Chapter 20: A Child Worth Teaching

After eating the flatbread, they went straight to sleep.

The savages didn't care about the future or what dreams and pursuits were; as long as they could see the sun when they woke up tomorrow, were among their tribesmen, and hadn't lost any body parts, that was already a great success.

There was nothing at the New Camp being prepared, while here at least half the work was already built; although it wasn't suitable for long-term living, it would do just fine for a temporary stay.

It was unrealistic to move everyone over now; after all, starting from scratch on that plain carried risks. Tomorrow, they would just take a portion of the people over first to tamp the earth foundations and build houses.

As soon as the sky brightened, Baifeng directly pulled nearly half the labor force over to the plain to engage in construction. He basically didn't pull anyone from the gathering or Fishing Team, as that was the most important logistical support. As for those hauling coal and tamping earth foundations, he took them all; there was no need to waste time staying at the Old Camp.

For the Pottery production team, Baifeng had them build a kiln several times larger than the one they had made before, and then they placed the dried pottery blanks inside to officially begin firing.

Facing the open plain, everyone was still a bit afraid; after all, such a place without any cover really couldn't give these savages much sense of security.

Baifeng did not lead from the front, but instead acted as a technician and foreman.

He used a wooden stick to outline about seven hundred square meters of land, then had the savages use tools to dig pits and take soil from outside the outlined area. For one, this provided enough building materials, and for another, it could raise the height of the living area, which was beneficial for drainage.

The molds for making earth foundations were very easy to produce; they didn't need to be exquisite, just capable of forming a rectangular block of earth. Two people used one mold, one putting in the soil and one tamping it solid, like an assembly line. Once skilled, they could make one in three minutes.

As for Baifeng, he was unwilling to do this kind of physical labor; providing technical guidance and suggestions on the general direction—that kind of mental labor was what he liked to do.

He first took a dozen or so strong men, carrying large water jars, to the lake to fetch water.

The one-hour round trip to fetch water was neither far nor near, but the main thing was that it was easy to encounter wild beasts along the way. Fortunately, in the middle of the day, most beasts were unwilling to come out; they preferred to hunt at night.

If they wanted to live more conveniently in the future, they had to find a way to pipe the water directly over, rather than risking being hunted and sending a large number of people to fetch water every day, wasting labor.

As for this, Baifeng already had a plan in mind; this would have to wait until everyone moved over to do it together for it to be fast enough. Bamboo was everywhere; one only needed to select the thick ones, clear out the nodes, and connect them to make water pipes.

They could use mud to seal the outside, which could prevent wind and sand, reduce evaporation, and keep out wild beasts. Once productivity increased, the temporary bamboo pipes could be replaced with pottery pipes. For a distance of about three kilometers, Baifeng was still confident.

The lake's elevation was higher than the plain camp. The water level would drop in the dry season, and it would also freeze, making the water pipes unusable, so digging a few large water cellars around the camp was also necessary. Water cellars had been used in the northwest region for thousands of years.

There were many people working on the plain, and the food they ate at noon was brought in sufficient quantities, but the current food was very monotonous, almost entirely fish. The people who usually went hunting in the tribe were now working overtime and couldn't go out to catch more things.

Over a hundred savage men were working under the scorching sun, and Baifeng was setting up a fire under the shade of a tree to grill fish for them. Baifeng had no pants and nowhere to carry flint, but on this land, flint was too easy to find. After finding two pieces, Baifeng very easily used sun-dried grass fluff to ignite the fire.

The salt placed here yesterday was evenly sprinkled on the thin stone slab. Once the fat fish released its oils, he sprinkled on crushed Wild Onion and continued grilling; the aroma was so good that even Baifeng couldn't stand it. However, Baifeng didn't eat; he put one grilled fish after another into the large pot beside him. He was in charge of logistics now, and he absolutely could not annoy this group of laborers.

The weather was truly too hot, and being roasted by the fire made Baifeng sweat incessantly, even though he was in the shade. He would scoop up water from the jar beside him and drink it. Although he couldn't serve the savages their meal yet, they could come over to drink water whenever they wanted.

Baifeng was just wiping away his sweat, his eyes so blurred by sweat he couldn't see clearly, when he saw a savage in the pile of working savages fall straight down. His partner not only didn't panic, but kicked him with his foot to tell him not to slack off.

Seeing that he was indeed not faking it, the partner wasn't scared, but just didn't know who he should go to continue working with, so he could only stand blankly in place. The surrounding savages saw their companion fall, but didn't have much of a reaction.

Baifeng suddenly felt something was wrong and ran over quickly. One look and it was indeed heatstroke. Fortunately, the savage was still conscious, just fainted, and had symptoms of vomiting.

Baifeng quickly had the partner help him carry the heatstroked savage to the shade of a tree, splashed water on the savage to cool him down, and found a leafy tree branch for the partner to fan him. The partner didn't know why he had to do this, but he did it anyway.

Splashing water, dripping water into his mouth—seeing that the effect wasn't very obvious, Baifeng could only find other ways. He absolutely could not let a strong laborer die just like that from heatstroke.

Baifeng saw a Huai Shu not far away, immediately ran over in long strides, picked a handful of thorns from the Huai Shu, and then came back to perform acupuncture on the heatstroked savage.

Acupuncture evolved from this: bamboo needles, bone needles, stone needles, and then metal needles. Baifeng was acting out of necessity and could only use plant thorns.

First, he pricked the philtrum to let blood, and the Union Valley point had to be needled, but the skin on the hand was too thick, and the unwashed dirt had become like Armor; it was truly too hard. As soon as he applied force, the tip of the thorn broke. Therefore, for points like Inner Pass, Baifeng had to use the thorns to forcefully stimulate them; in any case, he couldn't pierce through.

The savage fanning nearby saw Baifeng treating the heatstroked person this way and was so scared he kept saying he would definitely work hard and never slack off.

Baifeng told him not to be afraid, that he was just saving a person and treating an illness. But that savage didn't know what "illness" meant; in their concept, there were only two states: alive and dead; there was no such thing as illness.

Baifeng didn't explain further, just continued to use the thorns to stimulate the acupoints. Soon, the heatstroked savage showed improvement. Only then did Baifeng feel at ease, and then he simply found a relatively round and smooth stone to perform Gua Sha on the savage.

He scraped once, and the Sha appeared immediately. The savage nearby was already stunned; in his world, such a thing had never happened. He was so fascinated that even the frequency of his fanning became erratic.

Seeing his curiosity, Baifeng said with a bit of mischief, "Do you want to try it too?" The savage fanning didn't stand on ceremony at all; he threw the tree branch away and took the stone to start scraping.

Baifeng thought the heatstroked savage would be scraped into pain and cry out, but there was no reaction. And the savage doing the Gua Sha was actually scraping in a decent manner. Baifeng also wanted to test how strong this savage's receptivity was, so he began to instruct him on how to perform Gua Sha.

"The angle should be a bit more slanted, yes, just like that, the force should be a little bit stronger, um, very good."

"Look, you have to start from here, and then scrape until you finish here, yes, just scrape like this... hey, yes."

Baifeng suddenly felt like he was training an intern, and this savage did indeed learn very quickly. The Gua Sha technique wasn't hard to learn; just by practicing a few times like this, he had already learned seven or eight out of ten.

It wasn't easy for such a talent to emerge among the savages. "What is your name?" Baifeng asked.

"I don't have a name..."

"I can give you a name. Are you willing to take me as your Division? I can teach you medical skills."