Huo Tang had not expected that after being gone for only two months, the tribe had changed so much.
Outside the tribal city, the terraced fields were lush and green, while man-made streams wound through the mountains.
On Tribal Land Mountain, medicinal gardens adapted to local conditions had begun to take shape everywhere.
The tribe's children chased one another and played.
Beside the fishpond, loud training chants rang out from the martial grounds.
On the high platform beside the martial grounds, two tribesmen were clashing.
This was the Martial Platform.
When tribesmen practiced martial arts, arguments and disputes were inevitable. If there was a conflict, they would take it to the Martial Platform, where victory or defeat settled the matter.
Once private fighting was discovered, those involved would be severely punished according to the newly established tribal rules.
Within the houses and courtyards, scattered tribesmen used their spare time to practice the Kui Ox Fist. Clearly, they had not abandoned Martial Dao cultivation.
Below the steps outside the ancestral temple, grass mushrooms, medicinal herbs, and other things had been spread out to dry.
With the ancestors watching over them, they could eat with peace of mind.
As for the Mountain-Cleaving Kui Huo Shan rode, they had been captured in the deep mountains.
Nine had been brought back in total. Those that refused to behave had apparently already been eaten.
The remaining four were very obedient.
In such a short time, three small systems—for farming, breeding, and cultivating medicinal herbs—had initially been established.
Was this really the tribe after the plague had swept through it?
No wonder Shi Fu and his group had been stunned before even entering the tribe. Even he, the chieftain, was stunned.
He suddenly realized that the tribe seemed able to function just fine without him as chieftain...
When he arrived at the stone platform outside the ancestral temple, Huo Tang could not help stopping again and looking back.
When Shen Can came out, he saw Huo Tang standing there in a daze.
"Chieftain, won't you rest for a few more days?"
Hearing this, Huo Tang immediately came back to his senses. "A-Can, among all the chieftains throughout history, only I have traveled beyond three thousand li. What I saw on this journey was utterly shocking, and my heart has remained unsettled."
He recounted his experiences outside, with a lingering trace of fear in his voice.
"I feel that the Ling Yu Tribe may have done it. Other than the Ling Yu, who can treat a flood disaster as if it were nothing? We do not know of any other tribe powerful enough to do such a thing."
"Great ships seized people, strange fish towed those ships, and yet by establishing our tribe deep in the mountains, we instead escaped the calamity."
"After hearing about this, I think we should have people specifically sent out to scout. At the very least, they can discover danger in advance and return to warn us. If they cannot win, they can still run."
Shen Can nodded. "Establishing effective channels for information transmission is indeed necessary. If people go out for many days and lose contact, panic will arise within the tribe as well."
As for intelligence connections, he had previously considered raising flying birds, but unfortunately, all he had managed to raise were a few Mountain-Cleaving Kui.
If Blazing Flame was determined to develop outward, it had to grasp the circumstances beyond its borders in order to seek fortune and avoid disaster.
"The tribe has never stopped cultivating its people. Now, the number of Stone Splitter Realm warriors is about to exceed five hundred. That is enough for us to arrange scouting parties."
"So many?"
Huo Tang jumped in fright.
But Shen Can did not think it was many.
After the plague, they had eaten beast meat without regard for the cost, and over the past two months, they had also had diluted third-rank beast blood.
This was not ascension to godhood. If they still could not break through with one Desolate Power, they might as well stop practicing martial arts altogether.
"Is there still enough food?"
After the surprise came joy, Huo Tang considered the heart of the problem.
Warriors consumed a great deal, and naturally ate a great deal. Under normal circumstances, how could they support so many warriors?
"The wheat and millet in the fields reclaimed after the disaster are growing very well. The desolate beasts in the forests outside are increasing too, so maintaining daily consumption will not be much of a problem.
"While no new tribes have yet emerged nearby, we should thoroughly survey the surrounding environment, draw maps, and bring vast areas under the tribe's control.
"Just like Shanghuang, we should be able to cross three thousand li at any time.
"During the scouting process, we can also capture young desolate beasts and flying birds to bring back for taming, making up for the tribe's shortcomings in travel and intelligence transmission."
Shen Can thought for a moment, then added, "We should also search for mineral veins. Right now, the weapons used by the tribe's warriors are too poor. Without mineral veins, we have no way to forge more weapons."
"Then good. Let us learn from Shanghuang first and thoroughly understand the mountains and terrain within a radius of three thousand li."
At the mention of Shanghuang, a spark of competitiveness rose within Huo Tang.
The Shanghuang Tribe had a longer heritage than Blazing Flame. During the flood disaster, the Heaven Vein Warrior of the Shanghuang Tribe had come twice in an overbearing manner. Huo Tang had long been holding his anger in.
For most tribesmen, tribal life repeated day after day, and time passed quickly as they counted through each one.
In the blink of an eye, five months passed.
Through the efforts of the tribesmen, the first harvest season after the flood disaster arrived.
Unlike the wheat and millet of his previous life, the wheat and millet of the Great Wilderness World had grains several times larger. They hung heavy and full, each grain carrying greater weight.
Why call it a harvest season? Mainly because the harvesting period lasted a little too long.
They had already been harvesting bit by bit for more than two months, yet outside the city, the fields still showed gold intermingled with yellow-green.
Every day, the fields were packed with tribesmen gathering wheat and millet.
The city walls, rooftops, even the stone platform and steps outside the ancestral temple were all covered in wheat and millet laid out to dry.
Because the plots were scattered everywhere, Shen Can did not know how many mu of land had been reclaimed in total.
Looking outward from Tribal Land Mountain, everywhere the eye could see, above and below the mountains, was wheat and millet farmland.
The soil of the Great Wilderness was extremely fertile. Even millet planted in land reclaimed that very season produced unexpectedly high yields. Measured in the tribe's containers, each mu yielded between thirty and forty containers.
Shen Can estimated that one container weighed roughly a hundred jin.
The yield per mu looked high, but this was the Great Wilderness. The land was different, the crops were different, and the tribesmen ate more as well. There was nothing much to compare with his previous life.
Such a high yield per mu was also partly Shen Can's contribution.
The tribesmen had followed his earlier methods of weeding and breaking up clods of earth with hammers, wooden mallets, or rakes, along with the shamanic medicine insect-repelling method he had devised.
They said the mountains held four seasons, and that the weather changed every ten li. Yet this millet field did not even stretch beyond ten li, while the wheat and millet's growth cycles had somehow split into several stages.
Some had been harvested in less than three months, while others still remained green after a full six months.
Such a carefully planned, batch-by-batch maturation period—where a few grains ripened at a time, then a few patches—was something Shen Can had never expected.
Even though the imprint of farming lay deep in his bones, he had never seen anything that so completely defied the laws of growth.
He had asked the tribal elders about it, but they only vaguely knew to store supplies when it grew cold and plant after the chill had passed.
Whether they merely responded in broad terms to the coming of cold and heat, harvesting in autumn and storing for winter because the Blazing Flame Tribe was too small to possess knowledge of the solar terms, or whether such knowledge had never developed at all, would have to be verified in the future.
At the edge of the fields, Shen Can cheerfully greeted the tribesmen, occasionally reaching out to pat the heads of children who came close.
These children carried small vine baskets specially woven by their mothers, picking millet ears from the fields.
Under the same conditions, wheat and millet ripened at different times. Shen Can guessed the soil was the reason and prepared to study it.
More than another month passed before the wheat and millet were finally all harvested.
Though the harvest had stretched over a long period, such an unprecedented bumper harvest in the tribe's history was still worth celebrating.
"The hunting party is back!"
On the city wall, several little children saw a group returning and immediately shouted at the top of their lungs.
As the harvest drew to a close, Huo Tang had sent Huo Shan out with people to hunt.
Several dozen people returned, dragging or carrying their prey.
At the very front, a strange and extraordinary Mountain-Cleaving Kui that had been drugged unconscious was strapped to a wooden frame.
Besides the two crescent-moon-shaped horns on its head, this desolate beast also had a black-striped horn on the bridge of its nose.
As the hunting party entered the city, tribesmen from every household came out of their homes.
The children carried their own small vine baskets, filled with large ears of wheat and millet selected from the fields during the harvest.
For the first harvest after the flood disaster, apart from the hunted desolate beast.
The more important offerings were these large ears of wheat and millet.
"Honor the ancestors!"
Huo Xian's horn sounded once more.
This time, Shen Can did not emerge from the ancestral temple first.
Huo Tang stood upon the stone platform outside the ancestral temple.
"Thanks to the blessing of our ancestors, Blazing Flame survived the flood disaster and the plague, and has welcomed a bountiful harvest."
"Today, we offer a hunted Mountain-Cleaving Kui to our ancestors, as the entire tribe performs this sacrifice together."
"We respectfully inform our ancestors that Blazing Flame's heritage endures, its sacrifices shall never cease, and its descendants shall continue without end!"
While researching material for this chapter, I learned that on Java Island, because of volcanic eruptions, rice can actually be harvested nine times in two years. I'm completely numb.
Some places in Vietnam can manage three or four harvests a year, which is already enough to make people green with envy.
As for the issue of measuring yield per mu, I will still use the ancient unit "shi." However, Blazing Flame is isolated from the other tribes of the Great Wilderness, and the Great Wilderness has no unified system of weights and measures, so "container" will temporarily be used as a substitute. Once they begin communicating with other tribes, their measuring tools will gradually be standardized.
Why is there no unified system of weights and measures? Just like during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, every state had its own standards, and even their writing differed. Qin Shi Huang's greatness was fully displayed by his unification of writing and weights and measures alone.
Before you continue