For the young girls like Tsetseg, even though she was Hassan’s daughter, she did not receive any preferential treatment.
It was also probably because of Hassan’s impartiality that he became the tribe’s chief.
The moment Yan Liuyuan arrived at their tribe, he was treated with the highest respect. Therefore, he had never had to experience the hardships of the nomads. When Xiaoyu and he saw that these people reared their own livestock, they thought that the tribe was quite well-to-do. However, they did not know the livestock were not supposed to be killed at whim. With so many people in the tribe, if they only ate beef and goat meat for their meals, they would probably have to slaughter several of them in one day alone.
Their tribe could not survive such extravagance.
When Yan Liuyuan heard this, he started asking Tsetseg about the situation in the tribe in detail. Only then did he realize that not only did the tribespeople not get to eat meat often, they also rarely got to have salt.
Salt was extremely scarce in the grasslands. The nomads had always supplemented their salt intake through eating mutton, beef, and drinking goat milk. The meat they usually ate did not have much taste, and only the meat served to Yan Liuyuan would be seasoned with some salt.
But now, as the tribespeople were not allowed to eat any meat, they could not replenish their salt intake. Many of the women and elderly would get dizzy, experience muscle spasms, or show signs of nausea.
When such symptoms appeared among the tribespeople, due to a lack of knowledge, they just felt they might be ill or something. So everyone would gather around the firepit and pray for blessings from the gods, hoping they would get cured in the process.
There was no salt or medicine in this place, and the tribespeople would only resort to killing goats if they got too hungry.
“That’s right, we’re the poor people of this era, so why did I think that y’all were leading a good life?” Yan Liuyuan said with a bitter smile, “It’s my fault.”
Yan Liuyuan had Tsetseg call Hassan over. Hassan glared at his daughter on the way to Yan Liuyuan’s tent. Then he respectfully said to Yan Liuyuan, “Master, don’t listen to Tsetseg’s nonsense. Actually, things aren’t that difficult for our tribe yet.”
“Enough, just listen to me.” Yan Liuyuan said calmly, “The women and elderly are showing signs of nausea because they don’t have meat to eat anymore, so they can’t replenish their salt intake. We need salt.”
Hassan said awkwardly, “Salt is very scarce here. Only the large tribes have it. We need to pay tribute to the big tribes with our livestock every year to obtain the precious salt that they have.”
Yan Liuyuan realized this sounded like one of the methods the consortiums used to control the refugees. Hassan’s tribe was just like the refugees outside the strongholds, always getting controlled by others.
But at the thought of this, Yan Liuyuan became even more interested. He wanted to lead these people to a good life.
Yan Liuyuan asked, “Don’t y’all have the ability to get salt by yourselves? This steppe is so vast, so you should be able to find some, right? It might not be much, but there can’t be completely nothing.”
“The salt pools are all controlled by the large tribes, and there aren’t that many salt pools in the steppe to begin with,” Hassan replied. “I heard that the large tribes don’t even have enough salt for themselves.”
Yan Liuyuan carefully recalled what Ren Xiaosu had told him about wilderness survival. He did not like learning, but he would always take note of everything Ren Xiaosu mentioned to him.
Yan Liuyuan suddenly said to Hassan, “Gather the herdsmen. Ask them if they remember where and what the cows licked when they brought them out to graze.”
He remembered that Ren Xiaosu had told him before that all mammals needed to take in salt. Humans had long lost their instinct to survive in the wilderness, but they were a species that relied on their intelligence. If they could not find salt by themselves, they could always get the animals to help them locate it.
How did the animals in the plains replenish their salt intake? Some of the cattle farms in the Central Plains would place some coarse salt in the cowsheds for them to lick. Meanwhile, in the grasslands, there would be salt licks that cows would find to replenish their salt intake.
As expected, Hassan managed to get an answer after asking a few tribesmen.
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After all, there were only a few places the cows liked licking when they were grazing in the pastures, so how could they not know?
Yan Liuyuan immediately set off and led Hassan and the others to that pasture.
What happened after was simple. Yan Liuyuan led a group of people to pry open the frozen ground and bring a lot of the soil under the grass back to the tribe.
Yan Liuyuan did not know how the salt should be extracted, but he knew for sure there was salt in this soil.
He could only use a makeshift method of mixing water with the soil before filtering it through a cotton fabric over and over again until the water cleared up. Then the water was placed over the firepit for distillation.
Very quickly, Hassan, who was standing off to the side, saw a faint layer of yellowish-white crystals forming at the bottom of the pot. It was a very minute quantity. As the extraction process was not up to par, the crystals that formed did not look clean.
Hassan could not wait any longer and placed a little bit of it into his mouth. Then he looked at Yan Liuyuan in surprise. “Master, this is really salt!”
Regardless of its appearance, it was still salt!
Yan Liuyuan heaved a sigh of relief. In the past, Ren Xiaosu would go out into the wilderness to look for the roots of a walnut tree to boil in water. The water that was cooked would then carry salt content. At that time, it was always Ren Xiaosu who was responsible for looking for food, and now, it was Yan Liuyuan’s turn.
He said to Hassan, “Scrape these off. I want y’all to go to the salt lick and do the same as I did earlier, understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Hassan said excitedly. This was indeed a god. He could even extract salt from barren soil. How powerful!
Actually, the nomads were capable of similar expertise like this long before The Cataclysm. But after civilization had developed to a certain extent back then, the steppe inhabitants did not lack any salt intake in their daily lives anymore. Even while living in the north, the people still had access to salt that came from thousands of kilometers away.
The steppe inhabitants from before The Cataclysm were going through a formal education system during their schooling years, and no teachers had ever taught them how to search for salt in the grasslands.
Therefore, by the time The Cataclysm occurred, there were even some steppe inhabitants who knew the poem, “Preface to Prince Teng’s Pavilion.”[1] But when it came to surviving in the grasslands, they had lost the crucial skills necessary for that.
Gradually, the pressure to survive started hanging over everyone’s heads. Eventually, even the “Preface to Prince Teng’s Pavilion” was forgotten.
All that was left was an instinct to survive. After that, ambitious people began rising up and consolidating their authority over the grasslands. Then they started getting ideas about treating the Central Plains as their granary to feed themselves.
However, there had been some flaws in their understanding of the world. When they arrived at the Central Plains, they realized they were actually the ones in the most miserable state after The Cataclysm. Strongholds had already been established in the territory of the Central Plains, and they were even equipped with firearms.
The nomads living in the grasslands did not even quite understand what the South had become. Only Yan Liuyuan and Xiaoyu knew.
Yan Liuyuan sat in the tent while Xiaoyu, who was next to him, kept smiling at him. He asked, “Big Sister Xiaoyu, why are you smiling?”
“I’m smiling because I find that you look just like your brother now.” Xiaoyu said gently, “He’ll definitely be proud of you, don’t you think?”
Xiaoyu realized Yan Liuyuan had fallen silent and was looking rather down.
Yan Liuyuan said softly, “Big Sis, I miss my brother.”
[1] A piece of literature by Wang Bo of the Tang dynasty. It is considered a founding piece of Tang Literature.