Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 22 Labor Makes Me Happy
The houses in Hekou Village are built against the mountain. The closer the houses are to the foot of the mountain, the higher their foundations are raised. A row of houses at the foot of the mountain are even raised with thick timbers, and the doors are at the back, so people can enter and exit from the back.

Every unusual architectural layout has a profound meaning. The reason why houses at the foot of the mountain have to raise their foundations indicates that flash floods frequently occur here! However, the flash floods are not very large.

Similarly, after Eji ate a roast suckling pig, her mouth smelled so good that the little girl she was holding kept trying to pry open her mouth to find the source of the fragrance.

Yun Ce hadn't eaten his fill, so E Ji gave him two green, round objects. He smelled them; they emitted a grassy, ​​woody fragrance and were a byproduct of the bark fiber of the cypress tree.

This stuff becomes crispy on the outside and soft on the inside after being roasted over a fire. It tastes pretty good if you add some honey or jam.

Unfortunately, Hekou Village has neither honey nor jam.

Yun Ce and that pretty little pig ate a lot of sweet and sour berries while roaming in the wilderness. They should make a good jam after being cooked, the only downside being that it's not sweet enough.

Hekou Village has no honey or jam, to be honest, they have nothing at all. Even though their main occupation is separating fibers from tree bark for weaving, they don't have any extra clothes or bedding.

Yun Ce had only been in Hekou Village for a short time and hadn't yet figured out whether the shortage of supplies was caused by exorbitant taxes and levies, or by their own extremely low productivity.

In the absence of years of famine, there are only two reasons why a large number of people are extremely poor.

Even though the theory was already very complete and detailed, Yun Ce still planned to experience it for himself and revisit the daily work and life of the people of Hekou Village.

The bark that Yun Ce carried from the forest first had to be soaked in water for two days and two nights. Then, after the bark had absorbed water and swelled, it was taken out and placed in the middle of a sturdy piece of wood with blades cut on both sides. It was then pulled hard. After being pulled through, the remaining bark tissue would be blocked by the blades and fall into a wooden basin. What was pulled through was the main product of the bark—plant fiber.

The byproducts of the tree bark that fell into the wooden basins would be forcefully crushed into powder by the legless men in large stone mortars. The women would then filter the powder, discarding the residue. The filtered solution would be left to stand for half a day, and the sediment at the bottom of the wooden bucket would be the green, lumpy substance that Yun Ce had eaten.

The process of making bark fibers is not yet over. The bark fibers need to be stretched on the edge of the wood until they are stretched into thin strands before being soaked in water to maintain their toughness.

Yun Ce was clearly a strong laborer. In one day, he ate only two green dumplings given to him by E Ji, and he also made more than a dozen buckets of tree bark by-products and half a platform of plant fiber primary products for E Ji.

According to the old man with the white beard, the dozen or so barrels of tree bark byproducts were enough for Eji to eat for seven or eight days. As for the plant fiber, it was enough for Eji to exchange for three coins.

Yun Ce asked the old man with the white beard for a coin and examined it. The metal used to make the coin was strange. He held it in his hand and weighed it. The density should be similar to that of aluminum. It was very light, but the color was greenish. The coin was in the standard style of the Han Dynasty Wuzhu coin, with a square hole in the middle so that it could be strung together. The old man with the white beard only had half a string of these coins, so the number should be around two hundred.

After seeing that Yun Ce ignored the two hundred coins he possessed, the white-bearded old man Zhao Jin chattered on and on to E Ji.

“He’s definitely from a prestigious family! 91%!” Yun Ce heard Gouzi’s simultaneous translation in his ears.

Yun Ce nodded, agreeing with Zhao Jin. Judging from the level of development of their Han Chinese lineage, anyone who came from Earth was a member of a prominent family, or at least would be in the future.

Eji received three green coins from Zhao Jin and was in a great mood. Her gaze towards Yun Ce softened considerably. It was the look of a head of household looking at livestock, a look Yun Ce was very familiar with.

Yun Linchuan often looked at him like that.

"In other words, if I work all day, I can earn enough for seven or eight days' worth of food, and a piece of clothing?"

Yun Ce wrote down this sentence and handed it to Zhao Jin.

After reading it, Zhao Jin shook his head and wrote on the wooden tablet: "Three months later, you will have to pay a poll tax of twelve coins, a military tax of eighty catties of fodder, and participate in harvesting hay for twenty-seven days..."

Yun Ce understood the head tax, and he also understood the military tax, which was eighty catties of military rations. The problem was that although he knew what "grass plundering" meant, it was strange that it was being used against Han people. Usually, it was foreign tribes that implemented the policy of plundering Han people. He had never heard of Han people going to other people's territory to plunder.

Yun Ce didn't ask Zhao Jin any further questions. He nodded to indicate that he understood and continued working, preparing to process all the bark that had accumulated at Eji's place before dark.

Let's see if hard work can lead to wealth here.

The proverb "hard work leads to wealth" has been passed down for thousands of years and is a common saying used by elders to encourage younger generations. However, it seems to be less true on Earth now. Today, I finally have the opportunity to meet a group of Han Chinese whose development path has seriously deviated from the norm. Let's test this here and see if this saying is true.

Let's see if this statement has lost its accuracy due to historical development.

The next day, just as dawn broke, Yun Ce went to the woods where E Ji often went to peel bark from trees. There was a large patch of trees there called the Clothing Tree. Other trees would die after their bark was peeled off, but this tree would not. After the first layer of bark was peeled off, the second layer of bark would quickly grow back.

Basically, the best bark for making clothes is the third layer of bark from the clothing tree. The fibers peeled from this layer are the finest, softest, and most resilient. The fibers peeled from this layer of bark are usually transported to Izumo Castle, where many weavers process these fibers through six or seven steps, turning the whitish fibers into a bright, silvery-white color that is very beautiful.

The only downside is that the third layer of bark doesn't produce much starch...

This tree bark is certainly very suitable for making paper. This branch of Han people may not have lived through the time of Cai Lun, and they are still completely ignorant about papermaking. If Yun Ce can make paper, it won't be a problem for Hekou Village to become rich overnight.

The problem is that Yun Ce needs to personally test all kinds of relationships in this era, both good and bad, before he can write a qualified social investigation report.

Now, before he has fully integrated into this world, Yun Ce wants to prove the value of the saying "hard work leads to wealth".

This has nothing to do with intelligence, but only with fairness. If hard work cannot lead to wealth, one must find the root cause of the inability to become wealthy and then make use of it. This is a quality that a born revolutionary must possess.

After finishing her drumming, Eji came to the woods to find Yunce again. Although Yunce was busy peeling bark from the trees, Eji hinted to him several times that he didn't need to peel so much bark and could go find a pig or something in the bushes.

Eji has been struggling to survive on her own for many years, and her mind remains as pure as a spring stream, clear and transparent.

Eji was the first person he met on this planet, and she showed Yun Ce great kindness, which made him feel that his luck wasn't bad.

There were many wild boars hidden in the Dragon Balls. He originally wanted to bring the remaining thirty-seven into the Dragon Balls as well, but the war broke out, forcing him to end the hunt as soon as possible.

The ditch was the same one dug yesterday, and there were plenty of withered branches and fallen leaves here. When Eji saw Yun Ce prop up a small wild boar and put it on the fire to roast, her soul flew to the heavens again.

Because they had eaten their fill, Eji and Yunce had more tree bark on them when they returned. Yunce fished out the tree bark that had been soaking in the pond for two days and continued to scrape off the fibers, while Eji began to put the scraped residue into a stone mortar and crush it, busy collecting grass and grain.

Yun Ce was in good health and had considerable strength. He could work from sunrise to sunset. Seeing that E Ji was receiving a lot of green money from Zhao Jin every day, Yun Ce was in a very good mood.

It rained today. Because of the crescent moon last night, the weather was cold. Yun Ce felt that he should go out to work in this kind of weather, otherwise he would be unworthy of the word "hardworking".

The villagers of Hekou Village watched with envy as Yun Ce, carrying a rope and a load, went to the Cloth Tree Forest with E Ji.

"That's what you call a scion of a prominent family; they're incredibly diligent, 88%."

"The wealthier people are, the more diligent they tend to be, 75%."

"How can you become rich if you're not hardworking? 71%"

Yun Ce kept hearing the dog's barking. In the past few days, the dog had absorbed a lot of information, and its translation accuracy had improved a lot.

The rain was not heavy to begin with, just a light drizzle. After entering the cypress grove, the rain became even lighter. Today, Eji didn't need to play the drum; she just followed Yun Ce to the cypress grove to peel bark.

Yun Ce didn't know the meaning of drumming; he only knew that it was the right of the young women in the village.

Peeling bark is actually a very stress-relieving activity. Yun Ce spun his Swiss Army knife around the trunk, then made a cut all the way down, spun it around again at the bottom, pried up a corner of the bark, inserted a wooden wedge, and then tore it off with his fingers. In just a few strokes, a complete piece of bark was peeled off.

Finally, take the bark tube and beat it hard on the trunk a few times. The bark will become soft and easy to tie into a bundle.

Yun Ce had gotten used to peeling bark from trees while listening to the drumbeats, but now, after peeling bark for quite some time, the drumbeats from the hillside still hadn't come.

Seeing that Eji was still preoccupied with the image of roasted wild boar, Yun Ce coughed and pointed towards the place where the drums were being played.

Eji understood immediately, grabbed the carrying pole from the ground, and ran like the wind towards the place where the drum was beating.

After thinking for a moment, Yun Ce followed E Ji at a leisurely pace to the place where the drums were being played.

Today, the person in charge of playing the drum is another woman in her twenties from the village. Even now, Yun Ce doesn't understand why they play the drum all day long.

Although he didn't understand, Yun Ce still respected their traditions.

When Eji and Yun Ce arrived at the place where the drum was placed, they saw a naked woman lying on the drum surface. Her body was lying across the drum surface, her long hair covering her face, and she looked a little shy.

Right next to the drum, a shirtless man was impatiently taking off his clothes and pants.

Yun Ce was furious and was about to rush forward when E Ji covered his mouth and dragged him back to the Cloth Tree Forest.

(End of this chapter)