HLnovel Chapter 261 Plant Growth Rate (Read it again)
Chapter 261 Plant Growth Rate (Read it again)
The village's brick kilns underwent an emergency expansion after the snow season ended, and currently there are three kilns firing bricks simultaneously.
The quantity of finished bricks is currently insufficient to supply the construction of houses, but it is still possible to build a heated kang (traditional heated platform bed) for every family in the tribe.
Xing and Jiang Luoluo first went to the carpenter Cong and told him all the furniture requirements they needed. Then they ordered several glycerin containers from the carpenter Cong.
Although it's not the snow season now, and the tribe doesn't have a great need for glycerin, they still frequently use it to care for their children's skin because of a habit formed throughout the entire snow season.
Some tribespeople whose children are about to be born have also begun to make preparations in advance—it's not just during the snowy season that tribespeople get pregnant, but relatively speaking, the number of tribespeople who get pregnant is more concentrated during the snowy season.
In other words, the tribe has the most children born during the Great Beast Season, which explains why the tribe uses the sacrificial rituals during the Great Beast Season as a dividing point for the passage of time.
Currently, Xing has several items, including hair ties, stone paintings, soap, and glycerin. The latter two have become essential items in the tribe, ensuring Xing's stable food supply.
Therefore, Xing's desire to live independently was not a whim, but a serious consideration. She judged that she could bear the costs of living independently before she felt comfortable making the suggestion.
Seeing Xing and the carpenter discussing the size of the soap mold and the volume of the glycerin container, Jiang Luoluo suddenly remembered that the Little Beast Season was already halfway over, and everything in the Taz Forest was flourishing, with many beautiful flowers and plants.
You can use some dyes with high dyeing rates to color soaps and glycerin, making them look better... It's not very useful, but it looks nice.
You can add fragrance to soaps and glycerin by using some fragrant flowers and herbs... It may not be very useful, but it smells nice.
And it's not necessarily useless. The beautiful colors and refreshing scents can make people feel happy and relax, so how can that not be useful?
On the way to the brick kiln, Jiang Luoluo shared these thoughts with Xing.
Xing thought about it and also felt it was a promising idea.
At the same time, he excitedly told Jiang Luoluo, "Luo, I'm going to carve some patterns on the soap molds and add the dyeing you mentioned. It'll definitely make something very beautiful."
Jiang Luoluo was shocked. She had actually thought of this too, but felt that given the pragmatic nature of the tribe, they might not like such fancy things.
After all, it is very troublesome to engrave patterns on soap molds, but the soaps produced are no different.
Unexpectedly, Xing had thought of this on his own.
Indeed, artists and ordinary tribal people think differently.
"Great!" Jiang Luoluo raised her hands and feet in agreement, and she and Xing began to discuss enthusiastically what pattern to carve.
However, this problem really stumped Jiang Luoluo and Xing.
Jiang Luoluo is too young to have had the chance to leave the tribe and see the outside world.
Because of a congenital condition, the Xing is unable to transform into a beast and cannot leave the tribe.
Neither of them had ever left their tribe.
Their perspective was limited to the tribe, and they felt something was missing no matter what was mentioned.
Finally, Jiang Luoluo set her sights on the witch.
The shaman's herb garden has many plants that can only be found in the Taz Forest. Although there is no ban on entering, people like Xing have never actually been there.
Jiang Luoluo decided to take Xing to broaden her horizons.
Also, she went to see the seeds she had borrowed from the witch.
Apart from a herb garden at the summit of Silver Peak where shamans can grow things, other tribesmen who want to grow anything need to bring soil back from the Taz Forest themselves.
You also have to arrange the garden yourself and prepare for it to be washed away by rain during the rainy season, which is extremely troublesome.
Go already had a tough time, having to constantly participate in hunting in order to support himself.
Jiang Luoluo didn't want to cause Ge any more trouble, so she went to Wu and asked if she could have a small plot of land in his garden to plant something.
Wu was always easy to talk to Jiang Luoluo, and also wanted to know what Jiang Luoluo wanted to do this time, so he readily agreed.
Jiang Luoluo planted all the seeds she had collected in the witch's herb garden.
For example, she asked Chi to help her test the least spicy chili seeds, hoping to cultivate them to the spiciness she wanted as soon as possible.
There were also carefully selected foxtail grass seeds—the tribe already grew them, but Jiang Luoluo's requirements were more complicated, so the shaman gave her a separate plot of land to see what she could grow.
Jiang Luoluo didn't actually do anything special; she simply selected the largest, most numerous, and least likely to shed seeds from among the foxtail grasses as preferred seeds.
These seeds, once grown, will not be used for food, but rather the largest and most abundant ones will be selected as grain seeds.
We aim to further increase their seed quantity.
As for the taste—Jiang Luoluo has no way to improve it for now.
Wild foxtail grass tastes quite unpleasant. Jiang Luoluo wasn't sure if the foxtail grass in her previous world was this bad, but there was no doubt that the foxtail grass in this world was indeed unpalatable and unacceptable.
If even the tribe members, with their limited tolerance for food, can comment on how bad it tastes, you can imagine just how bad it really is.
Even if Jiang Luoluo tried to make it into the shape of steamed buns or pancakes, it couldn't salvage its texture and taste.
It's just plain bad.
Of course, this applies to Jiang Luoluo.
For the elderly tribes who used to survive on foxtail grass, their lives have been greatly changed.
The steamed buns and pancakes made from crushed foxtail grass are very soft and easy to chew.
The pancakes require frying in animal oil, and the flavor of the oil is enough to mask most of the unpleasant taste of foxtail grass, rekindling the will to survive in many elderly members of the tribe who were already struggling to survive.
The taste of food can indeed affect a person's mood most of the time.
...If one had to spend the rest of their life eating only one kind of extremely unpalatable food, most people probably wouldn't even want to live.
For Jiang Luoluo, who has experienced staple foods with "zero off-flavors," even "20% off-flavors" is unacceptable.
But for these people in the tribe, they have always eaten staple food with "100% strange taste". Even if it is reduced to "80% strange taste", it is a huge improvement that makes people feel "delicious".
So once Jiang Luoluo tried it, she never thought of eating it a second time—at least not until new seeds were cultivated.
The trip to the mountaintop to find the shaman was scheduled for the afternoon. After ordering the number of bricks from the brick kiln in the morning, Jiang Luoluo also went to find a member of her clan to help build a heated kang (a traditional Chinese bed-stove).
After all, neither she nor Xing could do this kind of thing, so they had to ask someone for help.
Although building fire pits is not yet a new profession in the tribe, it has indeed brought unexpected benefits to some members of the tribe.
They returned to the cave with the tribesman to check the situation and agreed on a time later, at which point the matter of the heated kang bed could be temporarily put on hold.
After lunch, Jiang Luoluo took Xing and headed up to the top of the mountain.
Although Xing had met the witch a few times, she was not as relaxed as Jiang Luoluo, who could wander around the witch's place freely.
"You're here just in time, let me take another look at your leg." Wu looked at Xing, who was using crutches, and thoughtfully raised his hand to stop her.
Xing was a little confused. She didn't feel any discomfort in her body recently. On the contrary, she felt healthier and healthier. She didn't know why Wu would tell her to take another look.
But since the shaman had already spoken, Xing didn't object and obediently sat down next to the shaman.
"As expected." After a thorough inspection with tapping and knocking, Wu revealed a slight smile.
"Your leg is recovering very well and is much healthier than before. If you continue to recover at this rate, in another two years, you will probably be able to walk on your own without this."
What the shaman said shocked Xing greatly, and she could hardly believe it. "Really?"
The shaman smiled and nodded, then offered a few explanations.
"Although you cannot awaken your beast form, the power of your beast bloodline is still working within you. It is constantly improving your legs, and you should be able to feel that your legs are getting stronger lately."
Xing had previously stayed at home and did not go out often. The beast-like bloodline in her body could only keep her legs from completely losing sensation.
However, ever since Jiang Luoluo made the crutch, she has enjoyed going out and walking more and more. It should be noted that the crutch only relieves the pressure on the legs, rather than completely replacing them.
Like a wound that is constantly being injured and repeatedly healed, it stimulates the body to perform more functions.
The more Xing uses her legs, the more her beastly bloodline will function in them.
Although it won't allow Xing to walk normally immediately, if we persist, it's only a matter of time.
However, it is unlikely that the beast bloodline can be fully activated.
To put it simply, under normal circumstances, a healthy member of the tribe still has a 10% mortality rate and a 10% disability rate when activating their beast-like bloodline.
The act of awakening and transforming into a beast is inherently unsafe.
However, because the tribe members have been trained since childhood, they have not seen many examples of failure, but it is not that there are none.
But for Xing, even if her legs fully recover, the probability of successfully transforming into a beast is less than 30%.
However, the fact that she was able to walk normally again was enough to move Xing deeply.
Xing was so overjoyed that she was almost distracted by what happened next.
Jiang Luoluo knew that Xing was emotional, so she didn't disturb her. Instead, she followed the shaman to the herb field behind the house to check on the seeds she had planted.
Somewhat surprisingly, most of them had already grown and produced seeds, and it seemed like they would be ready for harvest in just a few days.
"...I think I only planted it a short time ago." Jiang Luoluo calculated the date. It had only been a little over half a month, so how could it have grown to this size already?
Shouldn't it generally take several months for them to grow?
“Most of the plants in the Taz Forest are like this; they grow very quickly,” Wu said, as if it were commonplace.
After all, the area of his herb field on the mountaintop is not very large. If he can only grow one or two harvests a year, how could he possibly grow enough herbs for the entire tribe of several thousand people?
The competition for plant growth in the Taz Forest is extremely fierce, except for those plants that occupy a geographical advantage and have the leisure to grow slowly.
Most plants, if they cannot grow in a short period of time, will have their sunlight, soil, and water completely controlled by other plants.
He himself was dead.
Because of the intense competition, these plants can complete a growth and seeding cycle in about a month.
Jiang Luoluo was greatly shocked. She suddenly realized that according to this time pattern, excluding the rainy season, she could harvest at least five batches of carefully selected seeds before the snow season.
She's one step closer to her goal of taming chili peppers to a normal level of spiciness!
"By the way, if we want them to keep growing at this rate, we need to get seeds from the Taz Forest regularly," the shaman suddenly remembered and reminded them.
Jiang Luoluo looked up in surprise. The reason she cultivated it herself was to create a taste that was completely different from that of wild seeds. If she were to find wild seeds to plant, wouldn't her cultivation have been in vain?
“These plants are quite clever.” Seeing Jiang Luoluo’s puzzled look, Wu sighed and explained, “After growing and bearing fruit here for several generations, they will find that there are no natural enemies or competitors here, and their growth rate will slow down.”
Jiang Luoluo slowly opened her mouth wide. No way, is this even possible?
When these plant seeds were first brought out of the Taz Forest, they still retained the growth habits of the Taz Forest, which is to take root, sprout, flower, and bear fruit as soon as they land, with a maximum growth rate.
But after they have bred for several generations in the tribe, they will find that they have no rivals to compete with. This whole territory belongs to them, and they can grow slowly and peacefully.
There's no need to worry about sunlight, water, or any soil issues.
The advantage is that plants and herbs that grow slowly have better medicinal effects, and the fruits and seeds they produce are larger, sweeter, and more delicious.
But most of the time, the tribe is more concerned with the number of people.
Therefore, it is necessary to frequently bring back those original wild seeds from the Taz Forest to maintain their growth and development rate.
Jiang Luoluo realized that her plan to earn five incomes a year had fallen through.
Now all I can do is hope that these plants discover they "don't have to compete" a little too slowly.
However, Jiang Luoluo was not entirely in despair.
She still has her ultimate weapon to use, which is "hybridization".
The principle of hybridization is very simple: it combines the advantages of both parents to produce a better and more perfect seed.
The trouble with hybridization is... how do you know that the combination is the advantage of both sides, and not their disadvantages?
And how to reliably pass on the advantages.