We made you the chief, and now you've become the world's chief?

Chapter 129 The Revitalized Xia Tribe
“That’s not right! You didn’t do as the chief said.”

"I'm right, the chief is wrong!"

Beside the huge rock, an old man and a young man began to argue.

The young man struck again with his chisel, and the huge stone shell shattered, a small portion of which fell off, leaving behind a perfectly smooth, curved surface.

Then he looked at the old man, but the young man was not going to say any of the principles he had heard from the chief. Instead, he spoke directly.

"The chief must be right. If you don't listen to the chief, you won't be able to break the big rocks properly, you won't have salt to eat, and the chief will even have someone stab you with a bronze spear!"

Startled, the old man immediately fell silent and turned to begin chiseling at the large rock in front of him.

But after a while, the old man's expression turned strange. Then he looked at the young man beside him and became angry, because he felt like he was being treated like a stupid duck that had willingly swum into a trap.

"The chief said that as long as no one does what is done on the stone slab, no one will be impaled by the bronze spear."

"You can't even read the stone slab."

"I can understand it. I'll understand it in a few days. I'll go to learn characters every morning!"

The young man was too lazy to say anything more. He had heard this old man from the Da clan, who claimed to be able to make the best stone tools, say such things twenty days ago, but he had not seen the old man write even a single word.

Unlike myself, who could read all the words on the old stone slab during the rainy season and thus got such a good job.

If you carve this large stone well, you can get a clay pot every ten days, and the pot is half-filled with salt.

These not only allow me to have enough meat and taro to eat every day, but also save me the amount of red salt at the bottom of a jar.

Unfortunately, the earthenware jars and salt couldn't be exchanged for a mud house. He didn't want to live in a dormitory; he wanted his own mud house so he could properly store his belongings.

He wanted an earthen house, but he could only marry a woman. However, the women of the Wu and Xi clans did not want to marry him, and he had heard that the women of the Li clan liked to beat men, so he dared not.

It is possible to marry a woman from the Da clan, but if you marry a woman from the Da clan, you have to live on the other side of the river.

He didn't want to go to the other side of the river; Salt Spring Mountain was much better than the other side...

Suddenly realizing that he had been neglecting his work because of these choices, the young man shook his head and continued to carefully move the chisel in his hand.

He had never faced any choices before; all he could do was try to survive, so it's no wonder he's now feeling lost...

boom!
With a thud of the wooden mallet, the bronze chisel chipped off another piece of the outer layer. Seeing that the remaining surface had the "uneven cracks" the chief had mentioned, the young man quickly moved the chisel to the other side to make corrections.

Compared to the young man's skill, the old man next to him was much more awkward. He accidentally started chiseling directly at the large rock, just like he used to do when making stone tools.

Although others scoffed at him, he would still secretly say that the chief was wrong.

It was because he couldn't adapt to the methods taught by the chief, which completely changed his habit of making stone tools that he had developed over the past twenty years.

But he knew in his heart that this method was indeed better, because it allowed some young people to easily make good stone tools.

I was originally very confident about the stonemason assessment that the chief said he would be holding in a while.

After becoming a stonemason, even if you don't work on stones, you can get a whole jar of salt every full moon.

But now, the old man is also a little afraid that he will not become a stonemason.

Thinking of this, he swallowed hard and finally made up his mind to carve the huge stone in the way the chief had suggested.

Just as I was trying to figure out where to place the chisel, I suddenly heard a voice behind me.

"Grandpa, Mom asked me to bring you taro from across the river. It's the first batch grown using the method the chief taught us, and the taro are huge!"

The old man turned around and first saw his granddaughter, a smile appearing on his face. Then he looked at the taro in his granddaughter's hand, his expression instantly turning to surprise.

So big!
He had never seen such a big taro before. The ones he ate before were all small, and this one was too big to fit in one bite.

"Eating this won't make my tongue itchy, unlike the ones I ate before."

The granddaughter giggled twice when she saw her grandfather's expression, and then continued speaking.

"This is what the chief said we dug out. Now we only need to dig once per full moon, and everything we dig out is big!"

Hearing the voices behind him, the young man, disturbed from his work, frowned slightly, turned his head unhappily, and glanced at Taro.

No matter how big a taro is, it's not as delicious as crocodile meat, not even as good as fish.

Although he hadn't eaten snakehead fish for a long time after fishing was banned, he still remembered the taste.

Just as I was about to turn around, I caught a glimpse of the undulations beneath the long robe out of the corner of my eye…

Then, with a hint of reluctance, his gaze moved upwards and landed on the face of the old man and his granddaughter.

At that prime of youth, full of vigor and vitality, he instantly stood up straight...

At that moment, he suddenly felt that living on the other side of the river wasn't so bad.

In a daze, the young man suddenly remembered a word he had never heard before that the chief had mentioned a few days ago.

love……

Could this state of my being be love?

……

……

……

"It will bite off..."

"will not."

"Ugh, I'm scared..."

I've unlocked a few new poses, but they're not as fun anymore.

"It's time to get down to business."

After putting on his windbreaker, Xia Minghao pushed open the door and went out.

Dali, on the other hand, was somewhat worried, pinching and squeezing the food to check if it had been bitten.

If it gets chewed up, we won't be able to feed it to the child.

At this time, Yanquan Mountain was already bustling with activity.

Looking at the sundial, it was about nine o'clock in the morning.

Looking back into Yanquan Mountain, Xia Minghao immediately spotted the three stone statues.

Although it is quite simple, the features have still been abstracted.

Their facial features were completely unlike those of these white people; everyone could tell at a glance that this was their own stone statue.

The reason for doing this is certainly not due to any arrogance or overconfidence.

Xia Minghao has always adhered to the principle of pragmatism and has not relaxed his efforts so far.

After all, there's a wolf clan that might attack from the grassland above the waterfall upstream of the small river, and a totem tribe by the large river downstream of the small river.

To be a foolish ruler at this time is simply courting death...

The reason for building these two stone statues of himself was also to further enhance his power.

Especially after leaving to explore the floodplains, it's uncertain how long it will take to stabilize the situation there before returning to Salt Spring Mountain.

With these "clones" here—one on the other side of the river, one inside the Salt Spring Mountain, and another in the Strange Tree area—it can serve as a reminder to these people and help them maintain their "habit of obedience."

After inspecting the work in various places, Xia Minghao finally arrived at the iron smelting shed.

Unlike the bronze-making shed where seven or eight people are busy, the iron-smelting shed has only had Xia Minghao working there for the past few days.

But today, there's an extra leaf.

"Chief."

Ye Zi's eyes were somewhat dark, it seemed she was worried about the Wind Tribe members who had not yet recovered.

"How are your people?"

Xia Minghao asked, but Ye Zi just shook her head silently.

It seems that this kind of psychological trauma is quite difficult to treat. More than 20 days have passed, and there is still no sign of improvement.

Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about psychology, and this is a very special case, so I can't offer any help at all.

As a result, the Leaf's people are unable to become a productive force like the Leaf, which is truly worrying.

After offering Ye Zi a few words of comfort, Xia Minghao began adding charcoal and clearing the ventilation holes, preparing to try smelting iron again in this blast furnace, which had undergone several improvements. If there was anything more troublesome, it was this iron smelting process.

Xia Minghao was extremely depressed because he couldn't melt that small iron ore no matter what he tried.

The furnace has been improved again, and it is now using ultra-high-quality coal that was burned just a few days ago.

With the combined power of his own and Yezi's totems, he was confident that the furnace temperature would be sufficient to handle the iron ore!

Once he was ready, Xia Minghao put on the bracelet and immediately began to search for that feeling.

Two streams of air were generated simultaneously and converged towards one point.

Just as Xia Minghao was about to see how powerful the gathered airflow was, he suddenly felt that the airflow he had created was beginning to disappear intermittently!
He quickly looked at Ye Zi and saw that Ye Zi also looked astonished.

"Chief, why..."

Could it be that the power of totems interferes with each other, preventing them from stacking?
Seeing that Ye Zi also had this feeling, Xia Minghao immediately felt a sense of foreboding.

Frowning, what was originally intended as iron smelting turned into conducting experiments with Ye Zi.

After trying various methods and conducting superposition experiments, Xia Minghao's brows gradually relaxed.

Indeed, they cannot be superimposed. If two totem forces act simultaneously in the same space, they will affect each other.

Even if the wind blows in different directions, they will repel each other as long as they get close.

During this period, I was extremely busy with various matters, including raising wild ducks on the other side of the river, scientifically harvesting and replanting taro, and making bronze artifacts in Yanquan Mountain.

Xia Minghao therefore did not have time to conduct experiments on the power of totems.

It turns out that there are actually situations where totem powers interfere with each other, which greatly lowers the upper limit of this power.

This is certainly a bad thing, but it's also a good thing.

By inferring the unknown from the known, we can at least conclude that other totem tribes probably don't possess any powerful "combination skills."

"It's alright, Yezi, you should go and rest."

"Yes, Chief."

Ye Zi nodded apologetically, feeling that she hadn't been able to help, before leaving.

As Xia Minghao watched Ye Zi's departing figure, he was still pondering what kind of energy transmission form this totem power was.

But wishful thinking is unlikely to yield any useful answers, and there are no conditions to conduct experiments, making it even more difficult to summarize the true commonalities.

Perhaps only when we possess the power of other elemental totems will we be able to discover more of its mysteries.

If we can gain a deeper understanding, we might even be able to make totem power independent and become a special form of energy, thereby achieving a completely new technological breakthrough.

However, this will inevitably require a lot of research. It is estimated that it will take a very long time before we have the ability to establish a research facility, and we will also need a sufficient number of people with scientific literacy.

This is not something Xia Minghao can covet right now. He should focus on the task at hand: refining iron.

In fact, in theory, he could have done it all by himself.

Now, with this wind stone bracelet, it is possible to generate wind that is slightly stronger than that of the blades, and it is continuous, more coherent, and more powerful than the wind produced by a normal bellows.

In theory, the iron ore should have been able to be melted.

We've improved the blast furnace many times, and even the charcoal has been improved. I refuse to believe we can't melt it this time!

……

"Hey, this is really weird..."

Seeing that even the ceramic crucible had cracked from being fired, the iron ore hadn't cracked at all!

How could it not fuse?
Melting is only the first step; the other step is to keep it in a liquid state.

But now, they can't even take the first step...

Is it...

Xia Minghao picked up a piece of iron ore and examined it himself.

Could this not be iron ore at all?

But it can be attracted by magnetism...

The only minerals that can be attracted by magnets are iron, cobalt, and nickel, and this one doesn't look like it could be an ore of either of those.

It's even less likely to be a new element, since the periodic table is already full, so where would a new element come from?

Could it be influenced by the totem power that exists in this world?

That doesn't make sense, though. The malachite was fine before, wasn't it?

Or is it a special case?

After putting forward many conjectures, Xia Minghao felt they were all unreliable.

If this thing isn't iron, then what is it?
Xia Minghao really couldn't figure out what kind of mineral could be formed in nature that was so similar in properties to iron ore.

My major is not relevant to this field, so I don't understand it at all.

The limited knowledge of engineering geology is simply insufficient to solve the current problem.

It seems that all the hard work of the past few days will have to be put on hold for now.

When we have the opportunity later, we'll figure out what it is if it's not iron, and if it is iron, why it can't be melted.

"Chief, Chief!"

After examining the spherical iron ore for a while, they heard a sound coming from under the bronze-working shed across the street.

"Chief! Chief!"

When he heard someone calling him, Xia Minghao thought that the farm tools such as sickles and hoes that he had arranged had been made.

Now that there are no external threats for the time being, they have begun to reforge the spears and halberds in batches.

What is forged will naturally be the agricultural tools needed to flood the plains.

Xia Minghao even made special improvements to tools like sickles and hoes, so that they could not only be used for farming but also for killing.

"Is the sickle ready?"

"No, Chief, I mean the guillotine you mentioned!"

The guillotine is finally ready?!

Actually, if Xia Minghao had given the instructions personally, making the guillotine wouldn't have been difficult.

However, because he had been busy building the large ship, Xia Minghao simply handed over the manufacture of the guillotine to everyone as a test.

If you already possess the ability to complete tasks independently, then when you arrive at the Floodplain, you can confidently entrust these people with tasks that are as complex as the guillotine.

"Get me a pork bone, the biggest one."

"Yes, Chief!"

A clever young man who was helping with the bronze smelting immediately picked out the largest one and brought it over.

With a few simple maneuvers, and under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the wind-driven wedge-shaped bronze piece crashed down, instantly splitting the bone in two.

"This can cut bones very quickly!"

Actually, nobody knew what this thing was used for. Now that we've seen it, we can make some guesses.

bone?

Xia Minghao smiled faintly, "I'm not cutting the bone, I'm cutting the neck!"

He didn't explain, but instead looked at the small mud house in the distance.

At this time, the prison that had been specially built some time ago was where Gandan, who had been tortured and was covered in wounds, was sent.

And soon, Gaden will be able to come out.

After finding Hima, Xia Minghao asked Hima to organize people and gather as many as possible together.

Hima was puzzled, but she immediately accepted the order.

Xia Minghao then prepared to give Gandan one last interrogation, as a final farewell.

(End of this chapter)