Chapter 72: House-building Ideas
That white “wild chicken” ultimately couldn’t escape Su Ran’s clutches.
Just as it was panicking and dodging Gray’s blockade, it crashed headfirst into Su Ran’s thigh.
Then Su Ran quickly grabbed one of its two flapping wings and tied it up securely before tossing it into the backpack on her back.
Only then was Su Ran able to carefully observe the appearance of this “wild chicken.”
This wild chicken was as big as a large goose, completely snow white all over.
It had no comb and actually looked more like a bird.
But it had ears, unlike the two hole-like ears hidden under feathers on Earth birds; this wild chicken had a pair of small triangular ears the size of nails at the ear positions.
It looked a bit small and cute.
While Su Ran was curiously examining the wild chicken she had caught, Gray ran to the bushes where the wild chicken had darted out from earlier and bent down to rummage for something.
Not long after, he stood up holding things in his arms, ran back to Su Ran’s side with a happy face, and showed her what he was holding: “Ran Ran, bird egg!”
Su Ran looked down and saw it was surprisingly the green-skinned bird eggs that Gray had brought back some time ago.
It seemed that Su Ran and Gray’s walking sounds had startled the wild chicken incubating the eggs, so to save its life, the wild chicken had abandoned the baby to save itself!
Unexpectedly, it ran into the ruthless Su Ran, who didn’t care if you had family or not, and directly wiped out the whole nest!
After harvesting one wild chicken and a few eggs, Su Ran followed Gray to the place he had found where the last red fruits were still growing, picked a small half-backpack of red fruits, and perfectly filled the entire backpack.
Then she carried the securely tied wild chicken in one hand, while Gray held it in his arms, and they returned to the river beach side together.
That evening, the wild chicken went into Su Ran and Gray’s bellies.
The way Su Ran cooked this chicken was the simplest method she knew now for making chicken: beggars’ chicken.
After cleaning the chicken body thoroughly, she rubbed it with oil, salt, and a little chili juice, then stuffed chopped red fruits and green soap fruits into the belly.
Then she wrapped it solidly in two layers of sweet leaf vein tree leaves on the outside, finally coated it with mud, and put it in the fire to bake until done.
Gray had eaten roasted internal organs made the same way before, so he didn’t find it strange watching Su Ran wrap this wild chicken in mud.
When the time was about right, Su Ran pulled the beggars’ chicken, now baked into a large clod of earth, out from the campfire. She used a wooden stick to knock off the outer layer of hard earth still emitting heat.
As the broken earth chunks fell away, a meat aroma completely different from that of white-headed sheep or four-eared ox meat spread around the river beach.
Su Ran smelled the tantalizing roasted chicken aroma; the rich meat scent carried a faint fruity sweetness that dispelled the greasiness of the meat aroma.
Without her calling, after smelling this roasted chicken, Gray darted to Su Ran’s side and started swallowing saliva at the beggars’ chicken she hadn’t fully unpacked yet.
Soon after, the whole chicken was eaten clean by Su Ran and Gray, not even leaving the green soap fruits that had fully ripened inside the chicken belly.
After eating, the two even unconsciously licked their lips.
The tenderness of the wild chicken meat was completely different from the tenderness of the four-legged animal meat they had eaten before.
The tender texture of the chicken meat, combined with the Q-bouncy, oily, fragrant skin after roasting, made Su Ran, who had always preferred chicken meat before, even more delighted with today’s roast wild chicken.
This also led to Gray’s hunting prey over the next six or seven days being basically all this kind of wild chicken.
The wild chicken’s body was small, so he would catch six or seven at a time, and each time he also brought back many green-skinned wild eggs.
Now the eggs that Su Ran had saved up and couldn’t finish eating had already filled a small half basin.
At this time, Su Ran began to consider the matter of building a house.
The time in this world had now fully entered summer.
So far, Su Ran felt that the seasonal changes in this world were very similar to those on Earth.
So if the seasonal changes in this world were really the same as on Earth for a year, then from summer to autumn, autumn to winter, the time left to build a house capable of overwintering before winter would really not be much.
After all, to build a house, just the preliminary preparation of building materials would take her a lot of time.
Moreover, since she was going to build a house, she wanted to make it bigger.
It needed a sleeping room, kitchen, and storage room; such a house wouldn’t be anything on Earth, but here it was a big project.
Having decided to build a house, Su Ran began to pay attention to the wood or stones she saw every day that could be used as building materials.
From the start, she passed on the option of building a mud house and instead turned her gaze to the stones upstream of the river beach.
She wanted to build a stone brick house.
With the existence of black-flowered Malan grass, obtaining stone bricks was not a problem, just requiring more time and effort.
But once the house was built, it could last for many years.
The house walls would be made of stone bricks, the roof beams could be made of wood like the rain shelter, then topped with a thin layer of stone slabs to replace cement boards.
However, the only current difficulty was that she had no cement.
Without cement, there was no way to bond the stone bricks together.
Su Ran had seen science popularization that ancient people also burned lime from seashells, then mixed it with sand and clay to make building materials.
Su Ran thought about the possibility of trying this herself, but in the end felt that this method seemed the most reliable.
Otherwise, apart from this method, the most reliable remaining option would probably be to mix soil with grass segments and mud!
After carefully simulating the materials, construction process, and building methods in her mind, the next day, Su Ran began deliberately collecting seashells.
Besides picking some shellfish at the seaside every day with Gray, she also picked up all the seashells that the other beastmen had eaten before.
For this, she specially sewed a large animal hide bag from animal hide, just to pick more each day and make it convenient to carry.
Thus, in less than half a month, Su Ran had piled two seashell heaps over a meter high outside the rain shelter on the river beach side, right next to the rain shelter.
The shellfish picked back that couldn’t be eaten were all dried into dried shellfish and stored in jars for slow consumption.
Gray had always been curious about why Su Ran was collecting seashells; after Su Ran’s patient explanations, although he couldn’t imagine what the “house” Su Ran described was, he understood that Su Ran wanted to build a dwelling on the ground.
After understanding that Su Ran wanted to build a house to live on the ground, the vitality in Gray’s pair of glowing green eyes instantly faded.
