Transmigrating to the BeastWorld,I Picked Up an Adorable BeastHusband!-Chapter 61: Salt desiccant(1)

The second iron-oak sat where it had crashed, its massive trunk pinning a few smaller saplings to the forest floor. Weijie stood over it, the obsidian axe hanging loosely from his hand.

The cut on his palm was sluggishly dripping dark blood, but he seemed almost too dazed to notice.

"Weijie, stop. Look at your hand." Ningning said, her voice was sharp with concern.

He blinked, looking down as if the hand belonged to someone else. "It... it does not hurt.." he muttered.

That was the problem—his nerves were already beginning to dull.

"Sit. Now."

She didn’t wait for him to argue. She pulled him toward the tree.

He sank onto the wooden truck, his massive shoulders slouching. Ningning took his hand, wiping the blood away with a leaf.

[The wound is shallow, Dumpling, but the lack of peripheral circulation means it won’t clot as fast as usual,] Doudou noted. [Wrap it tight. And he needs glucose. His energy levels are cratering because his metabolism is trying to downshift while he’s forcing it to work.]

Ningning scratched her head.

Where was she going to find glucose from?

All they had was meat.

She sighed and looked around.

These trees weren’t fruit bearers so they weren’t any fruit for that immediate sugar rush.

"You’ll just have to bear."

Her eyes drifted to the fallen tree Weijie was sitting on.

She would have to some calculations, if Weijie couldn’t do it then she’d have to build a machine that would help her chop up this wood.

"These wood are wet. There’s still the trouble of drying them."

She tapped Weijie’s knee and stood straight.

Each log, she could cut it into sets of five. If she stacked them carefully according to the weight she could push the wheelbarrow.

"Help me with this calculation Doudou. What’s the length and width of the log, what’s the weight? If I cut each log into sets of five, and there are six logs gotten from one tree. I’d be left with thirty pieces of wood, as for the drying. If I combine lime and hydrochloric acid I’d get calcium chloride but unless I gut someone’s stomach out, I’m not getting the acid, so we’ll be using to rock salts we stored. I’d have to build an enclosed space where the wood and salt will be stored and hopefully in two weeks I’ll have a decent amount of dry wood."

[Calculation initiated, Dumpling,] Doudou’s voice hummed with a precision that cut through the chilly forest air. [An average mature iron-oak of this height has a trunk diameter of approximately 60 centimeters and a density that would make a modern carpenter weep. We’re looking at a total mass of roughly 2.5 tons per tree. If you section that trunk into six main logs, each log is roughly 415 kilograms—nearly half a ton.]

Ningning winced. That was more than she had anticipated.

[If you split those logs further into five pieces each, as you planned, each piece weighs about 83 kilograms (approx. 183 lbs). You can definitely move those one at a time in the wheelbarrow, provided the axle holds.]

Ningning looked at the massive trunk. "Eighty-three kilograms is still heavy, but I can manage the leverage if Weijie helps me lift them into the barrow."

She turned her attention to the drying problem.

She couldn’t wait for months of seasoning. She needed to desiccate the wood enough to prevent a "smoke-out" in the cave.

"The rock salt." she whispered, her mind clicking from inbuilt knowledge, chemistry was her forte. "Calcium chloride is out, but the rock salt we hauled... is naturally hygroscopic. It wants to pull moisture from the air. If I stack the wood in a ’chimney’ style and pack the salt around the base in an enclosed area, the salt will act as a sponge."

[Correct] Doudou agreed. [It’s a crude kiln. By stacking the wood in a ’Criss-Cross’ or ’Log Cabin’ pattern, you maximize airflow. If you line the floor with the salt and seal the ’Hot Zone’ with the mud we gathered, the salt will pull the sap out of the green wood. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll keep the wood from ’hissing’ and producing lethal carbon monoxide.]

Ningning nodded and grabbed a piece of stone.

Dragging it across the wood until she had made five sections.

Reaching for the axe, her face went blank.

It was heavy.

She wasn’t even surprised now that Weijie got tired.

Nevertheless she prepped herself to raise the axe.

If she didn’t prepare on time, she’d die.

Whether she was outside or inside the cave.

Both were equally risky.

She moved to hoist the axe, her muscles tensing to compensate for the top-heavy weight of the stone head. She had the physics worked out, if she used the weight of the head and a high-arced swing, she wouldn’t need his raw power.

But before the blade could even touch the bark, a large, calloused hand wrapped around the handle just above hers. Weijie’s grip was steady, though his skin was cooling.

He didn’t pull the axe away aggressively; he simply held it in place, looking down at her with a stubborn, hazy gaze.

"No, little moon." he rumbled, his voice vibrating with a protective instinct that seemed to bypass his exhaustion. "This wood... it is iron-oak. It bites back. If the blade slips, it will not care that your skin is soft. I will not have you scarred while I still have the strength to move."

"Weijie, you’re bleeding!"

"Then I will bleed on the wood." he replied with a grim finality. He gently but firmly nudged her aside with his hip.

"You mark the lines. But the cutting of the wood... that is for the male."

Ningning opened her mouth to argue, but the look in his eyes stopped her. It wasn’t just pride; it was his way of maintaining his identity as her protector while his body slowly tried to shut down.

If she took this from him now, he might just give up entirely.

"Fine." she sighed, stepping back to grab the stone. "But five pieces per log. No more. If you try to do more, I’m taking the axe back."

As the sun touched the horizon, turning the sky into a bruised mixture of violet and gold, the grove was filled with the rhythmic, wet thwack of obsidian hitting green wood.

Weijie worked with a terrifying, mechanical focus. He didn’t waste energy on grunts or shouts. He simply lifted, dropped, and let the stone hit.

Ningning followed behind him, using a smaller stone wedge to help split the deep gashes he made, ensuring the logs separated cleanly into the 83-kilogram sections she had calculated.

[Energy efficiency is dropping, Dumpling] Doudou whispered. [He’s burning through his last reserves of brown fat. If we don’t get him into the cave with some warmth soon, he’ll hit a state of ’cold-shock’ before he even starts brumating.]

"I know, Doudou. We’re almost there."

She began loading the first five sections into the wheelbarrow.

To maximize the space, she used a Cantilever Stack, placing the heaviest pieces directly over the axle and the lighter ones toward the handles.

"Weijie, help me lift the last one." she called.

Together, they heaved the final 83kg chunk into the frame. The barrow let out a long, agonized creak. The sap-and-ash lubricant Ningning had made was already thickening in the evening chill, turning into a tacky paste that made the wheel harder to turn.

"I will push." Weijie muttered, reaching for the handles.

"No," Ningning countered, stepping in front of the wheel. "I’ll pull the front with a vine-strap to help you steer. If we hit a rock in the dark and the axle snaps, we lose the barrow and the wood."

The trek back to the cave was a grueling test of coordination. Ningning walked backward, her eyes glued to the ground, kicking large stones out of the way of the wooden wheel.

Behind her, Weijie was a shadow of his former self, his head bowed, his entire weight leaning into the handles to keep the momentum going.

Every time the wheel hit a bump, the wood groaned, and Weijie stumbled.

"Almost there," she encouraged, her voice a melodic anchor in the deepening twilight. "The tribe is just past the ridge."

When they finally rolled the barrow into the mouth of the cave, the temperature difference was immediate.

The stone walls held a lingering warmth from the day’s sun, and the air was still.

"Help me unload." she said.

We’ll have to stack these for now, till I can build some kind of enclosed space.