Beauty and the Beasts

Bai Qingqing smiled with her mouth closed and ran back to the stone castle to take a stone mortar.

“Just strip off the rice grains and try using this,” Bai Qingqing said. They were running out of rice, but the rice here wasn’t enough either. She wanted to leave them for planting, but in order to try pounding rice, she had no choice but to sacrifice some of these grains.

“You want to crush the rice?” Parker had a furious look on his face, and his nostrils flared.

Although planting crops was now much easier thanks to Bai Qingqing and Winston’s innovations, this was his first time planting, and he had put in lots of painstaking effort. It was hard for him to calm down if Bai Qingqing wanted to ruin his hard work.

Parker tried to convince himself that he planted the rice for Qingqing and that it didn’t matter as long as she was happy.

Parker held back his anger and tried to say as calmly as possible, “If you want to grind the rice grains into powder, you’ll have to wait for me to peel them first. Otherwise, you’ll mix the skin and the rice together.”

Bai Qingqing waved her hands and quickly explained, “No. In our world, we just pound the rice in a stone mortar. We can remove the husks that way.”

She still vaguely remembered that there was a passage in her textbook about “pounded rice” that had accompanying illustrations. To make that, rice was poured into a stone bowl and pounded with a wooden log.

“If you’re still worried, I could use a wooden stick instead,” Bai Qingqing said meekly and in an unsure tone.

Seeing that Bai Qingqing was genuine, Parker stripped a handful of grains. He then looked for a piece of incense wood in the woodshed and rounded off and smoothed one end before carefully using it to pound the rice.

Bai Qingqing stared nervously.

If they were successful, this would make things much more convenient for the beastmen. If they failed, she would have to suffer Parker’s wrath!

Parker pounded the rice a few times, then picked up the grains. Relief washed over him. “They’re still intact,” he said.

Bai Qingqing breathed a sigh of relief as well. “Keep going.”

“Mm.”

Gradually, husks began to separate from the rice grains. When Bai Qingqing blew air into the bowl, the husks rose into the air and flew towards her face.

“Be careful. Your skin might itch again.” Parker chuckled.

The two of them met eyes and smiled. Bai Qingqing said, “I’ll wash my face later.”

Parker felt like a huge weight was completely lifted off his shoulders. He stripped all the grains and quickly removed the husks with the stone mortar. Of course, there were small amounts of pounded rice as well.

If these rice grains were peeled by hand, it would take them at least the rest of the hot season to finish doing so. However, harvesting and removing the husks now took less than an afternoon. With so much time saved, he could overlook the fact that minute amounts of rice were crushed.

“Take this rice to Winston and tell everyone about this method,” Bai Qingqing said with a smile and clapped her hands. “It would be best if you could find someone else to exchange the rice for grains that we can plant later on.”

“Okay!” Parker left excitedly.

…

Winston gathered the citizens of the City of Beastmen once again. He told everyone about the method to remove husks and demonstrated it to them. As everyone was rejoicing, he announced a piece of earth-shattering news.

“It’s very likely that there will be a drought during this year’s hot season. If it doesn’t rain, the river will dry up,” Winston said very slowly as his deep tiger eyes scanned the main hall, silencing the crowd.

This message was from Curtis. This time, the drought area was extremely large, and some distant places also experienced a serious fall in their water levels.

There was an eerie silence in the main hall for a moment before it suddenly became chaotic.

“How can that be? Wasn’t there just a flood recently?”

“Why isn’t the ape king informing us of this? It’s always the tiger king. Is he okay?”

“We should probably ask the ape king first.”

“Right. Let’s go ask the ape king.”

The beastmen followed the crowd and rushed to the ape king’s castle.

Bai Qingqing walked in from the backyard and smiled. “Come on. Let’s go watch the fun too.”