Chapter 10: CH 10

After returning home, Chen Qi claimed the two pheasants and proposed to cook lunch by himself, sending Aze out to build a simple rack to dry his clothes. Aze did not refuse. When they’d been collecting perilla leaves earlier, he’d listened to Chen Qi talk the whole time and he was quite curious about the food Chen Qi could churn out with the perilla leaves and wild ginger they’d collected.

Aze had already cut up one of the pheasants into pieces for later use. Aze’s house was piled with a lot of pottery. Apart from a few ceramic plates that contained some unknown bones, practically all of the others were empty. Who knew what he’d use all of it for?

Chen Qi took a piece of pottery shaped like a pot. Because there were only two jars of water, he only rinsed the pot once and then put the cut up pheasant meat into it for blanching. After using broth with the blood foam removed to carefully wash the pot again, it was filled with water, wildfowl and cut wild ginger before it was set to stew over the fire.

As usual, the other pheasant was skewered with cleaned wooden sticks and grilled on the fire, but Chen Qi was not in a hurry to rub the salt stone on the roasted pheasant. He placed a piece of salt stone into another dish filled with a little water and mashed it with a wooden stick. The salt stone dissolved quickly upon contact. After it completely dissolved, the previously clear water in the small dish turned gray and murky. He reached out a hand to touch it and it felt a little like fine sand and stone. Chen Qi looked at the salt water in silence. How many impurities are mixed in the salt stone? He could not imagine how Aze had been eating this for so long without any issues.

Chen Qi wanted to filter this dish of salt water, but looking around the contents of the house, he found nothing useful. He held his chin in distress and thought for a moment, wondering if his shirt could be used as a filter.

He went outside and saw Aze setting the last piece of laundry, his coat, on a wooden pole to dry. Who knew where he’d gotten two tree trunks with branches to insert into the soil to make two brackets, as well as the wooden pole that was placed horizontally on it for the clothes to be hung over for drying, but it did look good.

Seeing Chen Qi come out, Aze hung up the coat neatly and asked, “Is the food ready?”

Chen Qi shook his head. “Not yet. It may take a little while. I’m making some stewed chicken soup.”

Chen Qi walked over to the drying rack, took the shirt hanging on it, and went back into the house. Aze looked on with an odd expression. He did not understand why the man took back the not-yet-dried shirt and followed him inside.

As soon as Aze entered the door, he saw Chen Qi frowning with the shirt in one hand and a pottery dish in the other. Concerned, Aze hurriedly walked over and asked, “What’s the matter? Do you need me to help with something?”

“Yes.” Chen Qi handed the shirt to him and directed him, “Hold the shirt, like this, make an opening with your hands, like this.” Then, Chen Qi placed a clean dish under the shirt, and slowly poured the salt water over the fabric.

Chen Qi’s shirt was a whitish color, and the area where salt water poured through it was soon dyed gray. The shirt was folded into two layers, and although the water leaked through it a little slowly, the filtering effect was still very good. The two of them repeated the process two or three times before Chen Qi felt the results were satisfactory. 

The chicken soup was already done boiling. Chen Qi scooped some filtered salt water into the husk of a laiche fruit. Then he put a handful of perilla leaves into the chicken soup. This was his first time adding perilla leaves to chicken soup and he hoped the taste would not be too strange. The fragrance of roast pheasant had begun to permeate the air and the shiny glow of the roasted meat gave off a mouth-watering appeal. Chen Qi chose a few fluffy pheasant feathers and tied them together to serve as a brush. He carefully brushed the salt water on the wildfowl three times, then took out an apple, cut it into two halves with his sharp dragon-horn, squeezed out some juice and smeared it all over the barbecue.

Chen Qi pulled out some red-hot coal from the fire pit, placed a couple of sticks on it to light a small fire, and put the dish with salt water directly over it to heat it slowly. After all this messing about, he had already used up most of the water in the two large pottery jars. He poured the rest of the water into the laiche fruit husk, added last night’s remaining pieces of green peel into it, and left it to boil. Chen Qi thought to himself, I guess this can be considered green fruit tea.

When the green fruit tea was done boiling, the pheasant was almost done roasting. Chen Qi used the horn to cut off a small piece and put it into his mouth for a taste. The bitter taste had finally disappeared. Chen Qi smiled happily at Aze, who was sitting beside him. Before Aze could register his actions, a piece of roast chicken had been stuffed into his mouth. “You have to try this quickly and see if it has become tastier.”

Aze didn’t like eating things that were too sweet or greasy. When he had seen Chen Qi smearing apple juice on the roast meat, Aze thought to himself, No matter how bad the roasted meat tastes, I should eat it all calmly. Chewing the meat in his mouth, he didn’t know if the piece he’d been given had been spared most of the juice,, but the sweetness was just within his range of acceptability, and without the bitterness from the impure salt stone, the taste of this roast was much better than what he’d ever roasted for himself.

Aze looked at Chen Qi pleasantly surprised. “This is much tastier than what I’d roasted before. Chen Qi, I didn’t see you smearing the salt stone on the meat. Why does this meat still have some saltiness to it?”

Chen Qi pointed to the salt water that was heating up to the side and explained, “I dissolved the salt stone in the water, and now I will dry it back out again by heating it.”

“Can the salt stone be dried out again using this way?”

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“Maybe.” This was still Chen Qi’s first time doing this, so he was not sure. “When it is dried out, the result will not look the same as the salt stone, and it will probably turn into salt grains that look more like sand.”

Aze made a sound of assent and looked at Chen Qi with a slightly complicated expression. This Chen Qi who knows so much would definitely be pursued by many females.

Chen Qi scooped up some chicken soup that was still stewing with a small piece of the remaining laiche fruit husk and gave it a taste. How should he put it? The slightly salty soup was neither delicious nor difficult to drink. It had a very ordinary taste. Using chopsticks made from the branches of an acacia tree, he took a bite of a piece of stewed chicken. The chicken had very little taste after being stewed in water and only retained a slightly smoky flavor.

Chen Qi gave Aze a taste of both. Although the broth was tastier than when Aze made it and did not have the same bitter taste, it was not as delicious as the broth cooked with laiche fruit juice. The stewed chicken was a bit tasteless, but Aze did not mind. By the end of lunch, most of the roasted chicken went into Chen Qi’s stomach while Aze mostly devoured the stewed chicken.

Satiated with food and drink, Aze wrapped all the used pottery dishes in a large animal skin and, holding a jar in his other hand, went to the Chishui River to clean up and fetch some more water. Chen Qi used a stick with branches as a fork and stabbed it into the gum fruit they’d picked that morning, then set it over the fire to bake. The gum fruit was undoubtedly tough, and showed little sign of melting even after half a day* of being over a fire. Chen Qi patiently placed a small pottery dish under the gum fruit to collect it as it slowly melted.

*not literally half of a day. Common expression to exaggeratedly indicate a long time had passed

Chen Qi took out the dragon-horn and the gum tree branch. Aze had processed the gum tree branch while he was sitting idly on the side when Chen Qi was handling the food. The length was cut to be palm-sized, and on one end of the branch, a narrow gap was cut out, which was just enough to insert one end of the sharp horn. Chen Qi stared at the two things in front of him for a moment. Then, he stood up, went outside and brought some hay back in. He burned the hay into ash, put it on a cattail leaf, added a little water, and stirred up the mixture.

When the gum fruit was about a third melted, Chen Qi removed it from the fire and mixed some of the melted gum fruit into the ash blend. Afterward, he used a thin wood chip to carefully wipe the glue mixture onto the opening of the gum fruit branch. The melted gum fruit would take a long time to become dry again. He filled the branch opening with the glue mixture before inserting the sharp horn and securing it tightly with a straw vine, thus completing the simplified version of a primitive knife. Chen Qi looked at it several times with joy. After confirming that there were no problems, he set the knife in a corner of the house and let it dry in the shade.

By the time Aze returned from fetching water, the small plate of salt water had almost dried up, and white solids had begun to appear on the surface. Aze set the things down and leaned over in surprise. Chen used a wooden stick and kept stirring it until almost all the water had evaporated before putting out the fire. He motioned for Aze to wrap the pottery dish with hide and remove it from the fire to allow the salt to completely dry out with the remaining heat.

Aze dipped his finger into a little bit of the white salt, then licked it. It tasted much better than the salt stone. “Chen Qi, this is salty too, and it’s much better tasting than the salt stone.”

“Do you have any more salt stones? I’ll use this method to deal with them, so don’t use the salt stones anymore.”

Aze went to a section with potteryware, pulled out a small bag wrapped in animal skins, and opened it. There were a few pieces of salt stones, each the size of half a fist. The color was the same as the one they’d used before. They were all gray and white. It was obvious at a glance that they contained many impurities.

Chen Qi picked one up and weighed it. Such a piece could only produce less than ⅔ of its size in salt. Winter here lasted for several months and there was no prey in winter. These few pieces of salt stone would not be enough to preserve food. “Aze, where did you get these salt stones? Can we get more?”

“You need more? These were traded from other tribes at a gathering last year. Two months from now, the Lion-Wolf Tribe will hold their annual gathering. I can go and trade for some more then.”

Chen Qi nodded. “Winter is coming soon. Salt can be used to store food better, so it would be best if we could get more of it.” Speaking of storing food, Chen Qi looked at Aze. “Aze, shouldn’t we start preparing food reserves for the winter? Will we have enough time?” There were only a few days before winter arrived.

“En. I’ll take you over to see the tribe in a little while, and I’ll go out to hunt again once you’re settled in.” Aze paused, then added, “You don’t have to worry. I hunt fast and can get enough for the winter.”

Chen Qi smiled and put aside the dish with the salt stones. “Since there’s nothing else to do right now, shall we go see the tribe? Or should we wait to go a little later?”

Aze looked at the sky. Uncle Azhang goes hunting in the mornings and should be back by now. He stood up and said to Chen Qi, “Then, let’s go to the tribe now.”

“Okay.”

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