The future belongs to the orcs of the land; they will march towards summer...
The Bearbeastman clan members, including the Dogo, can manipulate plants, but their houses are not wooden or treehouses, but stone houses.
This seems to be their habit, or perhaps they are being wary of something.
Jiang Yunlan counted the haphazardly built stone houses, wrote them down on a piece of paper, and then turned to look at the vine shed that Duoguo had built.
The roof of the trellis is opaque and looks very sturdy, making it seem like it could be used as a roof. In the summer, walls could be built underneath the trellis, doors and windows installed, transforming the trellis into a living space.
But seeing the two large vine-covered sheds in front of her, she decisively abandoned the idea of turning them into a shelter. She figured she'd rather spend that time building a wooden shelter than constructing walls.
She shook her head, walked away with a regretful look, pondering how many more wooden shelters she would have to build.
Compared to their shelter, the orcs' clothing problem was much easier to solve. They had animal skins stripped from the bear-orcs, as well as a pile of animal skin beds and blankets scavenged from their habitat, enough to sew clothes for Bai Shui and the other orcs.
The orcs, whose injuries were more severe but who were able to sit up, learned the movements of the Xia clan orcs: sharpening bone needles, threading, cutting clothes, and sewing.
Their expressions were serious, their gazes focused, and they hardly blinked. They were sewing clothes for the cubs, and Lan had said that the orcs who made good clothes would get a bonus.
They also learned from other Xia clan orcs—no, from their own people—that the clansmen hadn't brought much thread and didn't have the means to cut it. Orcs who sewed in the wrong place could only painstakingly unravel the thread and re-embroider.
No matter what the reason, they dared not slack off and focused intently on dealing with the animal hides in their hands.
Hati didn't want to build houses, so at sunrise he would lead the other orcs to hunt down furry animals to provide raw materials for the orcs who were preparing spinning machines.
By noon, Yan Duoyu and his teammates returned pushing a cart of wood. They called for Bai Shui, who was slightly injured, to stop and rest while the orcs building the houses, but they still hadn't seen Hati. It seemed he had led his team to some distant place.
Antelope Grass led her tribesmen, who were busy with chores, to deliver meals to the patrolling beastmen like Black Soil, the wounded, and Lan who had forgotten to eat.
"Lan, don't forget to eat when you're dealing with things." Ling Xiaocao carried a bowl of food in one hand, walked to Lan's side, squatted down, placed the bowl down, and pushed it in front of Lan.
Jiang Yunlan snapped out of her reverie, moved the paper and pen from her lap to the map beside her, and picked up the food from the ground. She gripped her chopsticks firmly, shoveled a mouthful of food into her mouth, and glanced at the grassland sheep-orc sitting cross-legged next to her eating.
Before she left, Grey Honey and Ink Velvet must have given Antelope Grass some instructions. Now, the beastman who watches over her every day, from eating to sleeping, has become Antelope Grass.
Ling Xiaocao always finishes eating around the same time as her, which shows that she deliberately controls her eating speed.
Noticing that Lan was looking at her, Ling Xiaocao put down her chopsticks, turned her head in confusion, and remained expressionless. She only liked to show a harmless smile when she was pretending; otherwise, she rarely made any expression.
"It's nothing, you can continue eating," Jiang Yunlan said.
Ling Xiaocao nodded and asked, "Lan has been writing all this time, is she still planning things here?"
“No. I’ve already thought about what the tribespeople need to do. Right now, the only things we need to consider are food, clothing, and shelter. It’s a bit troublesome, but it’s not difficult to arrange.” Jiang Yunlan said, glancing down at the map on the ground while picking up another piece of food with her chopsticks.
“I was looking at the map just now, thinking about which way to go back. We’ve never been here before,” she said, her voice rising with delight. “The map is blank, which is perfect for exploration. If the sick or seriously injured beastmen are recovering well, we can walk through a section of the blank map and then rejoin the routes we’ve already explored.”
She shoved the food off her chopsticks into her mouth as if it were too much trouble, put down her bowl and chopsticks, picked up the map, pointed to the route she had planned, and said to Ling Xiaocao, "I've got my eye on this road. We can cross it from here and get back to the mountains."
"This way, we'll travel much faster than we did to get here, and we might even discover something new."
On their journey from the mountains to the Zelan Forest, Jiang Yunlan discovered a new animal along the way—one perfectly suited for pulling a cart. Xia successfully tamed that animal.
She was looking forward to encountering new things in unknown places.
Seeing Lan's bright eyes and radiant smile, Ling Xiaocao's expression softened. She smiled and said, "Lan's plan is excellent. However, it's lunchtime now, and the food will get cold if we don't eat soon."
Jiang Yunlan's hungry stomach growled appropriately. She paused, silently put down the map, and quickly took back the bowl and chopsticks.
Chew, chew, chew.
What should I do after returning to the clan? Jiang Yunlan ate a few bites of food, her mind already preoccupied with clan affairs.
Xia isn't really suited for long voyages right now, but she could first improve her shipbuilding technology and build a few small boats to explore the mainland along the river. Thinking of the compass in her group and her people's increasingly adeptness at reading blueprints, she felt this was a feasible plan.
After thinking about it for a while, she decided to arrange for communications as well.
As surrounding clans came into contact with Xia, they learned about Xia's writing system. Letters containing this written language were then able to connect the two ends of the continent.
Orcs from other regions had not learned Chinese in Xia and could not read the characters, but messengers could read and write letters for them.
Jiang Yunlan remembered that the surrounding clans would leave their members to work for the Xia clan during the flowering season, and only let them return home when the fruit season ended.
The time spanning three seasons is long. She thought that if the beastmen who stayed in the summer also wanted to contact the clan, the summer could send a team of beastmen to deliver messages to them in each season, along with the supplies they wanted to send back to the clan.
Among the orcs who come to work, there will always be those who care about their clan and their people. Their needs cannot be ignored.
There's also the big house that Gray Creek and the others wanted. After we go back this time, the residential area should be completed, and the right to live in the houses should be open for purchase.
The thought of finding a place to stay sent another headache through Jiang Yunlan.
How should she arrange accommodations for the new orcs who have joined the Xia clan? In the course of the clan's development, she has realized that it is not ideal to unconditionally assign a dormitory to every orc who joins Xia.
The dormitories for the fox beastmen and the grassland sheep beastmen were finally completed in Xia. If they wanted to allocate dormitories for the beastmen in the mountains and Bai Shui and the others who were rescued by the White River, they would have to continue building dormitory buildings.
That's not the biggest problem.
The size of the orc dormitories is built according to the height of the race. Although proportionally, every orc feels the same when entering their own dormitory, in terms of actual area, the dormitories for larger orcs are larger than those for smaller orcs.
Jiang Yunlan would occasionally hear smaller orcs envying the dormitories of larger orcs.
I have a feeling that if the tradition of assigning dormitories continues, problems will arise.
As she pondered a solution, she heard Ling Xiaocao ask for the empty bowl in her hand, so she handed it over. Then, with her left hand, she scooped up the paper and pen from the ground.
With the orcs she moved from the forest to the grasslands, both the orcs there and those in the grasslands were assigned dormitories. This was the perfect time to change the dormitory assignments. So, what conditions would the orcs need to meet to get dormitories in the future?
Jiang Yunlan tapped the paper with her pen, recalling the contribution points she had once offered to enable ordinary clansmen to purchase iron weapons, and instantly had an idea.
Turning the paper over, she wrote "Contribution Points" and then listed the various dormitories, noting how many contribution points were needed to move into each type. Different sized dormitories required different amounts of contribution points, and everything depended on the orc's own efforts, so there would be no discrimination.
Orcs can't be without a place to live, and she clearly still hoped that every orc could have their own dwelling. Xia should be the orcs' home. Therefore, the dormitories don't require rent or purchase; all that's needed is for the orcs to accumulate enough contribution points.
This can be considered a threshold; the orcs of Xia must make sacrifices for the Xia collective.
Jiang Yunlan had no idea what changes her decision would bring to Xia; she only knew that it was the best solution she could think of at the moment.
In this way, there is no dispute about who should move into the newly built dormitory first. Of course, the orc who meets the contribution value requirement first will move into the dormitory first.
After writing down the plans, problems encountered, and solutions for this period of time in one go, Jiang Yunlan stared at the papers spread on the ground and said with a lot of distress, "I feel that there are still not enough orcs in the clan to do so many things at the same time."
We need to find a way to lure more orc clans into working for us.
Food is always the best way to attract beastmen. Indeed, ensuring a full granary is the priority. After she leaves her habitat with the fragments of earth, will the habitat, now only protected by the fragments of forest, still yield a bountiful harvest?
“If the rice and wheat yields reach the amount I want, Grayfeather should be trying to brew wine this snowy season. Medicine cannot do without the alcohol extracted from wine.” She said, somewhat worried about the food harvest in the clan’s farmland, when she suddenly heard Maple Red calling her from afar.
"Lan—"
She blinked and looked over. Feng Hong rushed over from a distance and stopped right in front of her with practiced ease, without bumping into her or stepping on the papers on the ground.
"Lan! Lorelei and the others are amazing! They just put their hands on the ground, and all the fruit trees around them started bearing fruit!" Maple Red grinned, as excited as a speeding train. "We harvested so much food on this trip. The containers we brought are full of all kinds of plants, fruits, and tubers."
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