activa-t Chapter 17 The Baby's Death: The Dark Raven
Chapter 17 The Baby's Death: The Dark Raven
After the rain, the sky cleared, and the bright moon shone brightly.
This moon, regardless of the changing times or the ups and downs of human life, has remained unchanged throughout the ages.
The moonlight, like water, quietly poured over the wooden frame of the cabin and platform.
The giant golden pumpkin vine stretched out each leaf with all its might, absorbing the scattered moonlight. A faint, shimmering white halo gradually appeared on the edges of the leaves, as if coated with a thin layer of frost. The eight smaller golden pumpkins were not to be outdone, breathing in and out towards the high-hanging bright moon.
With each breath, the melon seemed to expand and contract.
A radiant light enveloped the melon, shimmering and dazzling, like a dream.
Through the radiant light, one could vaguely see delicate and adorable infants lying among the eight small golden gourds, their eyes closed, their little mouths open, whimpering as if they were having a sweet dream.
A stream of air, like a mother's milk, flowed into my mouth from the vines and the melon itself.
As the airflow entered, the baby's body slowly grew, and its originally wrinkled little face gradually smoothed out, becoming fuller and rosier.
"Croak... Croak..."
A harbinger raven flapped its wings and cawed loudly as it flew overhead. I glanced down casually and was suddenly startled.
What is that?
The harbinger crow immediately flapped its wings, turned, and swooped down.
The raven is the most unwelcome bird in the boundless, wild jungle, for wherever it appears, death is sure to follow. Wherever it passes, beasts flee, insects fall silent, and even the grass and trees seem to lose their color.
Before long, the harbinger crow landed on the wooden frame, folded its wings, lowered its head, and stared intently at the eight small golden gourds that emitted a shimmering, precious light, its pupils flashing with greed.
The little golden gourds sensed the movement and immediately woke up.
The precious light instantly subsided, and the luster on the melon dimmed, making it look exactly like an ordinary golden melon—green with a hint of yellow, plain and unremarkable.
The crow's eyes flashed with an unusual light, and then it lowered its head to peck at the small golden gourd at its feet.
"Hoo"
A sudden, sharp whooshing sound erupted as the first golden melon swung on the vine and hurtled out with the speed of a fighter jet, slamming heavily onto the crow's head. In an instant, red and white sprayed from the crow's shattered skull, tracing a dazzling arc in the moonlight.
The crow's body stiffened abruptly, its eerie green eyes instantly losing their luster, and it could no longer stand, plummeting straight to the ground.
As if premeditated, the tendrils of the giant pumpkin vine swiftly emerged from the soil, several thick roots tightly binding the corpse of the raven and dragging it into the darkness. No sound was made, no trace was left, as if the raven had never existed.
The third golden gourd sprayed a stream of water into the air, which turned into a fine rain that gently sprinkled on the places stained with red and white.
Water droplets sparkled in the moonlight, washing over the platform and cleansing away all the grime. In no time, everything was spotless and refreshing.
The cabin returned to its peaceful state, as if nothing had happened.
The little golden gourds continued to sleep, their bodies enveloped in a renewed glow with each breath; the large golden gourd vines continued to stretch their leaves, quietly absorbing the earth's energy and the moonlight. A night breeze blew, rustling the vines like a soft lullaby.
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It was sunny and hot today, the sun was blazing, and the ground was steaming with heat.
Cai Xuan didn't rush out to work; he wanted to wait until the ground was a little drier before going.
Taking advantage of this free time, he planned to cut down the trees on the hillside below, clear the land, and plant it all with sweet potatoes and purple sweet potatoes, so that he wouldn't be too busy storing food to care about anything else when the food ran out. While cutting down trees and clearing land, he also dug a hole on the hillside, intending to burn some charcoal and make some tools, such as knives, arrowheads, and wooden chisels.
Although practicing the Zonghe Horizontal Training Method did indeed make my body stronger, the rate at which I consumed food also increased exponentially.
He didn't know how long the little food he had at home would last, so he wanted to forge a knife, a gun, or arrowheads, and also make a bow so he could go hunting. He had discovered that only meat could truly replenish the energy depleted from his martial arts training; the Nine Oxen Divine Strength Potatoes were still a bit lacking.
The good news is that since I started practicing external martial arts and eating three-colored crabs, my body no longer has that explosive feeling of strength and the urge to vent wildly. Now it can only fill my stomach and satisfy my cravings.
In addition to clearing land, he also plans to build a straight road from the rocky mountain to the banks of the Longjiang River.
His insistence on clearing a path served two purposes: first, to have a coordinate system to avoid getting lost in the dense jungle; and second, to avoid snakes and insects. Being from southern Fujian, he knew all too well the swarms of snakes and insects that roamed the area in summer. He recalled that back home, in the summer, any shady, green place would be infested with bamboo pit vipers; the water's edge would be teeming with black-banded kraits; and before winter, venomous snakes would inevitably crawl into the house. Encountering snakes while walking was perfectly normal.
Everything is for safety.
Cai Xuan didn't actually know how to make charcoal, but fortunately he had watched a lot of related videos and downloaded related content on his phone.
So, following the instructions in the video, he dug a hole on the hillside, then dug a ventilation opening behind it, stuffed the dried wood inside, and lit it. Once it had burned to a certain extent, he sealed the hole and then left it alone, waiting to open the kiln.
When I opened the kiln, wow, it really turned into charcoal! Looks like I have a talent for charcoal making.
He transported the charcoal back and stored it in the storage room on the first floor, then continued clearing the land.
After several days, Cai Xuan finally finished clearing all the trees from the hillsides on both sides of the spring ditch.
This time, however, instead of cutting down all the trees like when clearing land for planting, they peeled a ring of bark from the base of the large trees that were difficult to cut, letting them wither and die slowly on their own. Only the smaller ones were cut down, to save time and effort.
He didn't waste any of the vines in the forest; he collected them all, scraped off the rough outer bark, and left the inner, flexible fibers to dry in the shade to make ropes. The thicker vines were used to make rattan chairs, rattan bows, or rattan shields.
While clearing the land, he discovered a lot of Nine Oxen Divine Potatoes.
The only difference was the quantity and size of the potato tubers. Even so, the dug-up Nine Oxen Power Potatoes filled the storage room on the first floor to the brim.
He worked tirelessly to grind what could be ground into flour, and sliced and dried what couldn't be ground, saving it for later use in soups.
In addition, he also tried using the residue left over from milling to brew wine. As for whether he could successfully brew it, that depended on whether God would be on his side.
After finishing all this, the weeds and trees cut down on both sides of the hillside were almost dried.
Cai Xuan divided them into piles and burned them. After burning them, he began digging pits.
This time, instead of leveling the land and creating ridges, he dug pits to plant purple sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are very easy to grow; they can grow in fields, sandy land, or wasteland, whether the land is neat and orderly or messy.
The hillside was covered with tree stumps, giant trees that hadn't died yet, and scattered stones. Leveling it would be too much trouble, so Cai Xuan chose to dig holes to plant them.
He dug out the soil from the pit, filled it with layers of wood ash and fertile humus, sprinkled a layer of compound fertilizer on top, and then covered it with the fresh soil he had dug out.
In this way, there is no need to fertilize in the early stages, which can be described as a lazy person's planting method.
If you look down from above, you'll see that the two dark hillsides are covered with countless holes, like burrows dug by moles. They're crooked and twisted, but they look quite amusing.
There is a large stream of water in the crevice of the rocks above the spring, which is level with the highest point of the hillside.
To facilitate irrigation, Cai Xuan dug a ditch at the top of the hillside, and then dug another ditch every five meters below, connecting each ditch to form a long, bow-shaped ditch running from top to bottom.
Both hillsides are the same.
After digging, he brought over two pieces of wood that he had cut down earlier, and used an axe to cut a "V" shaped groove in them. He placed one end of the wood at the spot where the spring water flowed out among the rocks, and the other end in the ditch.
The spring water gurgled down the groove into the ditch. When the first layer was full, it flowed to the second layer, down layer by layer, and finally into the mountain stream at the foot of the mountain.
Cai Xuan stood on the hillside, looking at his masterpiece, and laughed triumphantly.
In this way, we won't have to work so hard carrying water to irrigate the fields anymore.
After clearing the land and planting sweet potatoes and "Nine Oxen Divine Potatoes," he continued to carve out a road from the foot of Stone Mountain to Longjiang River. Not only that, once this road was open, he used it as a starting point to continue carving a road along the mountain stream to the right of Stone Mountain, following the tributaries where numerous mountain springs converge and flow into Longjiang River.