Chapter 72

Today's task is to install some smoke vents in the experimental house. In the morning, with Titus' help, Wowben and another woman went to the reservoir to continue making mud bricks. All the mud bricks are being fired in the large stone kiln built next to the reservoir.

She needs to seal the house more tightly; all four walls need another layer of mud covering. This task was assigned to Titus, who had some free time in the morning. He was squatting nearby, diluting the mud with water to make it more adhesive. His two strong arms worked like a mixer... Previously, she and the women had to mix for half a day to make mud for one wall, but Titus could handle all four walls on his own.

While Titus was plastering the walls, Cloudy was studying the chimney openings in front of the experimental house. Since fires will be lit in the interlayer of all four walls, holes need to be made in each wall. At the same time, window positions need to be determined.

These tasks weren't too difficult for Cloudy; she just needed to focus on getting them done! She almost used all the skills she learned from her childhood, playing Mahjong with her parents in the Mahjong hall, to build this insulated house she had imagined. The small one was fine for now, but once it was successfully running, it would be expanded into a larger one, and the locals would take care of the foundation for the big house.

By midday, Titus had re-plastered all four walls with thick mud, leaving no gaps. "Cloudy, how did I do?" he asked.

"Very good!" Cloudy inspected the small house, ensuring the four smoke vents and window openings were sealed with mud. The next step was to dry the walls by lighting a fire and then test the temperature inside the house. "Is Titus leaving soon, or does he want to stay and see?"

Titus looked towards the direction of the settlement gate and thought for a moment. "...I should leave. Cloudy will wait for me to come back at night to sleep."

"Alright!" Cloudy clapped her hands, dusting them off. "When you come back tonight, this house might just be a success!" She was very confident now; theoretically, this house could even steam dinosaurs, so handling a few newborns shouldn't be a problem.

After Titus helped Cloudy move a few large stones into the house and left, Cloudy went to fetch firewood. The Matriarch had informed the locals on fire duty that whenever Cloudy came, she should be given fire without conditions. It was this aspect that made Cloudy feel like she might have become a village official, or at least someone highly valued.

She placed the fire next to the house; there was a small opening at the bottom of each wall for inserting firewood. Cloudy lay on the ground and stuffed each interlayer with firewood before lighting them one by one.

Before long, gray smoke started slowly seeping out of the smoke vents on all four walls, quite pungent... She stepped back five meters and waited for the firewood inside the walls to burn completely.
A few minutes later, holding her breath, Cloudy rushed into the small hut and blocked the exit with the crude wooden door from the entrance. The outside temperature was already hot for Cloudy, and inside the hut, it was even hotter. Not even half a minute had passed before she felt her exposed skin starting to turn red.

The perceived temperature was definitely above 50 degrees, staying a bit longer would mean death. After enduring for two minutes, Cloudy kicked away the wooden board and rushed outside, taking in deep breaths of the fresh air. She touched her face, feeling sticky with sweat, her pores all over her body feeling like they had opened up due to the heat.

However, the smell inside the hut was extremely unpleasant, with the dust and dirt odor intensifying in the high temperature, making it hard to breathe. Her nose felt itchy, rubbing it for a while didn't help much... She wondered if the locals could adapt to such an environment. Either way, expanding this hut to be used as a shelter for newborns during the rainy season would definitely provide better insulation than the mud huts in the settlement.

After the hunting expedition, when Titus and the others returned with the fur and animal skins for making warm clothes, Cloudy felt that Titus had fulfilled his promise. She had done everything she could, and now it was time to leave it to fate!

Cloudy rested outside the hut for a while. Around twenty minutes later, the firewood in the wall cavities had burned out. Once the house had cooled down completely, she went back in to check for any cracks or collapse risks due to the high temperature. Standing on the stones Titus had helped her throw into the hut earlier, with a stone under her foot, she could reach the ceiling and pushed it upwards a bit, feeling it loosen slightly.

The roof was made of wood, rattan, mud, and leaves, definitely more fragile than the walls. After testing the roof, she started pushing on the inner walls. The internal mud plaster had fallen off in many places due to the high temperature and insufficient viscosity, but the external mud was holding up fine. She speculated whether it was related to the humidity inside and outside, or if using a different material for the inner mud walls would be better. How to improve it temporarily was still undecided. She went outside and tapped on the outer walls.

The walls, heated and loosened by the mud, would sway with a push, indicating the need for improvements in building a proper insulated house. Cloudy immediately thought of something like reinforcing bars, but in the rainforest, the only alternative to that would be wood, which couldn't be placed inside walls subjected to continuous high temperatures.

Large stones seemed to be the best option, but cutting them would be troublesome. This would need further research later on, luckily, there were plenty of strong individuals in the settlement who might solve the problem in no time.

Apart from the stability and insulation of the hut, ventilation and how to add firewood inside were also major concerns. Once the rainy season set in, the locals would surely want to seal every crack in the hut tightly, making it impossible to open a window. However, maintaining a certain high temperature inside the hut for an extended period would make it impossible for newborns to breathe.

Cloudy sat cross-legged on the ground, staring at the stone hut in front of her.
After some thought, Cloudy realized that both of these things could be easily solved. Simply opening a window inside the house and adding a sturdy cover would do the trick. After some time, the airflow would improve. She stood up and began to feel along the stone wall, uncovering something different among the wood ashes.

In that moment, Cloudy noticed a few dark pieces that stood out from the rest of the wood ashes. Curiously, she reached into the crevice and pulled out the dark pieces.

Several dark pieces of "wood" rolled out from the crevice. Cloudy widened her eyes as she picked up these black pieces of wood and rubbed them in her hands, leaving black powder on her skin.

Is this... charcoal??

Cloudy couldn't help but make a strange sound. She had actually tried to make charcoal a few times before, but the process seemed different from her imagined idea of "piling wood together and it might turn into gold." Lacking the relevant expertise, Cloudy had abandoned the idea of making charcoal.

Unexpectedly today... she had accidentally obtained charcoal!! To confirm that these pieces were indeed burnable charcoal, Cloudy went back to the fire room, brought back some kindling for an experiment, and the results were very satisfying. These pieces were indeed charcoal, capable of burning!

But why? Cloudy looked in amazement at the crevice in the stone house, wondering how it had formed. They had also ignited the wood in the crevice yesterday, but no charcoal had appeared then. The only difference today in the stone house from yesterday was that Titus had plastered mud on the inner and outer walls and added a few more smoke vents on the wall.

Excitedly, Cloudy began to stomp her feet in place, feeling like she was starting to understand something. If she could produce charcoal in large quantities in the future, wouldn't it greatly enhance her insulated house?