Ancient Eden

Chapter 77

~End of chapter 76

“Mu Qing, come out.”

She turned around and went back inside, and just as she was about to pick up the basket to go find Naduo and go out with her, that’s when she heard someone outside calling her name.

She could now understand some simple words and communicate with them in short syllables.

Chapter 77

(25.1)

The voice calling her belonged to a man, and it was a slightly aged voice.

She knew this voice. It was the chief.

They all respectfully called him Da Wu. Mu Qing guessed that Da Wu was probably a title of honor given to the king or the chief.

Mu Qing hummed and came out from the hut. She saw him with his hands behind his back, quietly looking at her.

Apart from the first time they met, when he came to her to turn her body around, and revealed to her his black teeth, which made her sick to her stomach, she was unsure whether Li Mang had anything to do with it, but he never did anything to her. He just occasionally came looking for her so that she could teach him to knot ropes. Mu Qing did her best to think of that time as going to the vegetable market and ending up picking chicken and duck fat, and like this, the feeling of disgust she had for him gradually dissipated a little bit. After all, she was living in his territory.

Recently he had been looking for her more often, for reasons related to a matter that happened the other day. That day, when she and Naduo came back to hand over the day’s harvest, she saw the woman responsible for the management of what each person could get counting the number of things in the baskets of the women in front of them, and then using the rope to make different marks. She was very slow, so the women waiting behind, probably in a hurry to go back to cook dinner and wait for their men to come back, started to complain.

Here, although all the things that each person got were shared, what each person harvested each day was added up and recorded on the wall with symbols. Mu Qing guessed that this was done probably to use as a guide to distribute food to each family during the winter, with a reward proportional to one’s work, so the women worked very hard every day.

People here already had the notion of numbers, but their calculations were a little slow beyond ten, and they weren’t able to go past a hundred, they had to divide the things into piles of ten, and after ten piles of ten, they would then use some kind of knot on a rope to do a mark, indicating one hundred, after ten marks of one hundred were attained, another knot was used to indicate a thousand, and so on.

Although Mu Qing and that woman had from the very beginning started on the wrong foot, but so many days had now passed, and apart from the ugly face that woman made when she was facing her, their interactions were peaceful and without quarrel. Seeing her being so flustered now, Mu Qing went forward to help her count, and very quickly counted the number of fruits in the basket.

There were one hundred and twenty, so she tied one knot indicating one hundred and one indicating twenty, on the ropes belonging to the woman in charge of collecting the things, and then drew three bars on the side. Mu Qing counted, once this woman gets another knot indicating one hundred, she could untie those ten knots and replace them with one knot indicating a thousand.

The line very quickly became short. The women finished handing over the things in their hands, touched Mu Qing’s forehead, and happily left. Here, touching the forehead was a gesture to express gratitude.

Mu Qing was a little worried that the woman in charge would blame her for being nosy. But when she saw her appearing relieved, while looking at Mu Qing’s face with a strange expression, similar to admiration, also a little reluctant to admit defeat, but without any malice, Mu Qing let go of her worries, smiled at her, and handed hers and Naduo’s things, before going back.

It was probably because her reputation for being good at calculations had spread, so these days she and the woman in charge were doing the counting together, and the woman’s attitude towards her was getting more and more polite. Then, when Li Mang learned of it, he looked at her just like the first time he saw the telescope, and for the first time in her life, Mu Qing knew the feeling of being worshiped, and by such a strong man.

Although she felt a little ashamed for being put on a pedestal even thought she only knew a little more math than them, but her mood was good. She even thought that after some time, when she and they could communicate smoothly, she would teach the children here Arabic numerals and simple arithmetic, after all, it was very helpful for daily life.

Translator : Laura

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