“He is already sensible.”

Well, Chen Qi didn’t have experience educating children, so he didn’t continue discussing this topic.

It was already dark, and the few of them planned to process the two hydrochoerus dragons in the yard. Previously, only a portion of the internal organs were kept after processing prey while the intestines and like were wrapped in animal skins and thrown into the Chishui River. There were a large number of fish in Chishui River, some of which had sharp teeth, and they could even eat the fur and bones of animals.

“Why do you want to keep the large intestine? It’s so dirty.” When Chen Qi told Aze not to throw away the hydrochoerus dragon’s large intestine, Ka Luo frowned and was the first to object.

Chen Qi had already melted several large pottery plates full of snow for later use. When Aze heard Chen Qi say that he wanted to keep the hydrochoerus dragon’s large intestine, he wordlessly set it aside. He’d ask Chen Qi what to do with the large intestine after the whole hydrochoerus dragon was processed and packed into wooden boxes.

Hydrochoerus dragons were so big, their large intestines were several meters long. Chen Qi asked Aze to cut the large intestine into several sections, then flipped the whole thing over to clean up the dirt inside. When Aze started to clean it, Ka Luo pinched his nose and walked far away. Ake could not stand the smell either and went back into the house early to continue learning to write. He could already write his and Ka Luo’s names, and planned to learn to write the others’ names as well.

Azhang didn’t think it was too dirty. So, he took a section of the large intestine and followed Aze’s lead of listening to Chen Qi’s instructions to clean it.

After the dirt in the large intestine was cleaned out, Chen Qi had them wash the large intestine with water. Then he went back into the house and brought out a bamboo tube of salt. He scooped a large portion of salt onto the washed large intestine in Aze’s hand and asked Aze to rub the salt all over it. After the salt was applied, it was once again washed with water and then another scoop of salt was added so that even the fat adhering to the inner walls of the large intestine were cleaned.

The large intestines of the two male hydrochoerus dragons filled two large pottery dishes, and it took a lot of time to process them all.

After moving the prepared large intestines back to the living room, Chen Qi worried that the odor from the large intestines would be difficult to remove. So he instructed Aze to blanch them all and clean them with another round of salt. Meanwhile, he went to check out all the stuff Aze had brought back these past two days.

Chen Qi took several empty wooden boxes out of the sundries room. Now, aside from some cold-resistant things that could be stored outside, food that would go bad if frozen, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, were packed into wooden boxes and piled up in the corner of the living room. Altogether, there were only two boxes. The apples that he used to eat often were all finished; Chen Qi had turned all the laiche fruits into sugar and now there were two bamboo tubes full of it.

Thanks to Ali who’d made a lot of backpacks, between yesterday and today, Aze had filled ten whole backpacks. Chen Qi first took out all of the milk fruits and rice berries. These two things accounted for half of the space in all the backpacks. There were also more than a dozen cabbages, though he didn’t know how these could grow on such cold days? The rest of the vegetables were some ginger, onion, garlic and the like that Chen Qi often used, as well as a few bell peppers. Of the wild fruits, Chen Qi had seen some of them before, while he’d not seen some of the others, that were more odd-looking, before. Aze said that they were edible though. Chen Qi took a green wild fruit that looked like a gong pear*, gave it a wash, and took a bite. It was unexpectedly sweet.

*Google says this is the asian pear or china gong pear.