Orc Girl's Tribal Daily Life

Chapter 273 The Daily Routine Continues to Accelerate

After learning that the tribe "could not leave" Silver Peak Mountain and cross the river to live on the other side, Jiang Luoluo did not have much of a reaction.

After all, she had been mentally prepared for this from the beginning; now it's just a matter of confirmation.

Moreover, her life hasn't changed much; she's just lost a direction and goal to strive for.

In the days that followed, Jiang Luoluo and Angela became increasingly active in the tribe, and the tribespeople all knew that Jiang Luoluo had raised a black bird.

Many members of the tribe who regularly hunt birds to make feather blankets made a special trip to Jiang Luoluo's home to see Angela.

It's not that keeping birds is anything unusual.

Instead, they were worried that while they were hunting birds, they might accidentally shoot Jiang Luoluo's birds as well, so they came over to identify the birds to avoid accidentally injuring them.

Jiang Luoluo knew her people meant well, so after thinking about it, she simply made a metal bell for Angela to wear. The metal would reflect light, making it easy to see and distinguish her from a distance.

As for why it's a bell instead of a simple pet name tag, that's a matter of Jiang Luoluo's "ambition".

Jiang Luoluo remembered watching videos of eagles being raised and trained on the grasslands. The eagles wore bells on their talons so that when the eagles swooped down from the air and caught their prey, they could quickly locate the prey by following the sound of the bells.

Angela is a nocturnal creature that flies silently, making it difficult to find. Jiang Luoluo thought of using the same method to "locate" Angela.

However, this method failed miserably within two days.

Jiang Luoluo didn't know if the eagles she saw on TV never moved around much, which was why their bells rarely rang.

But Angela is different. Angela is very active and loves to move around. She can't stay still at all. She walks around in the cave every day with her two paws. She can probably walk up to 10,000 steps.

The bells on its paws jingled and tinkled with every step it took.

After listening to the bell for only two days, Jiang Luoluo felt like she was having a nervous breakdown, and she was hallucinating the sound of the bell wherever she went.

Finally, for the sake of her health and mental state, Jiang Luoluo could only find a piece of burlap, stuff it into the bell, and plug it to prevent it from ringing.

Then tell Angela that whenever she needs it, she should retrieve the shredded linen from the bell herself, thus freeing her ears.

So the metal bell that was painstakingly customized ended up serving the same purpose as a pet's name tag, all for nothing.

Apart from that, everything else is proceeding normally.

For example, they expanded the area of ​​the kilns and increased the number of kilns. For several commonly used metals, they made special kilns for separate operation.

They've become increasingly skilled at extracting different metals, and can even make things like metal bells.

At the same time, Zao was also in charge of the "charcoal" firing. The kiln had always relied on firewood cut from trees as fuel, and the combustion temperature had an upper limit. Although it had not yet reached the current upper limit of the forging temperature, Zao was very keen to notice this problem.

Rather than dealing with problems after they arise, Zao prefers to identify problems in advance and then come up with solutions—because her time is running out, and she is unsure whether the remaining members of her tribe can complete the mission after she leaves.

Just as she was unable to find her successor, in a sense, she lost "hope" for the younger generation of the tribe.

Therefore, rather than trusting the wisdom of future generations, they preferred to solve problems directly themselves.

Jiang Luoluo did indeed have a solution. She thought of charcoal. Although both are made from wood, charcoal can improve both the burning time and the burning temperature.

Furthermore, once charcoal is produced, the tribe's need for trees will decrease accordingly.

Although the amount of trees the tribe is currently cutting down is unlikely to have any impact on the Taz Forest.

The concept of "environmentally friendly" was etched into Jiang Luoluo's mind from the very beginning.

Like Zao, Jiang Luoluo didn't want to waste environmental resources while she was alive, leaving future generations of her clan to fill and repair them.

—When the number of people in a tribe increases to a certain level, it will encounter all sorts of problems and keep decreasing.

Jiang Luoluo felt that the rampant deforestation was definitely one of the reasons.

Although the trees felled by the tribe are insignificant to the overall Taz Forest, for the wild animals living on the outskirts of Taz Forest, it is a concrete manifestation of their increasingly shrinking living space.

With insufficient living space and a dwindling number of wild animals, the only way to obtain enough food is to venture deeper into the Taz Forest, facing even more powerful beasts and paying a heavier price for hunting.

Therefore, when you think about it this way, planting trees becomes a very necessary step.

Of course, planting trees is not a realistic task for the current tribal manpower, but Jiang Luoluo has already recorded it in her notebook.

When she gets older and the tribe grows, she will remind the chief and the shaman to pay attention to this.

Jiang Luoluo only remembered a little about how charcoal was made: burning wood, but not completely, and then letting the gases in the air react with the burned wood to form charcoal that burns longer.

Now that we have the theory, all that's left is the practical application of it.

Then there's the matter of fruit wine and fruit vinegar.

As expected, both Chief Jing and the shaman chose to increase the amount of fruit wine brewed, rather than restricting the tribe members from exchanging fruit wine—they probably still need to impose some restrictions so that the fruit wine won't be completely consumed before the snow season is halfway over this year.

Of course, what was actually depleted was only the stock in Jiangma Cave. Chief Jing had left a certain amount of fruit wine as a reserve for hunting.

It was the shaman's suggestion to the chief.

This has now been confirmed as evidence of the shaman's foresight and understanding of the people's character.

Most families actually have some stored fruit wine – it can also be used for cooking.

When cooking gamey or fishy-smelling wild game meat, adding fruit wine can better remove that smell and improve the taste of the meat.

Otherwise, with just a bunch of alcoholics, the fruit wine wouldn't have been consumed so quickly; it could have lasted a few more days.

Jiang Luoluo knew about distillation, but seeing the current supply and demand for fruit wine, although she could produce a stronger wine, the quantity would be greatly reduced.

It seems that tribes prefer "large and numerous" to "few but excellent."

As for distilled spirits, we'll wait until the tribe has a surplus of fruit wine before distilling the excess.

Although, in Jiang Luoluo's view, the quantity of fruit wine is unlikely to be abundant in the short term.

Of course, Jiang Luoluo secretly produced some distilled liquor herself, just in case.

Although Jiang Luoluo wasn't sure when she would need it.

Jiang Luoluo informed Wu and Chief Jing of the distilled liquor produced. After watching the entire process, the two tacitly refrained from asking Jiang Luoluo to continue.

The finished product was divided into four portions, one for each of the leaders Jing, Wu, Ge, and Jiang Luoluo.

The chieftain's and halberd's portions were carried during hunts, while the shaman's portion was used to try and incorporate herbs to see if it could replace a greater function and create herbs with other effects.

The copy that Jiang Luoluo kept for herself was purely to see if she could expand on it further and come up with something new as experimental material.

After rushing around, Jiang Luoluo was finally able to escape from the endless work of brewing fruit wine halfway through the Little Beast Season. The cave where the fruit wine was originally stored had to be expanded because the amount of fruit wine to be brewed had increased again.

However, the space in Jiangma Cave is not large and is relatively fixed. The cave, which was originally used to store fruit wine and fruit vinegar, has made use of the idle space.

However, if it were to expand further, it would require squeezing out the living space of the Jiangmadong people.

So Jiang Luoluo helped, together with carpenter Cong, to set up a double-layered wooden shelf for the cave where the fruit wine was stored, dividing the space inside the cave into upper and lower levels and increasing the storage space.

—If you can't understand this structure, just say it's the same as a Loft apartment, and you'll probably get it.

Carpenter Cong had no complaints about Jiang Luoluo's instructions this time, and even hoped that Jiang Luoluo could find him some more work to do.

Why? His wife was due to give birth in a month or two, and Carpenter Cong was working incredibly hard to earn food so that his child would have enough to eat after birth.

In fact, given Carpenter Cong's current situation, he could afford to raise even twins, since his wife is also a powerful orc warrior.

But only after experiencing parenthood firsthand will you feel that uneasy feeling that no matter how much you have, it's never enough.

This has led to Carpenter Cong taking on jobs like crazy lately, and even actively seeking advice from Jiang Luoluo.

This shows that there is a big difference between a person who is married and one who is not.

Jiang Luoluo actually came up with a new way for the carpenter Cong to expand his customer base: digging cellars.

This measure was primarily aimed at tribespeople and families living in caves.

Jiang Luoluo discovered that every year during the snow season, Ge needed to go out frequently to retrieve food from the icehouse in the back mountain.

It can be said that most of the food in the tribe is stored in the icehouse behind the mountain, and individual families do not keep too much food at home.

The tribespeople living in wooden houses would use the partitions in the middle of the houses to create a cool room effect, store a certain amount of food, and reduce the number of times they had to go out.

But this isn't possible in caves, since food can't be stored outside—wild animals attack the tribe during the snowy season, so storing food, especially richly flavored chunks of meat and blood, at the entrance of one's own cave is impractical.

Do you think that wild animals don't have a strong enough sense of smell to smell the blood?

It's practically like inviting wild animals into your own home to attack you.

So, Jiang Luoluo came up with the idea of ​​digging a cellar to store items. It was actually a fleeting inspiration that came to her while she was trying to find a way to expand the space in Jiangma Cave.

In her previous life, Jiang Luoluo had a habit of building cellars in her hometown, relying on the cold, damp underground temperature for storage. When she was a child, Jiang Luoluo loved to go down into the cellar to play.

—The premise is that you are not alone.

Different families have different cellars. Some cellars are only a little over a meter high, so deep that adults can't even stand up straight, and children have to go down to help.

However, some families dig cellars two or three meters deep, requiring ladders to climb up and down. Once down there, with no one else around, accidents can easily happen.

The ground of Yinfeng Mountain has been compacted, so there's no need to worry about its stability. However, to avoid walking on it and causing dust to fall and contaminate the food, it would be better to reinforce it with wooden planks around the perimeter to prevent dust from spreading.

Most importantly, the top needs a suitable cellar cover that is stable enough not to impede normal walking on it, and also easy to open and close so that people can go down inside to retrieve things.

With his child urging him on from behind, the carpenter quickly came up with a suitable method of making the cellar lid. He divided it into several parts, fixed them on all four sides, and then pried them open from the middle with force.

However, if you don't start from the middle, the surrounding area will be very solid and difficult to lift.

The purpose of this design was not to prevent children from carelessly opening the cellar door, but to protect against wild animals.

The tragedy that occurred during the previous snow season left a deep shadow on Jiang Luoluo, and she kept thinking about whether she could do something to change things.

The cellar was Jiang Luoluo's idea—a "hope" that could buy the children some time.

If the parents temporarily leave, leaving the child alone in the cave, the child can be placed in the cellar, or the child can hide in the cellar by himself.

The cellar was certainly not entirely safe, but the specially compacted ground and the protection of the fire greatly slowed down the speed at which wild animals dug, buying time for the parents to return.

They don't aim to completely escape wild animal attacks, but as long as the children can survive longer during these attacks and the parents have a better chance of returning, they have a greater hope of continuing to live.

Upon hearing about the purpose of the cellar, almost everyone in the tribe signed up to build one, and many tribespeople weren't even concerned about what use the cellar might have.

The mere fact that it could give their children a better chance of survival was enough to keep the tribe busy with the cellar project.

Even if it's a little hard and busy, what does it matter?

Even the tribespeople living in the wooden houses had prepared cellars in advance. In order to keep fire going, there was a section in the very center of the wooden houses that was not covered with wooden flooring.

It's just a matter of adding another piece of ground, and with a cover over the cellar entrance, it's no different from wooden flooring.

After the cellar was built, the tribespeople discovered that it was indeed quite useful.

Even disregarding the snowy season, the temperature inside the cellar is extremely cold during normal hot weather. Food stored in the cellar rots and spoils much more slowly than when stored outside.

Moreover, the large space inside can be used to store items that are only needed during the snowy season. The space, which had become smaller due to the construction of the heated kang (a traditional heated platform bed), has become spacious again thanks to the cellar.