Chapter 137: In Winter, Animals Are Scarce
Su Ran spent one evening collecting all the firewood previously placed under the rain shelter, the broken long table wood, and the wood from the damaged chicken pen and cattle pen behind the house, piling it all together on the left side of the house.
Then she gradually cleared and emptied the space in front of the house and on both sides.
She planned to take this opportunity to directly build the large storage room she wanted to construct.
She also planned to build the chicken coop and livestock pens at the same time.
From this lesson, she still felt that whether raising animals or storing items, stone houses were more sturdy.
If something happened again, at least the losses could be smaller.
There wouldn’t be a need, like this time, for all the things to undergo “post-disaster” reconstruction!
The recent weather was still very hot, but Su Ran no longer planned to delay the construction of the storage room.
Although the daytime temperature was high, she could build the house during the few hours of early morning and evening.
Moreover, although it was hot during the daytime, it wasn’t unbearable; she could take it slowly and wouldn’t tire herself out every day.
There were still some stone bricks left from the previous house building, and during this later period, whenever Su Ran had time, she would make a bit more.
Although the quantity was still insufficient now, she could build the house in the mornings and evenings, and when the daytime weather was hot, hide in a shady place to make stone bricks.
Those few beastmen who died in the previous fight were, at the end, sent together by the beastmen in the settlement one early morning to the dark river in the cave where the elderly beastman had been taken after dying, and they floated away.
Su Ran was very curious about where this dark river ultimately led, but Hui also couldn’t explain clearly, only that the beastmen had always done it this way.
After the aftermath of the “night raid” incident in the settlement had completely passed, Su Ran immediately began her house-building plan.
She first dug out the foundations for the storage room and the house for raising small animals, and piled up stone bricks on them.
The area of the storage room wasn’t very large, about over forty square meters, and Su Ran divided it into two rooms.
The two rooms were entered through one door; the inside one was for storing food, and the outside one for storing tools.
For these two rooms, Su Ran planned to make only two small windows on the front wall of each.
But the window areas wouldn’t be large either, so small that even one beastman couldn’t crawl through!
This size gave her a bit more sense of security.
Chickens, cattle, and sheep were fine; if lost, they could be raised again, but this food was what she had saved bit by bit—if lost, all her efforts for a period of time would be wasted!
Now Su Ran was immensely glad that she had stored those foods in the bird’s nest back then, instead of casually building a thatched shed outside to make do.
Otherwise, her green soap fruit powder, dried seafood, and dried fruit probably wouldn’t have any left now!
The foundations for the storage room and the chicken coop and cattle and sheep house behind the house were dug out and piled up by Su Ran alone, taking nearly fifteen days.
Although the wounds on Hui’s body had healed more than half, before they were completely healed, Su Ran still wouldn’t allow it to do this heavy labor.
Occasionally letting it go out to hunt was already the limit.
Even the food they ate in the recent half month was hunted by Su Ran in the nearby woods.
Although they were all small animals, Su Ran hunted many at a time, so Hui wouldn’t go hungry.
Because of this, Su Ran’s archery skills rapidly became proficient and accurate in just half a month.
However, the healing speed of the wounds on Hui’s body was also beyond Su Ran’s expectations.
Whether it was due to the beastmen’s constitution or the significant effect of the yellow mushroom powder, in just half a month, the two most serious wounds on Hui’s shoulder had already begun to scar on the surface skin!
If not for this, Su Ran wouldn’t have agreed to it going on those few hunting trips.
However, no matter how much Su Ran didn’t want Hui to help up front, Hui, who didn’t like seeing Su Ran busy, wouldn’t obediently listen.
The Nth time Su Ran was digging the foundation for the storage room in front, she discovered Hui secretly digging the foundations for the cattle and sheep house and chicken coop in the back, and helplessly rolled her eyes at Hui, whose face was still smeared with dirt.
In the end, she could only arrange for it to sit at the house doorway making stone bricks.
And with Hui’s stone brick supply, Su Ran’s house building went even more smoothly.
After the storage room foundation was piled up and filled in, she found A Huo and Qing Yu to help cover a layer of stone slab on the foundation, then began piling up the house.
The cement used for piling up the house was still the one she made herself.
The blue worm internal organ gel inside was what she had accumulated bit by bit when previously collecting blue worms and drying them.
When piling up the storage room, Su Ran still built a smoke channel inside the storage room.
Including the chicken coop and cattle and sheep house to be built, they all had to be piled up too.
It was just that this smoke channel was piled up along the base of the wall.
This was in case there was a need for heating inside this room in the future.
Completely piling up this storage room took Su Ran a total of one month.
At this time, it also meant that Su Ran had been in this world for half a year already.
And by now, the temperature in this world had finally begun to show a trend of gradual decline.
This made Su Ran happy that the hot summer was finally over, while also starting to worry about the coming winter; her overwinter reserve food wasn’t prepared yet.
And now the storage room wasn’t built yet, let alone having time to collect food and process it for storage!
“Hui, in winter, when it’s very very cold, can you catch red-skinned pig and four-eared ox?”
Su Ran asked Hui beside her while scraping the stone brick in her hand.
“Can catch, but animals, few, sometimes can’t catch, very hungry, sleep and not hungry!”
Hearing Hui’s words, Su Ran’s sense of crisis rose again.
Even with the beastmen’s strength, they would go hungry, which meant that in winter, the number of animals active outside that could still be found was really too few.
Moreover, it also indicated that the coldness of winter here might be more severe than Su Ran had imagined.
Thus, on the next day, Su Ran sped up the construction speed of the chicken coop and cattle and sheep house.
However, because she already had the experience of building the storage room in front, when building these two rooms, Su Ran’s technique was already very proficient.
The size of the chicken coop Su Ran built was a bit smaller than the cattle and sheep house.
Wild chickens were small in size; even raising dozens wouldn’t take up much space.
The two animal rooms were side by side, built facing the river beach direction, just like the house where Su Ran and Hui lived.
After building the main stone framework of the houses, she also used stone bricks to enclose a stone wall about one meter three high in front of each of the two houses.
This way, during the daytime, the raised small animals could be let out to bask in the sun, and locked up again at night.
