Chen Qi had almost picked all the dandelions growing on both sides of the trench. Although he’d used a small handful when cooking two of the dishes earlier, there was still a large pile left. He carefully plucked off the flowers, rinsed them a little in clear water to remove some dirt and bits of grass, then found a large cattail leaf and spread the flowers on it. Outside, the sun was at its strongest. Chen Qi cleared a small space next to the door and set the cattail leaf with the flowers on the ground to dry. In the future, these flowers could be used as the ingredients to make scented tea, so they wouldn’t need to just drink plain boiled water every day. The rest of the whole dandelion heap was piled up into a corner to be cooked that night and tomorrow.

The golden lilies in his pocket seemed to have been squished for too long and were frail. He’d forgotten to ask Aze if there were any problems with them before, but Chen Qi was not in a hurry. He put the golden lilies in some water and set them aside. When Aze came back, he’d ask him.

There were a lot of hides and animal skins in Aze’s home. Chen Qi chose one and unfolded a grayish brown hide that looked a bit like cowhide. The hide was very tough yet light, so despite the size, it didn’t feel like he was carrying much weight at all. Chen Qi planned to sew a backpack with it. It was too troublesome to always use a whole piece of hide to wrap things in, and if he happened to be careless, everything could spill out onto the ground.

There were no pens here. Chen Qi found a small piece of charcoal and a small, smooth stone slab and drew a simple backpack design. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to sew something too complicated, so the design was the simplest style he could think of.

He simply drew some lines to map the shape of the hide he wanted to cut off. Chen Qi didn’t plan to cut it into multiple pieces and sew it back together in the form of a backpack. Instead, he cut off the unnecessary hide with the dragon-horn knife and directly made the whole hide into the shape of a backpack. He used some flexible twigs to line the bottom of the backpack which fixed the figure of the base, so as to avoid things being squished together when he put them inside later on. Then he took about six or seven roots and twisted them into a cord to use as a string. The hide was very tough, and in order to make small holes to thread the string, he had to knock on the bone needle a few times before it would poke through.

For the straps, he used two layers of animal skins. So that it could bear more weight, Chen Qi densely stitched over the seams between the straps and the backpack four or five times. Although the appearance was a little ugly, it was fine if it was hardy enough, since it would be carried on his back and he wouldn’t need to see it. Finally, he attached a cord around the top to be able to close the opening and the basic backpack was finished. 

This backpack was almost half the size of a person. Chen Qi was going to get some stones from outside to test the backpack’s load capability when he realized that it was already dark out.