Chapter 264

The steps for brewing fruit vinegar are actually quite similar to brewing fruit wine; they just require a longer time.

Speaking of which, the person who discovered fruit vinegar wasn't Qi Bai; there's a small backstory involved.

Since Qi Bai brewed fruit wine for the Black Mountain tribe's first Courtship Day, he had taught everyone the method of making fruit wine.

Pure fruit wine made from wild berries, even with an alcoholic taste, has very low alcohol content. If this were modern times, these would definitely be beverages with a bit of alcohol.

Whether it's milk tea or fruit wine, the addition of drinks greatly enriched the beastmen's dining tables. A bite of meat followed by a sip of wine—such a life needless to say how comfortable it was.

Beastmen had never been exposed to alcohol before. They might get drunk easily the first time they drank, but they adapted over time. The sweet and fragrant fruit wine quickly became beloved by the tribespeople.

The skill of brewing fruit wine also spread within the Black Mountain tribe. After all, it wasn't troublesome to make. They just needed to collect more berries during the ripe season, mash them, and seal them in pottery jars.

However, due to various reasons like hygiene, temperature, and berry types, the wine brewed by the tribespeople wasn't always successful.

So, if their brewed wine developed a strange smell, they would ask Qi Bai to come take a look.

Honestly, Qi Bai himself only had a half-understanding of winemaking. At most, he could help them judge whether the jar had spoiled or if it could continue fermenting. It hardly counted as guidance.

But for the beastmen, having Qi Bai take a look was enough.

Last early winter, when the first batch of Black Mountain workers hadn't yet arrived in the north, after the weather turned cold, the tribespeople all stayed holed up in the tribe.

That day, Qi Bai had just finished feeding Chuan Chuan at the stone sheep pen and was planning to go home when someone called his name.

The person who stopped Qi Bai was a bovine beastman named Qin. Niu Qin was around forty years old, with some wrinkles on her face, but she was very efficient. Qi Bai had a relatively deep impression of her.

Niu Qin stopped Qi Bai and stated her purpose directly: "The wine at my house started smelling sour just a few days after brewing. I've never seen this before. Leopard Bai, can you come see if my wine has gone bad? If it's bad, I'll just pour it out. The smell isn't very pleasant."

Qi Bai didn't have much to do just then, so he said: "Sure, shall we go now?"

The tribe wasn't big. They didn't walk far before reaching Niu Qin's house. As soon as they lifted the animal skin curtain of the kitchen, Qi Bai indeed smelled a faint sour odor.

Qi Bai could barely conceal his excitement: "It's vinegar!"

Earlier, when he heard Niu Qin mention a sour smell, Qi Bai had a guess. Now, seeing the fruit vinegar with his own eyes, he was very happy.

How could he not be happy? Without vinegar, Qi Bai could only use sour fruits to remove the gaminess from fresh meat and fish. But sour fruits weren't available all the time, especially in deep winter when even substitute fruits were hard to find.

But with vinegar, all these problems would be readily solved.

Qi Bai had privately tried to make vinegar a few times but never found the trick. Who knew the vinegar would come to him on its own?

"How did you make this jar of vinegar? Can you tell me?" Excited as he was, Qi Bai didn't forget the main matter.

Niu Qin didn't expect Qi Bai to be so interested in this sour thing she made and was also happy: "It's nothing." She then recounted in detail how she obtained this jar of vinegar.

Late autumn, Niu Qin had brewed several jars of wine with wild berries. Wine brewed with wild berries would have much fruit pulp left behind. Tribespeople usually ate the pulp while drinking the wine.

But Niu Qin felt the leftover pulp in the wine wasn't tasty, yet she didn't want to waste it. So, she found a way to filter it out, added water again, hoping to brew some more wine with it. Unexpectedly, by chance, she ended up making fruit vinegar instead.

Only then did Qi Bai realize that fruit vinegar wasn't made directly from fruits. The material needed for fruit vinegar was actually the distiller's grains) left after winemaking.

Getting this method, Qi Bai felt this was there is no story without coincidence. The discovery of many things in the world was probably full of such coincidences.

It was just a pity that winter had already arrived by then. Qi Bai could only try with the distiller's grains from his own jars and indeed succeeded in brewing some, though the taste of vinegar made this way was still somewhat inferior.

But this was normal. Whether vinegar or wine, becoming mellow required time's precipitation/sedimentation; otherwise, it wouldn't be called aged brew.

Now that they finally had sufficient apricots, Qi Bai naturally couldn't wait to make more wine and vinegar.

Inside the apricot forest.

Beastmen either climbed apricot trees with baskets on their backs or stood under the fruit trees pulling down heavy branches, soon filling a basket.

In the shade outside the apricot forest, oxcarts were lining up. These carts were recently modified by Qi Bai for transporting scattered food. By adding a surrounding guardrail/board around the cart bed, the oxcart turned into a small truck.

Beastmen took turns pouring the collected apricots into the truck bed. It didn't take long to fill one cart.

"Whose turn is it next to pull the cart?"

A few beastmen rested briefly in the shade, taking a few sips of cool water from their bamboo tubes. Seeing the full cart hadn't been taken away, they chatted idly.

Pulling the cart was scheduled. It wasn't that people didn't want to do it; everyone wanted to pull this newly modified truck, so scheduling was necessary.

"The last one was Yun Jing. The next should be Xi Zhou. Eh? Where is Xi Zhou?" The beastman looked around but didn't see Xi Zhou and shouted towards the apricot forest, "Xi Zhou! Come back! It's your turn to pull the cart!"

"Coming! Coming!"

Soon, Xi Zhou with a basket on his back hurriedly ran back. Clearly, as the driver Xi Zhou, hadn't been idle while waiting; he had gone into the forest to pick apricots.

The truck bed had no cover, so each time the fruit couldn't be loaded too full. Xi Zhou poured the apricots he gathered into the next truck bed, then transformed into his beast form and pulled the entire load of apricots towards the city.

Along the way, Xi Zhou occasionally encountered a few small trucks coming and going, all of them transporting apricots back and forth. These past few days, they had already flattened a small path between the apricot forest and the city.

Entering the city, Xi Zhou headed straight towards the northwest.

At the location of the northwest city's workshop area, although there were still no walls, the beastmen had previously made dried bamboo shoots and sour bamboo shoots here, so the tools were quite complete.

Hu Xue in the crowd looked up. She was responsible for the work here. Seeing Xi Zhou return with the cart, she quickly stood up and came over.

Hu Xue called out: "There's prepared dry grass over there. You can park the cart next to the dry grass pile."

On the open ground, teenagers and elderly beastmen were busy. Hearing the noise, a few more cubs ran over and helped Xi Zhou, now in human form, unload the apricots.

The apricots brought back by the male beastmen first had to be washed clean in large pottery vats, then de-pitted, keeping the flesh. The dark brown pits were placed in large wicker baskets, while the apricot flesh had different destinations.

One part of the apricot flesh) would be directly spread out on winnowing baskets, which were then stacked layer upon layer on high racks to air-dry into dried fruit.

Another part would be arranged in large steamers nearly two meters in diameter, steamed, and then dried.

The final part would be poured into clean large pottery vats, mashed into pulp with pounding sticks, then covered with pottery lids and sealed for brewing wine.

With over half a year of work experience, harvesting apricots wasn't considered difficult for the beastmen of Heiyao City. Everyone worked together in division of labor), and a cartload of apricots could be processed quickly.

Moreover, every day there were visible, tangible fruits and dried fruit. The working cubs could even eat cooked apricot flesh anytime. Everyone did this work happily.

Not far from where the fruit was being unloaded, a group of people were moving among large pottery vats.

Qi Bai was at the workshop area today with Yang Luo and a few other old priests. Apricot flesh brewing wine needed regular ventilation and gas release from the vats; otherwise, the high internal pressure could cause them to explode.

At the same time, they also had to monitor closely. After the wine was brewed, they needed to transfer the distiller's grains to other vats, add water, and brew vinegar.

As they walked, Tu Ya said: "The millet and beans in the cultivated fields outside the city are almost ripe. It looks like they can be harvested soon."

Qi Bai naturally had been paying constant attention to the condition of the crops in the fields. He thought for a moment and said: "No hurry. Let them grow a bit more. We'll harvest them twenty days later."

This time last year, the millet had already been harvested, and it was time to harvest soybeans, sweet potatoes, and the second crop of radish roots.

But this year, the fields were cultivated late, and there wasn't as much fertilizer. The crops in the fields were growing far worse than last year.

Besides radish roots, most other crops in the north could only be planted once a year. Having these harvests was truly not easy. Since it definitely wouldn't rain anyway, Qi Bai felt they could (definitely wait a bit) for the fruits to grow fuller.

Tu Ya naturally listened to Qi Bai. If they could grow more fruit, it was of course a good thing.

Speaking of harvests, the smiles on Yun Tan and the others' faces couldn't be contained: "We never knew before that scattering seeds in the land) could grow so much fruit."

Yang Luo disapprovingly said: "Tilling the land, selecting seeds, watering, catching insects—so many steps. How come in your mouths it becomes just scattering seeds in the land? Clearly you didn't study properly in spring. With attitudes like yours, how will you teach the tribespeople to farm in the future?"

Yang Luo was the youngest among the five priests, but faced with his slightly stern words, no one was angry/annoyed).

For these priests, living long wasn't everything; how much knowledge one possessed was more important. Otherwise, they wouldn't honor Qi Bai as High Priest.

Yun Zhang said with a laugh: "Priest Yang Luo is right. Farming is such a good thing. No matter how seriously we study, it's all as it should be."

These perceptive beastmen had long since discovered the huge difference between farming and gathering.

Not to mention the amount of food that could be harvested from land of the same size, just the size of the food produced by each plant couldn't be compared.

Take radish roots for example.

The radish roots grown in the fields, although smaller than the aged ones from the Black Mountain tribe area, were roughly similar overall.

But the radish roots gathered recently from the mountains and forests were not only small, but many were also weirdly shaped, with long roots and little flesh, each looking like it had been starved into a long strip.

Hearing everyone discuss radish roots, Qi Bai shook his head and said: "This is also something that can't be helped."

Water was the food for plants. Since the sky refused to give them food [rain]), they could only desperately drill deep underground.

The fact that there weren't large swathes of withered mountains and forests could be considered these plants having vigorous vitality.

Qi Bai explained the reasons to everyone. Besides suddenly realizing, Yun Tan and the others also felt some apprehension.

Just looking at the situation in the north, the Northern Wastelands, which had far less water sources than the north, presumably wouldn't have much rainfall either.

Last summer, many places in the Northern Wastelands already had cracked land and withered plants. By autumn and winter, many tribes hadn't gathered enough food.

This year was the same again. If the three tribes hadn't left the Northern Wastelands, what would their situation be like now?

No, even without the drought, their previous lives compared to now were completely like earth and sky.

However, these heavy emotions didn't have time to spread before being replaced by intensive work). It wasn't that beastmen didn't understand sorrow; it's just that every day was so busy and fulfilling that sorrow simply couldn't catch up to them.

Harvesting the apricots took less than ten days in total from start to finish. The twelve production team leaders then organized the beastmen to disperse to various surrounding mountains to gather food.

The beastmen were very pragmatic). No matter how things looked, and regardless of whether wild food had decreased, having something was better than nothing. They wanted to bring everything back to the city for storage.

On the other hand, besides the male beastmen routinely out on patrol, all other male beastmen were also gathered up.

They needed to complete the construction of roads and public facilities within the city before the autumn harvest.

The reason Qi Bai chose this time to build roads, besides utilizing the time gap before the harvest, was more importantly because the residential areas of the five tribes had basically been completed.

The three tribes' beastmen had already moved from tents into brick-and-tile houses in the city. The Giant Wind tribespeople had also moved out of the Stone Forest. Even the Black Mountain workers had exchanged for separate houses.

However, compared to the beastmen of the other four tribes, many Black Mountain workers hadn't yet met the assessment standards and needed to deduct some points to temporarily rent the houses. They could only gain ownership of these houses after accumulating enough points.

Of course, most of these beastmen lived together as partners.

Although Qi Bai was promoting marital and family relationships, beastmen were very independent. Many believed partner relationships were only temporary. Even if they lived together temporarily, they still wanted to have houses completely their own.

But these extra houses weren't considered urgent yet and could be realized slowly in the future.

Qi Bai felt that since the most basic living needs of the city's residents had been solved, the next main event should shift to the construction of public areas.

Regarding what kind of roads to build in the city, Qi Bai and Wolf Ze had discussed several schemes.

Rammed earth roads, lime mortar roads, and flagstone roads. The two analyzed the pros and cons of each and finally found that these materials weren't suitable for use alone.

Rammed earth roads feared water, mortar roads couldn't withstand too much pressure, and flagstone roads were difficult to fix firmly. Only by combining them could they utilize strengths and avoid weaknesses.

A sturdy road wouldn't damage even after thousands of years. But if it was a jerry-built project [lit. tofu residue project], needing patches and repairs after a year or two—such roads Qi Bai had indeed seen before. So the effort and materials couldn't be skimped on.

The three main east, west, and south roads had long been rolled over many times by Giant Wind male beastmen pulling stone rollers. Some potholes had already been filled.

And the black stone slabs for paving were all ready.

Although the tools Ma Liang made for Ma Chong wasn't usable by others, his method was worth adopting. Qi Bai had the leaders of each production team select some beastmen with less strength to specially make) stone chisels and hammers. With these tools, everyone's efficiency in making stone slabs indeed improved quite a bit.

As for using iron to make tools, Qi Bai had also considered it. But on one hand, the hardness of the ironware they currently produced wasn't as high as in later times. Another reason was that smelting iron required too much manpower and resources, and the output wasn't very high. The difficulty of popularizing it was too great. Comparing comprehensively), currently, stone tools seemed more practical.

Because of all this advance preparation, when the beastmen actually started work, the efficiency was very high.

They poured lime mortar onto the rammed earth road, placed the stone slabs neatly on the mortar, and finally filled the gaps between the slabs with more mortar. Once the mortar dried, the road was complete.

The stone slabs for paving, although slightly thinner than those for building foundations, were still over thirty centimeters thick. Even the largest beastmen would find it hard to break them. Of course, even if breakage occurred, repairing such roads wouldn't be difficult.

The cubs had only seen adults set stones vertically to build houses before. Where had they seen stone slabs laid horizontally to make roads?

"This is our road!""So wide!!""So beautiful!!!"

"This road leads to my house!""Mine too!""Mine too!"

The cubs ran around the road tirelessly in circles like crazy. If not for the adults stopping them, they really wished they could lie down on the street right now.

Not to mention the cubs, even the working male beastmen leaned on their stone shovels and spades, grinning foolishly as they looked at their road.

That pitch-black flagstone road looked especially cool. Lying on it must be very comfortable.

Nearly thirty-meter-wide broad avenues, over ten-meter-wide roads separating neighborhoods, flagstone paths weaving between various areas, and canals and riverbanks over ten centimeters above the road surface.

As the black flagstone roads continuously extended forward, the majesty and dignity of Heiyao City gradually manifested.

After the road paving was complete, the male beastmen didn't rest but immediately began constructing the office and workshop areas within the city.