Ch88 – Building A House
There was still some residual warmth in the pottery fire pit, and there was no wind when they lay down at the bottom of the pit, so everyone felt quite good after sleeping there overnight.
Sleeping inside the fire pit was even more comfortable than sleeping on the ground of a cave.
The next day, Xiong Ye went out hunting with the hunting team while Zhou Ji roamed around the tribe’s territory.
He wasn’t very satisfied with the cave they lived in now and wanted to build a house of their own. Now was about the right time to start.
Of course, when one wanted to build a house, they had to first choose a place and decide on the design.
After thinking about it for a while, Zhou Ji decided to finally act.
The house couldn’t be built too far away from the tribe, but it also couldn’t be too close since he didn’t like being stared at by the tribesmen all day long.
At the same time, it was preferable if the house had two floors, at least three rooms, a large yard, and an enclosing wall.
They could plant flowers and other plants in the yard and grow climbing ivy and morning glory along the walls. If it was possible, they could also dig out a small pond…
The more Zhou Ji pictured it, the more he looked forward to it.
This was the home that he dreamed of.
During the apocalypse in his last life, when faced with a polluted world, he had especially wanted to live such an idyllic life.
At the time, it had definitely been a luxury completely beyond reach for him, but now… It was completely possible for him to build a manor larger than any estate on Earth!
That wasn’t necessary, of course…
Zhou Ji finally found a suitable place about four hundred meters away from the entrance to the valley, next to a hill. He marked out an area that was even larger than the valley that the tribe lived in now, then found the priest and said, “This place will be mine later on.”
“That’s fine. What are you going to use it for?” The priest asked him.
“I’m going to build a house there.” Zhou Ji replied.
“Why are you building a house there?” The priest didn’t understand.
“I’ll live in it.” Zhou Ji said.
The priest was stunned, “You plan to live outside the valley? Aren’t you afraid of encountering dinosaurs?”
“A fence can be built.” Zhou Ji said. Although he had originally wanted to make a wall out of mud, the area that he ended up drawing out was a bit too big, so he changed his mind.
He planned to keep a few trees, then pound some wooden stakes between them and make a wooden fence instead.
Of course, they could add an additional low wall near the cottage.
The priest listened to Zhou Ji’s words and gave Zhou Ji a rather complicated look as he tried to understand what Zhou Ji was trying to do.
Their valley was very safe. Why would Zhou Ji suddenly want to build a house outside of it? And he also wanted to put a fence around the house and block himself inside like the dinosaurs they were raising…
But, if this was what Zhou Ji wanted, then so be it.
Perhaps Zhou Ji would be able to do something new again in the end!
With this in mind, the priest said, “The barley has already been harvested, and the ground has been plowed. We can start helping you with this tomorrow.”
“Alright.” Zhou Ji nodded.
Zhou Ji marked out a bunch of trees and told people to help him cut them down the next day.
It didn’t take him much time, and after he was done, he slipped over to the place where the pottery was fired.
It had been a few days since they had harvested the barley, and the weather had been particularly sunny recently, so the barley was basically fully dried, so the individual grains of barley fell off the stalks on their own.
Zhou Ji told people to use a wooden stick to strike the barley so that the barley would drop to the ground, and they could then collect it and place it into some barrels.
Of course, the best way to eat barley was to cook it after it had been shelled, but to be honest, this method wasn’t suitable for the people of the tribe–it was too troublesome!
It had to be said that even during the Han Dynasty on Earth, people still didn’t know that they should remove the shells from the barley before cooking it. When they used it to make bread and such, they also skipped this step.
They always cooked it straight with the shells on.
During this period, some of the tribes that grew barley didn’t eat it, either.
With this in mind, Zhou Ji had some people fry up the barley with the shells still on.
The barley was fried in a stone pot until it was toasted yellow and became… Barley tea?
Zhou Ji picked some up and put it into his mouth. After chewing it for a while, he felt that it wasn’t unacceptable despite being a little burnt.
“Divide up the fried barley and let everyone have a try.” Zhou Ji made himself a cup of barley tea while he was at it–he hadn’t forgotten to make himself a cup when he made pottery last time!
The toasted barley was soon divided amongst the people of the tribe, and everyone obtained a portion.
“This barley smells good!”
“It tastes pretty good too. It’s a little bitter, but very fragrant.”
“It’s really delicious.”
“I don’t feel hungry anymore after eating just a small amount. This food should be quite useful in the winter.”
……
Zhou Ji felt that eating barley with the shells still on was a little rough, but the people of the tribe obviously didn’t care and even seemed to enjoy the toasted barley.
This barley carried with it the fragrance of food. Although it was a little bitter, the bitterness wasn’t unbearable… Everyone treated barley as a snack and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Xiong Ye even felt that chewing it and eating it directly was quite tasty, but was also quite reluctant to have Zhou Ji eat something so coarse.
“Zhou Ji, let me shell the barley!” Xiong Ye offered.
“Alright.” Zhou Ji gave Xiong Ye one hundred kilograms of barley, “This barley all needs to be shelled.”
Xiong Ye: “……” So much!
“This barley has been drying for a long time, so it should be easier to remove the shell than the previous batch.” Zhou Ji added.
Shelling the barley would allow Xiong Ye to practice his control over his energy, so he didn’t mind letting Xiong Ye do more of this kind of work.
“I’ll go and do it right now!” Xiong Ye said.
Compared to last time, Xiong Ye’s skill in removing the shells from the barley was much better this time. When he was finally done, most of the barley was still intact.
Zhou Ji no longer used water to separate the barley shells from the grain. He told Xiong Ye to pour the mix of barley and barley shells from one barrel to another, and then used a fan to blow away all the shells as he poured.
After they cleaned up the barley, he told Xiong Ye to continue breaking it down to make barley flour.
Compared to barley rice, flatbread tasted even better. And… He knew that Xiong Ye wanted to eat it.
Now that they had a pottery pot, making flatbread had become easier!
As usual, Zhou Ji prepared the filling.
He made two kinds of filling. One was chopped up fresh dinosaur meat fried with salted vegetables, while the other was smoked meat mixed with chili.
One flatbread after another emerged, wrapped around its filling. It became even more fragrant after it was fried in oil…
Xiong Ye only had to use two pieces of flatbread to convince the people from the Giant Pig Tribe to spar with him.
Zhu Zhan and his people cut apart the flatbreads, and everyone was able to try a small bite…
“I never thought that something so good could be made out of barley!”
“The people from the Beast God Temple have never had the chance to eat something so good, right?”
“This should be made out of hulled barley that has been ground into powder…”
……
After harvesting the barley, a portion of it was taken back to be planted, some was stored away, and the rest was split amongst the tribe. Everyone had basically two or three kilograms worth of barley each.
Zhu Zhan and his people were also given a portion. The next day, they went to learn from Xiong Ye so they could start removing the shells from their barley.
Next, they followed Xiong Ye’s descriptions and tried to make flatbread.
Although the bread they were able to make wasn’t as tasty as the flatbread that Zhou Ji had made, it wasn’t bad… Zhu Zhu was very moved, “I was exiled, but my cooking has improved… After going back and letting Zhu Zhu try my craft, she definitely won’t beat me anymore.”
“Big brother, what do you mean by going back? Shouldn’t we be trying to bring Zhu Zhu here instead?” One of Zhu Zhan’s subordinates asked him.
“Why are you calling her Zhu Zhu! Call her sister-in-law!” Zhu Zhan started to think about his mate again.
In fact, it couldn’t be said that Zhu Zhu liked to hit him. In fact, she simply liked to spar and fight with him…
Zhu Zhu enjoyed eating and was quite plump. If she came to the Big Bear Tribe and saw so much delicious food, she would be very delighted.
With that in mind, Zhu Zhan took an extra big bite of his flatbread and said, “I wonder how this salted vegetable is made… Next time Xiong Ye asks us to fight, we can ask for the method of making salted vegetables!”
Zhu Zhan’s subordinates all nodded.
They had really fallen so far, now willingly selling themselves for the sake of food…
Zhou Ji was someone who would do something as soon as it was decided. After telling the priest that he wanted to build a house, he asked the people of the tribe to cut down all the trees that he didn’t want within the area he had marked out. They then removed the branches from the trees and used the trunk to start building the fence.
At the same time, looking at the area that had been cleared out, Zhou Ji began to look forward to his future home more and more.
He wanted a small pond, a well, a vegetable garden patch, a variety of fruit trees, and of course, the house itself was also very important. Aside from a mud house, he also wanted to build a breezy wooden hut…
Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to raise a pet.
That didn’t matter. Whenever he wanted to have a pet, he could have Xiong Ye turn into his animal form!