Chapter 25: Double Blessings Arrive at the Door

There was no loud crowing of roosters in the morning, only annoying mosquitoes and flies buzzing by the ears. Baifeng's plan to hatch bird eggs had long ago ended in failure, with the eggs turning into foul-smelling biochemical weapons.

The Tile were taken out in stacks amidst the morning mist; the sound was crisp, and the color was pleasing. Baifeng could not wait to have the Tile laid on the roof.

Baifeng did not concern himself with the large houses; he simply called the tribesmen of the construction team. Under his wise command and leadership, they first laid Tile on his own luxurious house with its two-eaved roof. Once his roof was finished, he believed they would have learned how to lay Tile.

Everything was developing in the right direction. Except for the occasional disruption to the plan caused by Baifeng's sudden whims, everything was in perfect order.

Through Baifeng's unremitting efforts, the Bamboo Raft was completed, though the tribesmen did not know what it was for. Was it perhaps for laying on the ground to sleep?

There was no Fishing Line or net, but Baifeng still took people to Dahu. He used vines to tie the Fish Trap to the perimeter of the Bamboo Raft, so that they could also catch fish this way.

Everyone was afraid to step onto the Bamboo Raft; they did not believe that a few pieces of bamboo could keep them floating on the water. If they fell in, they were sure they would drown.

After despising this group of cowards, Baifeng took the lead and jumped onto the Bamboo Raft. To be honest, he himself had no certainty. As a pure landlubber from the northwest, his knowledge of bamboo rafts came basically from the "Sinking One," built by Bei Ye, the man at the top of the food chain.

If it sank this time, he reckoned everyone would trust him even less, and in the future, nobody would be willing to try the things he built.

Fortunately, the Bamboo Raft did not disappoint Baifeng. Standing on it, it only swayed slightly before floating steadily on the water. With a push of the bamboo pole, it slowly left the lakeshore and set off toward the center of the lake.

The lake area was vast, with Reeds and Gujiao growing wildly in patches along the shore. When autumn arrived, he could let the tribesmen come here to harvest reed flowers and beat out the Gujiao rice.

After drifting around the calm lake on the Bamboo Raft, Baifeng poled back to the shore. He did not want to spend time on these matters; he had already proven the Bamboo Raft had no problems. If they were still unwilling to get on, they deserved a beating.

They only needed to pole the Bamboo Raft to the center of the lake and wait for the fish to take the bait. Later, once he made Fishing Line, fishhooks, and fishing nets, they could engage in large-scale fishing.

The construction of houses never stopped for a moment. On his trips back and forth to Dahu, Baifeng also planned out the water diversion route. Once they fired another kiln of Tile, they could fire some water pipes along with them.

Time passed in a flash. On the day of the Beginning of Autumn, the twentieth large house in the tribe was successfully roofed. The living conditions of the tribesmen were much better than before; with about twenty people living in one house, it was not so crowded.

Living in large groups brought another obvious problem: there was excrement everywhere. The walls were being eroded into channels by urine. Baifeng felt that even without rain, the houses might be washed down by these people's urine first.

Baifeng not only found it disgusting to look at, but the surrounding air had clearly deteriorated. Furthermore, doing this was too likely to trigger diseases. The children in the tribe basically all had Ascaris, looking thin and weak. If not for Baifeng's habit of washing his hands before meals and after using the toilet, he might have been full of Ascaris in his own stomach as well.

To discipline these people, Baifeng specifically spent energy building a large public toilet, even separating it by gender. But they did not take it seriously, even wondering why one would waste materials to build a house for poop.

"Be civilized, establish new customs, and strive to be a new savage of the new era!" This was the slogan of Baifeng's tribe. The bored Baifeng wrote this sentence on the wall of the public toilet, but except for him, no one could understand these strange symbols, and no one could understand them when read aloud.

To make the savages go to the public toilet, anyone caught by Baifeng pooping or peeing randomly in the living area would be given ten lashes without fail, and then have to clean the toilet for a day.

At first, many were caught, but later, after being beaten enough, they became obedient. It was not a long walk; they might as well just go to the public toilet.

The new problem was that they were illiterate and did not know which was for men and which was for women. They would be told this time and forget the next, though it could not be ruled out that some scoundrels just wanted to sneak into the other toilet.

To solve this problem, Baifeng first drew modern male and female toilet signs on the walls. As a result, even more people went to the women's toilet. When he randomly grabbed a few to ask why they went there—wasn't it marked? —they just pointed to their grass skirts.

Later, Baifeng changed the signs to "concave" and "convex." Now, if they pretended not to know, they would get twenty lashes if caught.

The cleared excrement was mixed with plant ash and soil, piled together to ferment and mature, and when Winter arrived, it would be spread as fertilizer in the vegetable plots planned around the camp.

Now, whenever all the tribesmen went out, they would bring back unknown plants they had gathered for Baifeng to identify. Baifeng would decide if they had value. After Baifeng found many edible wild vegetables and medicinal herbs among them, he not only asked for plants but also required them to bring back any special stones they found. It would be great if they could find ore.

All the medicinal herbs found were processed simply and handed over to the healer. After a short period of study, the healer had generally understood the basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine, though they could not yet treat the tribesmen. Although the tribesmen did not understand what being sick was at all, feeling that even diarrhea or vomiting blood were very normal things, not a single person came to find the healer or Baifeng because they felt uncomfortable.

The water conservancy project also started on schedule. The original tools were not easy to use, so Baifeng changed the angle at which the Stone Axe was tied—wasn't that just a hoe? The "Ren" and "Du" meridians of the tribesmen's invention and creation were collectively opened in an instant.

Some brought chopsticks that were round on top and square on the bottom to show Baifeng, while others brought bowls that were narrow on top and wide on the bottom. Baifeng dared not casually dismiss these inventions, which were not only useless but even a waste of life, for fear that he might accidentally extinguish humanity's first technological explosion.

Fortunately, this wave of invention passed quickly because they all realized that the things they made were indeed of no use. However, during this period, some things appeared that Baifeng had not yet had time to make, such as a kettle with a long spout.

After the first stream of water flowed out of the water pipe, everyone cheered. From then on, they would never have to carry large water vats to the lake to fetch water again. No one thought this was a miracle, because from the start of digging the pipes to the water flowing, they had handled the whole process and knew the principle of this thing was very simple.

However, this day held more than just this one piece of good news; it could be said to be a double blessing, a joy falling from Heaven. The rich Iron Ore that Baifeng wanted most was picked out by Baifeng from a pile of peculiar stones.

It was a pile of stones of various colors that the tribesmen had picked up at will when they saw them while out. They only knew their Tribal Chief wanted to collect strange stones; he had even collected various inedible Grass before.

The reddish-brown stone with a slight silvery luster naturally attracted Baifeng's gaze. If he could find enough of this, Baifeng could not imagine how big a step he could make primitive society take.