The tribe of Green Sparrow does not lack tree bark.
Clearing land has always been ongoing in the tribe, and many trees have been felled.
Some of these trees, if suitable, are kept as building materials, while those that cannot be utilized are burned into charcoal.
With the smelting of copper, the tribe's demand for charcoal has increased significantly.
Used charcoal is used to fertilize the fields.
The remaining small branches and leaves are collected to be used as firewood, fully utilizing the resources.
However, before these trees were used for various purposes, people stripped off their 'clothing,' and Han Cheng initiated this.
When the Divine Child gives an order, the people in the tribe always act with great enthusiasm, never asking why, only how to do it, which is characteristic of most people.
The continuous sound echoes as several more bundles of tree bark are thrown into the retting pit.
Han Cheng knows that the first step of papermaking, like retting hemp, involves using microorganisms in the water to remove substances from the tree bark, leaving behind the fibers.
This step also becomes a major source of wastewater for the papermaking process.
However, wastewater is not a significant issue for the Green Sparrow tribe, as the land is being increasingly cultivated, and the tribe’s fertilizer needs are already outpacing the supply.
Under such circumstances, Han Cheng doesn’t mind the extra wastewater from retting hemp or tree bark.
Retting tree bark is time-consuming, so after throwing the bark into the water pit, Han Cheng has free time to do other things.
Now, he is thinking about the long rectangular objects that people in the picture carried to dry.
From the illustration, it seems that these are key tools for making paper.
After thinking for a while and still not understanding, Han Cheng leaves the tribe and walks westward.
Sometimes, when he can’t figure something out, he finds it helpful to change his surroundings and clear his mind.
For Han Cheng, the best way to clear his mind is to go into the fields, pull weeds, and fertilize the crops. Such activities always help him relax.
This might be related to his natural talent for gardening.
The millet is lush and green, and it’s almost time to bloom. The beans, planted in over two acres, have grown as tall as his calves. Han Cheng inspects them and finds no bean weevils under the leaves, which look unpleasant but can be sold for a high price.
These days, what captures Han Cheng’s attention the most is not the fields of beans or millet but the patch of land next to the vegetable garden full of various plants.
This land often surprises him with unexpected discoveries.
Han Cheng squats down and pulls a root from a plant in the patch.
At first glance, this plant's leaves look a bit like sweet potato leaves, but on closer inspection, they are quite different.
When he smells it, a strong fishy odor wafts up.
Yes, this plant is fish mint, one of the pleasant surprises he found in this messy patch of vegetation.
Despite its unpleasant smell, fish mint is a rare and valuable ingredient.
When spring arrives, the fish mint, dormant throughout the winter, emerges from the ground, tender and reddish.
The tender shoots of fish mint at this time, when plucked and briefly blanched in hot water, then cooled and seasoned, are truly a rare and delicious treat.
Fish mint is not only tasty but also an excellent medicinal herb. Han Cheng doesn’t know all of its benefits, but one he remembers very clearly is its ability to treat coughs.
In his past life, there was a patch of fish mint by the family’s vegetable garden. Whenever someone had a cough, they pluck a handful, wash it, and put it in a pot to boil for two bowls of water. Drinking it would cure the cough.
Compared to fish mint, Han Cheng would have preferred to have sweet potatoes.
After all, sweet potatoes are a high-yield crop that doesn’t require much from the soil.
They are also easy to eat—just dig them out of the ground, rinse them off, and they can be eaten raw, boiled, or steamed in water. Very convenient.
This is unlike beans, millet, rice, and wheat, which require many complex and laborious steps from harvest to consumption.
Once cut and dried into sweet potato chips, they also last longer.
However, such a good thing is something Han Cheng can only think about in his mind. After all, sweet potatoes are not native to this land, and to obtain them, one would have to cross the ocean by boat and venture into the tropical rainforests.
Looking back at the tribe’s dugout canoe, Han Cheng decided it was best to give up on that idea.
Obtaining sweet potatoes is not entirely impossible.
Han Cheng suddenly remembered something: until now, he still couldn’t confirm the exact location of his tribe. Obtaining sweet potatoes might not be out of the question if this crossing wasn’t to Earth but to another world.
After thinking this through, the image of a national treasure he saw in the bamboo forest near Lu River appeared in Han Cheng’s mind, breaking his idle musings.
With such creatures around, the likelihood that he is on a different continent is not very high.
Han Cheng shifted his gaze from the fish mint and walked to another spot. He didn’t go far before stopping. Here, he discovered another surprise.
This surprise was radishes!
With purple-red stems, green leaves, and tiny hairs growing on them that feel prickly to the touch, these plants look strikingly similar to the radish leaves of his previous world.
At this point, Han Cheng could confirm that these were radishes, as not long ago, he had pulled one up and tasted the root, which was about the size of his pinky finger.
The familiar radish taste was there, but the texture was far inferior to the radishes of his past life—less juice, less flesh, and not very crisp. Many ‘fibers’ were inside, making it a bit difficult to eat.
Moreover, while the leaves of these radishes looked very lush, the roots underneath weren’t growing very large.
However, they were about the size of a finger and were already trying to flower.
Han Cheng realized that growing the radishes he was familiar with would require years of careful cultivation.
But no matter what, this was still a good thing.
External factors can easily influence people’s emotions. Take Han Cheng, for instance, who had been feeling overwhelmed by the papermaking task. But his mood quickly improved after being stimulated by the fish mint and radishes.
And then, he resumed thinking about the papermaking process...
Five days later, Han Cheng pulled a bundle of tree bark out of the retting pit.
The retting process didn’t go as well as expected, but he persisted and retrieved the bark. After all, he was unfamiliar with papermaking, so he needed to experiment.
Han Cheng still needs to figure out the optimal retting time for papermaking tree bark through trial and error.