Chapter 97: Building a New Wooden House

Once the cold beast meat was distributed, everyone, regardless of the fact that it was still daytime, couldn't wait to begin their cultivation.

Calling it cultivation was, in reality, just eating the cold beast meat and then, through exertion, absorbing the energy contained within it to increase their base strength.

Xia Hong did not keep anything to himself; he ordered Xia Chuan, Yuan Cheng, and the others to pass down all four sets of long fist routines. Thus, before long, the sounds of punching echoed through the wooden house.

The wooden house, only thirty meters long, also had to accommodate the iron-smelting furnace and various other supplies. With over nine hundred people in the camp, all present, one could imagine how crowded it was inside.

Therefore, only a small portion of people could practice their punches. To be precise, it was basically just the hunting team and the logging team. A small number of reservists who managed to grab an empty spot could also do so.

The radiation range of the iron-smelting furnace was a hundred-meter radius. The temperature in the area extending seventy meters outside the wooden house was actually not much different from inside. Ordinary people could move about freely in this range at night; the only difference was whether it was windy or not.

But it wouldn't work during the day; the low temperature during the day came from the sunlight.

Xia Hong had already tested this during the time the Golden-Eyed Demon Sheep attacked. Even with his Earth-Digging Realm strength, he couldn't withstand the chill contained in the sunlight, let alone the others in the camp.

Cultivation itself was a nighttime affair. Today, because it was the first time everyone had received cold beast meat, they didn't care about day or night and cultivated immediately.

However, the current wooden house was too small, and it was a fact that the per capita activity space was insufficient.

Xia Hong frowned slightly and scanned the crowd. He saw Hearing Mu Dong in the corner, deep in thought while holding a wooden board, but after a moment of consideration, he didn't go to find him.

Over the next few days, Xia Hong led the hunting team and managed to bring back two to three pieces of prey almost every night; one night, they even brought back four.

The supply of cold beast meat was implemented fully and without fail, just as previously stipulated. Although the excitement of everyone in the camp had passed, their enthusiasm for cultivation grew ever higher.

When Xia Hong led the team out at night, the camp's reservists were already standing outside the wooden house, punching and cultivating. By the time they returned from hunting, dawn was almost breaking, yet the reservists were almost all still outside cultivating.

With sufficient cold beast meat and such enthusiasm for cultivation, Xia Hong looked forward immensely to the day when the Does Does Da Xia's Woodcutting Realm combat power would experience an explosive growth.

Xia Hong no longer personally oversaw the logging team's affairs, only listening to the reports from the captain, Cheng Feng, every day and focusing on the rising numbers of timber resources in the system.

Such plain and fulfilling days continued for six days.

On the sixth day, when Xia Hong returned to the camp with the hunting team,

Cheng Feng and Hearing Mu Dong immediately sought him out together.

As soon as he caught up with Xia Hong, Cheng Feng spoke first:

"Leader, these past few days, I've led the logging team and thoroughly explored all the Ice-Boulder Trees on the outer eastern side of Red Wood Ridge. There are thirty-seven in total. Their growth cycles are the same, and they have all just borne fruit. There was still a portion that hadn't been picked, so I've already led people to pick them all. We harvested a total of 140,000 jin of Crystal Fruit."

Xia Hong instructed the hunting team to take the prey to be processed first, then walked to the side of the iron-smelting furnace, sat down on the ground, and gestured for Cheng Feng and Hearing Mu Dong to sit as well.

Theoretically, once the supply of cold beast meat was sufficient, the significance of Crystal Fruit wasn't great. After all, there were only a hundred or so people in the camp who couldn't get cold beast meat now. Calculated at two jin per person per day, they wouldn't consume much in a year.

But the actual situation was not so. As cultivation supplies, Xia Hong couldn't possibly use cold beast meat to replace staple food. The biggest reason it could be supplied sufficiently now was that the Does Does Da Xia camp's population was small. In the future, when there were more people and the base of ordinary people grew large, they would still be inseparable from Crystal Fruit.

Even for the sake of making reserve food, Crystal Fruit had to continue to be picked.

More crucially, Xia Hong had used the medicine-decocting pot to identify them; Crystal Fruit could not only fill one's stomach but also be used medicinally. Not just Crystal Fruit—over these past few days, Xia Hong had used the medicine-decocting pot to test more than ten types of medicinal materials, such as Snow-Mane Tongue Powder, Frostwolf Inverted Bone, Black Caltrop, Coal Stone, Iron Powder, Golden-Lin Tip, and Vermilion Frost Stem.

These ten-plus medicinal materials consumed more than twenty units of Xia Hong's coal resources, which made his heart ache. The most frustrating thing was that he still hadn't been able to generate a formula.

It could solve the problem of a monotonous diet; it could serve as reserve food; it possessed medicinal value; and it was simple to store. For the current camp, the difficulty of picking it wasn't high either.

With various factors stacked together, the picking of Crystal Fruit was inevitably not to be stopped, including the exploration of the locations of Ice-Boulder Trees and the monitoring of their growth cycles—the same applied.

"Currently, the exploration is only within a five-hundred-meter range. Continue to keep an eye on this area when you go out logging later to see if there are any omissions. When our hunting range extends inward after a while, your exploration range can be expanded. Ice-Boulder Trees remain very important to us; we cannot be careless!"

Cheng Feng nodded and replied respectfully: "Yes, Leader."

On the other side, seeing that Cheng Feng had finished speaking, Hearing Mu Dong hurriedly handed over a wooden board, his expression spirited: "Leader, I've already drawn up the new wooden house concept you told me about before. Take a look and see if this is it."

Xia Hong lowered his head to look at the schematic diagram carved with a small knife on the wooden board, and immediately became interested.

Hearing Mu Dong, standing to the side, hurriedly leaned forward and, while pointing at the schematic, began to explain it to Xia Hong.

"According to what you said, Leader, the exterior of this wooden house is built as a square, two hundred meters long and wide, and fifteen meters high, divided into three floors in total.

The middle floor takes up five meters and serves as the camp hall. There's no need to partition it into rooms. Daily gatherings, meetings, camp assemblies, and the placement of public supplies like the iron-smelting furnace will all be on this floor.

The bottom floor takes up three meters. Aside from leaving an entrance and exit passage and the central hall, all other locations are partitioned with wooden boards into rooms ten meters wide. I've calculated that, based on a side length of two hundred meters, after subtracting the walls, the five-meter-wide and seventy-five-meter-long passage, and the fifty-meter-wide square central hall, it can probably be partitioned into more than three hundred such small rooms, which is completely enough for all the ordinary people in the camp now.

The top floor takes up five meters and is similar to the bottom floor, retaining the central hall and passage, plus a large warehouse, and partitioned into small rooms twenty meters wide. I've also calculated that it can probably be partitioned into ninety rooms, which is also enough for the logging team and hunting team personnel in the camp now.

"The three-story wooden building is partitioned by one-meter-thick wooden planks in the middle, and the top is constructed with beams into the four-cornered pointed-roof style you mentioned, Leader. It is then covered with a layer of animal hide to protect against snowmelt and the erosion of wind and frost."

Hearing Mu Dong spoke with great animation, the excitement in his tone extremely obvious; clearly, he highly approved of the new wooden house construction concept Xia Hong had proposed earlier.

Xia Hong wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He wasn't a professional architect; he had only proposed such a concept based on a bit of memory, and telling Hearing Mu Dong was just to try his luck. He didn't expect the other party to have actually come up with it.

Although he knew that the timber here was different from the wood of his past life, it was, after all, being built for people to live in. Xia Hong still asked solemnly: "Hearing Mu Dong, do you think it's feasible to build a wooden house like this?"

Hearing Mu Dong was startled, then immediately nodded and replied: "Of course it's feasible."

Then, his expression revealed a trace of hesitation, and he wavered: "However, there are a few very difficult problems that are not easy to solve."

"Tell me, let's see if I can solve them!"

Hearing Mu Dong pondered for a moment before answering:

"The massive demand for timber, the many types of tools that will need to be used, the need to consume quite a bit of iron material, and finally, the time to drive the foundation piles is very long. And in some places, it might require you, Leader, to do it yourself."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 98 =====