I Became The Chief Of A Primitive Village

Chapter 1039, The Round House

Translator: Silavin

Su Bai finished recounting the entire story and took a sip of tea, remarking that his throat had genuinely gone a bit dry after talking for so long.

To be honest, organising the story into language that people of the Primitive Era could actually understand was no easy feat.

There were moments when he got so caught up in the excitement that he kept forgetting to simplify things.

So what should have been a half-hour story ended up taking Su Bai the better part of an hour to tell.

That said, a classic story was a classic story. Even after all this time, recounting it still stirred something in him. And if even Su Bai, who could recite the tale backwards and forwards, still felt that excitement hearing it again, then it went without saying what effect it would have on someone hearing it for the very first time.

Yu Ying’s expression at that moment was one of pure astonishment, still completely immersed in the story she had just heard.

Yu Ying was visibly left wanting more, her pink fox tail swishing back and forth without stopping.

“So? If we were to stage this story as a performance, do you think people would enjoy watching it?” Su Bai asked.

“They would absolutely love it. Every single person would love this story, I’m already desperate to see it turned into a performance.” Yu Ying nodded enthusiastically. “If this story could successfully become a performance, it might even draw people from other Tribes to come and watch.”

“That’s roughly the idea I wanted to convey when I mentioned a performance, so you should have a sense now of how to go about casting it, yes?” Su Bai asked with great patience.

This was no simple matter to begin with. Getting people from a primitive Tribe, who had absolutely no concept of stage performance, to actually perform in one was a considerable challenge in itself.

“I know how to go about choosing now. Before I heard the story, I was a bit lost, but after listening I understood completely.” Yu Ying nodded without hesitation, already turning over in her mind how she would go about the selection.

“For now, don’t share the story I told you with anyone else. It needs to stay secret for a while.” Su Bai still wanted to preserve a little mystique.

The story of the ‘Havoc in Heaven’ was exciting enough to hear, but it was nothing compared to witnessing it brought to life on a stage.

“Understood, Shaman. Does that include Ah’Hua and the others?” Yu Ying had been eager to share it with them.

“Don’t tell them for now. Wait until the dress rehearsal and let them see it for themselves then. Isn’t that a better surprise?” The corners of Su Bai’s mouth curved upward slightly.

“That’s true, I’ll work hard at finding people. The moment the rainy season ends, I’ll start looking.”

Yu Ying smiled in that endearing way of hers, then suddenly asked, “Shaman, I do have one question though. What does the grand theatre actually look like?”

“Have a look at this.” Su Bai passed over the illustration he had drawn well in advance.

“A big wild pheasant egg?” Yu Ying’s first impression was exactly that, though she quickly composed herself and studied it more carefully.

“Ha ha ha ha. It’s not a wild pheasant egg at all. This is what the grand theatre looks like on the outside.” Su Bai laughed openly. “This is what our grand theatre will look like one day. The performances will be performed inside.”

Yu Ying stared at the diagram with wide, incredulous eyes, and after a long moment asked, “Shaman, can we actually build something like this? It really does look like a wild pheasant egg.”

Yu Ying turned the diagram over and back again, struggling to see how it could ever be anything other than a fantasy.

“Of course we can build it. Do you like a house shaped like this?” Su Bai asked.

What he had drawn bore some resemblance to the Beijing National Stadium back on Earth, broad and circular. (Also known as Bird’s Nest Stadium)

Su Bai had always intended to transform the Primitive Tribe into something resembling a modern city, and the grand theatre naturally had to be something extraordinary.

“If it can be built, it would certainly be something remarkable. I love a house shaped like this. It could become something uniquely our own, something that belongs only to the Flame Dragon Tribe.” Yu Ying said, her spirits lifted considerably.

“Building a structure like this requires an enormous quantity of materials, and a great many experiments to test things out.” Su Bai pointed carefully at the cross-section diagram on the reverse of the illustration. “Look here. This part bears a tremendous amount of weight. We would need to run repeated trials before we could get it right, otherwise the structure would never come together properly…”

He explained a great deal to Yu Ying in thorough detail. In short, this circular grand theatre was not going to be easy to build.

“I see. Will the Shaman be participating in the construction personally?” Yu Ying could see from the way he spoke how enthusiastic he was about it.

“If my help is needed, I would be very glad to give it. This is going to be the Flame Dragon Tribe’s landmark, after all.” Su Bai felt that Yu Ying had made a very valid point.

If this grand theatre were built, it would serve as something truly representative of the Flame Dragon Tribe, drawing many visitors from far and wide.

Besides, he was probably the only one with any real understanding of circular construction. How would people from a primitive Tribe ever know about such things?

Even building cement houses had taken no small amount of time and research. This grand theatre would doubtless take considerably longer.

“Shaman, I can see on the diagram that you’ve also drawn what look like individual pieces covering it. What are those?” Yu Ying asked curiously.

Looking at the completed overall illustration of the grand theatre, Yu Ying noticed that what covered the exterior was made up of individual pieces, each one painted a deep black.

They were not a single solid covering, but many small pieces fitted together to form the whole.

“Those are called glass. They will form the outer walls of the grand theatre. You can imagine the glass in the windows.” Su Bai gestured toward the floor-to-ceiling window, then continued his explanation. “The grand theatre will not have cement outer walls. It will have only glass outer walls.”

This was something he had designed deliberately, with the intention of making the entire grand theatre look all the more grand and imposing.

In any case, the Flame Dragon Tribe now had a glass workshop. It was simply a matter of accumulating enough glass over time.

Yu Ying’s pink eyes went genuinely very wide upon hearing this. “Is the Shaman being serious?” she gasped.

Yu Ying could barely bring herself to imagine it. A building whose entire exterior wall was nothing but glass. How breathtakingly magnificent would that look?

And the more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed, because it surely could not be achieved.

Every household’s glass panels currently sat within a frame. Take the Yong’an Building as an example. Even there, the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows had to be set into a frame before it could be fitted in place.

Yet Yu Ying could see that the grand theatre’s structure was circular. So how on earth would the glass ever be attached?

“That just needs a bit of careful thought to solve. It’s not especially difficult.” The corners of Su Bai’s mouth curved up slightly. “Back in my homeland, buildings like this can be found everywhere. It simply requires ingenuity.”

He was also planning to build a variety of other distinctive structures going forward, and there was one particularly ambitious idea already forming in the back of his mind.

That was to build the tallest tower in the entire Flame Dragon Tribe, at least a dozen storeys high.

Of course, that was little more than an idle thought for now. The specifics of any such plan had not yet been considered.

“Amazing.” Yu Ying had still not quite recovered from her astonishment.