Chapter 78 - Pottery Shard (1/2)

Ch78 - Pottery Shard

The Big Bear Tribe had really been short of people recently!

The earth eggs and barley planted in the fields needed to be carefully cultivated, but hunting couldn’t be abandoned either. Not to mention, the priest had also started messing around with pottery.

Not only did they have to dig mud for pottery, they also needed firewood. All these tasks required a lot of effort.

Originally, the Big Bear Tribe had thought that they had a lot of people. Now, they felt that… they didn’t quite have enough people to do all the work.

Because they were too busy, even Yang Su and Yang Ying who had previously always managed to find opportunities to slack off no longer had any chance to anymore.

When Xiong Ye saw them two days ago, he discovered that they were now a lot more tanned. They also no longer had time to always glare at him the way they used to.

That was great.

However, it was precisely because they were short on people that they definitely wouldn’t go fight the Giant Tiger Tribe.

The Giant Tiger Tribe had many more people than they did, and they were also very strong. If they went to fight against the Giant Tiger Tribe, it would be like sending themselves into the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

The little monkey heard him, and his face filled with despair, making him look rather pitiful.

Xiong Ye added, “In order to live well in our tribe, you can’t keep hiding in your animal form doing nothing… Go help the priest with his work. Even if you can’t do heavy work, you can still do some miscellaneous things.”

This person was really very weak. He claimed to be twelve, but he was smaller than the ten year olds in their tribe. That was bad enough, but his strength was also very limited.

It was likely because of this that the priest had left him alone and hadn’t arranged any work for him.

However, Xiong Ye felt that he still needed to work. He had no parents to take care of him, but he was living in the tribe and eating the tribe’s food. He had to contribute somehow.

After talking to the child, Xiong Ye stood up and said to Zhou Ji, “Zhou Ji, I’m going to go dig for mud.”

Zhou Ji said, “Wait a moment.”

“Is there something else?” Xiong Ye asked.

Zhou Ji rose from the recliner, “Today is the first time we’re firing pottery. Help me bring the recliner over.”

He didn’t know much about firing pottery. After talking about briefly with the priest, he had let the priest go about everything on his own.

However now that the pottery was in the fire, he still needed to go and take a look.

Zhou Ji’s reclining chair was something that the priest had asked someone in the tribe who was good at carving to make. It was made out of a single large piece of wood. It was very solid and very heavy, and was usually moved around by Xiong Ye or some of the others.

Everyone felt that Zhou Ji wouldn’t be able to move it.

“Sit down, then.” Xiong Ye said.

Zhou Ji glanced at Xiong Ye, then sat down on the recliner so that Xiong Ye could move him and the chair to the place where the priest was about to start firing pottery.

It was quite chaotic there.

Some people were kneading mud and creating all kinds of strange things. There were others who had created rectangular bricks and set them aside. Next to the place where everything was being made, the priest had arranged for people to dig out a hole.

“Later, when we fire pottery, do we just place these things that were made out of mud into the fire and burn it?” The priest noticed Zhou Ji’s presence and immediately asked him, “Approximately how long do we burn it for?”

Zhou Ji didn’t know either.

He had only ever seen the technique of making pottery in history books and other random books, but he had never tried to memorize it. Later, after spending so many years in the apocalypse, he had completely forgotten it all.

“The Beast God doesn’t like people who don’t do things for themselves. We’ll have to figure it out on our own.” Zhou Ji said. He couldn’t tell these people how to do everything; it was better for them to find their own way.

Of course, he could give them a little help. For example, he could use his spiritual powers to observe the situation of the pottery in the fire from the side and provide them with some suggestions.

Those clay bricks were placed in the middle of the pit, then surrounded by a circle of stones. Outside of that was another circle of firewood.

“Do you guys think that it will be successful?”

.

“This fire pit… I think we can make one like this inside the collective cave. It must be very warm when the fire burns like this in winter.”

……

The flames were burning vigorously. Zhou Ji looked at the situation and felt that the pit hadn’t been dug properly.

If the pit had been dug down at an angle, it would have something of a cover, which would keep the area within the pit even hotter.

Now, if they wanted to keep this fire going strong, they had to keep adding firewood to it endlessly.

It was summer now, and the weather was extremely hot. Everyone was drenched in sweat from the heat emanating from the fire pit as they worked.

The priest was still keeping count, “Eighteen bundles of firewood have already been used. Now it’s nineteen…”

Zhou Ji didn’t concern himself over what the priest was thinking. Instead, he observed the situation inside the fire with his powers.

After the clay had been inside the fire for about two hours, the priest asked, “Zhou Ji, is the pottery ready?”

“No.” Zhou Ji said. The bricks were a little cracked. Some looked pretty good, but the clay in the middle hadn’t hardened into pottery yet.

Since it hadn’t been fired properly yet, it was necessary to keep the fire burning. The priest added even more firewood to the pit.

While the people of the Big Bear Tribe were all busy with their tasks, the people of the Giant Pig Tribe, who had free time since it wasn’t a hunting day, had also run over to be part of the excitement.

Zhu Zhan felt that this Big Bear Tribe was quite amusing.

The people of the Beast God Temple would busy themselves for an entire year to create just a few hundred pieces of pottery. It was said that the method of making pottery was very complex. This Big Bear Tribe… was too funny!

They casually brought out some mud, shaped it, and then placed it in a fire. Did they think that they could make pottery this way? How could that be!

According to the Beast God Temple, pottery was a treasure that the Beast God had given to the beastmen. How could it be made out of baked mud?

Nevertheless, pottery was really useful. If nothing else, a pottery bowl was already much better than a stone bowl and was even very light.

Of course, the average person would have no chance to use pottery in their life. Within their tribe, pottery was a status symbol. Some people would even wear broken pottery shards as jewelry.

“Didn’t the Beast God Temple say that pottery was made out of a special kind of stone? What are they doing, trying to make pottery out of mud?”

“How could pottery be made out of clay!”

“So much firewood was wasted just like this…”

The people of the Giant Pig Tribe looked at the scene in front of them and felt rather helpless.

Of course, what made them feel the most helpless was Zhou Ji.

At first, Zhou Ji had been rather close to the fire pit. Later on, he felt that it was too hot and moved away from the area, resettling under the shade of a tree in the distance.

Someone immediately came over to help him move his recliner as soon as he moved.

Later, Xiong Ye returned and was called over by Zhou Ji. He even managed to obtain some fruit from who knows where that the two of them ate together.

One of Zhu Zhan’s subordinates tsked twice, “This Zhou Ji is enjoying life a little too much, right? His quality of life is even better than the priest of our own tribe.” The priest of their tribe had to bustle about every day and work hard with both his body and mind. This Zhou Ji was different; they had already been in the Big Bear Tribe for a few days now, and every time they saw him, he was either making food, or lying down and resting, or going out for a walk outside, bringing back all sorts of flowers and grasses.

Yet even though that was the case, the people in the tribe still obeyed his words, Xiong Ye even more so than any of the others.

They had already learned that Xiong Ye was a low level Beast Warrior, and a powerful one amongst that rank. In a few years, he would most likely become a medium level Beast Warrior.