Chapter 98 – The pictures in the animal skin rolls (1/2)

Translated by Sunyancai

Shao Xuan placed the animal skin curtain down and greeted her: “Hi, my name is Ah-Xuan, and I’m here to learn from the Shaman.”

The person dealing with the herbs on that stone plate looked up at Shao Xuan and then smiled: “My name is Gui Ze.”

Although she was smiling, Shao Xuan didn’t feel much kindness or welcoming from the smile, but she didn’t seem to have any malice either. Just like the Shaman, she smiled at everyone in a gentle way, but only for appearances.

Well, the Shaman had an excellent apprentice. They had the exact type of smile.

Compared with other warriors whose totem power had awakened, Gui Ze was relatively slender. After all, no matter boys or girls, anyone who had awakened their totem power would have a stronger physique. Therefore they would look stronger in terms of appearance.

It was warmer inside, just like everyone in the tribe said that this medicine house was connected with the fire pit. Shao Xuan didn’t know how the heat got transported to here, for there was nothing spectacular or suspicious in the room.

Shao Xuan walked towards the stone table and asked: “What should I do first?”

Gui Ze dropped the stone plate that she had in her hand and thought for a moment: “You can just stand there and watch what I do.”

“Sure.” Shao Xuan had no problem with that. He needed to watch and learn first, for he had no idea how to process these herbs.

All the plants were totally alien to Shao Xuan, but just as what Shao Xuan had learnt about herbs during his last life, most of the medical plants needed to be selected and processed, before they could be used on people.

One plant might have different effects on different parts. Some parts of it might save people’s lives, while the other parts might make things worse, or even take people’s lives.

However, now all Shao Xuan knew about herbs was the basic usage of the common-seen plants and herbs that he had encountered during his hunting trips with the team. When he was a part of the advance group, he learnt a thing or two about picking up rare plants. For example, when the proper time was to pull out the plant, what kind of plants had their valuable parts above the ground, what kind of plants needed to be pulled up as a whole, and what kind of plants could only be collected when they blossomed.

As for now, the first thing that Shao Xuan should know about was how to select them out, and when the herbs should be delivered to the medicine house.

Gui Ze was doing that right now, and she was half-done. After all, it had been over twenty days since the last hunting team returned. The short preservation life plants had long been processed, and the plants with long preservation life would be processed in the end.

The turtle approached Shao Xuan in silence, and suddenly, it bit on Shao

Xuan’s leg.

Shao Xuan’s eyes were fixed on Gui Ze’s moves on processing the plants, and he did not care for the turtle beside him. However, his hand quickly moved, and pulled out his stone knife. Without hesitation, he stabbed towards its eagle-hooked mouth with the back of the stone knife.

“Ba!”

The turtle got struck, but it waved its head, and still looked at Shao Xuan in an unfriendly way. Perhaps it still held a grudge, and it remembered how it was treated by Shao Xuan.

However, to Shao Xuan’s surprise, that turtle did not try to bite him again, which was totally different from his behavior back down the mountain in that old broken stone crock. Back then, it would fight till the last minute when it had an object.

Shao Xuan was a little confused. The turtle was a biter, but why was it calm in here? Because of the Shaman? How peculiar!

No matter what, it saved Shao Xuan a lot of trouble, since that turtle was not obsessed with biting people.

Now it was almost winter time, and the temperature dropped as well. In Shao Xuan’s previous world, the standard turtles would eat less and become lazier than ever. However, that odd-looking turtle with an even more bizarre character had totally upturned Shao Xuan’s original understanding of nature.

It looked pretty vigorous, and was much more vivid than when it was left in the stone crock, trying hard to survive. Although it wasn’t moving fast, the steps it made were very energetic.

“Some rare plants brought by the hunting teams could be eaten raw. When they are delivered in here, they would normally have impurities attached, such as mud and dirt…”

Gui Ze would also explain the basic knowledge to Shao Xuan as she was processing the herbs on the stone plate.

Regarding the newly-brought plants and herbs, some of them had high water content aside from the impurities such as mud and dirt. If not processed in time, they would go bad. Sometimes, they became moldy like normal food, and sometimes they would have special changes. So, whenever the advance group returned, they would deliver the plants here as soon as possible. Someone in the medicine house would quickly process the ones that were the quickest to go bad.

“When you roughly clean and wash the newly-brought plants, and then sort them out based on different species, you need to know that some of their non-medical parts must be removed. For example, this is the palpus fruit, and you have to remove its outer layer. The outer layer may cause diarrhea.”

People in the tribe were pretty strong, especially the totem warriors. If the palpus fruit could cause diarrhea to residents in the tribe, and even totem warriors couldn’t survive, then it was very much toxic.

Shao Xuan saw Gui Ze skillfully slice off the outer layer of the palpus fruit with a sharp stone knife. She peeled off the layer with the beard-like long hairs, without harming any of the translucent jelly-like flesh. Obviously, Gui Ze was very practiced in processing it.