Chapter 42: Learn from Me

The arrival of Butterfly and her people made the original members of the Black Moon Camp currently living here somewhat nervous.

However, issues like this could only be resolved by letting them gradually get used to each other over time.

After making some simple personnel arrangements, Zhou Xu beckoned to Butterfly.

"Mengdie, come here."

Zhuang Mengdie was Butterfly's new name, derived from the concept of Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly. The reason for giving her this new name was very simple.

On the one hand, as one of the four-star backbone members under his command nowadays, she needed to have a proper name.

On the other hand, it was because of another naming conflict.

Among the women of the Black Moon Tribe, not only was there one named Butterfly, but there was even one named Little Butterfly...

One could only say that in this era, the names primitive people could come up with were truly very limited.

Therefore, after they arrived here, Zhou Xu seized the opportunity to directly give her a much more fitting new name.

Zhuang Mengdie was overjoyed to receive her new name, as if the fatigue of the entire journey had been swept away in an instant.

Hearing Zhou Xu's call now, she immediately ran over.

"Is there something you need, Chieftain?"

Without wasting any words, Zhou Xu directly pointed at the three people in front of him.

"These three are in charge of manual labor here at the Black Moon Camp. Starting today, they will all be under your command. You will be responsible for leading them and teaching them step by step how to make the things we need."

"Then... Chieftain, what should we prioritize doing right now?"

Regarding this question, Zhou Xu did not ponder for long, but instead gestured and stated...

"Cage traps, prioritize making cage traps, but they need to be larger than the previous ones."

This time, Zhou Xu was undoubtedly preparing these cage traps for the wild rabbits.

In fact, he had also been studying snare traps recently. Although he had never made one before, wasn't this thing, to put it bluntly, just tying knots?

Once the prey crawled inside, pulling the rope would cause the snare's knot to tighten rapidly, thereby catching the prey.

When it came to rope knots, Zhou Xu's foundation was solid after all, and snare traps themselves were not overly complicated. Having some spare time to study them a bit lately yielded some results.

During this time, facing Zhuang Mengdie as an abruptly parachuted female leader, the three members from the Black Moon Camp behaved rather obediently, though what they were actually thinking in their hearts remained anyone's guess.

Zhuang Mengdie couldn't be bothered with what they were thinking. Back at the Salt Lake Camp, she had already been a minor leader managing a squad, so having three more people under her command brought her no pressure.

"Look over here, and make sure to follow and learn from me."

Without any nonsense, she directly followed their chieftain's instructions and began weaving a larger cage.

Although their chieftain had never taught them either, Zhuang Mengdie's upper limit of intelligence was four stars after all. Even though she was currently only at two stars, she was slowly revealing her intelligence that surpassed the level of ordinary people.

Simply adjusting the size appropriately while weaving baskets was the kind of drawing inferences from one instance that Zhuang Mengdie could pull off effortlessly.

Wanting to weave a large basket capable of easily covering an entire wild rabbit required more time and energy.

However, aside from that, basket weaving itself was a highly repetitive task. Basically, once they understood the basic weaving technique, they could start trying it themselves without needing to wait for her to completely finish one first.

Yet, once they officially started doing it themselves, they realized that this seemingly simple task was not so simple in practice.

Looking at their own clumsy fingers that were practically on the verge of tying themselves into knots on the spot, and then looking at their new leader's fingers, which were impossibly flexible!

This clearly made them realize that their parachuted leader was truly extraordinary, while also prompting them to quickly lower their heads and earnestly get to work on the task at hand.

This wasn't an overly difficult job to begin with. After crossing the initial learning threshold, the three of them quickly developed a sense of getting into the swing of things, and their fingers stopped acting up quite as much as they did at the beginning.

This gave them a bit more confidence, and subconsciously, they raised their heads to check on the progress of their new leader.

Then, they saw Zhuang Mengdie calmly placing a newly woven basket to the side, picking up two new strips of tree bark rope, and starting the next one.

Seemingly sensing the gazes falling upon her, Zhuang Mengdie continued moving her hands while raising her head to look at the three of them with a somewhat perplexed expression.

Immediately, three dumbfounded faces came into her view.

For a moment, unsure of what was happening, Zhuang Mengdie glanced at the baskets in the hands of the three people—which were only about a quarter finished—and asked with a puzzled tone...

"What's wrong? Is there something you don't know how to do?"

Faced with the question, the three of them shook their heads in unison like rattles, making Zhuang Mengdie feel even more bewildered.

"If there's nothing wrong, get back to work quickly and don't stop moving your hands."

Through this back-and-forth, the three of them were already completely convinced of the capabilities of this new leader who had been suddenly assigned and parachuted in by their new chieftain.

Meanwhile, Zhou Xu was leading two people, busy building a stove inside the Black Moon Camp.

Naturally, this stove was not meant for boiling water or cooking meals, but for firing pottery.

However, it was worth noting that pottery did exist here at the Black Moon Camp.

Yet their former chieftain had handled it terribly because the other party didn't even have a proper stove dedicated to firing pottery.

In Zhou Xu's view, this was probably the exact extent of what primitive people could come up with when they had just figured out pottery.

On second thought, though, it wasn't surprising; after all, not everyone was like him, fond of buying a few tea bowls, studying wood-firing and electric-firing techniques, and ultimately falling down that rabbit hole to become a sucker who spent a lot of money...

Still, it turned out that having a few hobbies in daily life and liking to tinker with things wasn't a bad thing after all.

After all, what if you happened to time-travel one day?

Shouldn't you prepare in advance?

Unlike before when he built a small stove at the Salt Lake Camp, this time he at least had prior experience and intended to build a larger stove all at once.

This way, the quantity of pottery fired in each batch could increase, which could be considered an improvement in efficiency.

The entire process simply consisted of Zhou Xu planning the blueprint and layout of the stove over there, while the two guys next to him were responsible for helping out and doing the heavy lifting.

The work proceeded quite quickly, and before dark, the stove had already been stacked up.

However, plastering the inside and outside with mud would obviously have to wait until tomorrow.

"Alright, that's it for today. Let's start a fire and cook!"