Chapter 780: Looking for Arable Land

When most people had caught just about enough, they decided to go back to sleep. They couldn't count, they just felt they had been catching and catching. Under the firelight, there was a scorpion every few steps on the ground. Those little clips were quite useful, but once clipped, they wouldn't die; throwing live ones into those Bamboo Tubes was a bit too dangerous.

Humans in the primitive era were always good at finding tools in the wild. The thorns of a jujube kernel or the thorns of a wolfberry—just break one off, use the clip to hold the scorpion, then aim for the head and poke it. The scorpion would quickly lose its vitality, and at this point, throwing it into the Bamboo Tube was very safe.

Those who used Iron Needles to poke them only needed a bit more practice to be able to go and poke scorpions. They skipped the step of clipping them up, but the accuracy was relatively low, so the efficiency wasn't much higher.

Countless scorpions were brought into the tents, and they were all very excited. But once the Milky Way overhead had swept past, they knew it was time to go back to sleep. They would find some Grass, plug the Bamboo Tube, put it in the Tent, and sleep soundly. In the end, these scorpions would be split equally with their partners. Sleeping now, they would wake up tomorrow full of energy again.

Early the next morning, everyone got up to work. Although there was no clock-in system now, nor were they at their own unit, Xi and Zhong and the others still got up right on time, took their toiletries, and ran to the small stream, which was still clear and had a large flow of water, to fetch water and wash up.

They could eat breakfast. The Laborers were already holding their tools and starting to work. Huaxia naturally could not provide them with things to brush their teeth; that was not a profession of Huaxia.

A toothbrush was just a twig chewed until it frayed; if that really wouldn't work, a finger could barely make do. But for such a massive Laborer force, the amount of salt needed for brushing teeth was quite large. Just the salt they needed for their daily meals was not a small quantity.

Right now, no one went to the salt lakes to mine and then refine salt. Sending people specifically to mine and refine it would waste manpower and time, and it was actually not much different from transporting it from Huaxia to Xiao Town. Moreover, one would have to send people there to protect those mining the salt, so it was simply better to transport salt over every time.

Brushing teeth and rinsing the mouth, which seemed very strange to the Laborers, was exclusive to the people of Huaxia. Although it was a bit troublesome, the people of Huaxia all wanted a mouthful of clean, sturdy, good teeth. The older generation didn't have teeth that were quite as good, but compared to those of other tribes, they were still incredibly good teeth.

As for the younger generation of Huaxia, their teeth were something people from other tribes couldn't help but envy. If they were asked to use salt and charcoal to brush their teeth, they would be willing to part with the charcoal, but they certainly wouldn't be willing to part with the salt. By comparison, teeth weren't that important; after all, they weren't even sure they would live to the day when they had no teeth left to use.

The Soldiers here at Xiao Town each had their own work and found it hard to get away. Therefore, the matter of protecting Xi and Zhong to go surveying was handed over to those Soldiers responsible for escorting supplies. It just so happened that they were in a gap between missions, and this was indeed what they were supposed to do.

They were divided into two teams. Naturally, the team following Xi was smaller, as the location he was going to was relatively safe, basically within the field of vision of Che and the others, and it wouldn't be far at all.

However, Zhong needed to go to some out-of-the-way places where one couldn't even see a shadow of a person, and wild beasts were everywhere. He had to have enough Soldiers to protect him. Xi and Zhong had no objections to this arrangement; in fact, Xi even took the initiative to ask for his own security force to be reduced so that more people could go to protect Zhong, but he was refused by Zhong.

In Zhong's backpack were his tools, but slung across his side was also a Changdao. He smiled at Xi and said, "Don't look at me as just a miner; I was a Blacksmith by trade before. I have great strength. In the first Warrior Competition back then, I even placed. I could have been a soldier, but the King thought I should go to the Ministry of Works, which is why I ended up doing this."

He patted the shoulder of a Soldier nearby: "The physiques of these young lads aren't even as sturdy as mine. When the time comes, it's not even certain who will be protecting whom. Aside from Xiong and those few I can't beat, I'm not afraid of anyone else. So, you don't need to worry about me; just pay attention to your own safety."

Xi looked at Zhong's robust physique, especially his arms which were almost as thick as his own thighs, and stopped arguing. There was indeed no need to worry about him; with this build, he could easily kill a wolf.

Without further words, the two steadied the breakfast they had eaten, then left the camp and set off toward their destinations.

Xi knew that it was definitely impossible to farm near the Saltpeter Mine, and the current location was also completely unsuitable for farming. There was mostly sandy soil, which couldn't be farmed at all. If it could be farmed, the vegetation here would be denser than this. To find a place that could be farmed, one had to go to places where the vegetation was dense; if Grass and trees could grow, then crops certainly could too.

He had already looked at the location of the forest when he came. The soil was fine for farming, but turning a forest into arable land was not easy. The trees had to be felled, and the tree roots had to be dug out as well; otherwise, it still couldn't be farmed.

The soil in those places was very fertile, after all, there were large amounts of fallen leaves. According to the King, that was called humus. It had already accumulated for who knows how many tens of thousands of years, and there might be very thick black soil underneath, which was excellent for farming.

The initial arable land in Huaxia didn't have such good soil. It all relied on fertilizing, spreading human feces and livestock feces, and only now had they cultivated those saline-alkali lands into the fertile arable land they were today. This included returning straw and wood ash to the fields, which was the same principle as the tree leaves.

The forest there would definitely be slowly cut down in the future. The construction and survival of Xiao Town required a large amount of wood. For the sake of safety, driving away wild beasts, and convenient transportation, no matter which aspect the need came from, the forest would definitely decrease slowly. At that time, those lands could become arable land.

As for these saline-alkali lands and sandy lands here, they could also be slowly transformed, at least into a Pasture. The feces of cattle and sheep could also become fertilizer for the Pasture, gradually forming a virtuous cycle, but the effort people needed to put into it was still very great.

The place Xi needed to find now, which could be reclaimed immediately and, with a little transformation, become good farmland in a few years, certainly wouldn't be here. He needed to follow Che's guidance and head east to a place where the vegetation was more lush than here, where trees were relatively sparse but there was a lot of Grass, and it was slightly longer, and the terrain was flat. It was the place here most likely to become arable land.