Chapter 24: It Rains Again

To capture more prey, one needs more powerful weapons; the bow is indispensable, but the bows of this time are extremely crude, being merely primitive straight-pull bows, which lack power and break easily.

Making a good bow is complex, but a bow that can barely serve for a demonstration is quite simple; the forest is full of old bamboo, which is the common material for making bow bodies.

The tribespeople quickly returned with several pieces of old bamboo. Baifeng split the bamboo into strips, used fire to roast them into a suitable curve, and carved a grip out of wood, but the Stone Knife was too laborious to use for carving, and what he carved was both ugly and prickly, so Baifeng had to use a large whetstone to grind it.

Without glue, he used animal hide to bind it and make do for now; the bowstring was the same. Baifeng pulled the finished Recurve Bow and felt it was about forty jin in draw weight. Lacking an Arrow, he used thin bamboo as a substitute for the time being. Baifeng pulled the bow to its full draw and fired; not only was it far off the target's direction, but the distance it traveled was also pitifully short. Once the tribespeople saw this, they felt it was boring and scattered one after another.

Baifeng was looked down upon, but he was helpless; he couldn't very well tell them he could improve it, could he? Do they even understand what improvement is? It seems he can only grind away slowly by himself to make a good bow, and then he will make them green with envy.

The bow he made didn't achieve a good result, but that doesn't mean they can rest. Everyone, take your Spear and get out to hunt! One hundred people—if you don't bring back three large pieces of prey, either spend the night outside or I will boil you for the New Year.

The Hunting Team didn't know what the New Year was, but hearing Baifeng threaten to eat them if they didn't catch prey, they all scurried off in a hurry, diving into the forest in groups of three or five to hunt.

The construction progress of the houses was neither fast nor slow, and the firing of the Tile was also nearing its end; no more firewood was added, just waiting for the temperature inside the kiln to drop naturally.

Relying solely on them to hunt is not very reliable; there must be other food sources. Fishing is something that absolutely cannot be abandoned, but in the Dahu, the old methods are no longer applicable.

To catch fish, one can only go into the Dahu to use a net or a fishing line.

Baifeng remembered that there was a lot of wild hemp here, and now it has grown wildly to two meters; this is a good material for the Weaving Department, sturdy and durable.

He arranged for people to go cut the hemp, but they had no idea what Baifeng was talking about. After describing it for a long time, Baifeng felt it would be better to take them there himself.

There were a few plants very close to the Battalion; hemp is dioecious, the female bears fruit and the male flowers. Baifeng wants to wait for the female to mature to harvest the hemp seeds; in Winter, he can eat hemp seeds just like eating melon seeds to pass the time. Moreover, it can be used as medicine, and Baifeng, who suffers from constipation, really needs this stuff.

Once they recognized what hemp was, Baifeng didn't care anymore and let them go cut it themselves, the more the better, as long as they returned before dark.

Right now, Baifeng still feels his time is very tight; no clothes, the house roofs aren't even covered, no animal husbandry, no agriculture. If he went out and met other tribes, and they were wearing Hemp Cloth clothes and holding Bronze Weapon in their hands, they would definitely mock Baifeng for being a savage.

Time must be accelerated, everything must speed up its progress; once the Great Heat passes, it will be entering Autumn, and there is not much time left.

The anxious Baifeng saw everyone busy and couldn't stay idle himself, so he took an axe and went to cut bamboo; if he could quickly build a Bamboo Raft, he would be able to go out onto the Dahu to fish.

By the time it was nearly evening, the Hunting Team returned first. They lived up to expectations and brought back two deer, as well as a dozen or so wild chickens and rabbits. Although it didn't meet Baifeng's requirement of three large pieces of prey, the large quantity of small items made up for it, which barely allowed them to pass.

The people who went to cut hemp also returned slowly, and the amount of hemp they brought was quite considerable. Baifeng estimated that with this much hemp, all the places in the tribe that needed hemp could be satisfied.

He called all the tribespeople back from work to prepare for dinner. At this time, Xiong, having seen Baifeng's abilities over this period, had already accepted him as his replacement; after all, he had no way to let all the tribespeople live this kind of life.

Before they even started distributing the fish, a gust of wind blew up from the flat ground. Looking up, half the sky was already about to be covered by clouds. The heavy rain, absent for half a month, was imminent.

Although the houses were not completely finished this time, the roofs were already sealed. Without Tile, they could still block the rain, and Baifeng and the others at least had a place to take shelter, so they wouldn't face death directly like last time.

Baifeng hurriedly postponed the mealtime and had everyone squeeze into the houses. For one house to squeeze in nearly a hundred people, big and small, could be described as very difficult.

Baifeng has his own small house and doesn't need to squeeze in with them.

Only after everyone was in the houses, with no one left outside, and after checking that the storehouse for medicine and food was also ensured to be safe from the rain, did Baifeng feel at ease.

He placed the containers used for storing water in the open space; they would be full once it rained, and there would be no need to run to the lake to fetch water again. After finishing all this, Baifeng felt the rain falling and then walked unhurriedly into his small room, standing at the door to watch the rain.

The rainstorm came fiercely, without any prelude, pouring down directly. With a clap of thunder, the tribespeople in the houses kept screaming; they were terrified of the unknown, and in front of Nature, they were as fragile as ants.

This heavy rain came and went quickly; in less than an hour, it was blown away by the wind. The setting sun still had afterglow to illuminate the earth, and the wind brought the scent of mud stirred up by the rain hitting the dust. This smell made Baifeng feel that the world was still beautiful.

The ground outside was already full of mud, and every step made a squelching sound, which was very unpleasant. He wondered when he would be able to pave this place with stone slabs or Brick.

Everyone was so frightened by the rainstorm that they huddled together and dared not come out until Baifeng called them out to prepare for dinner. Only then did the slightly bolder ones dare to come out to investigate, and Baifeng was also considered a warrior by the tribespeople for not showing the slightest fear under such circumstances.

Sitting in the mud to eat dinner, everyone dared not leave the room. Even though it was uncomfortable and stuffy for a group of people to be squeezed together, they were unwilling to take risks in the wilderness; the rain just now reminded them of the damage the last rainstorm had caused them.

Fortunately, the houses didn't have doors installed yet, so there was no need to worry about them being suffocated. Baifeng let them be and supervised the hunters as they processed the caught prey before letting them go back to sleep.

Under the cooling effect of the rainstorm, the Tile Kiln was constantly steaming with water vapor, looking like a fairyland. The Shaman asked at an inappropriate time which deity was enjoying this, which angered Baifeng so much he just wanted to kick him into the Tile Kiln to be sacrificed to the gods.

When they wake up tomorrow, everything will be able to get on the right track: some building houses, some hunting, those doing handicrafts doing handicrafts, and those gathering doing gathering.

Baifeng only needs to coordinate from the center and contribute wisdom to let everything accelerate its development; it would be good if there were a chicken that could crow to wake everyone up tomorrow morning.