Chapter 178: Exploiting the Tribespeople

However, the price for this was the Great Shaman's dark circles and his brain, which was on the verge of falling asleep. After working for a day and a night, the Great Shaman had finally sorted these matters out; even the warehousing of the newly traded supplies had been handled under his direct supervision.

Baifeng still felt a bit sorry for the Great Shaman. If these tasks had been left to him, he could have finished them by nightfall, as it wasn't like later ages where one had to fill out forms, make copies, and sign documents; they didn't even need to record names, just count the quantities directly.

The Great Shaman, who presided over the tribe's rituals, had been forced by Baifeng into becoming a warehouse manager and human resources officer. However, ever since Baifeng took over the tribe, the number of rituals had also decreased significantly, basically only occurring during major events, the Autumn Harvest, and the day of passing through Winter; at other times, there was no thought of holding rituals.

The god of the Baifeng tribe, which was that "Heaven and Earth" stone, had a small shrine built specifically to house it, and various food offerings were made to it every day. The tribe did not forbid the tribespeople from going to worship it themselves; at first, everyone was afraid to go because this was the authority of the Great Shaman and the Tribal Chief.

Later, after some people gradually tried it and did not receive any punishment, everyone let go of their reservations. Perhaps even after picking a handful of wild fruits, they would go and offer some up. Of course, their rule was that the offered items could not see two days of sun; without any special explanation, this was something Baifeng made up to prevent food waste.

New tribespeople and Free Persons needed to come and kneel before "Heaven and Earth," firstly to request the deity's recognition of their status in the Baifeng tribe, and secondly to request the deity's protection. As for the Slaves, they were likewise not qualified to come over; if they were willing, they could kneel toward "Heaven and Earth" from a very far distance, but they were not allowed to go near it.

Baifeng gave the Great Shaman a day off to let him go back and get some good sleep and rest. It wasn't that Baifeng was being considerate, but that they were about to prepare for the second trade with the Suiren Clan. This was another major project, and the Great Shaman would have to be busy for a long time; perhaps he would even have to follow the Boat to trade. This time, Baifeng did not intend to go; letting Xiong and the Great Shaman go would suffice. It was impossible for him to have to go personally every single time; he also had to give others opportunities to gain experience.

The Great Shaman did not know Baifeng's thoughts and even declined, saying he was not tired and could continue to persevere, but he was ruthlessly driven back to sleep by Baifeng. He was not a Zhou Bapi; even if there were several days of sleepless work, he still had to let his employees rest well afterward and recover their health.

However, it had now reached the time for the Autumn Harvest, and nuts and the like had long since matured and fallen to the ground. This required them to set out and gather them, but now that they had Slaves, the tribespeople could be spared from this work, which had no operational difficulty and was merely mechanically repetitive.

This year's wild fruits were not made into canned goods but were dried into fruit jerky and preserved fruit, mainly because there was no honey. They had originally intended to harvest honey, but most of the bees had not survived the Winter, leading to an unusually small number of bee colonies there, and consequently, not much honey was collected. Although the flowers had bloomed extremely densely this year, in order to allow these bees to successfully increase their population, the Baifeng tribe did not collect any honey this year.

This year's last batch of silkworms had already grown very large. Because of previous experience, even if Baifeng was not there, they could take good care of them. It was just that the work of picking mulberry leaves was truly too arduous, and others were very unwilling to raise silkworms. However, because the Fishing Line made of silk was truly excellent, only some of the anglers in the Fishing Team went to pick mulberry leaves with great enthusiasm, with the goal of hoping that when the silk was ready, they could be allocated some to make Fishing Line.

There were still more than twenty days until the trade with the Suiren Clan, but to ensure their safety, they certainly had to go down a few days early to observe the situation around the trading point. Otherwise, if the Suiren Clan had an ambush there, it would be easy for something to go wrong if they rushed down.

At the same time, these Boats also had to be further improved, such as specifically adding some positions to tie ropes. On a bare Boat, it was indeed not easy to handle if one needed to tie something down. Then there was the issue of night lighting; Baifeng felt they should hang some lamps on the Boats. Anyway, they had Glass and they had beeswax, or even if they didn't use beeswax, using oil was also fine. At night, it was pitch black, and even if they weren't traveling, it was very dangerous to move around on the Boat.

The most important point on the Large Ship was that Baifeng believed they should add a heavy weapon capable of posing a threat to people on the shore, which was their type of Heavy Crossbow. Its range was long enough and its power great enough; it was very inconvenient to transport on land, but there was no such worry when placed on a Boat.

Consequently, the only two Heavy Crossbows currently in the Baifeng tribe were unloaded from the city wall and installed on the Large Ship, because the city wall itself possessed defensive capabilities, not to mention the many Catapults they had hidden inside the city.

These two crossbows would be used on the Boat first, and once more were built, they would install at least two on each Large Ship and replenish the ones on the city wall. Because the production of Heavy Crossbows was too troublesome and they were not usually needed, the Baifeng tribe had not made any more for such a long time.

Currently, the busiest people in the Baifeng tribe were the Carpenters. They had to do almost everything. Although the Carpenter team was constantly expanding and already had over a dozen people, most were at an apprentice level and basically couldn't handle things; the important work was all done by the few people led by Ben.

What made him quite happy was that he hadn't expected that among the Slaves brought back this time, there were actually two whose carpentry was quite good. It was said that they used to carve totems for other tribes. Although they wouldn't do their current work, their manual skills were much better than the average apprentice; as long as they were guided a little, they could help do the main work.

Upon learning this, Baifeng was also very happy and directly lifted the Slave status of those two, promising that whenever the two of them could build a small Boat capable of holding five people on their own, he would give them the status of tribespeople, with the same treatment as all other tribespeople. Upon learning this news, the two wished they could stay in the workshop to work every day.

Good news also arrived successively from other places, especially from Zhinu. Among the female Slaves received this time, the number of those who could weave cloth was very high, enough to build another Zhinu team.

However, the people in pottery making were very dissatisfied with this batch of Slaves, because although these Slaves were diligent with their hands, their craftsmanship was truly too backward. The Baifeng tribe had even figured out Black Glaze, while they were still pinching mud figures.

The people in the pottery team were somewhat disgusted, feeling that these people would lower their standards, and asked Baifeng to return them, believing that these people could be thrown anywhere, as their pottery team did not need them.

Baifeng only asked one question: "Do you have time to make pottery blanks?" They were completely silenced and obediently took the Slaves back. In fact, having someone who could help them make pottery blanks was good enough.