Chapter 106

After the whole tribe had been busy for several days harvesting and drying corn, they finally stored all the corn in each family's cellar; some families, because they had many people or worked faster, had even already ground the corn into flour!

Of course, the quick workers certainly don't include Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er as a couple, and having many people is even less related to them! As a couple who have lived in their own little world since they got together, aside from occasionally asking their parents to help watch the house when they go far away, they have always been self-reliant!

So, in this short time, Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er merely shelled the corn and stored it in the cellar. I must say, this cellar is really very handy! When it was dug, they made it big, so even after storing several thousand jin of corn, wheat, and rice stalks, plus several thousand jin of sweet potato flour, dried sweet potato, rice flour, wheat flour, etc., there is still about half the space left, usable for storing vegetables to eat over winter.

Zhang Fan goes back to the vegetable field every day to check the vegetables' growth, and then, according to the different vegetable types and their varying degrees of maturity, he works out the optimal harvesting times for each.

That day, after breakfast, Zhang Fan went to the vegetable field again, and casually pulled out a sweet potato with a nearby branch—he didn't expect to dig up four or five large sweet potatoes each about ten centimeters in diameter! For this result, Zhang Fan was totally unprepared! It was just a casual pull! If they all grew like that, it would be a huge harvest! So Zhang Fan casually pulled out a few more sweet potato plants, but the sweet potatoes dug up were almost the same as the first ones! This made Zhang Fan ecstatic!

He didn't bother cutting the sweet potato vines, dropped the stick, and grabbed the vines with the sweet potatoes still attached, running home with them. It was quite a coincidence—Zhang Fan hadn't even reached home when he met Ba Ke Er returning with his game.

Ba Ke Er saw Zhang Fan holding a dozen or so large sweet potatoes, hurried over, took them from him, and then took Zhang Fan's hand to go home together. On the way, Zhang Fan told him about his plan to harvest sweet potatoes. After they got home, they put down the game and the fresh sweet potatoes they'd brought back, then grabbed hoes, sickles, baskets, shoulder poles, and the like, and headed out to the field together.

Upon arriving, they immediately got to work—Zhang Fan cut the sweet potato vines while Ba Ke Er dug up the sweet potatoes. Working together, they spent the morning busy and managed to dig up about half of the entire plot they had planted.

Zhang Fan looked at the mountain-like pile of huge sweet potatoes, feeling completely relaxed in body and mind! Even after a morning of hard labor, he felt no fatigue at all. Ba Ke Er stood opposite Zhang Fan, seeing him so happy, felt warm inside, thinking, 'For Fan Fan, anything is worth doing!' Thinking that, he felt energized all over.

Seeing Ba Ke Er still hard at work digging sweet potatoes, Zhang Fan called out to stop, then started pulling Ba Ke Er along to load the sweet potatoes one by one into baskets and onto the cart, cartload after cartload heading back. After they had made at least ten trips, they finally hauled today's morning harvest home and stored it in the cellar.

After Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er had rested, it was time for lunch. They ate a hurried meal, and only then did they finally feel tired. So, after washing the dishes, they went back to the room for a nap.

In the afternoon, after Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er woke up, they again took their tools to the sweet potato field to start working, intending to dig up all the sweet potatoes by the end of the day. At this time, the Tribe members were also beginning to dig up sweet potatoes, and since their fields were close together, they inevitably gathered to gossip.

After all, on Shouren Xingqiu, all females are equivalent to women on Earth. They possess all the skills that women have, including childbirth, so Zhang Fan wasn't particularly surprised that they enjoyed gossiping.

Yet, seeing everyone gathered together whispering, Zhang Fan was still a bit curious, for the looks on their faces didn't seem like they were chatting about gossip; their expressions were quite serious.

Just seeing that no one would tell him anything made him feel a bit left out, after all, he too was a member of the Heaven Lion Tribe! Why not discuss matters together? Zhang Fan had endured it for a long time, but finally he couldn't hold back; he dropped his sickle and sweet potato vine, walked over, and with a slight smile asked in a friendly tone, 'I've seen you chatting for a long time—what are you talking about? So seriously?'

Fei Er, upon hearing Zhang Fan's question, directly said: 'It's like this, Fan Fan—you say we've dug up the sweet potatoes, but for storage we still need to grind them into flour or something, which takes quite a lot of time! Moreover, we still have so many vegetables unharvested; we're afraid we won't finish in time! The cold season is only thirty-something days away! Why don't you, Fan Fan, come up with an idea? Your ideas are always the most! Originally we didn't want to bother you, since you're busy every day with so many things, but after discussing for a long time we still couldn't find a useful solution, so we had to turn to you for help.'

Upon hearing this, Zhang Fan felt relieved—it turned out they weren't excluding him from the tribe; rather, they saw him busy helping the chief plan for the Tribe and didn't want to disturb him, lest they add to his worries.

Upon thinking of this, Zhang Fan couldn't help but slap his forehead, then spoke up to everyone:

"Don't worry, everyone! Since we planted few sweet potatoes this season, we only need to take some time to grind them into slurry and let them settle; of course, we can also be lazy and simply slice the sweet potatoes, dry them, and store them."

As Zhang Fan spoke, he thought of the corn they had just harvested a few days earlier, and added: "Right! You can also temporarily store the corn, and grind it into flour when you need to eat or when you have free time during the cold season! As for the vegetables still in the field that haven't been harvested, we can dry them into vegetable chips, or make pickles, kimchi, fermented vegetables, and the like. Calculating it out, thirty-something days is already enough time for everyone to prepare for the cold season! Moreover, everyone has raised quite a few livestock. If you're still worried about not having enough meat, isn't there still the Beast Tide Month? We can gather plenty of food during the Beast Tide Month!"

Upon hearing him finish, everyone couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. One by one, they unanimously gave Zhang Fan a thumbs up, saying: "Fan Fan, you're still the best! We've discussed this for so long and never thought of these solutions! Now we're all set—this year's food supply is no longer a worry!"

Zhang Fan listened, then humbly replied with a few words, after which everyone returned to their respective posts to harvest sweet potatoes together with their own Beastmen. Seeing the females return, the Beastmen said nothing, each simply speeding up their work, as if competing with the surrounding Beastmen.

They worked until evening before preparing to stop; at that point, Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er's sweet potatoes were also completely harvested. They tied all the sweet potato vines into neat bundles and stacked them on the cart together with the sweet potatoes, then hauled them home.

Because the afternoon harvest was more than half again as much as the morning's, this time Zhang Fan went back and started preparing dinner, while Ba Ke Er continued loading the dug sweet potatoes basket by basket into the cart and kept hauling them home.

After Ba Ke Er had made about twenty trips, he finally hauled all the sweet potatoes home; by then Zhang Fan had already prepared dinner, so when Ba Ke Er returned home and washed his hands, he sat down at the table in the main room, which was laden with food.

After Zhang Fan took out his bowl and chopsticks from the kitchen, the two began serving themselves rice and started eating. After Zhang Fan had taken two bites, he suddenly remembered something, so he took the opportunity to speak to Ba Ke Er.

"Ba Ke Er, look, our sweet potatoes are harvested, but Am's side still has a lot! Should we go over tomorrow to help them out?"

Ba Ke Er was happy that Zhang Fan cared so much about his parents, but instead of nodding and agreeing to help, he slowly shook his head and said:

"Fan Fan, we don't need to worry about this—look at you, you've been exhausted for so long! You haven't even rested yet, so why are you still thinking about going to help? We don't need to go; I already asked my father today, and he said we don't need to help!"

Regarding this matter, Ba Ke Er, out of concern for Zhang Fan's health, didn't tell the truth—actually he never went to ask his father at all, and of course his father never said they didn't need to help. It was all made up! But for Zhang Fan, this was also a kind lie, wasn't it?

The next morning, Zhang Fan went out for a stroll around his home vegetable field. However, he didn't see the vegetables that were supposed to start being harvested in the next couple of days. So he simply went back home and began washing the sweet potatoes.

After washing a large basket of sweet potatoes, Zhang Fan began cutting them with the skins on. Preferring dried sweet potatoes, he cut half of the basket into thin slices and the other half into thin strips.

Zhang Fan spent the morning cutting that basket of sweet potatoes, and even when Ba Ke Er returned, he didn't move from his spot; lunch was left to Ba Ke Er to cook. After finishing lunch, they didn't take a nap, but directly used the break time to put the cut sweet potato slices and strips together into a steamer basket and start steaming.

When the sweet potatoes in the pot had steamed to a certain extent, he turned off the heat, called Ba Ke Er to help move the sweet potatoes to the courtyard, then grabbed them handful by handful and laid them out in the courtyard's special winnowing basket for drying, beginning to air-dry them.

After finishing that, Zhang Fan again got busy with Ba Ke Er to grind the sweet potatoes into slurry, then poured it into a large basin, letting the sweet potato flour settle naturally.