Chapter 773: Vine Armor, Leather Armor, and Bronze Armor While the spring rain hadn’t stopped falling, the entire Green Sparrow Tribe seemed relatively relaxed. People who were usually busy could take a break during this rain. However, Bai Xue was not among these relaxed people, as most of her work was done indoors. In the slightly dim room caused by the rain, there were some racks made from sticks of various sizes, and on these racks were bamboo baskets. Inside the baskets lay tender mulberry leaves, each with tiny black dots. If you stayed there for a while, you’d notice small holes appearing on these tender leaves. These were the first batch of spring silkworms of Green Sparrow’s tenth year, hatched two days ago under the warm spring sun. Bai Xue moved slowly around the room, pausing at one basket, then moving on to another. During this time, she would sometimes gently sweep inside the basket with a loosely made rabbit fur brush, and sometimes she would carefully sprinkle small, dry mulberry leaves—dried in a nearby pineapple—to the basket, working diligently. This kind of calm and seriousness is characteristic of people who have achieved something difficult for others within a particular field. Just like when Lame picks up his axe and saw to do woodworking, or Heiwa and Ni start pottery, or Second Senior Brother wields the sling, or Third Senior Brother takes down his longbow… a similar aura appears in them. After discussing armor with Eldest Senior Brother and Shang in the meeting room of the brick and tile house, Han Cheng left the room and headed to the silkworm room to find Bai Xue. Standing quietly a little away from the door, Han Cheng looked at Bai Xue inside, a sincere smile appearing on his face. Han Cheng naturally knew that serious men were charming — it was easy to tell from the green-tinged glances of the tribe’s female primitives when they looked at him. Now, he had a surprising discovery — serious women were equally charming. After watching for a while, Han Cheng stepped forward and approached the door of the silkworm room. Inside, the dim light changed, and Bai Xue, focused on her work, was briefly startled, then looked up toward the door. Recognizing who it was, her face immediately lit up with a bright smile, and the previous calm and serious aura vanished. She called out happily, moving to greet Han Cheng. Because of Han Cheng’s arrival, the quiet silkworm room became lively. Han Cheng asked her some questions about the spring silkworms, and Bai Xue’s words started flowing freely. After chatting happily for a while, Han Cheng began discussing the armor. Due to the tribe’s limited materials and technology, there weren’t many options for armor. After careful thought, Han Cheng concluded that basically only a few types of armor could be made in the tribe. One was made of leather armor, crafted from animal hides, and the other was made of vine armor. As for advanced bronze armor, the tribe’s technology was limited. At most, after making the leather armor, they could cast some bronze plates with small holes, then use strong leather cords to tightly tie these plates onto the leather armor. In the end, this would form a kind of combined armor that Han Cheng wasn’t even sure how to call properly. The reason he came to Bai Xue at this time to tell her about the armor was that she was very skillful with her hands. Not only in silkworm raising and weaving, her craftsmanship was ahead of others in the tribe, and even in making clothes, she was a cut above the other women. Especially the open-crotch pants she made for the tribe’s little minors were unmatched in Green Sparrow — no one could surpass her in this. Leather armor, although different in purpose from clothing, shared many similarities with it. So after deciding to add an extra layer of protection for the tribe’s people, Han Cheng came to Bai Xue. She squatted on the ground, listening thoughtfully. For the tasks Brother Cheng assigned, she was always serious, wanting to do her best. After carefully explaining to Bai Xue for a while, Han Cheng felt he hadn’t been clear enough. So he returned to the meeting room in the brick and tile house, sat at his desk, and recalled images of leather armor from costume dramas in his mind. He slowly sketched with a finely sharpened charcoal stick on paper made from stone. Life is the best teacher; whether you like it or not, it always teaches you many things. Like Han Cheng now — he used to never draw except for some scribbles, but now, after practice, he could roughly draw the shapes of some objects in his mind fairly skillfully. Outside, the drizzle continued to fall as Han Cheng sat at the desk, drawing intently. This continued until a small lamp was lit on the desk, and night deepened. Han Cheng stretched lazily, looked at the roughly drawn armor sketches on the paper, and smiled with satisfaction. The heavens hadn’t been harsh enough in training him; far from a human camera, only knowing some rough tricks, being able to draw such complex armor sketches was already very good. Besides, he didn’t have OCD — perfectionist tendencies would be useless for him. The next morning, Han Cheng experienced some back pain and overall fatigue. Standing there thinking for a while, he vaguely recalled dreaming last night of himself clad in armor, holding a long halberd, riding a horse, charging heroically across the battlefield. As the saying goes, “What one thinks by day, one dreams by night.” He’d been worried about armor all evening, so he dreamed of it. Recalling some fragments of the dream, his expression turned odd, and he couldn’t help but grin. Even horse jerking — such an advanced thing — appeared in his dream. Clearly, it was just a dream. But when his eyes met the familiar face of his grown-up child bride, Bai Xue, he couldn’t help but stroke his chin. This girl now seemed to have built-in navigation… Reflecting on his new skill, Han the Great Deity washed up, ate breakfast, and began taking out the sketches he had painstakingly drawn yesterday, calling Bai Xue and Lame over to explain together. Han Cheng planned to make some of both vine armor and leather armor. Without producing and testing both, he couldn’t rely on guesswork to know their strengths and weaknesses or which one suited the tribe better. Vine armor and leather armor used different materials and had some differences in details, but both were types of armor and shared many similarities. So Han Cheng called both Lame and Bai Xue together to explain, to save some words. Lame, initially not well regarded in the tribe due to his physical disability, had changed a lot after nearly ten years of training. This wasn’t just his status but also his skills in woodworking and weaving. As the tribe’s most prolific maker of new things, following the Chief’s lead, Lame was used to Han Cheng’s teaching style. His understanding and acceptance of Han Cheng’s innovations had been well honed. Newest update provıded by 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩·𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢·𝔫𝔢𝔱 So after Han Cheng explained, while pointing at the drawings for a while, Lame basically understood. Bai Xue’s understanding of armor was not slower than Lame’s. This was probably because making things like clothing was her specialty, and Bai Xue was also the person in the tribe closest to Han Cheng. After spending a long time together, she had been subtly influenced by his intelligence and gradually became smarter herself. It really is true that “one takes on the color of one’s company”! A particular shameless Divine Child, watching Bai Xue prepare to start making armor after gathering leather and copper knives, stood with hands behind his back, his face full of delight… As Bai Xue began making the armor, the newly hatched silkworms naturally became more difficult to care for. But there was no need to worry about this. Over the past few years, especially since Bai Xue began drawing silk from cocoons and weaving cool, smooth fabric from silk threads, the tribe had increasingly valued silkworms. Combined with Han Cheng’s advocacy, now the tribe had more than just Bai Xue, who could raise silkworms, but she was the most interested and the best cared for. Han Cheng watched Bai Xue making leather armor for a while, then got up and headed to Lame’s woodworking room. Lame sat on a small wooden stool covered with leather, weaving armor from soft vine strips. Now that spring had arrived, tree branches that had been brittle and easy to break in winter had become very flexible — perfect for weaving. Lame’s fingers, which looked very rough, were now extremely nimble. The vine strips moved back and forth in his hands and somehow came together to form shapes. As a guide, Han Cheng had nothing more to teach Lame about weaving skills. Lame had long mastered all the leather and fur skills that Han Cheng knew and had extended them much further. Han Cheng was not discouraged by this — in fact, he was pleased. Because this was all thanks to his teaching… Weaving strips of vine into vine armor was not easy. Even though Lame’s weaving skills were excellent, he still often paused to think, sometimes undoing or discarding finished pieces and starting over. Amid this trial and error, days quietly passed. The precious spring rain stopped, and after the field dried enough to avoid mud sticking to feet, the Green Sparrow Tribe began spring planting. Some people continued plowing unfinished fields; others who were better at sowing separated from the plow team to sow seeds with a seed drill in finely tilled soil. Donkeys being led brayed from time to time, leaving hoofprints in the field. The seed drill, pulled by the donkey, moved forward steadily. Along the way, strings of shelled grains slipped through the seed hopper, divided among three drill legs, then buried in the soil with a pleasant sound. When the hopper became clogged and the seed flow slowed, the person holding the drill shook it strongly from left to right. Yuan felt her eyes were no longer enough. This unprecedented farming method shocked her deeply. She really wanted to understand how this three-legged thing called a seed drill was made. She wanted to learn to farm with this three-legged device. But at the same time, she was very curious about the armor that the tribe was trying to make under the Divine Child’s guidance. After all, this was the first time since coming to the tribe that the wise Divine Child had formally asked the tribe to make something new. Being able to witness it all was the best, so she could easily understand the reasoning and feel the Divine Child’s wisdom more deeply. Fortunately, considering the need to cultivate a positive and upright value system and not mislead the tribe, Han Cheng had not told them the famous story of Journey to the West. Otherwise, Yuan might have already plucked out all her body hair to make clones… Actually, it wasn’t just her — most people in the tribe were inquisitive about this thing called armor that the Divine Child talked about. Following the Divine Child to see strange things had already become a consensus in the Green Sparrow Tribe. Especially Shang, whose attention to this matter was far greater than that of others. Because the Divine Child’s smile always made him feel a chill. As a war enthusiast, being unsettled by the Divine Child’s smile was a strange and unsettling feeling — if those Shang had killed knew this, they’d think their deaths were truly unjust… In the woodworking room, Han Cheng carefully examined the freshly made vine armor in his hands. After seven or eight days of continuous effort, the tribe’s first somewhat decent vine armor finally appeared. For some reason, as Han Cheng looked at the vine armor in his hands, he suddenly recalled the story of Zhuge Liang burning the vine armor army…