Chapter 41 Cang Li: !!! !!! ...
Cang Li: !!!
Cang Li panicked and lowered his head, groping himself.
No way! No way!
Hongyun, that kind old man, really gave her the purple aura!
No, she didn't feel anything either!
"Baby? What's wrong? Do you have worms on you?"
Nuwa looked over in confusion and asked.
Cang Li paused, calmly lowered his hand, and gave a mechanical smile, saying, "Oh, it seems there was a bug, but I've caught it now."
Nuwa yawned and ordered food: "I want to eat fried potatoes tonight."
Cang Li: "Okay, I'll make it for you."
This interruption calmed Cang Li down. The Primordial Purple Qi was elusive and no one would know even if it were on her. The Red Cloud given to her was no longer in the Primordial World. As a mere human, no one would suspect her.
Besides, the presence or absence of the Primordial Purple Qi makes no difference to Cang Li. She lived like this even before she knew about the Purple Qi, and she will continue to live like this even after she knows about it. She can't stop eating just because she has the Purple Qi, can she?
Thinking of this, Cang Li carelessly forgot about the purple aura and pretended not to know about its existence. Anyway, her mother had said that whether or not there was purple aura had nothing to do with her.
Two days later, the rain stopped, and the floodwaters gradually receded. Just as Cang Li had predicted, the rice in the fields was not washed away, and the rest of the crops were also harvested. All that was left was for the water to recede so that a new season of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other crops could be planted.
The humans, including Shi Tou Bai Yun, who had been hiding in a thatched hut near the cave for several days, also came out and gathered around Cang Li happily as soon as they saw him.
"Chief, the rain has stopped. What should we do?"
Cang Li withdrew his gaze from the distance and said, "No rush. Once the water has completely receded, you can start turning over the soil. How are the stones you've been grinding these past few days coming along?"
Because there weren't enough hoes and sickles, Cang Li had instructed these people before the rain to sharpen stone hoes and knives while they couldn't work due to the rain, so that they could work more easily.
Da Shan immediately ran back to get the sharpened hoe, sharpened it to be the same as Cang Li's, and with the bamboo pole attached, it was very handy.
Cang Li assembled the hoe. Before the rain, everyone worked by hand, but now with tools, they could be more efficient.
Although the assembled hoe wasn't as good as the one Cang Li had exchanged, it was still better than turning the soil by hand. Satisfied, Cang Li put the hoe down and said:
"After the water recedes, you should take hoes and go around to the various tribes to teach them how to make tools for work. Stone hoes, stone axes, and stone knives can all be made. I will also distribute seeds for you to take to the various tribes to plant. The harvest this season will be enough for you to get through the winter."
"In addition, during their spare time, each tribe needs to collect firewood and stockpile enough firewood for warmth in winter, understand?"
The hundred or so humans who received the task agreed in unison. Two days later, after the water receded, Cang Li inspected the bridge and then sent them to inform the various tribes. She also asked them to inquire about any casualties in each tribe, and if so, to count the number of casualties. If one person was missing, she would replace them with a stone and then return to inform her.
Cang Li knew that casualties were inevitable for the human race when facing heavy rain for the first time; this was a necessary process for the human race to survive.
After watching the human messenger leave, Cang Li went back and had Ji Hejie bring out the oxen, harness them to the plow, and start tilling the fields.
But one of them refused to get down, so the person went to find Cang Li:
"Sister, sister, that ox won't plow the field."
Cang Li found this strange and went over to take a look. Sure enough, the smaller ox refused to go down into the field. Jie didn't want to pull it away too forcefully, afraid of hurting it. Seeing Cang Li coming over, Jie quickly said:
"Sister, come and take a look."
Cang Li walked over and patted the cow's head. The cow was very docile and rubbed against Cang Li's palm, but still wouldn't get down. Cang Li had no choice but to go back and ask Tai Qing for help.
"Taoist Master! Come here and take a look at this ox. Is it sick?"
Taiqing got up and followed Cangli. After only one glance, Taiqing said:
“There was a life force inside the cow’s belly, which had been there for about three months.”
Cang Li: Huh? Angry?
Cang Li quickly realized what was happening and exclaimed in sudden understanding:
"Wow! It's about to give birth to a calf!"
After saying that, Cang Li became happy. "It's good to have a calf. That means we have one more cow!"
"Men, don't let this cow go to the ground. Take good care of it for the next few months, give it the freshest hay, and don't mistreat it. In a few months, it will give birth to a calf, and then we'll have three cows!"
Ji Hejie was also happy and carefully took the cow back to the cowshed to take care of it.
Cang Li happily returned to the cave, and soon saw Nuwa preparing to leave.
Nuwa patted Cangli's head and said:
"Bao'er, I'm going back to Nuwa Palace first. I'll come back in a few days. If you need anything, just ask Senior Brother Taiqing, or shake this bell. I'll know when you shake it and I'll come back as soon as possible."
Cang Li took the small golden bell and reluctantly hugged Nuwa's waist:
"Mom, it's a promise then, you have to come back soon."
Nuwa nodded, gently patted Cangli's shoulder, then asked Taiqing to look after Cangli before flying away. Fuxi had sent word that the Demon Court couldn't be delayed any longer, and she had to rush back as soon as possible.
Cang Li watched Nuwa disappear into the horizon with reluctance. After Nuwa left, Cang Li felt strangely empty inside.
Taiqing, standing behind Cangli, seeing Cangli's reaction, said:
"Why not discuss the Dao with me, so that we can improve our cultivation?"
Cang Li: ...
Cang Li ran away, saying to Tai Qing, "No, no! I still have work to finish!"
Just kidding, discussing philosophy is less important than her growing two acres of land!
Taiqing: ...
Taiqing was helpless. He always tried to find opportunities to discuss the Dao with Cangli, because he was really interested in Cangli's Daoist methods. However, Cangli always had various excuses to run away, which left him at a loss.
After running far away, Cang Li was still shaken. Discussing the Dao? She would never discuss the Dao with Taiqing. When Taiqing discussed the Dao, he wouldn't move for days on end, neither eating nor sleeping. Discussing the Dao was far too difficult for her.
Farming is still the most pleasant thing to do, after all, the grain won't suddenly ask her: Fellow Daoist, what is the Dao? How do you understand the Dao of Nature?
How could she possibly know what the Dao is? Let alone understand it? That would be asking her a difficult question!
Cang Li wielded a hoe and turned over two acres of land, then pulled Er to plant peanuts, and told everyone to plant cotton, hemp, and fireweed, while Yu stayed behind to water them, emphasizing that no one should be idle.
With the help of Cangli and Taiqing's magic and more than a hundred young and strong laborers, the nearly 1,000 acres of land in front of the cave have been completely planted. Half of the land is planted with rice and wheat, one-third of the remaining half is planted with sweet potatoes and potatoes, one-third with vegetables such as cabbage, scallions and ginger, and the last third is planted with cotton, sesame, peanuts, soybeans, fireweed and hemp.
Cang Li stood in front of the cave, taking in the entire land with a great sense of accomplishment. This was the empire she had built!
The next day, the hundred or so people who had been sent out to deliver the message returned one after another, bringing back bad news. The leaders of the various tribes also came over.
Seeing that a large number of people had arrived, Cang Li met them on the compacted open space specifically used for drying clothes.
"Chief, that heavy rain washed away a lot of things, and some people were swept away."
The chief of tribe number 8, who had been assigned a number by Cang Li, looked at Cang Li helplessly. They had made preparations according to Cang Li's instructions. The tribe's terrain was not low, and they had even surrounded it with bamboo for protection. However, the rain was too heavy, and their tribe had very little experience in life. They could only shiver and hide in the grass hut.
When the rain subsided, Chief No. 8 ran out to check on the tribe's situation and found that the stored food had been flooded, and a lot of it had been washed away, along with the people of their tribe. After distributing the stones representing each person, he still had ten stones left. When they first arrived in Li, the stones distributed to their tribe were just enough.
This meant that their tribe was missing one person. Chief No. 8 led his men to search the vicinity and even asked neighboring tribes, but they couldn't find the ten people. Finally, they found traces of someone sliding down the riverbank. Chief No. 8 knew that this person had probably lost their way in the heavy rain and accidentally fallen into the river, where they were swept away by the rushing water.
Although they had only just appeared in the primordial world, they knew what being swept away meant. These ten people would never return. They had been created from the soil by the Mother Goddess and were now going back to the earth.
Cang Li paused for a moment. The terrain around the cave was higher, so the water didn't seem deep. However, the land between the river and the Yellow River was sloping downhill, with occasional raised areas. Given the heavy rain, it wasn't surprising that someone might have an accident in the water. Cang Li nodded to Leader Number 8 and said loudly:
"The other departments shall report the number of missing persons and register the number of missing persons."
Ji Hejie quickly went among the tribal leaders to record how many people were missing. In the absence of paper money, Cang Li gave the two children a thin stone slab, and each of them drew a circle. It wasn't that Cang Li didn't want to teach Roman numerals, but no matter how he tried to teach the five children, they just couldn't learn. They simply couldn't use numbers to record things. Other humans couldn't understand Roman numerals either, and could only say one, two, three, four, five.
After much thought, Cang Li concluded that there was a Heavenly Dao at work here. In the early days of humanity, Roman numerals were incompatible with human evolution, preventing the installation of the numeral plugin. Perhaps it would be time before Cangjie invented writing during the Yellow Emperor's era that people could begin to formally write and record things.
Finally, Cang Li had people draw circles, with each circle representing one person. He then used magic to grind many round stone pieces about three centimeters in diameter and gave one to each person. He told the tribal leaders to use the round stone pieces to determine the number of people. After arriving at the tribe, the leaders would collect them and distribute them when they needed to confirm the number of people. If someone had more stone pieces than they needed, it meant that there were fewer people.
Half a day later, Ji Hejie finished registering and handed the two densely drawn stone slabs to Cang Li. Cang Li glanced at them. Ji Hejie's drawings were very neat, with 20 circles in each row. One stone slab could be drawn with 20 rows, while Ji's stone slab had 12 rows, totaling 240 missing persons.
The stone slab in question has 8 rows, with 160 missing persons listed, totaling 400 missing persons. There is likely some margin of error in this count.
Cang Li sighed. This was all due to losses. The initial count of the human population, including herself and her five children, totaled 12,023 people. Just one heavy rain reduced the population by four hundred.
However, the bad news didn't stop there. Leader Number 79 stood up nervously and said:
"Chief, three people in our tribe are burning up with fever and just sleeping. They won't respond when we call them, they won't do any work, and they won't eat. Chief, we really don't know what to do."
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