Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 079 part2
Chapter 79 part2
In the following days, everyone played jump rope but Chen Qi dared not let Ajing participate. He made a smaller rope for Ajing and taught him how to jump rope on his own. After all, everyone had things to do each day, so they naturally could not get together to play every day. Therefore, they played jump rope for a few days while it was still fresh for them before going off on their own to do solo jump roping. Ajing saw that others stopped playing and naturally did not clamor to participate either.
Chen Qi did pushups every morning and evening. At first, he could only do about 20 pushups and then he couldn’t get up anymore. After several days of perseverance, he could now do about 50 or 60 pushups.
Chen Qi made a makeshift hourglass. Since there was no way to make a transparent hourglass and he could not tell the time without seeing through the hourglass, Chen Qi made a funnel and put a pottery dish under it. The funnel was filled with washed river sand and Chen Qi estimated that it would take about half an hour for all the sand to leak out. Every time he jumped rope, he poured all the sand in the pottery dish into the funnel, and when the sand finished draining out, his exercise for the day was complete .
These kinds of days continued for nearly a month. Through Chen Qi’s hard work, his soft muscles finally became a lot tougher. He even felt that he had developed two abs. Although they were subtle, Chen Qi was already very satisfied.
Now the others no longer restricted the range of his activities. When the sun was at its warmest at noon, Chen Qi and Aze would take a walk in the yard to help digestion. After several snowfalls, the snow in the yard was knee-high again. Now, it was no longer necessary to pile the snow onto the walls. So after each snowfall, they just had to clear the snow off the running track and the paved roads.
Chen Qi held Aze’s hand and walked slowly along the running track. The surroundings were very quiet. There was almost no other noise aside from the breathing of the person beside him. The sun was warm on his body. Chen Qi leaned his head and kissed Aze’s lips. At this moment, he felt a quiet feeling of peace.
After walking two laps around the yard, there was nothing to see except the flat expanse of snow and the surrounding was blocked by tall walls. Chen Qi stopped in his steps and looked at the snow in the yard for a moment. After a seemingly long time, he turned to the person beside him to ask his opinion, “Aze, why don’t we make snowmen out of the snow in the yard?”
“Okay.” For Chen Qi’s requests, as long as they didn’t endanger Chen Qi’s wellbeing, Aze would agree to them regardless of whether he could fulfill them or not. Of course, until now, Chen Qi had not asked for something he could not fulfill.
An activity like making snowmen was, of course, more fun when there were more people. At Chen Qi’s suggestion, everyone went to the yard to see how to make a snowman.
After more than two months now, Ayao had learned to turn over on his own and occasionally, he would stare at his limbs and crawl forward for a distance. Chen Qi had never raised a child, so he wondered if the growth rate of this beastman child was similar to human children. Or was it faster?
At the moment, Ake came out holding Ayao, who was already dressed in small clothes. Ayao had instinctively transformed his body to be covered in fur. He was also tightly wrapped in animal hides, which made him look, ten points out of ten, like a little beast.
“It’s so cold outside. Is it okay to bring him out here?” Chen Qi asked, worried.
Ake smiled. “It’s fine. Although Ayao is young, he is much stronger than you.”
“…” Hadn’t he just accidentally gotten sick once? Could it be that his image in others’ minds was set as a sickly person?
Chen Qi recently felt that he had the potential to be a teacher, and these beastmen he lived together with had all become his students. But no. Even things like making a snowman had to be demonstrated by Chen Qi before they could understand.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
“What’s the use of piling up snow like this?” Azhang, who was on guard duty on the wall, saw the people gathered in the yard and jumped down out of curiosity. After hearing Chen Qi’s explanation, he was even more confused.
“Of course, it is for decoration.” Chen Qi picked up a rolled ball and placed it on the snowman. Then he turned to Aze and instructed, “Aze, help me to get some branches.”
The snowman’s arms, eyes and mouth were made of branches. Chen Qi stood a little farther out, looked at it and held his chin in his hand. He felt that something was missing. After thinking about it, he went back into the house, found a wooden stick and dyed it with red dye-fruit before taking it outside to dry. Then he inserted it into the snowman for a nose. The red color was very conspicuous on the white snowman. The snowman, which had no special features just now, suddenly came alive.
“This is it?” Although it snowed all year round, Chen Qi was the first beastman to play with snow. Everyone didn’t know anything about making snowmen and it was their first time seeing this strange new thing from piling up snow. Their faces showed expressions of having sudden epiphanies.
Chen Qi tore a piece of tattered brown hide into strips and wrapped one of them around the snowman’s neck. Then, he clapped his hands and nodded with satisfaction. “En, that’s good. You guys can pile them up like this.”
Thus, after this day, strange things of various shapes were erected in the originally undisturbed white expanse in the yard. Fortunately, there was no light here at night, or it would’ve been frightening to see them accidentally.
“Ka Luo, what are you making?”
“Ake.”
Chen Qi looked at the Ake snowman, whose body had half collapsed, and silently said, “Why are you making feet for him?”
Ka Luo looked at him, puzzled. “Didn’t you say to pile up however I see it? Ake has feet. So, of course I’m going to pile up feet for him.” Then Ka Luo frowned again with distress. “But the feet keep breaking apart. What should I do?”
Chen Qi didn’t want to douse his enthusiasm, so he suggested, “Why don’t you pile it to make ‘Ake’ sitting there? That way, the feet will not collapse from not being able to bear the weight of the body.”
Ka Luo slapped his forehead with the sudden realization, “Why didn’t I think of that? Chen Qi, you are so smart.”
Upon hearing Chen Qi’s words, Aze, who was next to him, silently pushed down the half-collapsed snowman and replaced it with one that was sitting down. If the posture was carefully scrutinized, it was clear that there were a few points of similarity to the shadow of Chen Qi.
After Chen Qi made two snowmen, he lost interest. He left behind the bunch of beastmen who were making strange things and went back to the house. In the house, Ali was practicing calligraphy. Ka Luo and him had woven all the wool cocoons when they were idle. Now, there were piles of over one meter high fabrics in the house.
“Back so soon? You’re not going to continue making those snowmen?” Ali was slightly surprised to see Chen Qi coming through the door. He got up and poured him a bowl of sweet ginger soup. Nowadays, he would boil a pot of sweet ginger soup at home every day. No matter who came in from being outside for a period of time they would have to drink a bowl of it to drive away the chill.
Chen Qi finished drinking the sweet ginger soup and put down the bowl before replying, “The soybeans that we soaked this morning should be almost ready. I will come back and make something delicious for all of you.”
Ali understood and nodded, “Then, let me help you.”
In fact, Ali had also gone out just now to watch Chen Qi and the others make snowmen, but he was a lot older than Chen Qi and them, after all. While this kind of activity looked novel, he didn’t have much interest in it. It was still more interesting to write and practice calligraphy.
Chen Qi took out the stone mill he’d made a few days ago. The stone mill was not big and was slightly wider than the pottery bowl they were using now. Chen Qi had pondered over the design of the stone mill for a long time and drew many renderings before finally coming up with it. From the start of production to being able to test its use and effect took nearly a whole month.
There was only less than half a bowl of soybeans. These were the same ones Ajing brought over before. Because there were so few of them, he had been reluctant to use them, which was why they had been kept until now. Now that the stone mill was ready, Chen Qi soaked all the soybeans in water and planned to make soy milk.
In fact, if conditions had permitted, Chen Qi would have liked to make tofu, but there was no gypsum here to coagulate the soy milk, so he could only give up.
Chen Qi put the soaked soybean into the opening on the top of the stone mill, added a little water to it, and then slowly turned the handle of the stone mill. White liquid* began to slowly flow out between the upper and lower connected stones, and then flowed down the channel into the pottery dish that was prepared below.
*Picture of making soy milk with a stone mill, clip taken from a youtube video
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
The small half-bowl of soybeans was added with a lot of water, and a large dish of soy milk was ground out. Chen Qi set the pottery dish of raw soybean milk on a wooden shelf next to the fire to boil, and then found a clean cloth to filter the boiled soybean milk twice to produce a large amount of milky white soy milk that was drinkable.
Smelling the familiar beans’ fragrance, Chen Qi added a small half-bamboo tube-full of sugar into the dish and then set it on the fire to melt the sugar a little before removing it from the heat.
Naturally, the filtered bean dregs must not be wasted. Chen Qi had not had staple food for a long time. He asked Ali to cut a large plate of diced meat, added it to bean dregs, and stir-fried them together. When it was almost cooked, he added some chopped scallions and seasoned it with salt before setting it into a dish.
The rest of the food was made by Ali; a large plate of stewed meat without potatoes, and two large bowls of steamed meat patties mixed with pickled cabbage. Chen Qi had pickled the cabbages when it was just entering winter. At that time, he’d been worried that the cabbage would not be able to be stored for a long time, so he pickled a lot of them. He didn’t expect that this thing wasn’t afraid of the freezing temperatures at all. Later, when they harvested more, they didn’t continue to pickle them. After several months, these pickled cabbages had become full of flavor and ready for use.
After dinner was ready, Chen Qi went out to call everyone in for dinner. To his surprise, Aze seemed to be having fun too. In Chen Qi’s impression, Aze gave the impression that he felt many things were dispensable and that there was nothing he was particularly interested in doing. In most cases, it was like he would divide things into things he needed to do versus things he didn’t need to do, rather than whether he liked or disliked them.
Chen Qi reached out his hand to brush the snow off of Aze’s clothes. Aze appeared reluctant to suddenly suspend the snowman-making activities. There seemed to be a little more childishness on his mature and handsome face. Speaking of which, Aze was a few years younger than himself, but because he usually seemed so strong that his actual age would often get overlooked.
Chen Qi’s heart softened, “After eating, you guys can continue to pile them up some more.”
“En.”
Taking a mouthful of sweet and smooth soy milk, the familiar taste seemed to instantly pull Chen Qi back to the breakfasts he had bought on his way to work on countless mornings.
“Chen Qi, why is this cabbage sour?” Ali, who had taken a bite of the steamed meat patty, asked curiously. When he was mixing the minced meat earlier, he had thought the cabbage seemed to taste very strange. He thought it had just been salted for too long, but he didn’t expect it to taste sour.
“Of course, this is pickled cabbage.” Chen Qi took a big piece of meat patty and bit into it. It tasted pretty good.
The others had long been accustomed to Chen Qi suddenly producing new and novel foods. Right now, they just wanted to fill their stomachs quickly and continue to build snowmen in the yard, and didn’t have any interest in knowing what these foods were made of.
Today is the first day after the Moonless Day, the moonlight was very bright. The few females relied on their good eyesight to not go to sleep until late in the middle of the night. Looking at the eerie atmosphere from the messy and strangely-shaped things in the yard under the moonlight, Chen Qi couldn’t help shuddering. He hurriedly shut the door and laid back on the bed holding his beloved to sleep. Before sleeping, he wondered if he was making a mistake with his ideas.
Trying to exercise, yet falling ill. Trying to teach them to jump rope, and injuring Ajing. Chen Qi now held a deep question mark over his ideas of introducing things from his original world into this one.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
The Chen Qi’s after dinner walk the next day felt a lot fresher because of the myriad of snowmen in the yard. Today Aze was on guard duty, so the task of walking with Chen Qi was handed over to Ajing and little wolf pup.
After a day and night of efforts, the beast people finally lost interest in the activity of making snowmen. Of course, Chen Qi guessed that it also had something to do with the fact that the snow in the yard had basically been used up.
The little wolf cub had grown a lot over the past few months. Now it was almost the size of a one-month-old puppy. It happily ran in front of Chen Qi and Ajing. One moment dashing into a snowman pile and rolling around for a while, the next, barking at a snowman pile that he couldn’t really tell what it was supposed to be the shape of.
Chen Qi was amused. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one who disdained these snowmen’s appearance. The little wolf cub couldn’t stand them either.
“Chen Qi, I made these ones.” Ajing tugged at Chen Qi’s sleeve and pointed at a crowd of snowmen nearby. There were two big snowmen, one small snowman, and an even smaller snowman next to each other..
Although he couldn’t see any similarities of these snowmen to their actual appearances, by the looks of Ajing’s expression that was seemingly looking for praise, Chen Qi guessed that the two snowmen were him and Aze, and the other two were Ajing himself and the little wolf cub.
“You made them wonderfully.” Chen Qi patted Ajing’s head and praised him. Ajing smiled so much his eyes and eyebrows curved.
“Little Wolf, what are you doing?” Chen Qi found that the little wolf cub had been standing in front of a pile of snow barking for a long time and couldn’t help but feel that something was strange. Just as he was about to walk over, he noticed that the pile of snow seemed to move a bit.
Chen Qi blinked. Could the snowman be alive?
While joking in his heart, the little wolf cub suddenly turned around and ran towards Chen Qi, barking louder and louder as he ran. Then Chen Qi saw that the pile of snow really moved, and even rolled over to the side, stretching out his limbs and revealing brown claws.
Where the pile of snow was originally now revealed a dark hole that was more than one meter wide. A pair of greedy and gloomy eyes stared directly at Chen Qi from the hole. Chen Qi seemed to be able to hear the sound of swallowing saliva.
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: May be a few weeks before the next chapter. Here’s part 2 to tide you over… (hides)
Translator: Miiya
Editor: MushroomNight73
Proofreader: Yume
Editor stepping into the realm of MTL translating, starting with CLWP. Support this translation with a Ko-fi. Three Ko-fis will add an extra chapter from the stockpile to the next weekly release.
What is that creature?! Σ( ° △ °)
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