Chapter 19: CH 19

“Aze, can you break the tip of this bone for me?” Returning to the front room, Chen Qi asked Aze, who had piled a bundle of new firewood in the corner.

Aze took it and gestured at a certain length. “Up to here, okay?”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Chen Qi nodded. Aze’s fingers squeezed with force, and the bone snapped.

The place where the bone broke was quite even, although when Chen Qi rubbed it, the surface was a bit rough. “It would be great if we had a whetstone.” After some sanding, there shouldn’t be any concerns about hurting yourself when using it.

“Whetstone? Do you mean the kind of black stone you asked me to find in the Chishui River?” When fetching water at noon, Aze had wanted to wander around the Chishui River to see if he could find any of those stones that Chen Qi needed. However, after hearing Ake’s retelling of Chen Qi’s encounter with the vultures that morning, he hurriedly returned, worried.

“En.” Chen Qi waved the other two bones in his hands. “If these two bones can be sharpened with a whetstone, they should be as sharp as Ka Luo’s bone-knife.”

Aze went silent for a moment. “I’ll go over to the Chishui River and look for one. Chen Qi, stay at home and don’t go anywhere.”

“En, the salt has been used up. I’ll filter the rest of the salt stones,” Chen Qi replied as he nodded.

Aze quickly gave him the rest of the salt stones and moved the two large pottery jars of water Ake had brought back by the fire. Aze knew that refining the salt would be very time-consuming, so Chen Qi wouldn’t wander out anywhere.

After he saw Chen Qi start to dissolve a piece of salt stone in the water of a small pottery dish, Aze left. After walking for some distance in the direction of the Chishui River, he suddenly turned around and ran rapidly in another direction.

After Chen Qi dissolved a piece of salt stone, he chose a small branch and bent it into an oval shape, intending to make a simple filter. He fixed the shape of the twig using the banyan root, then took out the piece of cloth he’d cut earlier. Next, he measured the size of the twig frame and cut the shape out of the cloth. He tied a root to the small, rudimentary bone needle and sewed a small cloth pouch onto the frame. In order to achieve a better filtering effect, Chen Qi sewed two layers.

After finishing, he filtered the dissolved salt water several times before slowly heating it over the fire. It would take a lot of time to dry out the salt again, and Chen Qi did not want to stay idle during the wait.

Chen Qi had almost picked all the dandelions growing on both sides of the trench. Although he’d used a small handful when cooking two of the dishes earlier, there was still a large pile left. He carefully plucked off the flowers, rinsed them a little in clear water to remove some dirt and bits of grass, then found a large cattail leaf and spread the flowers on it. Outside, the sun was at its strongest. Chen Qi cleared a small space next to the door and set the cattail leaf with the flowers on the ground to dry. In the future, these flowers could be used as the ingredients to make scented tea, so they wouldn’t need to just drink plain boiled water every day. The rest of the whole dandelion heap was piled up into a corner to be cooked that night and tomorrow.

The golden lilies in his pocket seemed to have been squished for too long and were frail. He’d forgotten to ask Aze if there were any problems with them before, but Chen Qi was not in a hurry. He put the golden lilies in some water and set them aside. When Aze came back, he’d ask him.

There were a lot of hides and animal skins in Aze’s home. Chen Qi chose one and unfolded a grayish brown hide that looked a bit like cowhide. The hide was very tough yet light, so despite the size, it didn’t feel like he was carrying much weight at all. Chen Qi planned to sew a backpack with it. It was too troublesome to always use a whole piece of hide to wrap things in, and if he happened to be careless, everything could spill out onto the ground.

There were no pens here. Chen Qi found a small piece of charcoal and a small, smooth stone slab and drew a simple backpack design. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to sew something too complicated, so the design was the simplest style he could think of.

He simply drew some lines to map the shape of the hide he wanted to cut off. Chen Qi didn’t plan to cut it into multiple pieces and sew it back together in the form of a backpack. Instead, he cut off the unnecessary hide with the dragon-horn knife and directly made the whole hide into the shape of a backpack. He used some flexible twigs to line the bottom of the backpack which fixed the figure of the base, so as to avoid things being squished together when he put them inside later on. Then he took about six or seven roots and twisted them into a cord to use as a string. The hide was very tough, and in order to make small holes to thread the string, he had to knock on the bone needle a few times before it would poke through.

For the straps, he used two layers of animal skins. So that it could bear more weight, Chen Qi densely stitched over the seams between the straps and the backpack four or five times. Although the appearance was a little ugly, it was fine if it was hardy enough, since it would be carried on his back and he wouldn’t need to see it. Finally, he attached a cord around the top to be able to close the opening and the basic backpack was finished. 

This backpack was almost half the size of a person. Chen Qi was going to get some stones from outside to test the backpack’s load capability when he realized that it was already dark out.

While he’d been making the backpack, the two to three pieces of salt stone had been completely refined. The salt stones were large enough that, even after the refining, there was a finger-thick layer of salt on the pottery dish which would last them a good period of time. Chen Qi went to the door to bring back in the dandelions that had been drying. As he stepped outside, he noticed that there was no light out there at all. Even the tall fig tree by the house was no longer visible. The surroundings were very quiet. At night, the noisy insects turned silent, and it was like everything was in complete darkness and isolated from the world.

Aze hadn’t returned yet. Chen Qi thought that the beastman would have been back by now since he was just going over to the Chishui River, and he felt a little worry and regret that he hadn’t reminded Aze to come back earlier even if he didn’t find the whetstone.

Today was the Moonless Day that Aze had mentioned. Chen Qi hadn’t expected the Moonless Day would bring this kind of thick and quiet darkness. Apart from the crackle of firewood burning in the house, only his deep and rapid heartbeat reverberated. Could Aze find his way home through this opaque night?

Chen Qi paced around the room twice, then added more firewood to the fire to make the flames larger. After thinking about it, he found two big but shallow plates, placed some firewood in them, and lit them with a spark from the big fire. He moved the plates outside by the door, one on the left and one on the right. Fire could deter attacks from most wild animals as well as illuminate the way for people returning home. In such darkness, even a little light could spread far.

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The hide door curtain was still kept half-opened and half-closed and there was no wind to affect it this night. Chen Qi had spent the afternoon successfully making the backpack, but at the moment, the backpack could no longer raise his spirits.

Chen Qi sat by the fire, quietly recalling things that had happened in his real world and contemplating the recent events of the past few days. The first snowfall’s first Moonless Day signified that there were three weeks left before winter arrived. There was no sign of the weather getting cold yet. Would it abruptly turn into winter just on that day?

Chen Qi picked up the small stone slab that he’d drawn the backpack design on earlier and soaked it in some water before wiping off the charcoal marks carefully with a rag. After it was dried by the fire, he neatly drew the first stroke of “Zheng”* on it.

*The Zheng character = 正 is the Chinese tally mark.

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but there was suddenly some noise coming from outside the house. Chen Qi thought that some animal might charge in and retreated behind the fire as he held the dragon-horn knife in a defensive posture. When he saw that it was Aze, who was carrying a small gazelle, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief. His tense expression also eased greatly. “You’re back.” Even Chen Qi did not realize how eager his tone sounded.

Aze was stunned for a moment, then pursed his lips and stared at Chen Qi for a long time before he gently replied, “En, I’m back.”

Aze took a piece of hide, laid it on the ground, and placed the small gazelle on his shoulder on it. Somehow, his movements seemed a bit awkward. Chen Qi then discovered that Aze’s hair and fur clothing were still a little wet. The hide that was normally tied around his right wrist was now wrapped around his left arm, tightly covering the entire upper arm. There were also several faint scratches on the back of his neck. If Aze had not crouched down, Chen Qi would not have noticed them.

“Are you hurt?” Chen Qi tentatively asked.

Aze’s expression appeared a little flustered, but soon calmed down. He turned to avoid Chen Qi’s inquiring sight and denied it. “No.”

Chen Qi raised his eyebrows. Trying to deceive him with such blatant attempts to hide it? “It seems it’s your left hand that’s injured. Was the prey hard to catch?” Chen Qi’s eyes fell onto the small gazelle. If even Aze could be injured, the living conditions in the world could not be at an ordinary level of harshness. But he had witnessed Aze’s hunting skills before. What exactly could’ve happened to this man who could kill an adult male warthog with ease? Maybe he could make some traps to catch prey. Always having Aze risk his life to hunt was not a good solution.

“No,” Aze explained anxiously, fearing that Chen Qi would doubt his hunting ability, “I wasn’t injured while hunting.”

“Not injured while hunting? Did you get into a fight?” Chen Qi wondered. It was impossible to fall on the rough ground without getting hurt anywhere else besides the neck and arm, right?

Aze lowered his head like a big dog that knew it had done something wrong. A little while later, he let out a soft en.

“What? Did you really get into a fight? With whom?”

“. . . . . . Vultures.”

Chen Qi thought he had a hearing problem and asked uncertainly, “You fought with vultures? You encountered them?”

“No, I ran to the vultures’ territory to fight them.”

Chen Qi choked.

Aze continued, “Not just the vultures, but I also fought a cheetah, a lion, and coyotes. I killed the lion and the coyotes. The lion was too old and coyote meat doesn’t taste good, so I didn’t bring them back. The cheetah was too cunning and too fast. It managed to scratch me with his claw and escaped. Also, more than half of the vultures are now dead. They have already started to migrate ahead of time.”

Chen Qi swallowed, then asked with some difficulty, “Why?”

Aze looked up at him, his beautiful pupils reflecting the leaping fire beside him, making them seem frighteningly bright. “So that you can wander around here during the day and no animals will attack you again.”

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