Chapter 12
Today, the sub-adults understood one thing: the chief’s words absolutely had to be obeyed, and Lang Shuo’s words had to be obeyed even more. They should never doubt food prepared by Lang Shuo. Even if certain combinations looked obviously unappetizing, as long as they were made according to Lang Shuo’s method, they would produce unexpectedly good results.
Snow fruit tasted average, but once it was added to meat, the meat became much more delicious. For a moment, even the snow fruits they had always disliked did not seem so hateful anymore.
The sub-adults copied the method used to marinate the steaks just now. Finally, they placed the marinated meat onto the stone slabs and began waiting in anticipation.
Meanwhile, Lang Yun, who was preparing food for the cubs, suddenly asked Lang Shuo, “Shuo, can other fruits be used to marinate meat?”
Because they had woven quite a few baskets yesterday, the gathering team had brought back more food today than last time. Aside from snow fruits, there were other varieties of fruit. Some tasted decent, while others were hard to swallow. If Lang Shuo could think of a way to use some of them up, that would be great.
Lang Shuo asked Lang Hui to bring over two of each type of food the gathering team had brought back. After observing and comparing them, he picked out several kinds. “These can be used. The rest won’t taste good mixed together.”
Marinating meat worked by using certain components in fruit to change the structure or state of the meat’s proteins, making the meat more tender. Some fruits were suitable, while others were not. There were also some fruits that could not be eaten together with meat, such as persimmons.
Persimmons had another name here. They were called red fruits, because once they ripened, they turned very red and were especially eye-catching during the snow season. However, there were too many fruits that turned red after ripening, and “red fruit” sometimes referred to a large category. Lang Shuo still preferred to call them by the name he was familiar with.
The name was secondary. The main point was reminding the members that they could not eat them together. Lang Shuo picked up a persimmon. “Put this kind of fruit away first. Don’t eat it these next two days.”
Eating persimmons together with beef easily caused indigestion. The curved-horned beasts they had caught today would last at least a day or two. It would be better to make these persimmons directly into dried persimmons and save them for later after the other fruits were eaten.
To prevent anyone from getting greedy, Lang Shuo emphasized the reason. “This kind of red fruit is also called persimmon. If eaten together with many foods, it can cause stomachaches, so you have to be careful.”
Words like stomach stones would be too troublesome to explain. In any case, as long as he told them the consequences, it would be fine. Lang Shuo tried to keep it simple.
Lang Rong, the captain of the gathering team, felt a little annoyed with herself. “Then we won’t pick them next time.”
In their previous territory, after the snow season began, they could barely see many fruits. So now, the gathering team picked whatever they saw. Whether it tasted good or not, they first had to fill their stomachs. But if it would cause stomachaches, then they definitely could not pick it.
Lang Shuo shook his head. “You still need to pick them. As long as they’re eaten separately, it’s fine. Once dried into persimmons, they can be stored for a long time and eaten even after the snow season.”
After the snow season came the breeding season, which was equivalent to spring in his previous life. Everything revived, and plants began to sprout, but ripe fruits were very rare. Most beastmen could only use leafy vegetables as a substitute for fruit.
The food beastmen hated most was none other than leafy vegetables. Lang Shuo guessed that it was because their digestive systems were different. Most leafy vegetables tasted bitter and astringent to beastmen, but for the sake of health, they could not avoid eating them entirely.
Compared with leafy vegetables, fruits they usually disliked, such as snow fruits, became delicious. But by then, the vast majority of fruits would already have been eaten, leaving them no other choice. Between getting sick and eating unpleasant food, they could only force themselves to eat leafy vegetables.
Now that they heard persimmons could be made into dried persimmons to replace leafy vegetables, everyone changed their earlier disdain. This was especially true of the sub-adults. They surrounded Lang Rong, pestering her to pick more persimmons tomorrow.
Lang Rong was caught between agreeing and not agreeing. If she agreed, they might not necessarily find persimmons tomorrow. To find more food, the gathering team could not focus only on one type of food. They picked whatever they encountered. But if she did not agree, the group of sub-adults surrounding her was simply too noisy.
Lang Shuo spoke up and rescued Lang Rong. “Persimmons hang on trees. It won’t be too late to pick them later.”
Although he said this, Lang Shuo also felt that something was a little off.
He did not know whether it was his imagination, but he kept feeling that there were fewer birds here than in their previous territory. If this were the previous place, even with back baskets, the gathering team would not have been able to pick so many fruits. The birds and other small animals would have eaten them long ago. Now that it was already the snow season, the fact that they could still pick so many fruits was truly a little strange.
The thoughts of the sub-adults, however, were much simpler. Their minds were filled only with food. Hearing Lang Shuo say that persimmons could be picked anytime, they finally let Lang Rong go and happily went to check on their grilled meat.
That evening, the entire tribe ate half roasted meat and half stone-grilled meat. Stone-grilled meat tasted better than roasted meat, but it also took longer. The stone slabs had to be heated first, and one stone slab could not hold too much meat. Therefore, some members with impatient temperaments still chose to roast theirs.
Lang Shuo respected their choices and did not interfere too much. No matter how they ate it, as long as the food entered their stomachs, it was not wasted.
During the rest time after dinner, Lang Shuo began thinking about those fruits.
Even during the snow season, these fruits could not be left there forever. Fruits lasted longer in the snow season than in other seasons, but they would still go bad. Some would spoil after being stored for too long, while others would freeze and rot once it became colder.
Lang Shuo recalled that in his previous life, fruit farmers stored fruit in cellars or cold warehouses. A cellar would be easy enough. They could dig one too. But Lang Shuo felt there was no need to dig one right now, because the remaining amount of fruit was not that large. If they sorted the different fruits and stored them separately, the energy spent digging a cellar would be greater than simply eating all the fruit. It really was not necessary.
If it were currently the harvest season, Lang Shuo would definitely choose to dig a cellar and store the food separately. But now it was the snow season. The food was only barely enough to eat, and the amount left over was too small. There was no need to go to such great lengths. Moreover, a cellar was not all-powerful. If people entered and exited frequently, the effect would be limited. It would be better to use another method.
Fresh fruit could not be stored for long, but dried fruit, jam, canned fruit, and pickled fruit could.
Lang Shuo directly eliminated the last option. Their tribe had neither sugar nor honey, and salt was a precious item. There was no way they could consume it like that. Canned fruit and jam were also out of consideration. They currently had no containers with good seals. Only dried fruit was the easiest to make and convenient to store.
Lang Shuo recalled the method for making dried fruit and decided to try using snow fruit first tomorrow. Of the snow fruits the gathering team had brought back, only a few had been used for marinating meat. The rest were all still there—two full large baskets.
However, two large baskets of snow fruit were not a small experiment like marinating meat before, nor were they like roasted or stone-grilled meat, which only changed the cooking method. With so much food, he had to report to Lang Yu in advance before processing it.
Aside from eating, Lang Yu was so busy that his feet barely touched the ground. Lang Shuo waited for a while before finally finding an opportunity and telling him his plan. “Brother, I want to make the snow fruits into dried snow fruit.”
“Dried snow fruit?”
Recently, every now and then, his younger brother would say an unfamiliar term. Lang Yu had already gotten used to it. He was merely curious about what new thing it was this time.
“It means cutting the snow fruits into pieces and drying them until they become dried fruit. They can be stored for a long time, similar to dried persimmons, but they need to be cut open and dried.” Lang Shuo explained.
Apples the size of fists had to be cut into small pieces to make dried fruit, much less giant snow fruits that weighed two or three jin each. They had to be cut into more pieces.
Lang Yu fell into thought.
Fruits concerned the health of the entire tribe. If they kept eating meat without eating fruits and leafy vegetables, their teeth, the corners of their mouths, and their tongues would ache. Because of this, no matter how unwilling they were, the sub-adults in the tribe would obediently gnaw on snow fruits once they felt tooth pain.
If this had been their previous territory, Lang Yu probably would not have agreed. After all, Lang Shuo needed too many of them—two large baskets at once. But this was new territory.
Lang Shuo was not the only one who had noticed that there were many fruits here. Lang Yu had noticed it too. With so many snow fruits, even if they did not follow Lang Shuo’s method, they would not be able to finish them anytime soon. If left for too long, they would spoil. Since that was the case, they might as well try.
Thinking of this, Lang Yu nodded. “Do it.”
If the dried snow fruits they made could not be eaten, he would go find more snow fruits to make up for them.
With Lang Yu’s approval, Lang Shuo recalled the steps for drying fruit once before going to sleep. Early the next morning, Lang Shuo began preparing.
The weather was cold, so air-drying would be relatively slow. But the advantage was that there were no mosquitoes, bugs, or flies, so the result would be clean.
They had brought back quite a lot of food yesterday, but the hunting party and gathering team did not rest. The former had not consumed much energy catching prey and wanted to catch more while food was sufficient to store up. The latter had heard that Lang Shuo was using snow fruits and planned to pick more, so there were not many people outside the cave.
The adult beastmen whose injuries had mostly recovered were making tools. The sub-adults were still idle.
Sub-adults would also help the tribe work, but they lacked patience. They grew impatient after working on many tasks for a while, and their efficiency was rather low. Lang Shuo simply called the sub-adults over again. Recently, he had been ordering these sub-adults around more and more smoothly. As long as it had to do with food, once he explained the requirements clearly, these sub-adults could basically do it well.
On the other side, Lang Shi, who was grinding a stone knife, heard the movement and also came over to help. He was strong and effortlessly lifted one back basket by himself, while the remaining baskets were carried over by two sub-adults.
Lang Yun, who was nearby, saw the group of sub-adults following along to wash snow fruits in the river, and her mood improved somewhat.
Sub-adults were the hardest group in the tribe to manage and required special attention. Before Lang Shuo woke up, as long as Lang Yu was not in the tribe, the task of watching the sub-adults fell on Lang Yun.
Lang Yun was already somewhat flustered caring for a group of cubs, and she also had to keep an eye on the sub-adults at all times to see whether they were doing anything dangerous. She was mentally and physically exhausted and had lost quite a bit of hair.
This situation had not appeared since Lang Shuo woke up. Lang Shuo could always think of something for the sub-adults to do. Combined with the temptation of food, the sub-adults had been especially obedient these past two days.
Lang Shuo did not know that he had unintentionally helped Lang Yun solve a major problem. Seeing Lang Yun extinguish the fire under the stone pot, he casually asked, “Yun, is making a stone pot troublesome?”
The tribe only had one pot. Every time they wanted to cook something, they had to wait.
Lang Yun was somewhat surprised. “You want to make another stone pot?”
Lang Shuo nodded. “We’ll need to boil a lot of things in the future. One pot isn’t enough.”
Drying the fruit alone would not be enough. They also needed to boil it in the middle of the process, and the stone pot was not big enough.
Hearing this, Lang Yun looked troubled. “It takes a very long time to dig one out, and we can only start digging after a few days.”
The difficulty in carving a stone pot lay in evenly hollowing out a whole stone. If they used too much force, they would dig straight through it. If they used too little, it would not be finished in a short time. They had only just finished digging the cave a few days ago, and wolves also needed to keep their claws sharp for self-defense and hunting.
After hearing Lang Yun’s explanation, Lang Shuo felt a little disappointed. But very quickly, he thought of a solution. If one pot could not cook that much, then they could weave a few steamers and place them over the stone pot to steam. They could steam several layers at once, and repeat the process several times if needed.
Still, the fact that they could not increase the number of stone pots in a short time left Lang Shuo somewhat regretful. When the weather was cold, they should eat more soupy foods. Roasted meat and stone-grilled meat cooled down as soon as they left the heat source, and the texture worsened once cold. In winter, eating dishes with soup was more comfortable. He missed hotpot a little, but unfortunately, they could not eat it for now. Neither the tools nor the ingredients were enough.
After missing all kinds of delicious food for a while, Lang Shuo only snapped back to his senses when Lang Shi and the others returned. First, he taught them how to cut the fruit.
Snow fruits were large, and stone knives were relatively short, so slicing them directly was somewhat difficult. Therefore, Lang Shuo chose to cut them into chunks. Each snow fruit was split twice down the middle, divided into four portions. The core in the center was dug out, and each portion was cut into five or six pieces according to size.
The cut snow fruit pieces were neatly spread out in shallow baskets to avoid piling up, then placed under the sun.
The temperature was low, so they would need to be dried for several more days. Lang Shuo was not in a hurry. He only reminded Lang Nuo and the others to remember to bring these baskets back into the cave before sleeping each night over the next few days. After all, it might snow again at any time. If they got wet, that would be terrible.
After handing the task of looking after the dried fruit to the sub-adults, Lang Shuo rubbed both arms and moved the leg that was not fractured. Then he assigned them another task. “I need a few long branches. Which of you will help me break some off?”
Lang Nuo took on the important mission without hesitation.
Breaking branches required at most two or three people. The remaining sub-adults gathered around Lang Shuo. One of them was curious and asked him, “Shuo, are you making something tasty again?”
Lang Shuo: “…”
Lang Shuo said, “I’m making crutches.”
