After the autumn harvest was over, Jiang Xuan immediately started preparing for sacrifices.
This sacrifice is very important to the Teng tribe, because it is the first official sacrifice since the establishment of the Teng tribe.
The previous sacrifice was so shabby that after Jiang Xuan told the story, he was despised by the old witch.
"As a time traveler, how can I let you compete with me?"
Jiang Xuan thought about it, the standards of this sacrificial ceremony must be improved, not only to shock the old witch, but at least not to make others look down upon.
At the same time, he planned to officially make Gan Song and other twelve tourists members of the Teng tribe during this sacrificial ceremony.
In addition, because there is sufficient food, Jiang Xuan is ready to add some more people.
With the development of the tribe, the problem of insufficient manpower has become more and more obvious.
He plans to recruit another twenty or thirty tourists.
If you recruit too many people at once, the Vine Tribe cannot afford to support them. If you recruit too few people, you won’t have enough manpower.
Therefore, by recruiting about thirty people, Jiang Xuan is confident that they can survive the winter safely and be easier to control.
It is already late autumn. Every year at this time, various tribes will fight fiercely to compete for food.
Some tribes will rise, and some tribes will be destroyed.
Those whose tribes were wiped out and those who managed to escape became tourists.
It is easiest to recruit people at this time.
Due to the lack of food and winter supplies, the Southern Wilderness tribes rarely kept slaves. They either killed them or, when necessary, snatched back women and children from other tribes to expand the population.
Winter is approaching, and if these tourists want to survive, they must find opportunities to join other tribes.
There is no rush to recruit tourists, the most important thing right now is to prepare the sacrifices and build a larger altar.
The small yellow mud altar is rough and shabby, so a larger altar must be built.
Considering that the divine vine is a plant and does not like stone altars, Jiang Xuan plans to dig more mud and build a larger earth altar.
When building an altar, the best soil is five-color soil, that is, five colors of soil: blue, red, yellow, white, and black.
Moreover, these five soils are required to be natural and cannot be dyed.
However, it is difficult to find the five-color soil because they are distributed all over the world. The Vine Tribe currently does not have this strength.
Therefore, Jiang Xuan could only settle for the next best thing and build an altar with white clay.
Yellow mud has no toughness, and the small altar built before has been covered with cracks after drying, making it very unsightly.
Fine clay is different. As long as you slowly mix the clay like making pottery, make the clay into mud bricks, and then build an altar. After drying, it will not only be difficult to crack, but also very strong.
As soon as he said it, Jiang Xuan gathered everyone and started digging clay to build an altar.
The stream next to the Vine Tribe is very long, and there is a lot of clay on the bank, enough to build an altar.
Jiang Xuan first led people to dig away the weeds, soil and stones on the surface next to the stream, revealing the gray-white clay below, and then dug it up hard with bones.
"Put the excavated soil directly into the rattan basket and carry it to the foot of the rocky mountain. Don't make it dirty."
Jiang Xuan was digging and directing others to work.
Under his arrangement, four people were responsible for digging clay, eight people were responsible for transporting it, and three people were responsible for cleaning the ground at the foot of the stone mountain, and then mixing the transported clay to make mud bricks.
Two other people were responsible for dismantling the cracked yellow mud altar.
Tribal people believe that building an altar is a very sacred thing, and it is a great honor to participate in it.
Therefore, everyone is enthusiastic and works hard.
With the efforts of everyone, it only took them three days to dig out enough clay to build the altar.
All the clay was transported to the foot of the stone mountain, mixed with mud, beaten, and turned into mud bricks of similar sizes.
Later, Jiang Xuan took matters into his own hands and piled up these mud bricks one by one to build an altar.
This work was quite detailed and took another three days to complete with the help of everyone.
With the efforts of everyone in the Vine tribe, a brand new altar was finally built six days later!
The altar is in the shape of a round cone, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, three meters high, six meters in diameter at the bottom, and five meters in diameter at the top. There are wide steps in front to climb up to the altar.
Such an altar is very tall for a small tribe, even bigger than the bamboo house where Jiang Xuan and the others live now.
Ordinary small tribes will never build such a large altar because they have to migrate frequently.
Even the old witch had surprise in his eyes when he saw this new altar.
"Paint the totem pattern and the altar will be complete."
Jiang Xuan picked up a few sharp stone pieces, roughly polished them, and used them as carving knives to start carving totem patterns on the altar.
It would take too long for him to carve all the totem patterns on such a large altar by himself, so he asked Chi Shao to help.
To be honest, Jiang Xuan's painting talent is not very good. After painting for a year, the totem pattern is only visible, not beautiful.
Chi Shao is different. Chi Shao's painting talent is much better than Jiang Xuan's. The totem patterns he draws seem to have a spiritual energy and are very beautiful.
Therefore, Jiang Xuan was responsible for carving the totem pattern on the back, and Chi Shao was responsible for carving the totem pattern on the front. The two divided their labors and cooperated.
It took the two of them a day to carve the totem pattern, and then Jiang Xuan made some paint, colored the totem pattern, and did the final polishing of the altar, which took another day.
Finally, after eight days of work, the new altar of the Vine Tribe was finally completed!
"It's not easy!"
Jiang Xuan stood in front of the tall altar, looked at the totem patterns on the altar, and sighed.
It took seventeen people eight days to complete this simple earthen altar.
If it is a stone altar, the stone bricks need to be polished piece by piece and the totem pattern may take half a year or even a year to complete.
"Although the altar is ready, it still seems to be missing something."
Jiang Xuan looked left and right, feeling that the altar alone was too monotonous.
"By the way, you can place two pottery tripods on the altar, and you can also erect some totem poles next to the altar, which will make it more beautiful."
Jiang Xuan's eyes lit up and he thought this was a good idea.
The tripod is currently used as a food cooking utensil among various tribes, and most of them are three-legged pottery tripods.
Including the Vine tribe, they now use three-legged pottery tripods to cook food.
But Jiang Xuan knew that when the pottery tripod developed into a bronze tripod, it slowly evolved into a sacrificial vessel.
People put animal blood or food in cauldrons to offer sacrifices to gods and ancestors.
During some sacrifices, fragrant plants will be ground into powder and burned in a cauldron, which is called incense.
Burning incense is also a very important part of sacrificial rituals, but considering that the totem god of the Vine tribe is a plant, he probably doesn't like fire, so Jiang Xuan doesn't plan to make an incense burner and do such a thankless task.
After Jiang Xuan thought it through, he immediately asked people to dig out a lot of clay, and first built a larger earth kiln for firing pottery tripods.
Then, he patiently made three tall three-legged pottery tripods out of clay, and carefully carved the totem patterns of the rattan tribe and some bird and animal patterns on the outer walls.
As for erecting the totem pole, Jiang Xuan left it to others.
Sometimes, it is not a good thing to do everything yourself. Not only will you be exhausted to death, but the people below will not get the opportunity to exercise and perform.
***The author has something to say***
Thanks to the book friend "Why is writing books so slow" a reward of 1,500 book coins.