Chapter 32: Building a House

Early the next morning, Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er got up, had breakfast, and began the day's labor. Zhang Fan was in charge of drying the rice stalks, while Ba Ke Er was responsible for building a house with his friends. The materials had already been prepared the day before, so they started digging the foundation today. Upon arriving at the construction site, Ba Ke Er began measuring the land with a long wooden pole and marking it with lime. As he worked hard, his friends arrived one after another.

"Ba Ke Er, you're early enough! Indeed, you're preparing to find a companion—you're different!" Wil, Ba Ke Er's friend, teased, and everyone started laughing. Mo De saw Ba Ke Er grinning foolishly on the side and couldn't stand it, so he began to interrupt their teasing:

"Alright, alright, let's get to work! Today we're digging the foundation, right?"

"Exactly, today we'll first dig the foundation; if we finish early we can also lay some bricks above, so we can finish sooner." Ba Ke Er answered.

After saying that, nobody said more and they started working hard. Everyone first transformed into their beast form and began digging the ground with their claws. Their movements were quick; although the beastmen's beast forms were large, they didn't feel clumsy, they were extremely agile. Three or four beastmen, using less than a morning's effort, finished digging the foundation. What remained was to place neat stone blocks in the foundation, using the stone blocks to first set the house's basic layout. Then they built upward; after reaching ground level, they buried the excavated dirt near the stone blocks, filled around the stone blocks with dirt, and tamped it down. The foundation was basically done. What remained was to continue building upward on the foundation stones. The main material used for building the walls here was a mixture of lime, clay, and water in a certain proportion, similar to cementitious sticky soil.

After a busy morning, the foundation was finally done; what remained was to build the walls upward. At noon, as usual, they went hunting together as a group, then each returned home to eat. In the afternoon they came back to continue building the walls upward. With just one afternoon's work, the walls were already about half done. If it weren't for the timber cut from the forest, intended for the house beams, still being wet, the house could probably be finished by tomorrow.

After dinner, Zhang Fan went to the construction site accompanied by Ba Ke Er, saw the house with half its walls already built, and couldn't help but praise it:

"Ba Ke Er, you guys are amazing! In just one day's work you've already built half the house's walls! At this rate, won't we be able to move into a new house in two days?"

"Fan Fan, we'll probably have to wait a bit longer, since the beams and partitions aren't ready yet. But if you want to move into the new house sooner, we could also go buy some from the carpenter's house in the tribe. As for the tiles, although I've already pre‑ordered them from Blair, the pottery seller, we'll likely need to wait a few more days because we need a large quantity and he needs several days to fire them. However, during this waiting time we can use it to build the courtyard; coincidentally we brought back a lot of stone blocks yesterday. What do you think, Fan Fan?"

"Mm-hmm, let's do as you say, Ba Ke Er—I also haven't built a house and I'm not familiar with any of this."

"All right." After looking at the house, the two of them held hands and walked home side by side.

That night, after washing up, Zhang Fan and Ba Ke Er fell asleep in each other's arms. And so another fulfilling day passed.