Life in Yidi is difficult, and this is one of the main reasons why the people of Hedi have allowed them to live freely to this day.

Because the only large port in the vicinity was now surrounded and trapped by ice floes, and was under the control of the Moon Country, the Eastern Moon stopped directly near the ice cap. The people who left the ship climbed down the rope ladder and lowered the supplies with the gondola on the ship, and then took a small boat to the edge of the frozen continent, stepping on a huge ice sheet dozens of times the size of the Oriental Moon and walking towards the land.

The fact that human beings are small in the face of nature has been reminded many times by the group.

Most of these ice sheets drifted from the distant North Rical Sea. The northern part of the Crescent, known as the Razor, is actually farther south than the Nordic and Four Islands of mainland Rigal, but its harbor freezes faster in the winter than in the far west of Suo Marina due to ocean currents.

The vast and massive ice sheet encircles the entire northern tip of the continent, as if it were white earth stretching outward, pushing the coastline for several kilometers.

The sea around Yidi is covered in ice throughout the winter, and it will not melt until the following spring.

But life is not extinct.

The Lady of Loan, dressed in a thick cloak, and our Mr. Sage followed the indigenous Lulu on a lake near the settlement, tying a large bundle of improvised cross-shaped things made of twigs and bark ropes, and then a simple bundle of string.

It's a sunny day, and the absence of snow and the sun make the temperature a little better, but a white land full of snow and ice can also be a disadvantage on a clear day - because the strong light will reflect off the white, making you dizzy and disoriented.

If you ignore it as tolerable, the consequences will be even more dire over time. The sun's rays reflected by snow and ice can burn your eyes for a short time, causing you to be afraid of light, cry when blowing in the wind, and blur your vision, which can be a drag on your teammates.

The harsh environment makes it necessary to be cautious in what you do, and if you are careless, the situation will quickly deteriorate to the point of no return.

Fortunately, just as people in other regions have their own solutions, to deal with the glittering snow on a sunny day, the Yi people have also invented corresponding equipment.

Theoretically, it is a wooden frame with a component made of skin, which can only be made of wood chips and cloth due to the limited conditions. The round frame made of fresh elastic branches is wrapped in a coarse cloth with a hole in the middle of the eye patch, which makes the trio look funny when they wear it, but it effectively reduces the direct damage to the eyes caused by reflections.

This is a necessary equipment for traveling in Yidi on a sunny day.

Just looking out from the small hole in the middle of the cloth that is not so neatly opened because there are no professional tools, and losing most of your field of vision can feel daunting at first, but once you get used to it, you will realize that it is not a big problem. And when you crouch down for work and don't need to look at the whole large field, you can simply move the blindfold up to restore normal vision, so it just takes some time to get used to it.

- Three days have passed since the group arrived at the longhouse.

That night, the goose feather snow lasted for three days, and during this time, everyone stayed in the longhouse except for fetching water and going to the toilet. And today, when the sun finally cleared, more than half of the dry food they carried had been consumed, so they had to be restocked.

This is not only for consumption now, but also for hoarding later on the road. The journey from Yidi to the Land of the Moon was not long or short, but because the group had no horses, it would take at least a week or so. Given their status, food supplies may not be available during the journey, so it's best to prepare yourself.

The only people who came out to hunt were the three of them, who were good at moving in the wilderness, and Kaleva, who was also the best in the group, was left in the longhouse. First, the dull-headed young people may be held back because of their lack of experience, and second, if the longhouse is left to a group of scholars and missionaries who are all from high society and lack independent living experience.

When they return, they may see a whole burning longhouse and melted snow all over the ground, and a group of people who are overwhelmed by all this.

No matter how unreliable Galeva is, he is also from the working people's class, and if nothing else, at least he is enough to maintain the basic daily life.

All in all, the first thing the three people in charge of food gathering had to obtain was the best and most stable source of food for the season.

Fish.

The top-down nature of the water makes it possible to live beneath the seemingly calm ice, and there are many species of salmon between the mountains and lakes of Yidi that can tolerate temperatures around zero degrees Celsius without freezing blood, but it is much more difficult to catch them than usual.

The ice, which is large enough to bear hundreds of kilograms of warhorses, is tens of centimeters thick, and even if you find the weaker part on it, it is not easy to chisel through it.

Provided, you're not Henry Mayer.

"Whew-" The water vapor exhaled from the mouth and nose quickly condensed in the air, turning into a white mist, and the sage gripped the thick wooden pole with both hands, and then aimed at the ice and stabbed it down hard.

"Wow!" the charcoal-hardened half-shaped head of the spatula was half-stuck in the sun-soaked ice, and the sage then twisted the pole to completely remove the loose ice ballast, and then shoveled it aside.

Repeating this process less than ten times, the ice cave that was shoveled out began to show signs of running water.

"Verbosity. (Almost)" Lulu looked at the overflowing water as Henry repeated the action again, easily piercing the ice.

Because of the light, a dark color made it difficult to see what was below the sea water surged through the fist-sized hole, and the two men, who were already surprised by the sage's physical strength, quickly took out something in the shape of a cross made of small branches, combined with a thin rope woven from bark fibers, and tied a small piece of wood about two centimeters long and pointed ends at the front.

The string was tied in the middle of the small pointed log, and then Lulu raised a hand and measured the length of the rope to be placed with the length of her arm, and then inserted a small piece of jerky into the small log, and slowly lowered the rope into the cave.

This small, pointed piece of wood is a simple hook that ties the rope in the center to keep it balanced, so that when the fish swallows the bait in its stomach, it gets stuck in the esophagus and makes it impossible for it to break free.

Relying on the sage's powerful and seemingly endless physical strength, the group had almost prepared the predetermined dozen or so punch fishing spots in less than an hour.

But this wasn't the kind of laid-back place where you could set up a pony and enjoy fishing, and given the possibility of cooling down and the fact that they had other things to do, the group had to leave after laying a fishing hole. And that's where the simple mechanism that looks like a little cross comes in handy.

Henry and Mira, who quickly learned how to do it under Lulu's teaching, were able to work together, which was one of the reasons for their rapid progress.

The bark line, which was so tough that it took a knife to cut, was tied to a small cross at the end.

The cross, which is cut out with a knife, is matched with a stubby horizontal log, and the open parts are cleverly joined and tied. There is another piece of wood tied horizontally above to maintain balance, but also to prevent the cross from falling into the ice cave.

This simple and eye-catching little mechanism is the crystallization of the wisdom of the people, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is an automatic fishing device. The cross standing on top of the ice cave maintains a delicate balance, and when a fish bites and begins to struggle, the line cart tied to the end will cause the erected cross to fall, so that there is no need to pull the line out of the ice cave every time to check, just look at whether the cross is still standing to know if there is a fish on the hook.

The wisdom of life accumulated over thousands of years is efficient and simple, all it takes is a knife and finding the right branches and bark to make it.

The same goes for the semi-circular vertical shovel made of small tree trunks, and although Lulu's people left with any solid and durable metal tools they could take with them, the improvisation group was able to quickly craft emergency improvised tools with their knowledge.

Unfortunately, it is very time-consuming and laborious to make smooth sleds or snowboards without planing knives, so they can only make a frame out of dried branches, cover them with bark and ropes, and make snowshoes and tie them to their calves, so as to increase the contact area of the feet to avoid falling into knee-deep snow with one foot.

The thick warmth of the pack and the huge clumsy bark snowshoes made the group not only slow to walk, but also physically demanding, which is why they didn't bring any scholars and missionaries with them. Even people who are accustomed to being in the wilderness can feel very tired in this weather environment, and the whole area is white and there are no elements to recognize the terrain, and the fatigue and vision will probably not be able to return if you get lost.

The man ahead had now changed from the native Lulu to our Sage Mister, and he had memorized the roads throughout the area – not surprisingly – so it wasn't hard to make sure the road was clear in the first place.

Our Mr. Sage has always been a pioneer of this kind, but it's not a kind of machismo like taking care of a lady, it's just that he's best suited to the position.

Both Mira and Lulu pull improvised sleds made in the same way as snowshoes, which are not good for carrying people, but are still very useful as an extension of their carrying capacity to store all kinds of materials collected in the field.

It doesn't take much effort to pull the sled on ice and snow, but it can be a bit overwhelming to have one hand free to pull the car, and it's important to have a third person who can improvise with his hands free.

And if this third person is Lulu or Mira, and Henry is the one who pulls the cart, then our Sage's tall physique, which weighs nearly a hundred kilograms, will become a burden in this case.

Because if Mira or Lulu fell into the ice or a puddle of snow, he could lift them up with one hand. And if the Sage stumbled—though it seemed highly unlikely to the Lady of Roan—there was no way that the two of them would have had enough strength to pull him.

All in all, after laying down enough fishing spots, the trio headed towards a hillside area where lush vegetation could be seen even though it was covered in snow.

The firewood stored in the longhouse had been depleted during the three days of heating and cooking, and they had to get more firewood or risk the cold.

Laying out the fishing spots, then going to the hillside to cut down the trees, and checking for hunting on the way back after cutting the fish increases efficiency and prevents valuable time and energy from being wasted. This kind of wisdom in detail is a cliché, and it is not something that needs to be written about for people who survive in harsh environments, but just a part of their daily lives.

Here, caution isn't something like a switch that you have to turn on suddenly when you encounter an unexpected situation.

Rather, it exists in the daily life, if you accidentally lose it and paralyze it, the harsh and merciless natural environment will not even give you a chance to regret it.

The process of climbing the mountain in heavy winter warm gear was very tiring, and after a while, the two behind them gasped, and one after another white gas turned into fog, but the moment the three of them reached the top of the mountain, the sage raised his hand and signaled the two behind him to stop.

"Footprints. He said, in the language of the Moon Country, to make sure Lulu understood as well.

"......" The aboriginal girl ran up quickly, looked at it for a while, and then said, "Kuma." ”

Mira didn't know the word, so she turned her attention to her teacher, and the sage explained to her, "It's a bear." ”

"But isn't it still winter? Miss Luo An asked rhetorically.

"The sleepless bear, perhaps worse, may not have stored enough fat before falling asleep and ended its hibernation early. ”

In layman's terms. The sage, who crouched down to examine the footprints, turned to look at the two:

"It was woken up by hunger. ”