Han Cheng looked at the little charcoal in the wooden basket, the ashes in the earthen kiln, and the unburned or not burned wood piled around him, and grabbed his hair in distress.

This was the eighth time he had failed to make charcoal in the earthen kiln.

None of these attempts at charcoal making were successful. Although he had been constantly adjusting the timing of the firing mouth of the earth-sealed kiln based on his previous charcoal making experience, there was not much progress.

The eighth time the kiln was opened to burn charcoal, compared to the second time, only a few more pieces of charcoal were produced...

He took a deep breath and exhaled deeply, feeling deeply the difficulty of picking apples without standing on the shoulders of giants.

The world is so big, and Han Cheng is naturally not the only one who is troubled. The leader of the Sheep Tribe is also very distressed at this time.

He squatted on the ground like Han Cheng, and occasionally used his hands to comb his messy hair.

In front of him was a corner of the cave.

The part that was originally connected to other places in the cave is now separated by some rough walls made of stones, forming a relatively independent space.

The leader of the sheep tribe, dressed in sheepskin, squatted on the ground and could smell some unpleasant odors coming from the cracks in the stone wall.

Of course, he was not bothered by the smell. In fact, the smell on his body was not much better than the smell coming out.

He squatted here for a while and then stood up again.

The scene in this independent space appeared in front of him.

The twelve sheep, whose original colors were so contaminated that it was almost impossible to tell, were frightened by the sudden rise of the sheep tribe leader. They huddled together, bleating and trembling.

These sheep are very thin, with skin and bones all around, and look like hairy skeletons.

The troubles of the sheep tribe leader come from these sheep.

Of course, at the beginning, the leader of the sheep tribe and everyone else had nothing but joy for these sheep.

Every autumn is a harvest season for the tribes living on this land, and especially for the Sheep Tribe.

Because every autumn, they can harvest enough sheep.

This will occupy a large part of their future food.

In the past, in order to prevent the captured sheep from escaping, they would choose to kill all the sheep.

As a result, the leftover mutton would often go bad, even in the cold winter, because there was a long period of time between the time they captured the sheep and the arrival of real winter.

In the past, although the people of the Sheep Tribe were troubled by this matter, they had no good way to solve it.

Because that's what their tribe has been doing ever since they can remember.

Food is precious, especially in winter. At this time, even food that has gone bad and rotten becomes extremely precious, and no one is willing to throw it away.

The Sheep Tribe, whose mutton accounts for half of their winter food, is reluctant to throw away the meat, because if they do, many people in their tribe will starve to death!

The Sheep Tribe can easily obtain large amounts of meat in the autumn and have enough food to survive the winter. This is why the tribe’s population has never been among the top among the nearby tribes.

Because every year when winter is about to end, some people in the Sheep Tribe will die, and most of the deaths are elderly and minors.

The Sheep Tribe will grieve for the dead, but their sadness is also accompanied by a sense of accustomedness.

Or it can be said that there is nothing that can be done.

A saying has been circulating in the Sheep Tribe. Even the oldest people in the tribe don't know when this saying started to spread.

It was said that the people in their tribe got food too easily, so the gods punished them...

The people of the Sheep Tribe believed this without a doubt. In their opinion, this was indeed a punishment, because the dead would become extremely thin, and even eating a lot of food would not work...

Of course, the people of the Sheep Tribe did not know that this was because they had eaten too much rotten food. This year they began to keep some of the living sheep, not because they wanted to solve the problem.

They did this, in large part, because they were inspired by seeing a large herd of deer in a neighboring wealthy tribe, and in small part because they received a promise from the leader of a neighboring tribe that living sheep would bring more pottery than dead ones.

This discovery from a neighboring tribe made the people of the Sheep Tribe extremely happy, because they suddenly realized that they had found a way to solve the problem of mutton spoiling after being left for a long time.

The meat of a dead sheep will become smelly over time, but this will not happen with a living sheep.

This is a very simple truth, and they understand it, but they have never associated it with the sheep caught in their own tribe.

Every year, we killed all the sheep we caught according to the experience passed down... until this year when we saw a large group of deer owned by a neighboring tribe during the joyous gathering...

As the saying goes, "Success or failure depends on Xiao He". Raising sheep did make the entire sheep tribe excited at the beginning, because after starting to raise sheep, they realized another benefit, that is, they could have sheep in their tribe until the cold weather passed, instead of having to wait until the next autumn to eat mutton once the cold season was over...

In order to raise these sheep, they also built a sheepfold modeled after the deer shed of the neighboring tribe.

They didn't have that kind of tall courtyard, so they built the sheepfold inside the cave where they lived.

They couldn't build a solid sheepfold with wood, so after seeing the neighboring tribe build something similar to the deer's habitat with stones, they returned and began to build sheepfolds with stones as well...

All this seems beautiful, but the distressing things are becoming more and more serious as the weather gets colder.

The trouble is collecting fodder, or the death of the sheep.

At the beginning, they thought raising sheep was indeed a good idea, and all they had to do every day was to get grass for the sheep to eat.

But after doing this for a while, it no longer worked, because their tribe had a lot of sheep and they needed a lot of grass to feed them every day.

As the weather got colder and all the fodder around the tribe was harvested, the burden of collecting grass became increasingly heavy.

These sheep were not well fed and well watered, and they only ate old yellow grass every day, so they began to lose weight at a speed visible to the naked eye.

And as time went on, sheep began to die.

The tribe would certainly not let go of the dead sheep, but compared to autumn, there was not much meat left on their bodies.

Raising sheep not only results in loss of meat, but also brings suffering to the people in the tribe.

In previous years, when the cold winter came, they would block the entrance of the cave with stone slabs and then begin the long winter around the fire.

This year, however, it is not possible, because they still have to go out to catch grass for the sheep, and they are all very cold. Some of them have started to get frostbite on their hands and feet.

This is where the Sheep Tribe leader’s trouble lies.

He was a little confused as to why a path that seemed to be very good turned out to be like this after actually doing it.

How do the neighboring tribes survive the winter with so many deer?

The Sheep Tribe leader scratched his hair again and asked people to prepare food. He decided to go to the neighboring friendly tribe to find out what was going on.