“I’m very strong, so it’s fine. I’ll protect myself carefully. Let’s salt the meat.” Right now, Ning Shu’s current goal was to stock up on enough food to deal with the approaching calamity.
Zhi was hesitant. “Are we really not going to hand this over?”
All the prey the tribe hunted was distributed amongst everyone. Zhi felt very uneasy about keeping this for themselves.
However, Ning Shu didn’t mind. “It’s fine as long as no one find out.”
“Since Jia knows how to cook a lot of tasty things, Rui will definitely give more of the prey to Qian Jia. No one in the tribe will say anything either since Qian Jia has contributed a lot to the tribe, but if we don’t have enough food, we won’t be able to survive winter,” coaxed Ning Shu patiently.
It was easier to handle some things with Zhi’s help.
Zhi bit her lips nervously but finally nodded. She picked up a stone and started grinding the stone to sharpen it.
Ning Shu took the stone. “I’ll do it. I’m stronger.”
Ning Shu skinned the deer, got rid of the internal organs, and found a place to bury them. Zhi carried over the salt jar. When she saw that Ning Shu was grabbing fistfuls of salt to rub it on the meat, she asked, “Should I ask Jia for more salt?”
“Yes, but don’t ask for too much at once.” Ning Shu was already being very conservative with the salt. After rubbing it with the salt, there was a need to massage for a long time to get the salt into the meat.
It was hard, but she managed to salt the entire deer with the large stone bowl of salt. Zhi found some grass stems to hang the deer up.
Zhi was very satisfied to see that they had so much meat.
However, Ning Shu sighed as she looked at the empty jar. Qian Jia pretty much controlled the salt supply of the entire tribe. She was the only one that could simmer the rock salt.
Whenever people in the tribe wanted salt, they had to either ask Qian Jia or the tribe chief.
Ning Shu wanted to go to the salt mine to get salt and boil it herself, but the salt mine was pretty far from the tribe and the tribe chief valued the mine a lot so he prohibited the tribesmen from going there to get salt themselves.
Qian Jia was the only one who could freely go to the salt mine to get salt.
As of now, Qian Jia’s status in Winged Tigers Tribe was extremely high, especially since everyone in the tribe with the exception of Ning Shu liked her.
Whenever Ning Shu didn’t have anything to do, she’d hole up in her cave to practice the Unsurpassable Martial Arts or tidy up her herbs. She was keeping busy with her own things so she didn’t interact with Qian Jia at all.
Zhi would ask Qian Jia for salt every couple days, but Qian Jia never gave her much. After a couple times, Qian Jia felt that something was off and asked, “Why are you using salt up so quickly?”
Zhi replied, embarrassed, “I really like eating salt. The roasted meat tastes really good.”
Qian Jia didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. As she gave Zhi a bowl of salt, she said, “You can’t eat too much salt, it’s not good for the body. Oh right, why hasn’t Cao come to get salt?”
“She eats with me, that’s why I’m going through salt so quickly,” said Zhi.
Qian Jia’s gaze flickered, then she said, “It’s great that Cao has a friend like you, but she has to do some things herself. Have her come get salt herself in the future.”
Zhi nodded, then left with the stone bowl.
Qian Jia watched as Zhi left, then leaned against Rui, discouraged. “Rui, I feel like Cao doesn’t like me. Did I do something wrong?”
Rui immediately said, “You’re the best. No beastmen can compare to you, and Cao is nothing but a female beastman. Even if she doesn’t like you, there’s plenty of people that like you. It’s her loss for not liking you.”
As Rui spoke, he squeezed Qian Jia’s delicate cheeks dotingly. He squeezed very gently, but it still left a red mark on her face, so his heart filled with heartache.
Qian Jia said with a smile, “Husband, I’m so happy to have met you.”
“I’m on the one that feels fortunate to have met you. Thank goodness that I was the one that saved you back then.”
