Chapter 3: Feeling Like Everything Is Lacking

After Baifeng turned his mind to it, he regrouped and began to catch fish; although he didn't spear any in the first few attempts, Baifeng felt he had already grasped the essentials.

Waiting quietly and aiming for the right spot, Baifeng thrust down with all his might; from the shaking of the fish spear, Baifeng knew he had succeeded.

Picking up the fish spear to look, he had speared a fish nearly the length of his own arm; he didn't really recognize the species, but it didn't matter—as long as it wasn't a pufferfish, Baifeng dared to eat it boldly.

With the experience of success, Baifeng no longer felt frustrated even if he occasionally missed when catching fish; by the time Baifeng's stomach was growling with hunger, he already had six large fish on the bank.

Chopping a piece of wood to string the fish up and carrying them on his shoulder, only then did Baifeng understand why so many anglers would go fishing regardless of everything; the feeling of landing a fish was just too satisfying!

On the way back to the Battalion, Baifeng looked up at the sun to calculate the time; he estimated that the angle between himself and the sun was about seventy degrees, so there was still some time before noon.

Arriving at the Battalion, Baifeng was happily preparing to eat, only to discover he had no pot and could only roast them; Baifeng thought for a moment and felt he should quicken his pace and rapidly enter the Pottery age.

Baifeng had already processed the fish's internal organs and scales by the water pool, cleaning them thoroughly before bringing them back to the Battalion.

Finding a piece of wood, he pierced the fish and placed them over the fire to roast while turning them; however, besides being uncomfortably hungry, Baifeng was also uncomfortably roasted by the fire.

It was summer now; although he didn't know the specific date and had no thermometer, based on Baifeng's experience spending summers in various cities in his past life, the temperature outside was nearly thirty degrees, and that was only because of the forest, which kept it from being even hotter.

The bonfire of several hundred degrees roasted his chest, making Baifeng feel very uncomfortable, but for the sake of his roasted fish, he could only endure it.

The first sensation of the roasted fish in his mouth was not fragrance or tenderness, nor was it fresh and delicious; it was bland—too bland—with only a hint of the fish meat's own flavor, carrying a faint fishy smell, and it was not tasty at all.

But for Baifeng, who had been starving for days, whether it tasted good or not was unimportant; eating until full to replenish energy was the most pressing matter. However, Baifeng also remembered another extremely important thing: salt.

Without salt, a person would get cramps, feel weak, and even die in a little over a week.

Only then did Baifeng realize that his task was very urgent; starting from zero was truly too difficult.

After eating his fill of fish, Baifeng patted his stomach and lay in the shade of the Battalion, comfortably waiting for the fish meat to digest to provide energy for his next work.

Watching the sun climb higher and higher, Baifeng suddenly remembered something; he immediately took his Knife, went down to cut a straight wooden stick, and then found a flat place in the Battalion to insert it, looking left and right to see if he had set it up straight enough.

Then Baifeng sat beside this piece of wood, watching the wood's shadow become shorter and shorter; when the shadow stopped shortening and began to lengthen, Baifeng used Charcoal to draw a line at the shortest point of the shadow as a mark.

It turned out that when Baifeng saw the sun, he suddenly thought of how to roughly infer the current date; he couldn't determine his latitude, but he could determine which day was the Summer Solstice through the change in the length of the sun's shadow.

As long as the shadow of that piece of wood was shorter the next day than it was today, it meant he was before the Summer Solstice; conversely, if the shadow grew longer, it was after the Summer Solstice. It would be best to get the exact Summer Solstice, but if he couldn't, it didn't matter; being off by ten days or so was fine.

Baifeng had yellow skin, as did that group of the Cannibal Tribe, and the forest was mostly deciduous broad-leaved forest, so Baifeng was very certain he was north of the Tropic of Cancer, unless he hadn't transmigrated to Earth.

After finishing this whim of an act, Baifeng found that what he should worry about now was how to preserve these fish; with the temperature so high, let alone keeping them for a few days, they might already be inedible by nightfall.

Without salt, he couldn't cure them to make Salted Fish, so he could only make Smoked Fish, but Baifeng had never made this before and could only rely on his imagination to produce it.

Baifeng first used thin wood and Grass rope to make a simple four-legged frame, then placed wooden sticks on the frame, and thus obtained a Smoked Fish rack.

Cutting the fish open and laying them flat on the smoking rack, Baifeng was afraid that using fire directly might result in roasted fish rather than Smoked Fish, so he found some wet wood to put in the fire.

Sure enough, once the wet wood was added, the smoke immediately became dense, choking Baifeng so much that he didn't dare to go near it. Baifeng simply took his things and went everywhere to look for suitable clay to make a pottery pot or something similar.

Baifeng went around looking for soil and kneading it as if he knew what he was doing, but in reality, he didn't know what good clay was actually like; he was purely planning to try his luck, and if that didn't work, he would just get a bit of every kind of soil to see which one could be fired into Pottery.

After wandering around, just as Baifeng was feeling troubled, he finally saw something he was familiar with: red clay. The Majia Yao Culture discovered in later generations was near Baifeng's hometown, and the material they used to make painted pottery was this kind of red clay.

Baifeng was overjoyed and hurriedly found large chunks of red clay to move to his Battalion; this kind of red clay was hard like a stone when dry, and it was in whole pieces, which was also convenient for Baifeng to transport.

When Baifeng felt he had moved enough and had enough to use, he found a thick bamboo, chopped off a bamboo segment to use as a bucket to fetch water, and brought enough water to the Battalion.

Baifeng had once heard his elders talk about how pottery was made in the past, so Baifeng planned to rely on those fragments of the process to manufacture some pottery.

First was to smash the red clay chunks and crush them fine; this was easy to handle. Baifeng found a thick piece of wood and used his axe to chop it a bit, obtaining a large-headed wooden hammer.

After hammering the red clay and crushing it relatively fine, he added water and kneaded it like dough; when he couldn't knead it anymore, he used his feet to stomp it, making the mud smooth and compact.

When Baifeng had stomped a large piece of clay mud until there were no air bubbles or soil particles, he began to make the pottery.

Baifeng felt that what he needed most was a pot; with a pot, whether boiling rice or boiling water, it would be convenient, and even if he found Tea Leaves in the future, he could drink a cup of hot tea.

The pottery pot didn't need to be made very delicately; in fact, for the sake of safety, Baifeng made the bottom and walls of the pot very thick, and for convenience in holding, he also made two pot ears.

After making a large pottery pot, there was still a lot of mud left; to avoid waste, Baifeng made two small bowls (he didn't know why, he just wanted to make two, fearing that if he only had one and it broke, he wouldn't have a bowl to eat with?) and even made a lid for the pot.

There was also a large water jar, but Baifeng had no confidence that he could fire this water jar well; he could only say that if it fired successfully, that would be best, and if it didn't, then so be it.

After making them, they couldn't be fired immediately; they had to be air-dried to set their shape first, waiting for the moisture to dry naturally, otherwise, they would definitely explode if put into the fire kiln now.

Looking at the results of his afternoon displayed before his eyes, Baifeng was full of a sense of accomplishment.

It was still far from sunset; summer days were very long, and working hours had also become longer, so Baifeng added some wet firewood to his Smoked Fish rack.

Watching the fish turn blackish and a bit dried out, Baifeng felt that the Smoked Fish shouldn't be a failure.

However, thinking of the bland fish meat, Baifeng decided to first find a way to get some salt.