When Yan Mo finished skinning one of the large voles in his clumsy, unpracticed way, the sky was already growing dim. Evening had fallen, and the sunset glowed red in the western sky.
Many people had already finished making dinner, while others were still cooking. The rich smell of roasting meat drifted straight into Yan Mo's nose.
He swallowed several mouthfuls of saliva in a row.In the grass hut next door, the slave had already finished roasting the meat and called his master out to eat. At the same time, she came over to help Yan Mo deal with the other vole.
"Have you been hungry for too long? It doesn't look like you have any strength left," Cao Ting said as she twisted the neck of the large vole and used a stone knife to cut a circle around the bleeding wound. She sliced through the remaining flesh and muscle, then pulled the skin downward.In just a few minutes, the whole skin was stripped off cleanly.
The people here really did seem physically strong.Yan Mo looked down at his own hands. Was he weak because this body was small, or because he was starving?Ninety percent because he was starving.He was too embarrassed to let Cao Ting do everything for him, so he picked up the stone knife and began cutting open the skinned vole. This was a skill he had carried over from his previous life. Even though it felt strange using a new body, the basic technique was still there.
He had been slow while removing the organs from the first vole, but by the second one he was already much more efficient.When Cao Ting noticed, he had already cut one vole neatly into pieces."You don't need to cut it so small," she said. "For prairie rats like this, it's easiest to roast them whole."
Yan Mo paused.
He had been habitually preparing the meat to be braised or stir-fried, but he had forgotten that there was no such thing here. These people had no concept of those methods at all.
Cao Ting helped prepare the second whole prairie rat, rubbing coarse salt over it before placing it on the fire pit.
"The chopped meat is only for boiling," she explained. "Remember next time—the meat tastes best roasted. If you boil our salt in water, it turns bitter. But if you roast the meat directly over fire, the bitterness doesn't come out as much."
Yan Mo pointed out, "The salt tastes bitter because it contains other minerals. It would be much better if it were boiled and filtered several times."
Cao Ting looked at him strangely.
"How many times would that take? How much would it waste? Do you know how valuable salt, water, and fuel are? Was the Salt Mountain Tribe really so wasteful? Yuan Zhan is a good master, so you got to use them freely today. If you had another master, you'd go hungry several times over for wasting things like that."
So it wasn't that the Yuan Tribe didn't know their salt could be improved. They simply couldn't afford the cost.
No wonder the Guide to Banishment had not responded when he mentioned it. Knowing something and being able to put it into practice were two different things.
Even in the twenty-first century, there were still poor regions where people lived primitively, not because they lacked intelligence, but because they lacked the conditions to do better.Yan Mo's face was thick enough not to blush.
If the Guide's geography and hydrology section could be unlocked now, then with this kind of climate and environment, he might be able to find natural salt lakes or salt ponds nearby. With such intense sun and such high daytime temperatures, even if boiling salt was too costly, the sun-drying method might work. That would be far cheaper and more efficient.If only he had known that earlier, maybe his scum value would have dropped before crossing the threshold.
Yan Mo wanted to cook the vole he had cut into pieces, but after looking around and finding nothing suitable to use, he had no choice but to give up.
When Yuan Zhan came back carrying a full tank of water and saw Yan Mo preparing to cook the meat, he set the tank down and kicked him.
"In the future, don't cook the meat like this. And don't use so much water on yourself."
Cao Ting looked like she wanted to say something, but she did not dare. She lowered her head and quietly left.
Yan Mo silently endured the humiliation.He had to completely change the way he thought. In a ghost place like this, where everything was in short supply, instead of thinking about how to make life better, it was more important to think about how to stay alive longer.
Yuan Zhan ate one and a half roasted prairie rats and left half a pot of boiled meat for Yan Mo.Yan Mo suspected that Yuan Zhan himself had not eaten enough, yet that half pot of meat still made his mouth water.
The moment Yuan Zhan gave permission, Yan Mo almost pounced. He immediately crawled to the side of the stone pot and reached inside to grab the cooled meat.He was starving.
Even though the boiled meat was bland and the salt water carried a bitter taste, he devoured it as if he had never eaten before. In the end, he even lifted the stone bowl and drank all the broth dry.
Night had fallen by then, and Yuan Zhan carefully covered the fire pit.
Licking his fingers, Yan Mo asked, "Do you keep the fire overnight?""There's a common fire pit in the camp. Slaves watch it. After this, remember to go there every morning to bring fire back. At night, you put your own fire out before sleeping."
"Why not keep it burning through the night?""How could we?" Yuan Zhan shot him a look full of contempt. "Do you think we have enough firewood to burn all night?"Yan Mo shut up again.
He remembered how, when he was a child, his grandparents used to cover the embers in the stove with ash so that the fire would last until morning. But that method clearly was not suitable here, and even if it was, he did not know it well enough to try.
It seemed reducing his scum value here was going to be far harder than he had imagined.
Yan Mo had just been about to raise a middle finger at the heavens again when Yuan Zhan grabbed his arm and dragged him straight into the tent.
After letting go, Yuan Zhan pointed toward the pile of junk in one corner.
"You'll sleep there from now on. Those furs are yours."
There was no fire inside the tent. Everything was pitch-black, and it took a while for Yan Mo's eyes to adjust before he could make out anything.
Yuan Zhan turned around, brought in a torch, and stuck it into the ground beside the large stone table in the middle of the tent.
By the torchlight, Yan Mo saw several tiny insects scatter quickly across the ground.Then he looked toward the dark corner where he was supposed to sleep.So this was going to be his sleeping place from now on—sharing it with bugs.
Yuan Zhan lowered the curtain, covered the entrance, and pinned the bottom with a stone. Then he turned and looked at Yan Mo's injured leg.
"Using wooden sticks to hold the broken leg steady so the bone doesn't shift? That method is good. I've never seen anyone here use it. The priest used something similar once. Did the priest of the Salt Mountain Tribe teach you?".
Yan Mo nodded and reached for a rotten piece of fur.
He swore that no fewer than five insects fell out of it and crawled away the moment he lifted it.
Yuan Zhan walked to his bed, untied his leather skirt, and tossed it onto the stone table. Then he sat on the bed as casually as if nothing were wrong.
Yan Mo caught sight of a large swinging thing in the torchlight and immediately went silent.
Were the people here all so physically overdeveloped?"What's your name?" Yuan Zhan asked.
"Yan Mo."
"How old?"
"Fourteen."
"You're three years younger than me, but you're not even a first-rank warrior.
Useless." Yuan Zhan spared no effort in striking down his own slave. "I became a first-rank warrior at twelve, and I was promoted to second-rank at fifteen. If I get more training and more fights, I'll become a third-rank warrior soon. Then I'll be allowed to have two slaves. The second one I choose will definitely be healthy, and it has to be good-looking too."
Yan Mo's expression almost cracked.So this so-called master of his was actually still a minor?In his old eyes, Yuan Zhan looked at least twenty, but people here matured early. Thirteen or fourteen was already considered old enough to start a family. By local standards, someone like Yuan Zhan was already a full adult.
"Da Ren," Yan Mo asked carefully, "if that's the case, why didn't you choose a female slave from the beginning? Like the master next door?"He almost called Yuan Zhan "kid," but held himself back. Enduring the pain in his leg, he shook out one piece of rotten fur and spread it on the ground.He had not expected Yuan Zhan to answer, but Yuan Zhan did.
"Female slaves are expensive. And if there's a female slave, there may be children. I can't afford to keep children alive."
After a pause, Yuan Zhan muttered, "I don't want to eat my own children. And I don't want to hand them to others so they can eat them either."
Yan Mo's hand stopped.
So winter here was truly that harsh?Not only did they eat slaves, but sometimes even their own children?Nothing in the Salt Mountain Tribe's memories had ever reached that point. Although the Salt Mountain people also had the custom of eating people, their salt trade made winter much easier to survive. In the fourteen years of Blackbird's memories, the Salt Mountain Tribe had never eaten one of its own.Maybe that was why they had abandoned him instead of keeping him for food.
"But if I rise to third-rank, I'll be able to support my children," Yuan Zhan said as he lay down. His voice turned cold. "Tomorrow is my turn to go hunting. The shortest trip is five days, the longest is ten. There isn't much food at home. I'll talk to Yuan Diao and have Cao Ting look after you. You'd better eat less. When I come back, I'll repay Yuan Diao for your rations. While I'm gone, don't run around. I haven't marked you yet. If you get caught wandering before I put my mark on you, there'll be trouble."
"Yes, Yuan Da Ren."Not long after that, Yuan Zhan began to snore lightly. The effort of the whole day had worn him out, and he had fallen asleep as soon as he lay down.Yan Mo carefully put out the torch, barely managed to spread the fur bedding, and then slowly dragged himself over with the support of his arms until he could collapse onto the pile of broken hides.The hides smelled terrible. They were rough and prickly against the skin. Still, they were better than the cold ground.There were many scraps of fur, but none of them were very large. Most had been left piled there for a long time and had grown moldy. Yan Mo searched for quite a while before finding a piece barely big enough to cover his stomach.Lying down at last, he let out a long breath.Finally, he could get a little sleep.Once the camp quieted, every sound around him seemed magnified. A tent of layered hides could not block noise completely.There was no entertainment at night.
So what did every family do after dinner?
Yan Mo listened to the muffled sounds coming from nearby tents and slowly closed his eyes.
Physical exhaustion and mental exhaustion together pulled him under quickly. Even if pain followed him into sleep, he was too tired to wake.
As the night deepened, the temperature dropped.The climate here really was like a desert—hot enough to kill during the day, cold enough to freeze at night.Unable to move his injured leg, Yan Mo curled himself into a ball inside the cold tent, hugging himself tightly against the cold and pain.Suddenly—"Ahhh—!"
Yan Mo screamed and nearly convulsed from the pain.Yuan Zhan, who had been fast asleep, woke up at once. Cursing, he got up, walked over, knelt down, grabbed Yan Mo by the hair, and demanded, "What is it?"
Yan Mo was drenched in sweat. His injured leg hurt so badly that his whole body was trembling.He had completely forgotten what the Guide had said.
That damned punishment had come.Just now, in his sleep, he had dreamed that the old priest was branding his injured leg with a burning stick.The dream had been false.But the burning pain had been real.Yuan Zhan frowned as he looked at him."What… is your wound hurting?"
Yan Mo's mind was hazy, and he could not answer clearly.
"Troublesome."
Yuan Zhan dropped him, removed the stone holding the curtain down, went outside, and came back with a scoop of water. Lifting Yan Mo's head, he shoved the scoop to his mouth.
"Drink."Yan Mo was drenched in sweat and truly thirsty to the extreme. Supporting the scoop with Yuan Zhan's hand, he drank greedily."Go back to sleep. If you scream again, I'll tie your mouth shut."
Yuan Zhan tidied himself up, then grabbed a whole intact fur hanging on the wall and threw it over Yan Mo. Without another word, he went back to bed and lay down again.Slowly, Yan Mo reached out and clutched the fur around himself, wrapping himself tightly in it.
The pain of the broken bone, mixed with the residual pain of that burning punishment, kept him awake for a long time. He did not finally fall asleep again until the middle of the night, and by then he did not even realize he was making small, muffled snoring sounds.The young and vigorous Yuan Zhan was irritated awake by his slave's snoring. After cursing under his breath for a while, he rolled over and went back to sleep.In the morning, Yan Mo woke to the stale smell that had built up in the tent overnight. His mouth tasted sour.Seventeen years old…Wasn't that exactly the age of a tree hole?