Making stone axes would definitely be handed over to the handicraft team led by Butterfly later on. After all, the scope of "handicrafts" was quite broad.
But before that, he had to study it himself. If even he hadn't figured it out, what could he teach Butterfly and the others?
Considering the current era, the importance of stone tools went without saying.
It was no exaggeration to say that before they discovered copper and iron ore and acquired the technology to smelt and forge them, stone tools would be their most important implements.
Under these circumstances, the simplest and earliest method was to find suitable stones and use them directly.
To improve them, they had to add the technique of "sharpening."
Sharpening didn't mean merely taking a stone and rubbing it. The "sharpening" in this context actually involved striking and hammering.
Others might not know this, but Zhou Xu had done something similar when he was a child in the village.
Back then, besides snapping off branches to use as swords and knives in their games, they sometimes liked to find stones, smash them with a sharp crack, and then pick out stones with somewhat blade-like edges from the broken pieces to play with as weapons.
That was more or less what the "striking" in sharpening meant.
Of course, in actual practice, he couldn't be as careless as he had been in childhood. He had to work more meticulously.
Take a stone axe, for example. He first had to find a suitable stone, hammer out its rough shape, and only then begin grinding it.
At that moment, as Zhou Xu held a stone and began hammering away, he felt as though he had returned to his childhood. For some inexplicable reason, a trace of happiness welled up inside him.
Thinking about it now, the wisdom of children was more or less the same as that of primitive people.
The only difference was that children did this for fun, while primitive people did it to make tools for survival.
With every strike Zhou Xu made, the sound of rock colliding rang out through the camp.
The tribe members who remained there, including Butterfly and the others who were making bark bags, couldn't help casting curious looks in his direction.
Zhou Xu paid them no mind and continued working on what was in front of him.
It was undoubtedly an exhausting task, especially when they only had one meal a day.
To say nothing of the fact that the precision of his strikes could not be guaranteed. Much of the time, the result of his hammering fell far short of what he had envisioned at the start.
Faced with this, Zhou Xu could only take things in stride.
In this era, they had no way to demand precision.
If he made ten stone axes and every one of them looked different, that was only natural.
With that mindset, the work proceeded much more smoothly.
With the first stone axe, Zhou Xu struck here and tapped there, inevitably dawdling over it for a while.
"Mm, this should be about right."
After shaking the arm that had grown sore from swinging the stone, Zhou Xu examined the stone block, which had already taken on a rough outline. After a thorough inspection, he finally moved on to the grinding stage.
The grinding stage actually required more strength and time than the hammering stage.
In truth, the stone axe could already be used in its current state, but Zhou Xu still planned to grind it down. He intended to spend enough time and effort to trade for a more useful weapon. He believed that investment would absolutely be worth it.
Before he knew it, the morning had slipped away amid the sound of grinding. Looking at the increasingly presentable stone axe in his hands, Zhou Xu couldn't help grinning.
To say that he had polished the stone axe completely smooth would certainly be false.
In his own estimation, this counted as no more than crude sharpening, but it was definitely sufficient for now.
He picked up a bark rope of suitable thickness. The next part was his specialty.
"Finished!"
Holding the first stone axe in his hands, Zhou Xu couldn't help swinging it twice. At that moment, he was grinning like a child.
When he was young, finding a branch called the "Dragon Slaying Sword" was enough to make him happy for an entire day. But after growing up, he had never experienced that again.
From the perspective of a modern person, this stone axe might look like a crude piece of junk. Yet in these limited conditions, he had poured his time, energy, and sweat into it, painstakingly grinding it out strike by strike!
The powerful sense of accomplishment born from this process was something no exquisite modern object could ever give him.
The stone axe in his hands had, at that moment, let him find the most primitive and pure excitement and satisfaction!
"Here, hold this! Help me test the new weapon."
Impatient to begin, he called over a tribe member who had been assigned patrol duty and tossed him a wooden stick suitable for making a Bone Spear.
"Hold it horizontally. Yes, just like that! Get ready—I'm coming!"
With that, Zhou Xu charged forward in a single stride, raised the stone axe in his hands, and chopped at the wooden stick held horizontally by the other man.
In an instant, a crisp crack rang out. Amid flying splinters, the wooden stick snapped cleanly, leaving the tribe member holding it standing there in stunned silence.
Zhou Xu paid him no attention. He immediately checked the axe's edge, then smiled in satisfaction.
If it could achieve this much, there was basically no problem at all.
He walked over to the Fire Pit. Under the tribe members' reverent gazes, Zhou Xu downed half a bowl of water. Just as he was preparing to make another stone axe and call over two tribe members to watch and learn how to make them, Dashan returned with the members of the gathering team.
Unlike the hunting team, the gathering team accumulated a sufficient amount of supplies after half a day of gathering.
So they usually chose to return to camp once, unload their supplies, and take the opportunity to drink water and rest before setting out again.
"Dashan, you came back at just the right time."
The moment he saw Dashan return, Zhou Xu hurriedly gestured for him to come over, then picked up the stone axe in his hands.
For a moment, he truly felt reluctant to part with it, but in the end, he still handed it to Dashan.
"This is for you."
The instant the stone axe landed in his hands, Dashan subconsciously weighed it and his eyes immediately lit up.
It was probably his Weapon Master talent taking effect. Although Zhou Xu hadn't explained anything yet, Dashan had already more or less understood what it was for.
"Thank you, Chief!"
Getting his hands on a new weapon undoubtedly left Dashan tremendously excited.
At the same time, it further bolstered their confidence in exploring.
"How did the exploration of the outskirts of the Black Forest go?"
"I think we've more or less finished. If nothing unexpected happens, we should be able to gradually begin exploring deeper into the Black Forest tomorrow."
After learning the exploration progress from Dashan, Zhou Xu nodded, now having a rough idea of the situation.
Tomorrow, then. If we work faster today and have a few more people begin sharpening at the same time, we should be able to make it.
Before you continue