I built a manor in the Middle Ages

Chapter 4 Salt Mines and Dead Deer

The herd of elk trampled on the mud and headed deeper into the forest, with Luc following closely behind.

Along the way, Luc kept making marks in the forest with his cross sword so that he could find the way back. After walking for about half an hour, he came to the foot of another mountain, where a gurgling stream was flowing down. A herd of elk was near the foot of the mountain. As Luc watched, the female deer leader began to lick a rock.

Luc's eyes suddenly lit up!

A herbivore like this would not lick a stone for no reason. There is a high probability that there is a salt mine here!

Luc took out the fruit and started chewing it, waiting patiently until the elk had finished licking them one by one, and then walked to the hillside and lay down to bask in the sun. Luc threw away the fruit core that had been gnawed smooth, ran to the rock in a few steps, picked up the mattock and started hitting it.

Of course, Luc didn't consider the stone that had been licked by the red deer. Regardless of whether it was dirty or not, the rock didn't look like it had much salt.

After digging around for a while, Luc actually turned over a piece of salt stone!
The somewhat dull salt stone made Luc very excited. You know, not every mountain area has salt mines. This kind of salt mining area left over from the vicissitudes of life is extremely valuable no matter when. Even if it looks very barren, as long as there is a little bit of salt mines, it is a treasure mountain!
"I've found a great bargain! But how do I extract edible salt from this salt rock?"

Of course, Luc is not stupid. He knows that this kind of salt mine is probably poisonous, but he knows nothing about refining it. He can only take it back and study it carefully.

Luc was not greedy. After he found another piece, he stopped and left. The salt mine would not run away by itself. He was the only one living here, so there was no need to go through the trouble of moving everything away.

After walking back along the same path for a long time, Luc suddenly smelled a foul odor.

Luc's memory was amazing. In order to get back to the cabin as quickly as possible, he chose to take a shortcut, but he didn't expect to smell this smell. This was not the smell of feces, but rather the smell of rotten meat.

Luc frowned. The sudden appearance of rotting animals in the forest was not a good sign.

Wading through fallen leaves, deep in the forest, the remains of a red deer that had been dead for a long time appeared in Luc's sight. Its limbs and internal organs were gone, leaving only deerskin, antlers and some scraps of meat.

The dry eyeballs that had lost their luster stared blankly at the sky, and seemed to be staring at Luke, adding a touch of weirdness.

Of course Luc didn't care. Don't forget, he was also a veteran who had gone through mountains of corpses and seas of fire.

The only thing that disturbed Luc was the cause of the deer's death.
First of all, it was definitely not hunted by humans, so it could only be killed and eaten by other animals. At the very least, it was eaten by carnivores after death.

"It seems my prediction was wrong. There are ferocious beasts nearby."

Luc's face was grim. He had originally decided to settle in this area because there were no threatening wild animals nearby. Now, that perspective had been shattered.
"But since the deer still dare to wander around so blatantly, we should be safe for the time being. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. At least it gives us an early warning."

After thinking for a moment, Luc coaxed away the swarms of flies, picked up the antlers, and did not intend to let go of the deerskin covered with black blood and rotten flesh. He covered the stench with a pile of sand and dragged the cross sword along as he walked.

When people are in the wild, they don't have to be so particular. A piece of deerskin can be used to sew many things, and they just need to clean the maggots and meat pieces carefully.

After returning to the cabin, Luke left the deerskin by the stream, then returned to the house with the antlers and salt stone, settled down and began to mix the yellow mud.

The appearance of the dead deer increased Luc's sense of crisis, and building the wooden house completely became the top priority at the moment.

Without a dustpan, Luc could only use a clumsy method to crush the soil into powder, then build a circle of barriers with gravel, mix in fine soil, stream water and a small amount of thatch, and sticky yellow mud successfully appeared.

He first smeared the yellow mud on the bottoms of the twenty or so roof timbers, then carefully glued the gaps between the sloping timbers. After struggling for a while because he had no utensils, Luc suddenly slapped his forehead with his muddy hands. He was so confused. Couldn't a shield also be used as a vessel?

Luc's shield was a typical small round shield, about sixteen inches in diameter, just right for holding clay.

With its addition, Luc's progress increased significantly and he completed the work quickly.

Once the yellow mud dries, you can put thatch on it.

After finishing all this, Luc didn't plan to rest. Compared with the previous few days, this intensity of work was like taking a walk. Luc began to fiddle with the salt stone.

How to extract salt from salt rock is really a technical job. It cannot be achieved by brute force or thinking for a while.

Luke thought about it for a long time and decided to crush it and then steam it in boiling water to see if it would work.

After boiling the salt for a while, Luc returned to the stream and cleaned the antlers he had taken out. He had previously fantasized about using the antlers to turn the soil. Although it was not necessary now, there was no telling when the sharp antlers might come in handy.

Finally, the hardest thing to clean is this deerskin!
In fact, most of the deerskin had rotted away, with only a small part intact. Luc endured the stench, cut off the rotten part, dug a hole and buried it, then used a lot of sand to rub off the unpleasant smell on the rest of the deerskin. Then he took out a multi-purpose dagger and carefully scraped off the remaining, undetectable grease on it. He couldn't use too much force, otherwise it would damage the deerskin, but he couldn't use too little force, as it was a test of the force point of his wrist.

When it is almost scraped off, wash it carefully in the stream. When it is slightly presentable, put it on the roof and wait for it to dry with the yellow mud.

Luc was not very clear about the tanning of fur. As far as he could remember, he had only tanned semi-finished products once. The previous lord did not allow neighbors to hunt privately. In his fiefdom, even a pheasant was the lord's property.

But Luc is not worried. If he can make this deerskin well, he will make it. If not, he will just use it as practice. He believes that as he explores, there will be more and more animal furs!

Happiness is achieved through comparison. Luc is now particularly convinced of this. If everyone around him has enough food and clothing and lives a rich life, then it would be the biggest joke that Luc has not built a shabby house in the past three days.

But when most people around him were hungry, wars were frequent, they lived in thatched houses, and their living environment was only slightly better than a garbage dump, then Luke's life was not very comfortable except for the hardship.

By the time he finished all this, the salt water used to cook the pot-cake had already boiled. Luke hurriedly took off the iron helmet through the rabbit skin, let it cool down, and poured it out carefully. He found that there was almost no change, and his heart sank immediately.

“Cook it again!”

Luc gritted his teeth. If there was still no other solution, he would have to find another way and use wood ash to extract some salt.

……

When the sun sets, Luc successfully hunts a pheasant from the forest, plucks its feathers and grills it. After boiling the salt stone three times, Luc finally gets half a helmet's worth of brine!

Looking at the turbid salt water, Luc swallowed his saliva. He didn't know what to do next, but it was too late today. Luc carefully carried the salt water to the door of the cabin and planned to deal with it tomorrow.

He used a flat stone to cover the gap in the roof to the left of the door, where he wanted to build the fireplace.

Then he picked up a pile of stones and blocked the door tightly, leaving only the top layer as a vent, and then lit the straw and the fire. In the wooden house that was so dark that it could be described as gloomy, Luke felt a sense of security that he had not felt for a long time.

(End of this chapter)