ch 55 – Building A New House (3)

At the end of the day, what did a three-year-old child know? Of course he learned that from some adult. Gu Ming was so angry he was about to snatch the bun back. Outside the room, the clan leader and the elders all heard it clearly and they shook their head nonstop. Gu Xiao took a look at the short and stubby child and his snicker grew colder.

The next day, the reconstruction of Gu Xiao’s house commenced. This is the down time for farming so every free labor in the village came to help out.

　　The house was being rebuilt above the site of where his old house was abandoned. Gu Xiao’s house was quite a bit of distance from the village, located half way up the mountain. Even though the wall had already crumbled, but the stones used in the original wall could easily be repurposes, which saved a lot of labors to acquire new stones. Once there were stones, the rest was easy. With the amount of manpower, the stone wall surrounding the courtyard was built in a day. (show me the houses that they live in!)

As for the structures on the inside, the base that was dug in the past was still there. With stones as the base, then with a rectangle shaped wooden mold, clay and straws were poured inside of it before hammering compact with a wooden baton. Lastly, it was the beams and layering straws on top of the roof.

Gu Xiao was generous in person and well rounded, and the food was delicious. Main food was mixed flour steamed buns and the side dish was always stewed vegetables with some sort of meat, either fatty meat or pheasants or wild rabbit. Never mind anything else, there were no shortages of volunteers to help out with that kind of meals.

Picture: mixed flour steamed buns

Source: meishichina.com

The weather was nice for a few days in a row, the crude form of the three main rooms were done quickly. In addition to the three main rooms, they’d also need a kitchen and a storage unit for miscellaneous items and firewood. In the backyard there needed to be a stable for the horse to stay warm. Under the persistent request of Gu Ming, some space was segmented out for a pigpen; he said he wanted to trap a piglet in the spring time to keep.

In the last couple of weeks, everybody was way busy with the building of the house; even Gu Ming and his few buddies would join in and help from time to time. Finally there were nobody watching over Gu Ye like a hawk and she felt like a little birdie that was finally released and happily into the woods she went.

The woods around the village were relatively safe, but also well-travelled by all the villagers. It was almost impossible to find anything of value. Excitedly, Gu Ye looked at the farther and deeper parts of the mountain.

This one day, she carried the back basket with her and took off without even telling anyone. Her destination was the big mountain behind their new house. After crossing two hill tops, the windy little path disappeared altogether. Waving the hatchet, she travelled along the path of thick bushes, occasionally startling a baby pheasant who’d fly out of the bushes.

Before she went into the mountain, she sprinkled some beast-repelling powder onto herself. She had invented these powder at the very beginning of the beginning of the apocalypse. It worked wonders at hiding from and keeping away the low level beasts.

Thinking about her previous live when the mutation had first started, all the once docile house pets turned into fatal enemies of humans. Docile cats turned into beasts more vicious than ferocious tigers; the once loyal canines turned abruptly into vicious beasts that hunted their masters…. Never mind about all the animals in zoos or circuses! Humans had fallen from the top of the food chain into preys in no time.

And she was just a stupid at a medical school when they discovered her amazing talent in alchemy. In order to stay alive, the first drug she developed was exactly this beast-repelling powder. The smell from these powder was enough to drive away the vicious beasts. It was exactly because she has these powder that she was able to avoid the mutated pets, the farm animals in the countryside, and finally being picked up by Icy Face…

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