In the bamboo forest, several women were playing with the little unicorn Mengmeng and three dumplings.

The growth cycle of a horse is very short, and it takes about three years to reach adulthood. Therefore, at this time, Mengmeng can already carry the little girl A Rou around, while the three dumplings can only follow with envy on their faces.

He ran next to him for a while, rested for a while, rested for a while, and then ran next to him for a while.

They also wanted to ride horses, but unfortunately, Xiao Mengmeng obviously couldn't carry them, and Bailong hid when he saw them, making them very depressed.

Fortunately, the bamboo shoots are still enough. When they run away and get hungry, they can still sit down and eat the bamboo shoots, which is not a big disadvantage.

As for Ayun, Ayue and Ashui, they basically prepared bamboo shoots and grass for them, and then stood aside and watched to prevent a few dumplings from bullying Xiao Mengmeng. Such a life was quite enjoyable.

While the girls were having a great time playing with some pets, Zhao Hao came back carrying a thigh-thick bamboo.

As soon as the three foodies saw this fat bamboo, they immediately gathered around. They thought Zhao Hao was here to improve their food. After all, they ate fresh bamboo shoots every day. Occasionally they would eat bamboo like this.

The whole grains are quite fragrant.

What is strange is that Zhao Hao actually pushed them away and cursed with a smile: "Eat your bamboo shoots, this is not for you."

What is he doing with such bamboo?

Under the curious eyes of the girls and the three foodies, he directly pulled out the magic weapon and used a few knives to cut the bamboo directly from the bamboo joints, cutting it into sections, and then picked up another section and swiped it.

With a few strokes, directly split the bamboo tube into pieces about two fingers wide.

This size is just right for stuffing into your mouth.

When the three foodies saw this, their mouths watered.

Unfortunately, Zhao Hao had no intention of feeding them. Instead, he picked up the bamboo slices and continued processing them.

At this moment, his knife skills were extremely fast. With a few swipes, he cut the inner circles of the bamboo slices into flat pieces. Then, he took out a thin iron drill from his body and cut the bamboo slices flat.

Three horizontal thin holes are drilled in the middle and both ends of each bamboo piece.

What is he doing?

Not only could the three foodies not understand it, but even Ayun and Ayue could not understand it either.

He didn't explain, and then took out a slender iron needle and threaded the thin cowhide rope he had prepared earlier through the iron needle. Then he quickly used the thin cowhide rope to string all the bamboo pieces together into a string.

A flat and neat piece.

If you have watched period films, you will know that what he made was bamboo slips!

It's a pity that none of the girls have watched costume movies, so everyone still doesn't understand what he is doing.

He worked hard for a while, and after making all the other bamboo tubes into bamboo slips, he tied all the bamboo slips with cowhide ropes, then jumped onto the highest pillar of his tent, hung the bamboo slips on it, and hung them to dry.

When Ayun saw him jumping down from the pillar, he couldn't help but ask: "Husband, what are you doing?"

Zhao Hao could only say helplessly: "This is too complicated to talk about. Even if I say it, you may not understand it. You will understand it in the future."

After saying that, he got into the tent again, took out the prepared boar bristles, horse hair, wool, wolf hair, etc., placed them on the ground, then carefully arranged them, and rolled them all into a handful as thick as a finger.

Then tie it with a thin cowhide rope, then find a few finger-thick bamboo branches, cut off the bamboo joints, stuff the manes in handfuls, and scrape them carefully with the magic weapon, until they are all

It looked like a writing brush, so he put it in an animal skin bag and hung it on his waist.

His actions were so strange that the girls were dumbfounded. What on earth did he want to do?

In fact, he just wanted to record something.

Because at this time, he had already sent all eight cavalry teams out to look for small tribes on the edge of the grassland. A few years ago, they searched the nearby wild jungle within three days' journey and found more than 20 small tribes.

, this time, he planned to search all the wild jungles on the southern edge of the grassland, and it was possible to find forty or fifty small tribes.

With so many small tribes, some may join the Salt Tribe like the Beishan Tribe, and some may be stubborn and refuse to join the Salt Tribe. If he does not record the basic information such as the location and population of these tribes,

, there may be chaos by then.

His idea is very simple, that is, to take advantage of the two or three years of breathing space to unify the tribes in the south of the grassland, try to recruit as many people as possible to increase his own strength, and then explore the entire grassland and collect all the cattle and sheep.

After gathering all the horses and other livestock, and hunting all the strange beasts, he could almost suppress Tu and fight fiercely.

His idea is simple, but it is not so simple to implement. At least, he must write down all the small tribes that are unwilling to join the salt tribe, so as not to use force to conquer them and leave some tribes behind.

.

However, he was really behind the times right now. Just such a simple idea had to keep him busy for a while, because he didn't have a pen, paper, or ink at the moment, so it was not easy to memorize something.

Originally, he wanted to make paper, but unfortunately, he thought about it for a long time and still had no impression of the papermaking process. In desperation, he had no choice but to use bamboo slips instead of paper.

He worked hard for a long time, and the bamboo slips and writing brush were finished, but the ink was not yet available.

This ancient ink was ground with an ink stick and an inkstone. He had an impression of this. The question was how the ink stick was made, but his eyes were blank. Fortunately, he saw it occasionally.

There is a kind of ink stick, which seems to be called pine smoke ink. This term actually gave him a lot of inspiration.

Pine smoke, as the name suggests, is the smoke produced by burning pine needles or pine branches. It is not very troublesome to collect. The trouble is how to make the pine smoke into an ink stick. From his understanding, the ink stick should be mixed with some kind of colloid.

It is made from pine smoke and then dried.

So, he prepared a clay pot, a cow bone, a cow tendon, some resin and a handful of pine branches with pine needles.

He worked hard for another long time, and after his face was completely dark, he finally collected a small amount of pine smoke. However, when he mixed the pine smoke into the gelatin soup of beef bone and tendon soup and resin for a long time,

But I found that after drying, this thing is definitely not an ink stick, because the color is too light. After adding pine smoke to the whole gelatin soup, it is only faintly black. After drying, the ink grinded out is as light as water!

How to do it?

He gritted his teeth, crushed all the charcoal made from pine branches into powder, added it to the gelatin soup and stirred it.

This time, the color is quite dark, but I don’t know what the ink looks like after grinding.

In this way, he worked hard for nearly a day and a half, and finally the bamboo slips, writing brush, ink stick and inkstone were ready.

At noon that day, he sat in the big tent, poured some water into the homemade inkstone very solemnly, and then picked up the homemade ink stick and slowly started grinding it.

The ink came out quickly, but the problem was that it was still not thick enough. The charcoal powder inside seemed not fine enough, and many of them were obviously grainy. What would the words written with this ink look like?

He took out a writing brush, dipped it in some ink, and tried to write the character "Hao" on the bamboo slips. The effect was quickly apparent.

How should I put it? It feels like the lowest quality ink has been used. The writing is very light, and there are particles of carbon on it.

Well, the charcoal powder is not fine enough, it must be fine enough to be completely dissolved into the ink.

This is not very difficult, just make an iron mortar and an iron pestle and pound it hard, it just takes a little time.

He worked hard for a few more days. After finishing the iron mortar and pestle, he also pounded the pine charcoal into an extremely fine powder. After making it into an ink stick, the ink was finally almost ready.

It was at this time that Ahua finally came to report and found a new tribe.

So, he quickly took notes: Starting from the grassland just north of Yanshi City, he drove west for three and a half days and reached a small river. Following the river to the south, he walked in the wild jungle for about a day and found a tribe with a population of about two hundred.
Chapter completed!