Chapter 13 Playing in the Mud
He dived twice but didn't see any fish.
I wanted to dive again to confirm it, but I had low blood sugar probably because I didn’t have breakfast and was hungry for most of the day yesterday.
Now I am lying on the edge of the lake, feeling dizzy and disoriented. If I hadn't gotten out of the lake, I would have sunk.
It took me a long time to finally catch my breath.
During this time, looking at the three tribal members who had no idea what to do and were about to call for help, Zhou Xu waved his hands with difficulty.
"I'm fine. How's the mud I asked you to dig going?"
“We’ve dug up quite a bit.”
As he spoke, the tribesman with muddy hands pointed to the side.
"Are these enough, Chief? If not, we can keep digging."
Hearing this, Zhou Xu tilted his head and glanced to the side. The excavated mud had already piled up into a small hill, but in Zhou Xu's opinion, it was obviously not enough.
“Keep digging.”
Relying solely on two hands, the efficiency is really too low, but even Zhou Xu couldn't come up with any decent tools to give them at once.
There is no way, these things have to be done one by one.
After accepting the reality of the lack of fish resources, Zhou Xu took the opportunity of rest to adjust his plans for the next few days in his mind.
The adjustments are almost complete and I have basically recovered.
His schedule for this afternoon, apart from confirming whether there are fish in the salt lake and digging the lake mud, the most important thing is to study the pottery making technique.
As long as the pottery jars can be successfully made, the fresh water can be stored in advance and it won’t be as tight as it is now.
However, Zhou Xu had no intention of starting to play in the mud right away.
If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools.
Although Zhou Xu had never studied pottery making before, he liked drinking tea and also liked buying tea cups.
In order to avoid being cheated, he also studied a little bit and mastered a lot of useless knowledge.
Tea cups cannot be considered pottery, they are generally porcelain, but both of them are made of clay, so they have some similarities.
What is the most important thing for firing this kind of vessel? A furnace, preferably one with a wall around it, so that the internal temperature is higher and more stable.
So now he needs to use the stones he picked up to build a furnace that can create a stable temperature inside.
It is definitely impossible to make one that is too big, so we can only make do with what we have.
At the same time, it is impossible for these stones to fit perfectly, so for these gaps, Zhou Xu's method is very simple, which is to directly fill them with mud.
This was also one of the main reasons why he asked the three tribal members to continue digging. He also had to build a stove, and this amount of lake mud was definitely not enough.
Using a palm-sized, relatively flat bone plate as a tool for applying mud, after applying three layers of mud inside and outside several times, the furnace looked quite real at first glance.
"Almost."
Putting the bone plate aside, looking at the stove that already looked somewhat finished, Zhou Xu patted the mud off his hands and nodded with satisfaction.
However, it was obvious that he had not yet officially started the work of firing pottery.
Firing pottery does not mean that you can just knead the mud and then fire it. You have to wait for it to dry naturally, and this stage takes at least two or three days.
He is still in the preparation stage.
After taking a sip of water and finishing building the stove, Zhou Xu slowly walked to the lake and started playing with the mud.
[This feeling is really wonderful. ]
After all, he only played with mud when he was a child. After growing up, he basically didn't do such things anymore.
Instead of doing anything big right away, Zhou Xu first got some mud and started making small bowls.
After all, he was a complete novice when it came to firing pottery, and he didn't think he could succeed at once. He must have experienced many failures during the process.
It is easier to make small bowls. If one is burned out, you can just replace it and continue burning. In this way, you can accumulate experience. When you can burn small bowls stably, you can start to work on those large pottery jars.
Otherwise, you might have no experience at the beginning and burn the big clay pot that you made with great effort, thus wasting your time.
Zhou Xu's hands had limited precision, and he was not an experienced master craftsman. The small bowls he made were somewhat irregular, and at first glance, each one was slightly different.
With a slight adjustment, it has been improved to a barely acceptable level.
Fortunately, playing in the mud is not difficult. Besides, since it is the first time for everyone, he may not be able to do much better than the primitive people.
"I'll leave it to you guys next. Put the molded pottery bowls here to dry."
He took the lead in making five or six of them. After the tribe members nearby had almost understood and learned how to make them, this task naturally fell on them.
Because Zhou Xu discovered that in such a harsh environment, the mental state of the tribal members was generally better than his.
Or perhaps their bodies had already adapted to the days of having less than a few bites of food and a few sips of water a day, but Zhou Xu's body obviously had not yet adapted.
By this time, he was already hungry and tired, so he had to sit by the fire to drink water and rest, while also giving some instructions to the handicraft team on basket weaving. When he had nothing to do, he would close his eyes and take a nap.
Until the collecting team led by Dashan came back.
"Chief, as you said, we have brought back a lot of stones, and the number of branches is far more than any previous time!"
As he spoke the last part, Dashan's voice was filled with excitement that he couldn't conceal at all.
At this moment, the branches brought back by their collection team were piled together in bundles, forming a small mountain as high as a person! With this amount, it seemed that they would not need to deliberately collect branches in the next two or three days. They could just pick up some while doing other things.
The freed-up manpower can be used for other arrangements.
"Well done, thank you for your hard work."
After seeing the wood and stones they collected from the mountains, Zhou Xu praised them generously.
"Oh, by the way, how many bugs did you catch?"
This is undoubtedly one of Zhou Xu's most concerned issues at the moment. After all, it will directly affect how much food each of them can get in the evening.
As it turned out, Dashan and his team's achievements this time were quite impressive. Judging from the quantity, it was at least two or three times more than before.
But if you think about it carefully, it doesn't seem strange.
They had just arrived yesterday, and by the time they got here, it was already late. There were so many things to do that they didn't have much time to catch bugs.
Unlike today, they officially set out early in the morning, and their main task for most of the day revolved around picking up branches, picking up stones, and catching insects. It was natural that they caught more than yesterday.
The update is here. Thanks to book friends '随缘莽汉', '世上闲人也', and '书友20210929094646704' for their rewards!
(End of this chapter)
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