Chapter 370: Peeling hemp and love songspetition


    "Water gently curves, like your big eyes. Like the round shape before you, the moon in the water calls out. Fish swimming past the moon in the water is like my hand caressing you..."


    Alongside the small river of the Sparrow Tribe, where the smell of hemp peeling and washing was strong, there arose a tuneless singing.


    Rather than calling it singing, it was more like roaring.


    However, the people peeling hemp on the shore were enjoying themselves.


    As soon as this nonsensical song ended, someone immediately followed up with another verse: "ck hemp skin is your garment, white hemp stick is your body, I peel off the hemp skin..."


    Peeling wet hemp in this season was not pleasant. The most unbearable aspect was not the pungent smell but the cold hands.


    After all, staying here for a long time would dull one''s sense of smell, making them less sensitive to the odor, akin to the story of the fishmonger who bes ustomed to the stench of fish.


    But they couldn''t wear gloves to solve the problem of cold hands while working.


    So after doing this kind of work for a while, people''s moods became somewhat low.To boost everyone''s morale and spirits, Han Cheng resorted to singing.


    He didn''t sing modern songs but improvised ones, using many metaphors, much like the poems in the Book of Songs.


    Of course, Han Cheng''s metaphors were all very serious and used as examples to inspire everyone.


    This novel approach immediately received unanimous praise.


    Inspired by Han Cheng, people improvised songs using simr metaphorical styles and "sang" them.


    Compared to Han Cheng''s seriousness and subtlety, the metaphors created by the people of the Green Sparrow Tribe were much more direct and explosive.


    The two songs they just sang were created by themselves.


    Artes from life, especially primitive and rustic art, which are closely rted to life.


    The earliest poetry was created from various life situations.


    Confuciuspiled the Book of Songs, leaving behind three hundred poems passed down through the ages. Among them are famous verses like "Guan guan ju jiu, zai he zhi zhou..." which is a fantasy of the single life, indicating howrge the scale of deletion was.


    The initial songs of the Sparrow Tribe, with more direct elements, were still eptable.


    As the tribe continues to develop and expand, talented individuals may emerge who, based on this foundation, innovate and create more beautiful and subtle poems.


    Originally, the arduous task of peeling hemp now unexpectedly left many people with watery eyes, and two fellows had even sneaked into the nearby bushes. They didn''te out for a while, which was something Han Cheng hadn''t anticipated.


    Perhaps this program could be preserved and developed into an annual hemp-peeling serenade festival.


    When the tribe besrge enough and the poption plentiful, it could evolve into a festival where mature men and women use love songs to find spouses.


    Peeling hemp, entertainment, and settling marital matters would all proceed smoothly.


    Watching Hei Wa and his wife, picking leaves off each other''s hair, Han Cheng envisioned this in his mind.


    Following Han Cheng''s previous demonstration, the peeled hemp was bundled neatly, one bunch at a time.


    Then, someone washed these hemp skins to the riverbank with river water, rinsing off some of the foul-smelling mud and removing impurities that hadn''tpletely rotted off the fibers. Then, theyid them out to dry on the grassy area by the small river, ready to take them back to the tribe when they returned.


    The Shaman twisted some of the hemp, which had only fibers left, into a rope andpared it with a rope made of the same thickness of grass, finding that the rope twisted from hemp was stronger.


    He nodded in satisfaction. Regardless of what the Divine Child said about hemp cloth and the clothes made from it, just the fact that ropes twisted from hemp were stronger than those from grass was enough for the tribe to invest so much effort into it.


    Piles of stripped hemp stalks endured the sun and cold wind torture here. Their clothes had been ruthlessly taken away by the people of the Green Sparrow Tribe, just like how the Cowherd took away the clothes of the Weaver Girl when she was bathing in theke.


    The difference was that the Cowherd''s misbehavior was to get the Weaver Girl to bear him children, while the people of the Sparrow Tribe simply wanted "clothes" made of hemp. After these hemp stalks were dried, they would be used as firewood and burned.


    Han Cheng didn''t follow his senior brothers and others'' suggestions to open and drain the hemp-soaking pits directly, as this would pollute the river.


    The Sparrow Tribe still relied on this river for food; if too much sewage were poured into it, it would drive away all the fish. Then what would they eat?


    So, after all the hemp was peeled, upon Han Cheng''s suggestion, the people of the Sparrow Tribe began to carry the water from the soaking pits to a field not far away that had been cleared for cultivation, using it to fertilize the fields.


    The water from the hemp pits soaked many things, making it quite "strong" for use as irrigation water.


    The sludge from the hemp pits was also not left behind. It was dug out and spread on the fields. This stuff was even better for fertilizing the fields than the water from the hemp pits.


    After this series of operations, the adverse effects of hemp soaking on the small river were minimized.


    Cleaning up the hemp pits sounded the horn for the Sparrow Tribe to fertilize thend, kicking off the event.


    After this, they transported the fertilizer soaked in the pits for nearly a year to the fields. The soil dug up from where fish were buried after frequent fishing was also dug up and transported to the fields.


    Early winter was a good time to fertilize the fields.


    First, people had more free time, and second, fertilizing the fields at this time was beneficial because it mixed the fertilizer with the soil, making it perfect for plowing and nting in the spring of the next year.


    The agreement between Han Cheng and Wu was not forgotten. Ten acres ofnd were enclosed, and nothing was applied to them, not even the ashes of burned branches and fallen leaves.


    Many people in the Sparrow Tribe were interested in thisparison.


    Since they started farming, they had always heard the shaman say that fertilizing thend was good for it and could increase yields. However, they didn''t know how much it could increase or how the effectpared to unfertilizednd. They didn''t have a clear concept of it.


    The suggestion to enclose ten acres ofnd came from Han Cheng.


    These ten acres included slopes, tnd, andnd near the river, epassing all types ofnd owned by the Sparrow Tribe.


    This way, the results would be more convincing, and there would be noter doubts that the difference in yield was due to different terrains.


    As the Green Sparrow Tribe was actively fertilizing thend, expecting a bumper harvest next year and witnessing the importance of fertilization, a crisis was also looming over the deer grazing far away from the tribe.