Chapter 283 Animal Husbandry, Music and Natural Disasters
While Fuxi was straightening the old man, he looked at the strange vines with surprise.

"These vines don't seem to be like this naturally, but are entangled by nature."

In addition to his enormous strength, Fuxi's growth also gave him unparalleled observation and insight, and he immediately noticed the strangeness of these vines.

These vines were twisted together, and some weak points were reinforced with purple vines. At the highest position, an ingenious arrangement was made: one vine was used as a pulling object, and the other vines were tied with several knots. As long as the vine used as a pulling object was pulled, the other vines used as knots would immediately tighten and seal the only hole. In this way, the fat fish could be salvaged without letting them escape.

A gleam of wisdom flashed in Fuxi's eyes. If he were asked to do it, he could do it better. At least he would not be unable to tighten it due to lack of strength and thus put himself in trouble.

But this does not mean that these vines have no merits. These vines are like the original seeds. These seeds may be weak or even ridiculous, but they brought the most important inspiration to Fuxi.

The improved method is like the fruit that grows from seeds, but no matter how sweet the fruit is, it is inseparable from the germination of the seeds.

After the old man stood firm, he thanked Fuxi repeatedly, saying that if it weren't for him, he would have been dragged into the river.

Fuxi smiled and waved his hand, indicating that it was just a small favor and nothing to worry about. Then he asked him sincerely what these vines were.
The old man glanced at the vines on the ground, suddenly realized, and said with a smile: "I am old and can't go out to hunt or pick fruits. I was driven out of the tribe and accidentally drifted here. I was hungry and wanted to catch some fish to eat.

But these fish were too cunning for the old man to catch any. When he was about to leave, he accidentally saw a spider hunting among the leaves, spitting out many webs. These webs had holes in them, making the prey think they could pass through freely, but in fact there were many dense lines waiting for them.

Once the prey touches the webs, they will be stuck in the webs and unable to move, and can only be slaughtered by the spiders. I suddenly had an idea to use these webs to catch fish, but the spider webs are too thin and I can't find too many spiders, so I used vines to simulate it, and fortunately the result is pretty good."

After hearing this, Fuxi was puzzled and asked, "Net? I wonder what a net is?"

The old man pointed at the vines and said, "These are called nets. They are not only made of vines, but also made of feathers, leaves, grass roots, etc. I call them nets. It's very simple."

Fuxi was shocked when he heard this.

He originally thought that he was already the best in the world. Even if he was not, he was still one in a million. He also had many tribesmen praising him, so although he looked calm, he also felt a little bit elated in his heart.

It was not until today that he realized that the world is so big that there is nothing strange.

There is always someone better than you.

The problem of the river and the fish had troubled him for so long, but in the eyes of this old man, it seemed so simple that Fuxi felt like admiring him.

Fuxi bowed deeply to the old man and said, "Please teach me the truth, wise man."

The old man laughed and said, "I am just an ordinary old man. How can I be called a wise man? Chief Fuxi, you are embarrassing me."

Fuxi did not move, and said in a deep voice: "I have never told the wise man my name, but the wise man knows that I am Fuxi, and I am also the clan leader. With such magical powers, he can be my teacher. Moreover, the person who can come up with the 'net' is far better than me. Since I am inferior to others in some aspects, then others are qualified to be my teachers."

The old man smiled but refused to accept Fuxi's offer of apprenticeship. He only said, "You said a good thing. If someone is better than me, then he is qualified to be my teacher. I am not omniscient or omnipotent. We should address each other as peers and not mention the title of teacher."

Fuxi was unwilling and still wanted to become his disciple, but the old man was adamant and he had to give up in the end.

When Fuxi welcomed the old man back to the tribe, it caused some commotion. After all, they had lived in the mountains for a long time to prevent being found by the big tribes. Now that a stranger had entered, it naturally caused them to panic.

But Fuxi's prestige in the past decade or so has surpassed that of any other clan leader, so after the commotion, everyone accepted this old man, but they were a little curious about his origins.

This old man called himself Cangjie. The reason he came here, not only because he was driven out of the tribe, but also to study writing.

Fuxi taught his tribesmen the art of weaving nets so that they could all hunt the fat fish in the river. This caused a lot of enthusiasm, and the entire tribe now had another source of food in addition to hunting and picking.

But fish also need to grow. After being caught in large numbers, although they cannot be said to be extinct, their numbers are greatly reduced, and they need time to grow.

As they grew, the fish became smaller and the original nets were no longer suitable for them. Just when the tribesmen were thinking of weaving smaller nets, Fuxi stopped them.

Facing the doubts of his people, Fuxi replied: "As the saying goes, when the lake is dry, you can fish. When we pick wild fruits, we will not cut down the whole tree just to pick the fruits on the top of the tree. Instead, we will leave them until the next time the fruits are ripe. In this way, those fat fish are the wild fruits, and the small fish are the fruit trees. If we kill all the small fish, there will be no more fish to eat, so we can't kill them anymore."

The tribesmen bowed in submission.

But the original Fengyan tribe members were used to the taste of meat, and they were reluctant to live a miserable life.

Just when Fuxi was at a loss, Cangjie developed a method of animal husbandry, which was that when they went out hunting, they would only kill the big wild beasts, and the young ones would be left in the tribe to be raised slowly.

Wait until these cubs grow up and let them give birth to litter after litter of cubs. When the first batch can no longer give birth, they will be killed. This way, you can always eat meat without having to work hard and risk your life going out hunting.

Fuxi was ecstatic after obtaining the art of animal husbandry, but ultimately decided to raise only five kinds of wild animals: chickens, ducks, cows, pigs, and horses.

Firstly, these wild beasts are gentle in nature and can be raised on a large scale. Although horse meat is not tasty, they have more mobility when riding on horses.

Secondly, they only eat wild grass, which is available everywhere. Unlike wild beasts that need to eat meat, they don’t have enough food for themselves, so where would there be any surplus food to feed them?
Moreover, meat-eating beasts consume too much energy, are more ferocious than herbivorous beasts, and are difficult to tame. Even if they are managed to be tamed, the meat obtained in the end is less than what they consume, so they are naturally not chosen by them.

Fuxi originally wanted to raise the fat fish in the river, but unfortunately those fat fish eat shrimps. If they just dug a big pit and filled it with water to raise fish, those fat fish would starve to death.

It was not realistic to send some tribesmen to the river to catch shrimps every day in order to feed the fat fish. Moreover, the river was not without dangers, and ferocious beasts would often drink water. Therefore, even if they went to fetch water, they would go together. As for going directly to the river and diverting a tributary to the tribe, it would lose the original purpose of the Fengyan tribe to establish itself here, which was for concealment.

With the skills of animal husbandry, the Fengyan tribe lived an extremely rich life. If Fuxi had not been afraid that his people would lose their courage and forced them to go hunting every day, they probably would not have needed to go out anymore.

Time flies like water, and more than twenty years have passed in the blink of an eye.

In the past twenty years, the Fengyan tribe has become very different from the past. Every member of the tribe no longer needs to use leaves to make clothes. Almost all of them wear various animal skins to keep warm.

Don't think that this is just a very rare and common thing. Every year during the severe cold weather, more than 30% of the Fengyan tribe members die, just because their clothes are not warm enough and their houses are not cold enough.

Even though they would go out hunting, in order to obtain food and ensure the safety of their tribesmen, the animal skins would be chopped into pieces and could no longer be made into clothes.

With these animal skins to keep warm, no one would die from the cold every year, except for those tribesmen who were too old.

This is all thanks to Cangjie's animal husbandry techniques, which enabled them to obtain a steady supply of complete animal skins.

But as the tribe grew larger, all kinds of things arose. Fuxi himself had a photographic memory, so he naturally didn't need to pay too much attention to it, but the other tribesmen who discussed matters together did not have this ability.

Every time a conference is held, it is fine if there are few things to do, but when there are too many things, it is easy to lose things. Fuxi either forgets this or that, which makes him very worried.

To this end, Fuxi developed the method of knotting ropes to record events. Whenever he wanted to do something, he would tie a knot on the rope and carve many simple symbols to remind himself not to forget.

As soon as this method came out, 70% to 80% of the confusion was immediately eliminated. Except for some people whose memory was really bad, almost everyone could carry out Fuxi's orders well.

In addition, Fuxi completely abandoned the belief in Yuanshi Tianzun and Guangchengzi and instead erected five statues of gods.

Among them, two statues are the tallest, namely, Nuwa, the Holy Mother of mankind, and Hengming Saint, the leader of Xuanjiao.

The last three statues are slightly shorter. They are Suiren, who created fire, Ziyi, who invented clothes, and Youchao, who built houses.

Fuxi had no objection to worshipping the Three Ancestors of the human race and Nuwa, but he was puzzled as to why they had to worship the Saint Hengming, who was even higher than the Three Ancestors of the human race. So he went to consult Cangjie, who was the first to propose a change of belief.

Cang Jie replied, "Sage Hengming has infinite power and is the supreme Lord of Fate. He is the elder brother of Nuwa and the master of the three ancestors of the human race. It was with the guidance of Sage Hengming that the three ancestors of the human race were able to create fire, invent clothes, build houses, and live in Yingzhou Fairy Island above the South China Sea. He is also the master of Yingzhou Fairy Island. Yingzhou Fairy Island is a holy place in the hearts of thousands of cultivators."

Fuxi had no objection after hearing this. The fact that he was the master of the three ancestors of the human race was enough for them to worship him, not to mention that he was the senior brother of Nuwa.

But what surprised him was that Nuwa and Hengming Saint also had a master. He wondered what kind of great person could be the master of these two supreme gods.

Taking the opportunity of the reform of beliefs, Fuxi completely broke off the tradition of getting pregnant before marriage and driving them out of the tribe, but he also took care of those people with the old beliefs. At the same time, he advocated the custom of men marrying women and stipulated the details of it. It was no longer maintained by relying on each other's conscience, but through laws.

But the day-to-day life also made these tribesmen feel very bored, and they even appeared dazed and absent-minded, with no energy at all.

Fuxi felt a bit of a headache when he saw this, and his grandfather, the former leader of the Fengyan tribe, didn't have a good solution either. After all, he had never seen such a situation before.

Finally, Fuxi had no choice but to ask Cangjie for advice. After careful observation, Cangjie sighed and said, "This is because the tribesmen no longer need to worry about their livelihoods, and they don't know what to do. The art of animal husbandry has saved them from worrying about food and clothing. With animal skins and clothing, they don't have to worry about winter. With nothing to do all day, they will naturally feel depressed. I can't do anything about it."

The reason why such a situation did not occur in the past was because the Fengyan people were worried all day long. They had to worry about what to eat tomorrow and whether their clothes were warm enough. Naturally, they were very busy and such a situation would never occur.

But life nowadays is so affluent that some members of the tribe feel overwhelmed and eventually start to harm their spirits.

As the chief of the tribe, Fuxi had endless things to do no matter how wealthy the tribe was. He secretly blamed himself for not caring enough about his tribe members, but he could not think of what to ask these people to do for a moment.

One day, while Fuxi was relaxing outside, he accidentally came to the outside of a cave. At this time, a gust of wind happened to blow by, and a whistling sound came from the cave entrance, which was particularly pleasant to the ear.

Fuxi was curious and walked closer to take a look. He found that they were some strange stones, hollow in the middle, so when the wind passed by, they would make some different sounds.

Some vague memories emerged in Fuxi's mind, but he was distracted for only a moment before he recovered. He collected these stones with great interest, and finally selected some suitable ones and made them into many strange objects.

He named these objects pottery xun.

The sound produced by the pottery xun was called music by Fuxi. With music to pass the time, these tribesmen finally stopped hurting themselves and began to develop various kinds of music.

In addition to the pottery xun, Fuxi also invented various musical instruments such as the zither, se, and flute, which completely relieved the boredom of these tribesmen.

But in addition to these problems, there is another biggest problem facing Fuxi, that is natural disasters.

The war between wizards and liches has only been over for a few hundred years. The death of countless wizards has caused a slight chaos in the great ways of heaven and earth. Some strange changes have begun to occur in various places in the prehistoric world. There are either long-term droughts or long-term ice, and even strong winds and torrential rains. It will take at least ten thousand years for these great ways to return to peace.

Ten thousand years is extremely short for those great gods, but for mortals, this time is unimaginably long.

(End of this chapter)