"Our meat hasn't been roasted yet." Qiao Yu said as he was about to go out.
When the men in the tribe came back from hunting, they would distribute the raw meat directly to each family after killing the prey, and the women in each family would roast it and distribute it.
In the past, collecting meat, grilling meat, and taking care of the household were all the original owner's responsibilities. Xiaoquan, in addition to gathering, also helped out. Shan went out hunting all day and came back to deal with tribal affairs, so he had no time to take care of these things.
Things have changed at home now. Xiaoquan has to take care of Shan these past two days, and it was Ah Hua and Miao who grilled the meat for them and handed it to them. Now that everything at home is back on track, Qiao Yu naturally can't bother them anymore.
"No need," Shan said. "Koizumi said he'll take care of all the household chores. If we don't let him go hunting right now, then he'll just do the household chores besides gathering."
Qiao Yu stopped and said, "Okay."
That was her original intention.
Ten years old, in modern times, would be an elementary school student, pampered by their parents and free from responsibility. But this was primitive society, a time when children as young as fourteen or fifteen could marry, have children, start a family, and be expected to provide for their families. Although Koizumi couldn't go hunting now, he still went gathering with the women.
Qiao Yu had no intention of taking everything on his shoulders and raising a lazy and gluttonous brother.
In other families, men and women had clear divisions of labor: the men went out hunting, while the women gathered food, did housework, and took care of the children. But this family was different. Since she, the woman, went out hunting, Koizumi, the boy, naturally had to stay home and take care of the housework.
"When is the fair?" she asked.
"At the beginning of winter, when the first snow falls." Shandao.
There was no calendar at that time, so the trade fair naturally could not set a specific date, and could only be marked by snow.
"How long do you estimate it will take?" Qiao Yu asked again.
This was a major event for the tribe, and Shan had been calculating it in his mind. He answered without hesitation, "Probably another twenty to thirty days."
"Where does the trade take place? Is it far away? How many tribes are there near us? What are they like?"
This was the question Qiao Yu had wanted to ask since he had traveled through time. He had been holding it in until now, worried that Shan might become suspicious.
Shan Dao: "It's held near a tribe called the Sun Tribe. It's about three days' journey to the south. Shu and Cang have both been there. You can just follow them when the time comes."
Qiao Yu asked again, "Is the Sun Tribe very big? How many people are there?"
Shan nodded. "The Sun Tribe is very large, with a lot of people." He thought for a moment and said, "Probably more than a dozen people from our tribe."
There are so many of them in a dozen tribes? Wouldn’t that mean there are more than a thousand people?
That's a really big tribe.
Qiao Yu frowned.
Shan continued, "Besides the Sun Tribe, there are also the Shanyin Tribe, the God Tribe, and the Giant Stone Tribe. Our tribe is the smallest, and the next is the Giant Stone Tribe, which has dozens more people than ours."
Hearing the names of these tribes, Qiao Yu searched the original owner's memory, but couldn't find the name of his own tribe. He couldn't help but ask, "What is the name of our tribe?"
Shan couldn't help but smile bitterly. "Ever since the last leader, our tribe has wanted to come up with a very impressive name, like the Sun Tribe, but there's always been debate and no one has settled on one. Because we live in a valley, everyone outside calls us the Valley Tribe. The same goes for the Great Stone Tribe. 'Great Stone' wasn't a name they came up with themselves, but rather a name they gave to a very large rock near their tribe."
Qiao Yu nodded: Okay.
She then asked, "Which tribe has salt?"
"It's the Sun Tribe." Shan Dao.
It's not advisable to worry too much about the mountain's excessive blood loss. Qiao Yu didn't ask about the specific situation of these tribes in detail, but only asked the question that concerned her most: "Do they have the kind of containers for boiling water and storing things?"
Fearing that Shan might become suspicious, she added, "Is there anything better than the bamboo tubes witches use?"
Thinking of the bamboo tube his daughter had smashed, Shan's heart moved, but he immediately smiled bitterly and said, "Yes. It's something called pottery. It can hold water and be used to cook things. I heard it's better than a bamboo tube. It's very expensive, not something we can afford."
He was worried that Qiao Yu would be tempted by external things and impulsively exchange them for useless items. He warned him, "The people in the tribe need to eat salt, otherwise they will get sick and lose their strength. We don't have much meat, so we can only exchange it for salt. If you exchange meat for pottery, the people in the tribe will have no salt to eat."
"Don't worry, Father. I know." Qiao Yu comforted him. "I was just thinking that we don't have enough meat to eat, and it would be a waste to exchange it for salt. If we could make pottery or something else, we could use the pottery and other things to exchange, then we could save the meat."
In years without major disasters, Shan led the tribe in diligent hunting, which allowed them to store enough meat for the winter. The reason they always went hungry in winter was that the tribe had to exchange some of their meat for salt every year.
Salt was controlled by the Sun Tribe, and became more and more expensive each year. In order to have salt, the tribe had to exchange large amounts of meat for it every year, which led to famine in the winter.
Shan's expression grew serious. "Actually, the salt didn't originally belong to the Sun Tribe. It belonged to a tribe called Fire. They took out salt during a trade, and the Sun Tribe targeted them. They eventually attacked and annexed them. All the men from the Fire Tribe were killed, and the women were enslaved. The salt then became the property of the Sun Tribe."
"So..." He warned Qiao Yu with a serious face, "Our tribe is small. Even if we have something good, we have to hide it and not exchange it."
"Don't worry, Father. What I take out must be something they also have." Qiao Yu said.
She still has this consideration.
Possessing something the larger tribes lacked and then announcing it to the public was like a child carrying gold bricks through a busy market, inviting unnecessary trouble. Before the Valley Tribe became powerful, any good things had to be hidden, otherwise they would end up like the Fire Tribe.
Shan suddenly thought of something: "Do you want to exchange it for the potato?"
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