Chapter 13: Playing with Mud

He dove twice in succession, yet not a single fish shadow appeared. Initially, he had intended to dive a third time for confirmation, but perhaps due to skipping breakfast and having been hungry for most of the previous day, his blood sugar was low.

Now, collapsed by the lakeside, his entire body was dizzy and his vision blurred. Had he not surfaced at that moment, he might have sunk directly to the bottom. After a long while, he finally managed to catch his breath.

During this period, as the three tribe members were about to call for help, uncertain about what to do, Zhou Xu weakly waved them off.

"I'm fine. How's the mud excavation going?"

"We've dug quite a bit already," one of the mud-covered tribe members replied, pointing nearby.

"Is this enough, Chief? If not, we can keep digging."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Xu tilted his head and glanced at the pile of mud, which was already heaped into a small mound. But to him, it was clearly insufficient.

"Keep digging."

Using only two hands, the efficiency was indeed low. Even Zhou Xu couldn't fashion any decent tools for them at the moment.

There was no choice; these tasks had to be tackled one by one.

Accepting the reality of no fish resources, Zhou Xu took advantage of this rest period to adjust the plan for the coming days in his mind.

Once the adjustments were mostly done, and his body had largely recovered, he focused on his afternoon agenda. Besides confirming whether the saltwater lake contained fish and continuing to dig mud, the most crucial task was to study pottery-making.

If he could successfully fire a clay pot, fresh water could be stored in advance, avoiding the current tight scarcity.

However, Zhou Xu did not intend to start playing with mud outright.

To do a job well, one must first sharpen the tools.

Although Zhou Xu had never studied pottery, he enjoyed drinking tea and collecting teacups.

To avoid being taken advantage of, he had researched a bit, gaining some mostly impractical knowledge.

Tea cups are not exactly pottery but porcelain, yet both are made from clay and fired, sharing some commonalities.

What is most important for firing such vessels? A kiln, preferably one enclosed by walls; this maintains a higher and more stable internal temperature.

So now, he needed to use the stones he had gathered to build a kiln capable of sustaining a stable internal heat.

It couldn't be too large, and he had to make do with a modest one.

Since the stones wouldn't fit together perfectly, Zhou Xu simply plastered the gaps with mud.

This was also a major reason he had the three tribe members continue digging: he needed enough lake mud to seal the kiln.

Using a small, relatively flat bone plate the size of a palm as a tool to apply the mud, he layered the plaster several times.

At first glance, the kiln looked fairly credible.

"Almost done."

Setting the bone plate aside, Zhou Xu looked at the kiln that had begun to take shape, patted the mud off his hands, and nodded with some satisfaction.

Yet, the pottery firing work could not officially begin just yet.

Making pottery is not a matter of simply shaping the clay and firing it immediately; after molding, the clay must air dry naturally, a process that takes at least two or three days.

He was still in the preparation phase.

Taking a sip of water, Zhou Xu leisurely walked to the lake edge and began gathering mud.

"This feeling is quite peculiar."

After all, playing with mud was something he had only done as a child; as an adult, he rarely engaged in such activities.

Not attempting anything large from the start, he shaped some mud into a small rice bowl.

Since he was a complete novice at pottery, he did not expect to succeed on the first try and anticipated multiple failures along the way.

Crafting small bowls was more manageable; if one got ruined in firing, he could simply make another. Through this method, he aimed to accumulate experience, and once he could reliably fire small bowls, he would move on to larger pots.

This avoided wasting effort on large vessels prematurely, only to ruin them in the kiln.

Zhou Xu's manual dexterity was limited, and as he was no seasoned craftsman, the small bowls he shaped were somewhat irregular; none looked exactly alike at a glance.

With minor adjustments, they reached a barely presentable standard.

Fortunately, pottery itself was not inherently difficult, and since everyone was a first-timer, he might not perform much worse than the natives.

"From now on, it's up to you. Place the shaped clay bowls here to dry."

He led by example, making five or six bowls. Once the tribe members beside him had roughly grasped the technique, the task naturally fell to them.

He noticed that under these harsh conditions, the tribe members’ spirits were generally better than his.

Or rather, their bodies had long since adapted to eating only a few bites and drinking scarce water each day, whereas Zhou Xu’s body clearly had not.

At this point, he was both hungry and exhausted, compelled to sit by the fire to drink water and rest, occasionally guiding the craft squad on basket weaving. When free, he would close his eyes and take brief naps.

That was until the gathering team, led by Dashan, returned.

"Chief, as per your instructions, we collected plenty of stones and far more branches than on any previous occasion!"

By the end of his report, Dashan’s voice was brimming with uncontainable excitement.

At this moment, the gathering team had stacked bundles of branches together, forming a small mountain nearly a person’s height!

This amount meant that for the next two or three days, they would not need to deliberately collect firewood; picking some up casually while doing other tasks would suffice.

The freed manpower could then be devoted to other arrangements.

"Well done. Thank you for your hard work."

After inspecting the timber and stones collected by Dashan and his team, Zhou Xu generously praised them.

"Oh, by the way, how many insects did you catch?"

This was undoubtedly one of Zhou Xu’s greatest concerns at present, as it directly affected how much food each person would receive that night.

The results proved quite impressive; by quantity, at least two to three times more than before.

But on reflection, it was hardly surprising.

They had arrived yesterday late in the day, with many tasks to tackle and little time to gather insects.

Unlike today, when they set out early in the morning, dedicating most of the day to collecting branches, stones, and catching insects — naturally yielding more than the previous day.