The successful purification of salt ore means that the Vine Tribe will no longer lack salt in the future. If the tribe grows and prospers, they might even be able to sell salt as a commodity.
After Jiang Xuan produced a small jar of salt, he temporarily stopped this time-consuming task. The remaining salt ore can be purified on rainy days when there's nothing else to do.
The next day, after Jiang Xuan tasted a pot of stew seasoned with salt, he was overwhelmed with immense happiness, almost to the point of tears.
This is what delicious food should taste like!
Meat without salt is indescribably bland to eat.
Having resolved the salt issue, Jiang Xuan went on to make two relatively large three-legged round pottery cauldrons from clay, and some spoon and ladle blanks, and left them to dry in the bamboo house.
Because the number of people eating has increased, those two pottery jars are no longer sufficient for cooking.
The three-legged pottery cauldron perfectly solves this problem.
The three-legged pottery cauldron has a large capacity and comes with three legs, allowing it to be placed directly into the hearth without needing to be propped on stones.
Additionally, the three-legged pottery cauldron has two cauldron ears. When the food is cooked, a wooden stick can be threaded through the ears to easily lift the cauldron elsewhere.
Peaceful days always pass quickly.
In the blink of an eye, nine days have gone by.
April 9, the weather has noticeably shifted from warm to hot, with the gentle drizzle turning into heavy or even torrential rain.
Whether it's the plants in the jungle or the grains and vegetables planted by the Vine Tribe, everything has begun to grow wildly, with lush greenery everywhere.
All of this indicates that spring has quietly departed and summer has arrived with its heat.
"April 9, sunny, start of summer."
In the morning, Jiang Xuan engraved the term "start of summer" on his bamboo tube calendar, then put the bamboo tube away and stepped out the door.
At this moment, the sky is a clear blue. Although the sun has not risen yet, several rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds, coloring the white clouds with a red glow.
"Let's see if the pottery was successfully fired."
Yesterday, Jiang Xuan placed the dried pottery blanks into the Horizontal Flame Kiln, and after firing them for most of the night, he went to bed.
"Chief, wait for me."
Gou Teng excitedly ran over, followed by Chi Shao, Shi Qiu, and Nan Xing, who all rushed in the same direction.
Jiang Xuan arrived beside the Horizontal Flame Kiln and touched it. The kiln wall still had residual warmth, but it was no longer hot.
Jiang Xuan unfastened his Stone Knife and dug out the clay sealing the intake port on the side of the Horizontal Flame Kiln. He moved aside the large block of hardened clay, revealing the pottery that had been successfully fired inside the hearth.
The first things to come out were five soup ladles, crafted to be relatively large with long handles. During the firing process, the handles of two ladles broke, but the other three were successfully fired.
"Take these." Jiang Xuan handed the pottery ladles to Gou Teng.
"Alright."
Gou Teng happily held the five ladles. He knew they were valuable, as having these meant not needing to pour soup directly from the pottery jar, but instead being able to ladle it into bowls.
With excitement in his heart, Jiang Xuan carefully retrieved a pottery cauldron from the kiln's hearth.
Jiang Xuan inspected it closely and found that it was successfully fired without any cracks!
This was a three-legged two-ear round pottery cauldron, approximately sixty centimeters tall and forty centimeters wide, very sturdy, with a cauldron lid on top.
The most striking feature of this pottery cauldron was the carvings of the Vine Tribe's totem patterns on its exterior and lid: a massive ancient vine entwined around a rugged Stone Mountain, resembling a dragon coiling around a pillar.
When the pottery cauldron appeared before everyone, they were all excited.
Not because of its perfect firing, but because it had the totem patterns carved on it.
Totem patterns hold significant meaning for the tribe members, and anything carved with them naturally carries special meaning.
Even if this pottery cauldron wasn't very smooth and appeared quite rough, for the people of the Vine Tribe, it was considered the best item, and they would not accept outsiders' contradictions.
Gou Teng asked, "Chief, are we going to use it for cooking in the future?"
"Yes, with the pottery cauldron, we can cook enough food for twenty people at once."
"That's great! Food cooked in the pottery cauldron will surely be delicious!"
The others nodded in agreement; after all, it's a pottery cauldron with the Vine Tribe's totem patterns carved on it!
"There's another one inside."
Jiang Xuan then cautiously retrieved the other pottery cauldron from the kiln's hearth.
The walls of this Pottery Cauldron are also engraved with Totem Patterns, and it has been successfully fired.
With these two Pottery Cauldrons, not only has cooking become much more convenient, but refining Salt Ore will also be much easier because it's big enough to hold more brine at once.
"Let's wash them first, and then go back to try out our new Pottery Cauldrons."
Jiang Xuan was the first to pick up a Pottery Cauldron, Chi Shao picked up the other one, and they carefully washed them clean by the creek.
Afterwards, the two Pottery Cauldrons were brought back to the bamboo house and placed in the fire pit.
The three legs of the Pottery Cauldrons allow them to stand stably in the fire pit without the need to prop them up; you can just light the fire directly.
Jiang Xuan placed burning wood under the Pottery Cauldron, and the flames kept licking at it, gradually heating it up.
Into the first Pottery Cauldron, Jiang Xuan first added water and then added various edible plant tubers, like Stone Egg, Round Potato, and Polygonatum.
This is the usual meal for the Vine Tribe.
For the second Pottery Cauldron, after Jiang Xuan heated it thoroughly, he added some lamb fat, wild ginger, and wild onions, and after sautéing them for fragrance, he added clean water.
Then he put in small chunks of dried animal meat and added many edible wild vegetable stems and leaves. Finally, Jiang Xuan added a pinch of precious salt, covered the cauldron, and let it simmer slowly.
This is their usual meat and vegetables meal.
Sometimes they cook animal meat, sometimes fish, sometimes shrimp and crab, and even some edible insects.
Cooking these foods takes some time. Jiang Xuan let Nan Xing watch the fire while he and three other people went to check the traps set up by the field.
With continuous land clearing, the Vine Tribe now has over ten acres of farmland where neat rows of grains and vegetables are planted, creating a majestic sight.
But problems have also arisen.
Because edible plants are gathered together, herbivorous animals from the nearby forest, including many insects, flock here, damaging the immature grain and vegetables.
As for the insects, the only solution is to have those Wanderers catch them by hand.
To deal with wild animals, Jiang Xuan and others need to set up traps.
To protect these hard-to-plant crops, Jiang Xuan and his companions set up a large number of traps around the fields, including rope noose traps, trigger traps, Earth Bows, and more.
These traps manage to catch or kill some crop-thieving animals almost every day, thereby adding to the Vine Tribe's meat supply.
Even the insects are caught by the Wanderers, one by one, skewered on sticks, and roasted for eating. If Jiang Xuan didn't forbid them from eating raw, they might even eat them raw.
Biting into one with a burst of juice was quite thrilling.
"A plump mountain rat, let's take it back."
Jiang Xuan went to the first trap and found a trigger trap with a plump mountain rat, its head pinched flat by a stick, about two to three pounds in weight.
This is also good meat that can be taken back for roasting.
Jiang Xuan tossed the mountain rat into the vine basket and continued walking forward.
The second trap was a snare trap, but the rope had already been bitten through.
Chi Shao carefully examined the marks left on the ground and said, "It should have snared a rabbit. The snare must have caught its foot, so it bit through the rope and escaped. If it caught its neck, it wouldn't have been able to run."
The four of them continued forward. Some traps successfully caught prey, some traps were not triggered, and some were triggered but the prey escaped.
Yet, after making a round, they actually collected more than ten small game animals, filling a vine basket.
"A good haul, let's go back."
Jiang Xuan was in good spirits. When clearing land for cultivation, he didn't expect to harvest meat as well.
When they returned to the bamboo house, the food in the two Pottery Cauldrons was already cooked, filling the air with fragrance.
"Our stomachs are flattened from hunger, let's eat!"
Jiang Xuan removed the firewood from under the Pottery Cauldrons and opened the lid of the big cauldron. The steaming food released an even more enticing aroma.
Jiang Xuan took out his Pottery Bowl and chopsticks. Using a long-handled ladle, he scooped up a big half-bowl of cooked plant tubers and then scooped out some animal meat and wild vegetables from another Pottery Cauldron. Blowing on it, he began eating heartily.
"Delicious!"
Jiang Xuan ate with satisfaction. With salt, all the food seemed to have been infused with a soul, tasting especially sweet and savory.
The others also started eating. After they were full, they packed the food into Pottery Jars and sent it to the Wanderers, so they could eat their fill and continue working.
To ensure these Wanderers had the strength to work, Jiang Xuan was not stingy. The food he provided to the Wanderers was almost no different from what they ate themselves, including salt in the food.
If the Wanderers were not given salt, they would fall ill from the lack of it because of their hard labor and sweating every day, making it impossible to continue working.