity as a warrior, because he has only been an adult for two years... In a small tribe like Li, he is indeed a little stronger than the ordinary people and has a little more warrior experience, but if you want to be picky, he cannot be considered a warrior, but only a big kid who has just reached adulthood and has a certain combat capability.
The Li Tribe is a small tribe that even Chief Li came to work, which made Xiao Yun embarrassed for a long time. The area where this tribe lives is relatively barren, with many monsters around, so they can't send out all the powerful warriors, but they are jealous of the treatment given by the Fire Tribe... Apart from anything else, one more warrior means one hundred kilograms of salt, which makes Chief Li feel uneasy, so Chief Li made up the number himself, and A Yan, the "big kid" who just came of age, also made up the number.
Who said that the Snow Wolf Man didn't have any tricks...
Four warriors were gathered together and came to the Huoyan Tribe. At first, everyone from Li to Ayan felt a little guilty, fearing that Ayun would be angry. Fortunately, Ayun didn't say anything. After giving them a hard time (mainly shaving their heads and disinfecting them), he fed them and arranged them to go to work. The work was very hard, so hard that people were so tired that they didn't even want to talk. Both the chief Li and the warrior Ayan were relieved. Although their identity as warriors was a little empty, the work they did was real!
A Yan, who was sweating profusely and digging the ground, heard someone calling for dinner and dug a few more times before stopping. He put his own tools together with those of his tribesmen, wiped the sweat off his face and climbed out of the two-meter-deep river. He turned around and pulled up the older chief Li, and then walked to the side with the others to wash their hands.
Ayun of the Fire Tribe requires everyone to wash their hands before eating, otherwise they will not be given snacks - insects wrapped in flour fried in soybean oil, meat skin, bean cakes made of flour and soybeans, etc. - some people were not used to it at the beginning, but after watching others eat the golden and crispy snacks while they had nothing to eat, even the dumbest people learned their lesson.
The water for washing hands is brought from the river. Each person can use a small basin of water, make some foam with soap, rub off the mud, and wash it with water. Then they can walk to the flat ground next to them to get their meals.
Lunch usually consists of steamed buns with noodle soup. The extra-large steamed buns are very soft and delicious. Ah Yan took his own portion, sat back next to Chief Li, and took a big bite with a happy expression on his face... Fortunately, he had the audacity to follow along, otherwise he would not be able to eat such delicious food.
"Today's fillings are really delicious. Did Da He come up with a new filling?"
The snow wolf had to eat three steamed buns weighing at least eight taels, and also drink a big bowl of noodle and vegetable soup. The gray dwarf did not have the snow wolf's appetite, so he was full with just one, and if not enough, one and a half would be the limit. While A Yan was munching on the steamed bun happily, the gray dwarf next to him, who had just taken two bites, spoke to the cat tribe who had brought the food.
The larger cat tribes were incorporated into Qingyan's secondary labor force. The wool spinning mill of the caracals started operation, and they were replaced by the messengers. Snow leopard Rosemary was also a foodie. If the mess hall had not been short of people, he would have wanted to sneak in. The gray dwarf's question scratched his itch, and he squatted down immediately: "That's right, I saw with my own eyes the new stuffing made by Dahe. The fish caught in the tribe's canal in the morning, the fish slices were fried, and they said they would add a dish to everyone in the evening. The fish bones, fish skin and pig skin were jelly boiled together and mixed into the stuffing. The taste is completely different..."
Ah Yan's mouth watered when she heard this, and she couldn't help but interject, "Are there any extra dishes tonight? Are they delicious?"
"Of course it's delicious. Dahe said he's going to cook tonight, and he even brought out the biggest iron pot in the warehouse." Rosemary boasted proudly, "Let me tell you, cooking is much more delicious than soup. The same cabbage can be fried several times more fragrant than soup..."
"Fuck, why don't you come over and help!" Huabao Yugu was scooping soup for someone with sweat all over his forehead. When he turned around, he found that his little friend was squatting next to him and playing with the crowd. He was so angry that he even yelled out Ayun's catchphrase.
“Here it comes!”
Ah Yan swallowed the steamed bun with his cheeks puffed up, gulped down a big mouthful of noodle and vegetable soup, burped contentedly, turned around and looked at the tribe leader with curiosity: "A Li, they have so many delicious foods here, why don't we have them in our tribe?"
Chief Li turned his back to him, too lazy to talk to this brat. What? Did he dislike him as the chief?
Ah Yan had an innocent look on her face and turned her head to look at another member of the tribe...but she saw that the member had eaten two steamed buns and was holding the third one with a complicated expression.
"It would be nice if I could give the third cake to my partner." The soldier sighed sadly and turned to face A Yan.
A Yan immediately lowered her head and drank the soup... The partner of this tribesman is also a warrior, and a very strong one at that. The safety of the tribe cannot be separated from her, so A Yan was asked to make up the number.
After everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, the cats came to collect the dishes and checked everyone's hands to see if they were clean. Those who were clean were given snacks - a bean cake mixed with flour and fried until golden, crispy and delicious, and a handful of fried beans fried with salt and a few pine nuts.
Apart from the main meal, what Ayan looked forward to most was the distribution of snacks. He took his share with both hands with great care, holding the bean cake in his mouth and carefully putting the fried beans into the pocket on his belt... It would be a pity to eat all the delicious snacks at once, so he saved the meat floss he was given two days ago and ate it slowly. Now there is still a small handful left in his pocket.
After dinner, everyone can rest for half an hour before going back to work. Many people take this opportunity to take a nap. Ah Yan is energetic and doesn't want to take a nap. He wants to ask the tribe members if they want to go around to find some edible wild fruits. When he turns around, he sees the tribe members staring at the fried bean cakes in a daze.
"...I can give half of it to my partner. I also want to share the meat floss I saved with her..." The tribe member turned his gloomy gaze to A Yan again.
A Yan... A Yan immediately found a place and lay down for an afternoon nap.
After a busy afternoon, when it was dark, Ah Yan followed the team back to the tribe. Under the arrangement of Lan Guo and others, they lined up to wash off the mud and dust on their bodies, rinsed themselves clean, put on clean animal skin shorts and rattan shoes, and followed the engineering team to the square - the weather was a little warmer, and everyone didn't like to eat in the house. The canteen didn't care where everyone ate anyway, it didn't affect their workload.
Holding the chopsticks clumsily, Ah Yan carefully put the stir-fried pork with Chinese cabbage and the fried fish with a little pepper powder and chili powder into her mouth. She showed a happy expression from the bottom of her heart again... It's delicious! The taste is so exciting!
Although I feel a little sorry for my tribesman’s partner...but it’s so hot to shamelessly follow Chief A Li!
“Bang!” “Ah!”
The sound of a pottery bowl breaking and a scream rang out simultaneously. Ah Yan looked up and found that a warrior from another tribe was staring at the broken pieces of a pottery bowl on the ground with a pale face and trembling hands. There were still some vegetable leaves in the pieces.
"Don't rush over, be careful not to cut your hands!" The people in the cafeteria also noticed this side, and when they saw the soldier suddenly squatting down, they shouted to stop him.
"This... I, I'm not..." The soldier looked panicked.
"It's okay, the bowl is broken." Someone from the cafeteria came over and took a look, "I'll clean it up, you continue eating."
The soldier looked up at the people in the cafeteria, then looked down at the pile of debris, feeling a little at a loss.
"You can't eat the food if it's dirty. Go get another one." The staff in the cafeteria didn't let him squat, so they squatted down to clean up the mess themselves. "You won't get any snacks later. It's not because you broke the bowl, it's because you wasted the food."
The soldier stared blankly at the people in the cafeteria, unable to recover for a long time...
"You are so careless. You can't even hold such a good bowl properly."
Ah Yan heard Chief Li muttering in a low voice and nodded in agreement.
"But they don't seem to care about the bowls. Giving them snacks as a punishment is to avoid wasting food." A Yan, the older naughty kid, added.
Chief Li turned his back again and faced A Yan with his buttocks, what a damn kid!
After eating, take your dirty dishes to the washing area next to the kitchen. Those who know how to wash dishes wash them themselves, and those who are afraid of breaking dishes ask others to help wash them. Anyway, everyone's dishes are the same as if they have been licked, so washing dishes is not considered hard work...
They went back to the square and found a place to sit, one was to wait for snacks, the other was to wait to hear stories... In order to practice their expressive ability, Xiao Yun asked Hongye, Yu, Lan Guo, Cao Gen and others to take turns telling stories to everyone. It didn't matter if they couldn't memorize the whole text, they could use bark paper to tell it and practice at the same time - Lan Guo was forced to take math classes last year, so he had practiced it, and Yu, who rarely spoke, still needed practice.
There is a surprise in the snacks tonight. Those who did not make any mistakes can get a small piece of malt sugar wrapped in steamed leaves. As soon as Ah Yan got her share, she immediately put it all in her pocket... She has received malt sugar four or five times. She didn't know to save it and eat it all immediately before. Later, she could only envy others when she saw them eating.
It was Yu who walked up to the front and told the story. He still looked a little nervous. He spread out the bark paper and held it in both hands, stiffly: "Today, we are going to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood..."
The magically modified dark fairy tale with a strong sense of preaching, being too dark and even a bit depressing is actually not very interesting as an attractive spiritual entertainment... But the people of the grassland have absolutely no enjoyment in spiritual entertainment, so even if this kind of story is heard over and over again two or three times, everyone still enjoys it.
Others would tell old stories, only when Ayun went up there were new stories to be told. Ayan, the newcomer, was also well aware of this pattern, but stories were just stories, and even if one had heard them before, Ayan was still very enthusiastic.
A few more days of busy, fulfilling, tense and interesting working life passed. One night, Ah Yan carefully put the snacks he received into his pocket as usual, and suddenly heard cheers. He looked up and saw Ah Yun walking in front.
"Ayun Ayun——" Ayan was immediately excited and cheered like everyone else.
Chief Li moved a little further away from the dead child with disgust.
Xiao Yun raised his hand to quiet everyone down, and said with a smile: "Tonight, I will tell you something exciting, I guarantee that you have never heard of it before. This story is a ghost story. In the countryside of a human kingdom, there is a small mountain village. In this village, there is a family..."
Goblins have no religious beliefs, nor do werewolves and cats. Gray dwarves do believe in the God of Fire, but this belief is just a lifestyle habit, and their level of piety is as casual as the Chinese offering glutinous rice cakes to the Kitchen God... Facing such an audience, Xiao Yun nonchalantly threw out the concept of fictional ghost stories about the revenge of dead souls and exhorting people to do good - this world even has unscientific things like magic and alchemy, so ghost stories should have a market here!
The human most seen by most people present was Thrall, who was taken in by the Fire Tribe. But through the endless stories, everyone knew humans quite well... Many people even had a general understanding of the composition of human society and knew the shape of the power pyramid in human society.
In the "ghost story" told by Xiao Yun , the protagonist is a farmer in a mountain village. Because Xiao Yun never believes that kindness and class have any dialectical relationship, this farmer is naturally not the poor and kind image that humans use to coax children, but a standard "troublemaker" - this farmer takes advantage of his own geographical location to take in travelers passing by for the night, and then kills them for their property. Of course, these are not reflected at the beginning of the story. At the beginning, this farmer is just an ordinary person. Strange things suddenly happen in his life, such as the door will open automatically without wind, the water cups and utensils in the house change positions when no one is there, the lights suddenly go out and light up at midnight, and when going to the toilet, he always feels that someone is squeezed with him...
It was a very simple, crude and clichéd scary ghost story. When Xiao Yun told it, he frightened a group of grassland people who all had night vision and could move freely in the dark. They turned pale and unconsciously moved closer to their friends...
After scaring the farmer and the audience for a while, the farmer's livestock began to die. The bloody pigsty, the chicken coop pointed to by bloody footprints, and the bloody handprints on the walls of the courtyard -
The farmer finally didn't dare to stay at home, so he went to spend the night at his neighbor's house. As a result, the neighbor's family heard someone sobbing quietly at night, and the neighbors were so scared that they drove the farmer away the next day...
Next is the miserable end of the farmer. The neighbor hadn’t seen the farmer for many days. When he went to his house, he found that the farmer had become a dried corpse, kneeling at the gate and kowtowing in a corner of the yard. The neighbor looked in the direction where the dried corpse of the farmer was kneeling, and saw a bone hand sticking out diagonally from a patch of green vegetables in the vegetable field in the corner of the yard...
The neighbors quickly went to the town's security team, and the sheriff came over and dug up several bodies of travelers from the farmer's vegetable garden...
Xiao Yun finished telling the ghost story in a rhythmic and emotional manner, and then looked at the audience, even Xiao Yun himself was shocked - so many people sitting together listening to a ghost story were actually scared. Several people, even a dozen people, were huddled together, tightly squeezed together, and the smaller ones even managed to crawl into other people's arms.
"...Is it that exaggerated?" Xiao Yun's mouth twitched. When he told this story during the company's team-building event, a group of young girls lowered their heads to play with their phones and yawned while listening to it... Most of you guys look like brothers, it's too inconsistent to be so afraid!
She silently turned her gaze to the always reliable Grassroots Chief, only to see that although the Grassroots Chief had a firm expression on his face, he also hugged the gray dwarf Sally tightly who had snuggled into her arms, and his hands were still shaking.
Xiao Yun stared with dead eyes: "Uh... there is no need to test everyone's reading experience for this story."
