He needs to find the right ti to bring it up with Lin wan, what if other males start fighting for Lin wan’s attention, where would that leave him?
They spent the next portion of the morning mixing. Lin Wan had them combine the clay soil, sand, and dry grass she had gathered earlier in a rough ratio, working it together with their hands and feet, turning it and folding it and pressing it until the mixture began to take on the uniform dark texture she was looking for.
This was where the humor crept in, unavoidably and all at once.
Because watching four powerful and very handso beastn, one of whom was the Beast King of the entire continent, stood barefoot in a pile of mud and were stomping here and there with their feet was sothing Lin Wan had not fully prepared herself for, looking at them in their bare upper bodies with sweat trickling down their abs, oh! How Lin Wan wanted to cup a feel.
She managed to keep her expression professional for barely forty seconds.
Da Jun went first. He stepped into the mixture, felt it co up between his toes, and made a face that was deeply undignified for soone of his size.
"It’s cold," he said, shocked
"It’ll warm up," Lin Wan said.
"It’s also wet."
"Yes, Da Jun. That is the nature of mud."
Keal laughed. It was the first real laugh Lin Wan had heard from him, since they ca here.
He stepped in beside Da Jun and began working the mixture with more commitnt.
Wang stepped in without comnt and began turning the cob with steady, efficient movents, apparently having decided that if Lin Wan said to stand in mud then standing in mud was what they were doing.
Qin Mo looked at the mixture.
Then at Lin Wan.
"This is necessary," he said. Not a question. A confirmation he was seeking before he committed.
"It’s the best way to mix it evenly," Lin Wan said. "Your feet cover more surface and apply more consistent pressure than hands alone. The tribes in my holand who first developed this thod discovered it by accident and kept it because it works."
Qin Mo considered this for exactly two seconds.
Then he stepped in.
He worked the cob with the sa thodical attention he brought to everything else.
But at one point the mixture shifted unexpectedly under his foot and he had to adjust his balance quickly, one arm going out slightly.
Lin Wan, who was standing at the edge of the mixing area, looked up.
Qin Mo’s eyes cut sideways to her.
"Not a word," he said.
"I wasn’t going to say anything," Lin Wan said quickly, not daring to topple down laughing.
"You were thinking about it."
"I think many things."
Wang made a sound that was definitely a laugh this ti, suppressed imdiately into a cough that convinced no one.
They worked through the morning and into the early afternoon, the mixture taking shape gradually under their combined effort. Lin Wan directed the proportions, adjusted the water content twice, and had them fold the mixture back on itself repeatedly until the fiber was evenly distributed through the clay.
When it was ready, she had them stop.
"Now we test it," she said.
She took a portion of the finished cob, ford it roughly into a thick block, and set it on a flat stone in the sun.
"We’ll check it tomorrow," she said. "If it dries without cracking, the mixture is right. If it cracks, we adjust."
Qin Mo looked at the block. "We wait until tomorrow to know if we did it correctly?"
"Yes."
A pause. "And if it’s wrong?"
"Yo. . We start all over again."
Qin Mo was quiet for a mont, looking at the block with an expression Lin Wan couldn’t fully read.
"In building a territory," he said slowly, "we cut timber and stack stone. It is fast. Visible. You know imdiately if sothing holds or falls."
"And how long do those structures last?" Lin Wan asked.
Qin Mo was quiet.
"Stone stacked without binding agent shifts," Lin Wan said. "Timber rots. Cob, done correctly, lasts longer than either. It’s slower at the start because you’re building sothing that doesn’t need to be constantly rebuilt." She looked at him. "Patience at the beginning saves work later."
Qin Mo looked at the test block again.
Then at her.
"Where did you learn this?" he asked. His voice had shifted slightly, quieter than his usual asured tone. Genuinely curious in a way that felt different from his earlier questions about thod and material. "Your holand. What was it like?"
The question landed softly. But it landed.
Lin Wan felt the others go slightly still around her, their ears perked up.
Keal and Da Jun both finding reasons to be interested in the cob mixture, Wang looking out toward the treeline also waiting to hear, he had never really talked about her holand with Lin wan, because the ti they t Lin Wan had no mory of her holand, but it seems she rembers it now, maybe not everything.
Lin Wan looked at the test block on the flat stone.
"Loud," she said after a mont. "It’s very loud. And very fast. Everyone was always moving, always going sowhere, always building sothing new before the last thing was even finished."
"Did you prefer it?" Qin Mo asked. "That pace."
Lin Wan thought about it honestly.
"I thought I did," she said. "When I was in it." She paused. "But I don’t think I ever actually stopped to really understand anything."
She picked up a small piece of leftover cob and turned it over in her hands.
"Here it’s moving on it’s pace," she said, almost to herself. Echoing his words back to him without aning to. " And I’m starting to think that’s better, but I still miss ho"
Qin Mo said nothing.
But when Lin Wan looked up, he was watching her.
She set the cob piece down.
"Sa ti tomorrow," she said to all of them, brushing her hands clean. "We check the test block and start on the foundation."
She walked back toward the wooden house without looking behind her.
She didn’t see Wang glance sideways at Qin Mo.
She didn’t see Qin Mo’s gaze follow her across the caldera until she stepped through the door.
She didn’t see Wang look away with the expression of a male who had already made his assessnt and found the answer he was looking for.
But Keal saw all of it.
And Da Jun, who was still trying to get cob mixture from between his toes, looked up, looked at Keal, and very quietly said, "Is sothing happening?"
Keal watched the door Lin Wan had disappeared through.
"Yes," he said simply.
Then he went back to his work.
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