Chapter 388 - Time Elapses Without Traces in the Mountain (II) (1/2)

Covered with eternal snow, the soil layer has largely turned into thick permafrost. If you use some ordinary tools, you can’t even dig out any soil, let alone getting some clay to fire bricks.

Lin Luoran walks through this snow-covered mountain forest. Her uncovered skin has been tanned and is the color of honey lighter than that of wheat. She now looks like a vigorous female hunter in the mountains, totally different from a female cultivator who has the temperament of a fairy.

More precisely, maybe she is now a female architect.

Lin Luoran purses her mouth. At the same time, she is definitely also a cook and garden designer.

She jumps on a slightly projecting rock which is a little slippery because of snow. Lin Luoran looks at the rock and finds a rallying point to push it aside. She actually finds some moist soil under the rock. Lin Luoran used to catch crabs in this way when she was a kid but she doesn’t expect it can also work here.

There was a stream behind the Li’s Village and the water there usually dried up in winter. Lin Luoran often caught crabs in that place. Moving away pebbles covered with a layer of dry moss, she would find wet bubbling mud and hidden crabs there.

The same is true with rocks, which can also store water and resist freezing.

Lin Luoran takes out the soil under the rock and starts to fire bricks.

In ancient times, a large house with blue bricks was very popular. Clay rich with iron elements will usually become red bricks after firing. If you want to fire some blue bricks, you can’t just add some blue dyestuff. Instead, you need to add coal after firing it and then seal it in the kiln. After watering, the water vapor reacts with the hot coal in the kiln. Eventually, the red and highly active Fe2O3 gradually reduces into blue-and-gray and less active FeO. In this way, blue bricks are made.

Lin Luoran has never been a science student or a worker in a kiln factory. She doesn’t know such a simple truth. Fortunately, as a cultivator of the Bearing Essence, the fire Wakan is not a problem for her. Besides, she digs a kiln to fire bricks near the waterfall. After trying for many times, she succeeds by chance. It can say that she gets the bricks by chance with her high skill.

Nevertheless, it has been two months since she went up the mountain.

There is no cement in this place and cement is also not the material to build ancient houses. However, Lin Luoran finds the mixture of the rubber tree slime, a kind of polygonum powder, and ground flour can glue things together as cement. The most important thing is that the polygonum growing under the rubber tree can overcome the shortage of the rubber tree slime that will melt with heat.

It is the white bear that reminds her of the polygonum which shrinks to dry gra.s.s under the snow.

Lin Luoran fires a large number of blue bricks and finally begins to build a house.

Taking aesthetics into consideration, Lin Luoran gives up the idea of cavity walls. She finally decides to use bricks to make the bottom third of the house. In the meantime, the upper structure is decorated with wood of patterns. As for heating, she chooses geothermal heating.

She gets the blue stones on the ground by hollowing out a mountain wall somewhere. Building this house is now a well-known big deal and it is no longer a private thing of the white bear. Lin Luoran often sees some sneaky shadows haunting here at night. According to the white bear, there are more and more high-rank monsters exploring its territory at night.

It means that Lin Luoran has attracted much attention. If the house she builds cannot live up to this kind of attention, the white bear will totally lose its face—then its deal with Lin Luoran will naturally be invalid.

It’s just that the relations.h.i.+p among high-rank monsters above the mountain doesn’t seem to be as disharmony as that in the monster forest. Maybe it is because high-rank monsters have higher intelligence. Lin Luoran has no way to confirm her idea.

To build this house, she often runs through the forest. In mountains, many monsters become very fierce because they are short of food but still need to survive the long winter. Therefore, the forest becomes even more dangerous. Herbivorous monsters as rabbits of Fire and jumping sheep are hungry and skinny. They have to stay in their cave for a long time to reduce the energy they consume. Those high-rank monsters hunting them can’t find the rabbit holes buried by the snow and their claws and feet become soft owing to hunger. At that time, they will definitely rush over desperately when they see a living creature like Lin Luoran. Lin Luoran always gets very tired of handling them.

The food chains are so interlocked. They are uncomfortable and Lin Luoran also can’t live safe and sound.

Sometimes she sees starved monster corpses in the deep snow. Although Lin Luoran hates how ruthless they are, she will still stand silently and make a wish. She hopes the long winter of the monster forest can pa.s.s quickly.

If it lasts for half a year, there will still be at least three months.

Lin Luoran accepts the fate and drags a tree similar to agarwood back. Walls of blue bricks of the house next to the waterfall have been built. To match the height of the white bear, these walls of blue bricks as wall foot are almost higher than Lin Luoran’s head. On top of the blue bricks, Lin Luoran is going to use carve patterns and designs on woodwork. There will be both walls and movable wooden windows. With a high ceiling, this big house will be at least seven or eight meters high.

In the past three months, Lin Luoran has been building this large house. She also looks for some special and shorter tree species, roots, and stones for the decoration of the house in the monster forest from time to time.

One day when Lin Luoran is polis.h.i.+ng the iron pheobe with her Wakan, she suddenly tragically remembers that if she wants to build a house alone, she also has to make furniture besides designing the garden!