Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 096
Chapter 96
An additional kiln was built to fire more brick, and now the two kilns burned clay bricks almost day and night. These bricks were not just to be used to build the city wall, but Chen Qi also planned to use them to lay down roads in the tribe. After all, the stone slabs still needed to be reserved to build houses with.
Only after all the tribe people’s residential buildings were completed did the construction on the school begin. The school was only built with three rooms. One was an ordinary classroom, intended to teach the beastpeople to learn words and characters, one with several cooking stoves, intended to be used to teach the beastmen cooking techniques, and the last one was for learning hand-made craftsmanship.
Although the school building was constructed, it would still take some time to make the desks to fill them, so there was no hurry to open the school. On the other hand, the outdoor area for the playground was full of wild grass and weeds from the advent of summer, and they couldn’t be distinguished before they bloomed and bore fruit. Chen Qi planned to wait a little while for the surrounding plants to grow taller and see if there was anything useful before disposing of them. Anyway, it would be a long time before the wall is to be completed, so he could let things take their time.
The next day after receiving the task from Chen Qi, Ajing called up all the beastmen in the tribe who were not yet adults. There were only three of them besides Ajing. Ajing was the youngest, followed by Azhu, and although the remaining two females were also very thin, they were already about seventeen or eighteen years old, approaching adulthood, and their bodies did not have stunted growth like Azhu’s, there was already the semblance that they would grow into strong females in the future.
Because Azhu had been over once before, he was not as nervous as previously. The other two females had restrained expressions and stiff hands and feet. Even sitting on the chair, they only dared to sit on one edge, Chen Qi was worried that they would fall off.
Chen Qi didn’t start teaching them characters right away, but asked Ajing to take out the story he had written on the gum tree leaves and to read the words on them to these few people. Not too much, just read one every morning. Chen Qi also created matching illustrations for each story so that they could see the images and listen to the story to have a stronger sense of substitution.
The beastmen had never heard of stories before this, and after listening to them a few times, they became enchanted by the daily morning story class. Each day, before dawn, they would automatically run to the door to wait for Ajing to get up and read a story to them. They were also full of interest towards the words written on the gum tree leaves. Of course, what interested them more were the charcoal drawings painted, one by one, on the wooden boards. Unfortunately, as soon as they touched one by hand, the drawings would get wiped off. Therefore, whenever they went to look at them, the few of them would deliberately breathe lighter.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Having gotten acquainted with each other after coming over several times, the few young females were no longer as restrained as they were at first. Now, when Chen Qi had breakfast together with them, they would be seated at the table obediently. Ajing was also like a little adult and 100% imitated Chen Qi’s appearance when he was originally teaching him. Chen Qi saw this and his head was full of black lines.
Chen Qi twisted a potato seedling that was completely shriveled and frowned. Did he water it too much? Or was the soil insufficiently fertilized? Or were the plants here unsuitable to be dug up and replanted? Chen Qi regretted having fried up the last few remaining potatoes into fries in his excitement of finding the few potato seedlings.
“Aze, let’s not plant the potatoes for now.” Chen Qi took away the dead potato seedlings then turned the soil over again with the bone hoe.
Aze took out some wild ginger seedlings, still carrying some soil, from his backpack. Seeing Chen Qi’s slightly disappointed expression, Aze comforted him, “Summer has just started, so there should be a lot of potatoes nearby. I can find some more tomorrow. You don’t have to worry, there will always be enough to feed everyone.”
Aze hadn’t gone hunting since summer started. Every day, he was either busy building the tribe or searching around everywhere for the plant seedlings Chen Qi needed. Right now, almost all the things planted in the several plots in the yard were found by Aze.
Azhang, on the other hand, would take newly formed hunting teams into the forest every three days. The hunted prey would be divided equally to everyone in the tribe. Additionally, there was also the occasional big fish caught in the Chishui River. Now, tribes people had also started to eat three meals a day like Chen Qi and the others did. There was no need to worry about not having enough food.
Chen Qi shook his head, took the wild ginger seedling from Aze’s hand, then first dug a suitable hole in the loose soil, before placing the wild ginger seedling in it and covering it up with soil. He poured a little bit of water on it, and gently poked the tender green leaves of the wild ginger plant with his fingers. He then replied, “Didn’t you say that the fruits on the plains would mature in about three months? Instead of messing around here, it’d be better to wait until the wild potatoes have been harvested before planting them.”
In the short month or so period, he had planted three batches of potato seedlings, and their rate of survival was much lower than that of other plants. Chen Qi’s heart ached. In fact, the wild potato plants were not that young either. If they dug up all the potato seedlings around, then they’d have to go further out to look for more of them. It would be better to harvest a batch of them first and then try to save the seedlings. Maybe they would have a higher survival rate than their current method of directly digging up and bringing back the seedlings for replanting.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Aze did not know much about this ‘planting’ thing. Since Chen Qi said to wait until the potatoes on the plains were harvested, he silently recorded this in his heart. Next time, he would try to find a place where potatoes grew densely, so that when the potatoes were ready, they could go directly to dig them up.
“Chen Qi.” Azhang shouted from outside the courtyard gate and stepped in. Chen Qi raised his head and saw that others from the tribe were following behind him.
“What’s the matter? Did something happen?” Chen Qi stood up, and before even taking the time to clean up the dirt on his hands, he hurriedly went up to him.
“I heard from Ajing that you’d asked him to teach the few young females to learn to read and write. There is nothing to do at night. I brought the rest of the tribe along and wanted them to learn from Ajing as well.” Azhang also knew that Chen Qi had been staying in the courtyard to tend to the few plots of land used for growing plants these days, so he didn’t plan to have Chen Qi teach them personally. After all, they had all already been learning from Ajing. With Chen Qi watching nearby, he believed it was enough for Ajing to teach.
Chen Qi was stunned. He looked at the gray-haired and wrinkled old men there and imagined Ajing’s small figure standing in front of them, posing as a serious little teacher. Why did it seem so mismatched?
It was inappropriate for Chen Qi to leave them standing outside the courtyard gate to talk, so he hurriedly had everyone come into the courtyard. It was already evening, and the sun would be setting in a few minutes. There were no such things as electric lights here, and lighting was almost entirely reliant on fire. Naturally, it would be impossible to squeeze all of them into the fire-lit room in such hot weather. So Chen Qi asked Aze to move some hide blankets and spread them out under the fig tree. Chen Qi had already cleared up an open space for activities. It was just right for twenty to thirty people to sit together at the moment.
“Your yard is so tidy.” Ale looked around curiously as soon as he came in, and said enviously. Although his family had also built a courtyard, the yard was currently full of knee-high weeds, and he was afraid that after a while, those weeds would grow to be even taller than the wall. Naturally, it was not as neat as Chen Qi’s yard over here.
Summer was not as cold as winter. Chen Qi didn’t need to drill back into the bed early in the evening and his family was not short on oil. So he lit a few oil lamps and torches every day and tidied up the courtyard under that light. Now, the yard was not only paved with a gravel road, there was even a small clearing paved with stone slates under the fig tree and a table and several wooden stools were placed on it. When tired at night, sitting under the tree with a pot of tea, enjoying the breeze and admiring the moon. It was simply indescribably pleasant.
“When you have some time, you can also tidy things up like me. You can also try to grow something for yourself. It’s also comfortable to look at. “ Chen Qi suggested with a smile.
Ale repeatedly waved away the notion with his hand, “This thing doesn’t survive, I won’t waste my energy.” He said, as he sat down next to Ahxu.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Ale was right. Once the plants on the plains were dug up and moved elsewhere, the survival rate after replanting was very low. Now, apart from Chen Qi, in the tribe, only Ali’s family had opened a few plots of land for planting.
The strange thing was that they were obviously treating them with the same methods, yet the survival rate of the things planted by Ali were higher than those planted by Chen Qi. At least two potato seedlings planted by Ali had survived, while Chen Qi’s entire army was wiped out over here. Chen Qi wondered if he simply had no talent for planting.
Seeing that Ale had no interest in planting, Chen Qi didn’t force it. He himself was still in the experimental stage. It would not be too late to teach them to plant after the survival rate of the plants had improved.
Ajing, who was originally in the house doing homework assigned by Chen Qi, came out when he heard the commotion in the courtyard. Perhaps because there were so many people, the little wolf cub did not follow behind him as usual, but hid behind the door and poked its head out to look curiously at the crowd waiting in the yard.
Aze cooked a pottery pot of scented tea. Now that it was summer, even if there was not much food, the things that were not lacking were all kinds of flowers. Chen Qi did not dare to pick any kind of flowers back casually and he only picked out a few kinds of flowers that he recognized and that Aze said there was no problem with gathering. He dried some of them in the sun and usually steeped them for drinking.
Aze was now steeping a flower similar to a daisy. After being dried by Chen Qi and now being soaked in water, the originally shriveled petals spread out in the water, which was really beautiful.
Of course, there were not enough cups at home. Fortunately, there were still quite a few bamboo tubes in storage. So each bamboo tube was half-filled with scented tea, and Ajing helped to deliver them to the people in the courtyard.
After Azhang delivered the people, he said a few words of parting to Aze then left. The brick kiln could not be turned off and Ali was watching over it at the moment. Anyway, he had peace of mind to have Chen Qi handle the tribesmen and decided to help Ali watch the fire.
Ali and Azhang got married before summer arrived, but only the few of them who lived together in the winter knew about it. They didn’t even tell Ahxu and the others. Although Azhang felt that it didn’t matter if they knew or not, Ali thought that two females being together would not be blessed by the Beast God in the first place, so it was better to keep a low profile. Thus, no one else knew about it.
The ceremony for their becoming mates could not include the transfer of the stones with silhouettes as Chen Qi and Aze’s had. But now the hand-carved bone rings on their ring fingers had replaced the silhouette stone’s position in their hearts; the other’s name was engraved on the inner part of the bone ring, as if the other was always by their side.
Chen Qi had originally intended to teach the tribes people so they could gain various knowledge, but it was just that he was only planning to arrange courses for them after the school officially opened.
He asked Aze to help make dozens of palm-sized wooden boards, and instead of giving lectures to these people immediately, he looked around at the crowd that had hints of bewilderment and curiosity on their faces and asked, “Do you know what the character for your name looks like?”
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: Apologies for irregular posts. The release schedule appears to be spaced somewhere between “as soon as they are ready” (through edit and proofing) and “on some semblance of regular schedule” (usually Saturdays)
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.
