Chapter 99: Seashell Roof
The soreness on Su Ran’s body gradually began to improve after several days of the same high-intensity labor.
She had gritted her teeth and endured the first few days.
And after the most difficult days passed, her body seemed to gradually get used to such high-intensity activities.
At the end of each busy day, besides feeling a bit tired physically, she no longer felt any soreness.
And it wasn’t just that.
Her bricklaying skills also became more proficient, and her speed gradually increased.
Su Ran even thought that if one day she suddenly returned to Earth and couldn’t find a job, she could become a construction worker…
On the second day of starting to build the foundation, Hui also began learning bricklaying with Su Ran.
Now, although its actions were still a bit unskilled, because of its great strength, the speed at which it picked up stone bricks was much faster than Su Ran’s, so overall, it wasn’t much slower than Su Ran.
Occasionally, when Su Ran watched Hui laying stone bricks upwards, and then looked at the house in front of her that was slowly taking shape, a very fantastical feeling would always rise from the bottom of her heart.
The matter of building a house with tools and processed materials in a primitive savage wilderness world seemed very mismatched with this savage wilderness world.
With few workers, the progress of a major project would seem exceptionally slow.
Building the house frame took Su Ran and Hui nearly a month together.
During this time, besides resting for two days due to rain, and then Su Ran resting for a few days due to menstruation, Su Ran and Hui had been working non-stop every day.
And when Su Ran had her menstruation this time, although Hui’s reaction was still very nervous, it was no longer so panicked.
Su Ran’s menstruation came this time during daytime.
While she was washing her hands by the riverside preparing to eat breakfast, she suddenly felt something unusual below her body, and before she could react, Hui quickly smelled the scent.
Upon smelling the unusual scent on Su Ran’s body, it first frowned, showing confusion on its face.
Then its facial expression changed, as if it remembered something, and it immediately bent down to carry Su Ran back to the bird’s nest.
Then during this menstruation period, Su Ran once again felt the sensation of being cared for like a fragile doll.
Although this time it didn’t express its worry with the heart-wrenching howl like last time when it thought Su Ran was dying, it still stayed by Su Ran’s side almost without leaving an inch.
Even when Su Ran wanted it to go continue building the house first, it refused, stubbornly insisting on holding Su Ran and using its own body to keep her warm.
In the end, Su Ran had no choice, and Hui’s warm body temperature against her was indeed very comfortable, so she just let it be!
Moreover, perhaps because of the experience from last time, Su Ran felt that the comfort of being cared for this time was clearly much better than last time.
This made her a bit secretly happy.
Secretly happy that the beastman she encountered was it!
After menstruation ended, Su Ran threw herself back into the major undertaking of building the house.
And nearly a month after starting to build the house, the main frame of the house was finally completed.
Su Ran looked at the nearly three-meter-high brick wall in front of her, excited to the point of tears welling up, almost shedding tears!
It’s finally almost done!
To be honest, looking at the house frame in front of her that was just one last step away, Su Ran felt a little pride and a little sense of achievement from the bottom of her heart!
After the main frame of the house was completed, Su Ran dragged Hui to the seaside to pick up seashells for two days.
She wanted to use seashells to make the outermost layer of roof tiles, but because the previously collected seashells had all been used by her to make homemade cement, she had to collect more to make tiles.
After collecting them, Su Ran began using charcoal to mark on the previously prepared wood, then dug mortises and tenons on them.
Su Ran had no nails, so the beams and roof construction still had to use mortise and tenon structure.
After the beams were placed on the house, Su Ran had to first lay a layer of wooden boards on the beams.
And these wooden boards were made from the giant trees that Hui and A Huo had found at the beginning.
To saw open these giant trees, Su Ran also took out the wire saw from her tool bag.
As a result, this wire saw broke on the wood after less than three days of use, which made Su Ran feel heartbroken.
In the end, she could only let Hui claw them directly.
As for why not use the saw blade on the multi-tool axe, it was because that saw blade was really too short, not even half the diameter of these trees.
Moreover, Su Ran was worried that if the saw blade also got damaged, she would have no tools left that could saw wood.
After all, something like a saw blade isn’t easy to make with other things.
When installing the beams, besides Xiao Ju and A Jin happening to come over and help for two days at the end, the rest were basically installed by Su Ran and Hui themselves.
Transporting the beams with dug mortises to the roof wasn’t difficult; Hui could fly up with a whole log by itself.
The difficult part was how to install those wooden boards onto the beams.
Normally, with mortises on the beams, the wooden boards should have tenons left when made.
But if she had to leave an extra protruding piece of wood on the wooden boards while sawing them out, that technique was really too challenging for Su Ran.
In the end, after sitting on the wood and thinking for half a day, at noon she remembered there was another way to connect two pieces of wood together.
Now, mortises had already been dug on the wood for the roof beams.
So Su Ran directly dug mortises of the same size on the positions of the wooden boards that could align with the mortises on the roof beams.
Then she aligned the mortises on the two different pieces of wood, sawed out a piece of wood the same size as the mortises, and nailed it into the two stacked mortises.
After nailing, Su Ran shook the wooden board connected to the roof beam.
It didn’t move an inch.
Perfect!
So using this method, Su Ran and Hui laid wooden boards over the entire roof in just one day.
After laying them, Su Ran spread a layer of fine sand and soil on top of the wooden boards, then sealed it with a layer of homemade cement.
Then came the final step.
She pressed the picked seashells one by one onto the roof using the unset cement.
Even the chimney standing on the roof wasn’t spared.
And the reason for placing seashells, besides Su Ran wanting them to serve some decorative purpose, was also that, although the roof was sealed with a layer of cement, she wasn’t sure about the waterproof performance of this cement.
So placing a layer of seashells on top could also serve as a layer of waterproofing.
For this, Su Ran was exceptionally careful and serious when pressing the seashells into the cement.
After all, she didn’t want the house she had finally built to experience constant heavy rain outside and drizzling rain inside after just a few days of living!
