It was still the same old routine: thoroughly grind and filter out impurities, then add water to the clay.
But when he got to the clay mixing step, Lin Yang knew he certainly had something going.
The soil’s texture became extremely sticky after moistening, and rough shapes could be made quite thin by hand without compromising their structure.
After bustling about for a while, Lin Yang furrowed his brows. Since the clay was workable, simply hand-shaping it felt insufficient. To make rough pottery look neat and pretty, he needed a manual potter’s wheel to throw the clay.
This wasn’t a problem for Lin Yang. After a brief consideration, he picked up his axe and went out the door.
He wandered around the forest for a while and found the thickest pine tree he could, chopped it down without hesitation, and dragged a thick segment from the base back to camp.
With the basic axe and a military knife, working out the details was just a matter of time. He spent half an afternoon crafting a wooden throwing wheel.
Below it was a flat stone, on top of which he placed the carved wooden disk. The wooden disk was sharpened at the bottom to reduce friction, then smeared with some animal fat for lubrication. Applying force with his left hand at the edge, the disk slowly began to spin.
By constantly tweaking to balance the structure, he finally managed to get the workbench into a workable state.
After that, things became much simpler: mix the clay, place it on the throwing wheel, and experiment.
Once he had found the right feel for the moisture content of the clay, Lin Yang quickly shaped piece after piece into form.
The crude storage clay pots that he had previously fashioned by stacking coils of clay were just elementary school level compared to his new manual throwing wheel and the shapes he managed to pull from the clay, which astonished the onlooking audience.
This was a direct leap from the primitive state to the age of pottery.
With the basic shape down, making practical vessels was just a matter of time. Other than taking breaks to eat, Lin Yang kept on trying in front of the camera non-stop.
Failure, restart, learn from experience, and continue trying,
As he gained more experience, the rough shapes he made with the manual throwing wheel started to look more and more presentable. By the time the evening turned pitch black, he had seven or eight fairly well-structured and practical clay shapes by his side.
Shallow bowls for holding water and cups that already looked halfway like everyday porcelain; once they dried out and were fired without cracking, they could be used for serving food or even holding water, much more convenient than the small makeshift pot he had been relying on previously.
After a whole afternoon’s work, Little White sat obediently on the beam with a hat secured on its head, but after having its fill, it was very docile. The food in its crop had been compressed to its lower crop to be further digested throughout the afternoon.
Looking at the fruits of his labor from a whole afternoon and part of the evening, Lin Yang felt very satisfied. He washed his hands, donned the rabbit skin sleeves, and continued working the camera rig until past eleven o’clock at night. Only then did he close the door to rest.
Unwittingly, he had already spent more than twenty days in the wilderness.
As time passed, the climate was also undergoing significant changes. The temperature difference between day and night was increasing, with nights fixed below zero degrees, especially in the latter half. Often, the sound of howling wind could be heard, and inside the wooden cabin reinforced several times over, the fireplace burned all night, keeping it rather cozy.
The next morning, a well-rested Lin Yang got up before dawn to work with Little White, but this time he was more focused on the rough shapes that had been baking overnight.
Out of the seven shapes, two had cracked, while the other five had gradually changed color.
Lin Yang carefully placed them into the fire pit, stuffing the stove with flammable pine wood. If all went as expected, these roughly fired clay pieces would be ready for use when he returned from hunting.
For the next three days, he got up early each morning to rig the eagle, then went hunting with Little White in the morning. He returned to his dwelling around noon to do some repairs and incidentally tended to the firing of his pottery.
During these hunting days, he still targeted Snow Rabbits as his quarry. As he added muscle-strengthening food to his diet every day, Little White’s condition improved, and their hunting success increased day by day.
On the fourth day of hunting, he caught a total of eight Snow Rabbits in just one morning: seven were killed with a kick and one was caught alive, head in hands.
All the prey they encountered were taken down after a short struggle with no lucky ones escaping.
Lin Yang knew that Little White had passed the first phase of Box Hunting.