Chapter 23, Salt Mine
When Ning Yuan told him about some daily affairs in his territory, Bai Shihai agreed very readily. There was no way. Some people were born to not like fighting and killing. Bai Shihai was such a person, otherwise he would not have been so despised.
Born in this era before, he had no choice but to survive in order for his tribe members to survive, he could only force himself to fight continuously. The fact that he could reach this point today was completely forced by the general environment.
Now that Ning Yuan is strong, he can give the battle mission to this "crazy man" and he only needs to manage the logistics himself.
Ning Yuan didn't expect that Bai Shihai was so easy to talk to, but after thinking about it carefully, he realized that Bai Shihai was the kind of person who didn't like fighting very much.
As long as others don’t hit him, he will never take the initiative. Otherwise, the Baishi tribe would not have coexisted with the small tribe that was destroyed by Ning Yuan for so long. Of course, if anyone bullies him, he will fight to the death. Ning Yuan is the best example.
Bai Shihai's physical fitness is pretty good. Ning Yuan checked him and found that his ribs were not broken, but after being hit by him so hard, there will always be some internal injuries, which requires a slow cultivation.
As for the concussion, judging from his smart appearance, it is estimated that the shock has no effect on him at all.
After a while of rest, Bai Shihai finally stood up staggeringly. Seeing that he had nothing to do, Ning Yuan proposed to move to the Condor Heroes with the entire Bai Shi tribe.
When Ning Yuan said he wanted to move, Bai Shihai stopped doing it immediately. Even when Ning Yuan threw out new food such as fish, Bai Shihai had no intention of letting go. Just when Ning Yuan was about to say something, he asked Ning Yuan to follow him and then walked towards the camp.
Bai Shihai came to the tent and went straight in. Just as Ning Yuan was considering whether to follow him, he came out from inside again. Bai Shihai got out of the tent and handed Ning Yuan a small piece of white crystal.
After taking the white crystal, Ning Yuan looked at it for a long time but couldn't see what it was. Bai Shihai could only helplessly signal him to lick it with his tongue.
Seeing this, Ning Yuan could only put the white crystal to his mouth, and then licked it with his tongue. It didn't matter when he licked it. Ning Yuan was so excited that even the hair on his body stood up.
He is so familiar with the salty taste. This is salt. It is an indispensable resource for life. Humans have to eat it every day. If salt is deficient for a long time, various problems will occur in the human body. It can maintain the osmotic pressure and acid-base balance of the human body.
After coming to this world, Ning Yuan never tasted the smell of salt again. The food every day could fade out of a bird. If it weren't for filling his stomach, he would never want to eat foods that were difficult to swallow. Therefore, 100% virtualization is not a good thing sometimes.
Since salt is so important, what did the ancients use to replenish the salt needed by the body when they did not discover it?
Ning Yuan once specifically checked this information. It turned out that the blood of animals contained salt. Humans could replenish the salt needed by their bodies as long as they consumed the blood of animals. After learning the truth, another food that was difficult to swallow appeared on his dining table.
In fact, many foods contain salt, but there are only more and less. However, for humans, the salt contained in many foods is far from enough, so people put a little salt when cooking every day.
In addition to replenishing the salt needed by the human body, this can also regulate the taste of food and make it no longer difficult to swallow. Therefore, the discovery of salt is of great significance to the development of human society.
It allows people to stop drinking the blood of animals that are difficult to swallow. Ning Yuan even speculated that humans can bid farewell to the ignorant era of eating raw meat and drinking blood may also have a certain relationship with the discovery of salt.
In addition to being edible, salt can also be used to preserve some foods that are prone to spoilage, such as meat and fish. With salt, Ningyuan can completely turn the endless meat into air-dried bacon and bacon. In this way, the food crisis of the Condor Tribe in winter can be solved.
In addition, salt can also be used to make normal saline to clean wounds. Although normal saline cannot be disinfected and sterilized, only if the wound is cleaned can it effectively prevent infection. This should play a great role in the era of cold weapons.
In addition, salt can also protect teeth. Occasionally rinsing your mouth with salt water can effectively prevent tooth decay. Only when the teeth are good can the body be good. This is applicable in any era.
Of course, the uses of salt are not just a few, but these are now the limits that Ning Yuan can imagine.
"Where did you find these salts?" After calming down his excitement, Ning Yuan hurriedly asked.
"Come with me."
After saying that, Bai Shihai walked towards Bai Shishan, while Ning Yuan followed closely behind.
Baishi Mountain is not a high mountain. The highest peak can be about three or four hundred meters long. There are strange rocks on the mountain and lush vegetation. The whole mountain is circular. The Baishi Tribe is located just near the ring-shaped gap.
The two walked in along the gap. After walking for about ten minutes, a gray-white stone wall appeared in front of Ning Yuan. At this moment, a group of wild boars were licking something in front of the stone wall. When they saw someone coming, they scattered.
Ning Yuan came to the stone wall and found that the color of the stone wall was exactly the same as the salt crystals given to him by Bai Shihai just now. Curious, he stuck out his tongue and licked the stone wall. Sure enough, a salty smell came from him.
Could it be a huge salt mine? Unbelievable, Ning Yuan licked it everywhere along the stone wall. As a result, no matter where he licked it, there would be a salty smell coming from everywhere.
In order to further verify his speculation, Ning Yuan found a stone and smashed it at the stone wall with a bang.
Tasting the falling white powder, Ning Yuan finally confirmed that there was a salt mine here. And judging from the huge exposed salt stone, the scale of this salt mine is definitely small. It is estimated that this salt mine alone is enough for him to go bankrupt.
"Class leader, are we still moving?" Bai Shihai asked with a smile, looking at Ning Yuan's intoxicating appearance.
"I won't move, I won't move if I'm beaten to death. I will send someone to bring the camp people here. From now on, our Condor Heroes will live in this White Stone Mountain. All these salts belong to my Condor Heroes. Whoever dares to rob them will destroy anyone."
Since seeing this salt mine, Ning Yuan has completely lost his way. He vowed to take this place for himself and no one can get close to it.
As for the huge fish resources in Lake Victoria, he will give them to anyone who wants them. Anyway, Lake Victoria is so big that he can't occupy it alone.
Besides, there are not only a few tribes that can be occupied. When he becomes stronger in the future and annexes all the tribes around the lake, isn’t Lake Victoria still his?
After making up his mind, Ning Yuan and Bai Shihai returned to the camp. He asked Black Eagle to take thirty soldiers back to the Condor Heroes tribe to inform the people there to go to Bai Shishan the next day, and he would send someone to pick him up tomorrow.
After sending the Black Hawk away, Ning Yuan began to observe the terrain here. There is a huge valley in Baishi Mountain, which is considered a terrain that is easy to defend and difficult to attack. However, once this terrain is surrounded by the enemy, it will be like a turtle in a jar, and will be trapped by the enemy and die in the valley.
Ning Yuan is now accustomed to the fighting style of attack, attack, and attack. He likes this head-on confrontation of iron and blood. Blind defense is not in line with his style, so he plans to build a camp outside the valley entrance, so that he can block the entire valley without being trapped by the enemy in the valley.
In addition to the inexhaustible salt resources on the back of Baishishan, it also has a greater convenience for primitive tribes like the Condor Tribe, which is that it can use local materials to make stone axes.
Before finding copper ore and iron ore, the only weapon that Ning Yuan and the others could use was stone weapons.
Bone weapons are too brittle and easy to break, and wooden weapons are too blunt and have no lethality. Therefore, stone axes and stone spears are the mainstream weapons of this era. Before bronzes and irons are made, stone weapons will continue to rule this barbaric era.
In addition, the products of Baishi Mountain are also very rich. There are a large number of apple trees on and below Baishi Mountain. This is the season when apples are ripe, and there are so many apples here that people can eat and vomit.
The only regret is that these apples cannot be stored, otherwise all the apples here will be collected, and the entire tribe will be able to eat until the spring of the second year.
Ning Yuan knew a way to store apples, that is, dig a cellar, and then just put the apples in the cellar and it can be stored for a long time.
Unfortunately, some tools such as shovels are required to dig a cellar. The Condor Heroes tribe does not have the conditions to dig a cellar. Stone spears and stone axes are okay to fight wars, so let’s just dig deep pits.
In addition to fruit trees, the wildlife resources near Baishishan are also very rich. Since there is only an open-pit salt mine in the valley nearby, many animals will come here regularly to replenish salt.
There are many carnivorous beasts in the valley. Although these carnivorous beasts do not need to be replenished with salt, as long as they guard this open-pit salt mine, a steady stream of food will come to their doors. So it is no wonder that these beasts will live in the valley.
It is precisely because of so many food sources that Ning Yuan has no regrets about giving up Lake Victoria for the time being. He plans to use this place as a base and slowly expand around.
After having a delicious meal of salted meat stewed at noon, Ning Yuan took his people to explore near Baishi Mountain.
Although Shiraishi briefly introduced the situation here to him, some things still have to be seen with their own eyes. As the leader of a clan, Ning Yuan must be familiar with the terrain here, otherwise, if a war breaks out in the future, it may be a waste of opportunity for war.
There are dense forests near the White Stone Tribe, and there is a stream more than 100 meters away from the camp. The direction should eventually be flowing into Lake Victoria.
After a long circle around the camp, Ning Yuan finally decided to expand the new camp as far away as possible from the stream. Although the tribe's camping site could not be too far from the water source before inventing the well, it was not necessarily a good thing to be too close.
First of all, this is an era of wild beasts raging. Many of the carnivorous beasts are foraging near the water source, so they are too close to the water source and are easily attacked by wild beasts.
Secondly, for a natural disaster, Ningyuan must prevent problems before it happens. Although the water level in the stream is not high now, who knows what this place will look like during the flood season? After all, the flood is ruthless, so he must be careful.
After determining the direction of the camp expansion, Ning Yuan and his men began to clean up the ground. According to his idea, he wanted to level the nearby woods, but the stone axe in his hand was really not powerful.
The small tree with thick arms is fine, and there is no need for a stone axe. These warriors with bulging muscles can break it with their hands, but they have no choice but to have trees that are more than one person thick.
Although the stone axe is called an axe, its essence is still a blunt weapon. It is used to cut wood like hitting stones with eggs. After cutting two stone axes in a row, Ning Yuan decisively stopped this meaningless waste. It seems that no one could shake these big trees before the knife saw was made.
In desperation, Ning Yuan had to put these big trees into the camp. He asked someone to break a large number of branches as thick as arms, then used stone spears to dig out a simple ditch, inserted the branches into the ditch and filled them with soil, stepped on them with feet, and finally fixed the branches with vines, and a simple wooden fence was built.
Although this fence is not very strong, it can at least prevent some beasts from breaking into the camp at night.
Although Ning Yuan comes from modern times and has many advanced ideas, it is hard to cook without rice. Since there are no tools in his hands, many of his ideas cannot be realized for the time being. This long wooden fence is the only thing he can think of and do now.
The next afternoon, a large group of troops from the Condor Heroes finally arrived at this new camp. After arranging the accommodation issues for the tribesmen, Ning Yuan began to divide the labor of everyone.
The Condor Tribe now has 205 warriors, elderly people, women and children.
Since this era was a primitive society, the soldiers were responsible for supporting their families, which was equivalent to a soldier supporting an ordinary tribe. Therefore, the food pressure of the Condor Heroes tribe was not very high. If it was a feudal society, the common people would support the army, the warriors would be deadly.
Ning Yuan divided them into four parts. The first part was the strongest Condor Guard, led by him personally. The Condor Guard Guard had a total of 113 people, including Thirteen Eagles and one hundred soldiers. This was the combat force planned by Ning Yuan.
The remaining 92 people were assigned to Bai Ze's sixty people. These were his planned local defense forces, which were responsible for hunting in normal times and defense base camps in wartime.
The other thirty-two people were left for Shiraishi. Although these thirty-two people were all warriors, since these people were basically injured now, their main task is to stay in the camp to cultivate and patrol around the camp to prevent wild animals from attacking women and children.
As for the 240 women and children, Ning Yuan did not intend to leave them idle. Although they could not go out to hunt, Ning Yuan had already arranged work for them.
Ning Yuan plans to lead people to completely clear the Baishi Valley and temporarily build a small breeding base here. Then he will catch some wild boars, pheasants, goats, bisons and other herbivorous cubs and raise them in this semi-enclosed valley.
These women and children don’t have to do anything else, they just need to get some forage every day to feed these animals.
In addition, those big red apples cannot watch them rot.
Although the cellar cannot be dug now, when the valley is cleared out, I find several caves with low temperatures, and then transport the apples to the cave for storage. As for whether the apples rot in the end, it is not something Ning Yuan can control.
Although those women's physical strength is not as strong as those soldiers, they are better off because of their skill and patience. Ning Yuan planned to teach them how to weave baskets with rattan to hold items. As for weaving more complex things with rattan, they can only rely on themselves to slowly understand them.
You should know that in order to successfully build a basket, Ning Yuan suffered a lot. At the end of the game, he had to attend primitive social survival training classes specially designed for them, the lords and players every day.
After returning home, he finished watching the civilization forum, and he had to take the rattan he brought back from the training class to do his homework. After making a lot of holes in his hand, he finally successfully built a basket. Although his appearance was incomparable to what the teacher taught, he could at least decorate something.
In fact, if Ning Yuan had placed the Condor Tribe on the shore of Lake Victoria, these women would have slowly figured out these things by themselves in order to catch fish.
Although the weaving of baskets is more complicated than that of fish cages and fish baskets, as the saying goes, it is all-in-one, and some skilled people can constantly innovate according to their needs.
Unfortunately, the discovery of the salt mine made Ning Yuan decisively abandon Lake Victoria, and the primary and intermediate fishing he had invested a lot of scientific research value in the early stage could only be temporarily frozen.
Ning Yuan originally wanted these women to do some work within his ability, but after this arrangement, he realized that they were too many capable, and the staff in his tribe were not enough.
Cooking, taking care of children, collecting apples, weaving rattan products, raising livestock and poultry, collecting wild vegetables, collecting seeds,... The saying that women can hold half the sky is really not a burden.
After the assignment, everyone in the Condor Heroes tribe took action. Ning Yuan and Bai Ze took the Condor Heroes warriors for half a month to finally clear the Baishi Valley. Although there were many fish that had missed the net, at least those beasts would not dare to return to the valley for a short time.
As the safe areas opened by the soldiers became larger and larger, women and children also took action. They built new fences next to the camp, which were raising various herbivorous cubs caught by the soldiers.
The beasts that the soldiers hunted these days were also made of dried bacon by them with salt, and the apples near the camp were also picked and stored temporarily in a small cave.
In addition, they also collected a lot of seeds. Although most of them did not recognize Ning Yuan, he could wait until the spring of the next year, and then plant the seeds separately. When they bloom and bear fruit, he could know what seeds they were.
After working continuously for more than half a month, the soldiers were a little tired. Now the tribe is full of dried bacon and the food is very sufficient. So Ning Yuan simply gave the soldiers a two-day holiday to let them relax and have a good rest.
Chapter completed!