Fearsome Farmer - Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Fire-Lacking Brick

5 AM: Li Siwen woke up from his dream, spirited and in excellent condition.

Lighting up the fire stove, he threw in some stalks and leaves, letting its scent fill the air in the treehouse. Then, carrying his mountain ax and back basket, Li Siwen jumped out from the treehouse and did his patrol of the territory.

The sky had lit up, a few patches of clouds floated in the light blue sky, floating freely in the sky as some wind blew on it.

Without a doubt, it was another sunny day, and it was also the weather Li Siwen currently needed the most.

If this kind of weather could continue for another 10, no, just five more days, he could complete the basic framework for his safe house strategy.

Half an hour later, Li Siwen returned from his patrol. He briefly stayed at the farmland and checked that the crops were growing well, feeling thrilled in his heart.

Although there was a high chance he wouldn’t be able to eat the improved millets this year’s winter, there was always hope if he ripened them generation after generation.

Returning to the treehouse, Li Siwen took off the back basket. Inside, it was filled with the mushrooms he picked. He dispersed them on the roof to dry in the sunlight. It basically needed only two days to become dried mushrooms and be stored up. By winter, he might even eat chicken boiled in mushroom soup.

Swallowing down a mouth of saliva and putting an end to this thought, Li Siwen drew a bucket of water from the well. The water quality was much better than yesterday and the water level had risen too. According to this water output, he could mold bricks in large amounts today.

Pouring the well water into the wok, he threw in a handful of wild vegetables, a bunch of washed mushrooms, plus five kilograms of dried fish. Placing the wok on the stove, he threw in a few firewoods and left it by itself.

Coming out of the treehouse, Li Siwen started opening up the darkened furnace. It was darkened because sealing wasn’t enough and the smoke caused it to darken.

Extracting a brick on the outside, he could see the part on the inside near the fire was slightly glowing red. But it wasn’t the normal red, it was slightly white. Knocking on it with his finger, it sounded quite muffled. As for the hardness, he only slightly used strength with his fingers and the brick broke—

With no question, the bricks used for making the furnace were all useless now. This caused Li Siwen to have a bad feeling inside his heart, until he completely tore apart the furnace, and couldn’t see anything because of the flashing light inside. But at least, those inside were all red mixed with white, their color was quite unison.

“So this is because the heat wasn’t hot enough and caused a lack of fire?”

Picking up a brick, he knocked it with his finger. The sound was slightly better, just slightly. As for the hardness, he hit it with his fist, and nothing happened to his fist, while the brick broke again.

“Not enough sealing, not enough heat. I need to continue adding firewood or maybe charcoal? Never mind, charcoal requirements are too high, not only do I do not have any knowledge related to it, there isn’t enough time to try to make it too.”

Li Siwen pondered to himself. Actually, he was already very satisfied. Fire-lacking brick was still a brick. He could break it with one punch, but if a normal person tried to do the same, it would still be a brick that could kill.

Bringing out all the fire-lacking bricks, he prepared to build another furnace.

But before he did so, he used the mountain ax to fix each fire-lacking brick, trying his to make each side flat and able to link with no gaps, doing his best to ensure a high degree of sealing.

Also, he increased the space inside the furnace, to accumulate more firewood, in order to increase the amount of time in burning and heat of the fire. Then, he picked through the useless bricks to use some of them too before he finished making the second furnace.

This time, he was going to roast tiles and a water tank. This was also a test to gain experience, it didn’t matter if it failed, he could just try again.

Now that he had a water source, he only needed time to gain experience and make numerous bricks and tiles. Yup, his little light industry boat was about to take flight.

After consuming breakfast, Li Siwen continued digging. While maintaining yesterday’s digging speed, he also paid attention to collecting the soil underneath the layer of humus.

Humus was the specialty of a forest, formed by years of accumulation of rotten leaves and grass. It was the best soil to use in farming, but not for making bricks.

Today, Li Siwen made use of the opportunity during his digging to dig out quite a lot of yellow-colored soil was beneath the layer of humus. This soil had better stickiness and was finer. He didn’t dare to say that it was an excellent choice for making bricks, but at least it wouldn’t be too poor.

He expected to dig another ten plus cubic meters of soil or so.

Two hours later, when he depleted 10 Stamina Points, Li Siwen stopped digging. This was because as the depth of digging increased, the amount of stamina depleted was increasing too.

After taking half an hour’s brief break, he used the mountain ax to cut away the branches and twigs from the tree he cut down previously and organized them accordingly.

These were all considered normal firewood, used for making normal fires.

As for those trees and branches with their vitality intact, they were considered high-quality firewood and had to be placed separately. Especially the firewood cut from the tree trunks of such trees, those were the cream of the crop and considered being strategic-level firewood.

After more than an hour of cutting firewood, Li Siwen went inside and cooked another wok of wild vegetable mushroom dry fish soup, then continued digging again. By now, he had dug about a third of the foundation. Victory was at sight!

Digging under the big sun for another two hours, he was sweating profusely, but not tired. Li Siwen looked at his stamina and saw that he had actually depleted 12 points.

“The temperature these few days are quite high, the temperature today is probably at least 35-degrees Celsius, even my stamina of 50 points is affected by it too. I just hope that there won’t be rain for the next few days.”

Li Siwen pondered and went to draw a bucket of water from the well. The water quality was not bad now, slightly clearer. But even so, he continued to let it sit for a while before drinking.

After eating lunch, Li Siwen wanted to take a break, but under the pressure of the possibility of rain, he still continued to draw water, made mud, and mold tiles.

This time, he didn’t plan to make too many, only 200 tiles. He specially activated his level four Spirit Vision, seeking to make each tile with no flaw in it. After all, this was related to the effectiveness of rain-proof. Even a small crack now led to a bunch of dried meat becoming moist and moldy.

With the experience from tile making last time, Li Siwen completed the 200 tiles quickly this time, using only less than 15 minutes to finish the work.

He found some branches with leaves on them to cover them, in order to block the sunlight and prevent cracks.

Next, Li Siwen used his woodcutting skill to cut down another tree, then rested for half an hour. Currently, the temperature was probably over 40-degree Celsius; it was like the entire world was raining fire.

“According to this kind of temperature change, there will probably be a rainy season in the future. After that, it’s probably autumn.”

Sitting in the treehouse’s shadow, Li Siwen looked at the snow mountain in the distance, which was blurry due to the rising clouds, feeling full of urgency in his heart.