The north wind howled, the sky was filled with thick red clouds, and everywhere around was a heavy gray gloom.

The bare, lifeless mountains and earth, combined with such weather, made people feel very cold even without the wind piercing their necks.

After this climate persisted for some time, amid the cheers of the minors, snowflakes began to fall from the sky, bouncing playfully on the ground.

After a while, the snowflakes transformed into swirling snow that drifted with the wind.

The heavy snow marked the arrival of winter in the Green Sparrow Year, signaling that the year was nearing its end and that many things could no longer be done. Regardless of whether the tribe was prepared for winter or not, everyone had to face the harsh winter with various attitudes.

The newly built earthen wall around the Green Sparrow tribe looked magnificent and imposing.

After a year of hard work by the tribe, this outer wall was completed.

Senior Brother Da and others stood in the wind and snow, looking regretfully at the remaining gap of about twenty meters on the eastern side.

With just seven or eight more days, the last bit could have been finished, but the heavens chose this moment to start snowing.

Once the heavy snow falls, they will have to wait until next spring to close this gap.

Many in the tribe looked at that not-so-long gap and felt their hearts ache more and more.

If it weren’t for knowing that building walls in such weather wouldn’t be excellent, someone might have risked braving the snow to patch this final gap.

This was truly something that could drive a perfectionist mad.

Fortunately, Han Cheng himself did not possess such an excellent trait, so he could watch Eldest Senior Brother and others scratching their heads and fretting over the gap with a relatively relaxed attitude.

With the snow falling, the tribe members could finally relax completely.

Han Cheng decided to give the tribe a relatively long break so that everyone could rest well before starting some work suitable for winter.

For example, mining stones and transporting them to the tribe, or burning previously cut and dried branches into charcoal.

Mining and transporting stones were necessary because the walls were nearly complete. After spring farming, when they repaired the gap, they could begin building houses.

During this idle time, mining more stones would make the next year much easier. Plus, after the snow falls, with sleds available, transporting stones would be more convenient.

This was the second winter Little Pea had experienced. The previous winter, he spent completely swaddled, so strictly speaking, this was his first time seeing snow and ice.

The little one was especially excited to see the snowflakes. After looking up for a while, he took unsteady steps, wildly clapping his hands and frolicking like crazy in the yard.

Sometimes the snowflakes slipped down his neck, making him shiver and scrunch up his neck and squint his eyes, but that didn’t stop him from happily prancing about.

He showed exactly the excitement of a southerner seeing ice and snow for the first time after moving north.

Besides Little Pea, many other children were playing around in the yard. Laughing, jumping, shouting, they turned the Green Sparrow tribe’s winter yard into a muddy frog pond after summer rain, making noisy “gaga” and “wawa” sounds.

The shaman, wrapped in thick tiger-skin clothes and looking very stylish, watched the scene in the yard, smiling broadly with eyes almost disappearing.

Old people loved seeing such scenes the most.

With children and grandchildren gathered around, all plump and healthy, it naturally warmed one’s heart.

In the Copper Mountain residential area, west of the Green Sparrow tribe, although the heavy snow arrived a bit later, it was now also engulfed in swirling snowflakes.

Third Senior Brother, wrapped in supremely soft fur that had been tanned, looked around proudly yet with some regret from the stone wall they had built.

His pride came from these houses and walls they had built with their own hands.

There had been nothing here before. In just over half a year, they had built all this.

What made him regretful was the delay caused by the traitor Meng, which had slowed them down, so the cultivated land here was still limited.

Thinking of Meng, the traitor who defected from the tribe here, Third Senior Brother’s gaze turned toward the copper mountain not far from the residential area, where the traitor remained.

After several rounds of excavation and mining, there were now two mine shafts on the copper mountain.

One was shallow, only about two meters deep; the other was deeper, about seven or eight meters.

At this moment, the sound of clinking metal came from the mine.

Outside, the heavy snow fell, the light was dim, and the mine was even darker.

A figure inside the mine was swinging a hammer, striking a chisel repeatedly.

The figure was wrapped in dirty furs, with hair and a messy beard connected, and the face covered in dust and grime, making it almost impossible to see the skin underneath.

This person was the traitor Meng, sentenced to mine copper for eternity in the Copper Mountain.

Though the mine was extremely dark, for Meng, who had lived here a long time, the darkness no longer bothered him. His eyes had long adapted to such dim light.

After chiseling for a while, he extracted some ore, put it into a basket, and then stopped.

He walked toward the mine entrance, where some snowflakes drifted in and melted on his indistinguishable palms.

Previously, someone outside would watch him, but now there was no one.

Still, Meng had no thought of escaping.

Without food, it was impossible to survive in such weather by running out.

Meng was filled with regret, especially as he recalled last year at this time, living in the warmth of a kang (heated brick bed) room—he regretted so much it made his stomach turn green.

This regret began when he started mining copper here.

This kind of work, which didn’t seem very heavy at first, turned out to be so torturous!

It was much more complicated than carrying stones before.

He needed to fill ten baskets of copper ore daily to rest.

Filling those ten baskets was a self-discipline he developed after starving twice.

Today, he had already filled the ten baskets, but after resting for a while, he picked up the hammer and chisel again to keep mining.

Not because he wasn’t tired or wanted to contribute more to the tribe, but because if he stopped, the cold would be unbearable…

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay