Linley couldn't help but glance, thinking to himself, could this be called buttocks? Where human buttocks should be, the mermaid's body had transformed into a fishtail, covered in thick scales, though it was possible to discern a structure similar to the human body.
Could mermaids be considered domesticated species, suitable for riding? Could swimming through the sea on a mermaid be considered completing the task? The thought was too absurd, and Linley quickly shook it off.
"Try to cry yourself," Linley said.
"I can't cry myself," Pandora said, lying in front of Linley. "Try hitting me."
Linley gently hit her, Pandora cried out in pain, but didn't cry.
"You have to use some force," Pandora complained.
So Linley increased the force, Pandora swam around in pain, but still no tears.
"Looks like this won't work," Linley said.
"How useless I am, I can't even cry..." Pandora was so anxious, she actually cried.
Her tears floated in the water, condensed into pearls, Linley was overjoyed and immediately collected the pearls, putting them in his pocket. These were all precious resources.
"Cry more, cry more!" Linley urged.
Pandora wailed, but unfortunately, there were only so many tears, they couldn't flow anymore.
"Alright, alright, let's stop there," Linley said. "Maybe your tears are a very precious resource, taking a long time to generate, so you can't cry normally."
Perhaps their tears are vital for mermaids, or maybe this is a stress response to trauma, Linley couldn't delve into it at this time, he could only hope that Pandora could cry more.
Linley went ashore, his clothes automatically dried, not at all like someone who had just come out of the water. Odysseus, Nemo, Dave, and little John were waiting. Little John was the new representative of the slaves, he was an extremely rare follower of the old Dionysus before Linley's arrival, responsible for brewing wine on the farm, often helping other slaves, so he had a lot of prestige among the slaves, and he was the first to decide to come to Dionysus Island, so he came here with everyone to pay homage to Linley.
"How long have I been asleep?" Linley asked.
"You have been asleep for three days," Odysseus replied.
This time he slept for three days, less than last time. Linley looked around, the grape vines were even more lush, the grapes were also bigger, and they were already edible. Those goats were also very interested in the grapes, when they saw any fruit, they would eat the fruit first, then the leaves.
"Didn't I tell you to catch all the goats?" Linley said.
"We have caught a lot, they are all locked up in cages, the rest are really hard to catch. These goats can walk on cliffs, people can't catch up to them, only traps can catch them, but one trap can only catch a few at a time, there are hundreds or thousands of goats on the island, we can't catch them all for a while," Odysseus explained.
"Keep catching them, otherwise the grapes will all be eaten by them," Linley said.
Goats have a bad habit of pulling out grass roots when they graze. If this behavior happens on a large scale, it will have a devastating impact on the ecological environment. Therefore, sheep are usually grazed on the grasslands, while goats are more raised in mountainous areas.
Dionysus Island was originally overgrown with weeds, with limited goats, the roots being eaten wouldn't matter, anyway, the weeds would soon grow back. But now the weeds have all been replaced with grape vines, because grape vines are used to produce grapes, if they are eaten up by the goats, it will be a huge waste.
"Lord Dionysus," Dave said, "all the goods have been unloaded on the island, but we don't have a warehouse, if it rains, it may get soaked."
"Did we run out of planks from the Thunder?" Linley asked.
"We've used a lot, building houses for everyone, but there's not enough left to build a warehouse. I can only distribute all the supplies to each household," Dave replied.
Distribution of supplies is easy, but centralized management is extremely difficult. Everyone has their own selfish interests, and when supplies are scarce, who wouldn't want to have more reserves on hand? Even without selfish motives, it takes a huge price to track the consumption and remaining amount of supplies.
"Just distribute it then, it's fine," Linley said.
"I left ten thousand kilograms of grain in a small cave, and the other supplies have been distributed. But the cave is quite shallow, and if it rains again, there might be problems," Dave added.
Dionysus Island had multiple caves, but they were mostly small, formed by rainwater erosion, unsuitable for either living or storage.
"This time we brought back a lot of ships and supplies, all the items on the list are here," Linley said.
He handed the list of supplies compiled by Odysseus to Andre, who worked hard to collect them and load them onto the merchant ships before bringing them back. Linley originally thought these supplies would be enough, but he didn't expect that they would still be in short supply, there weren't even enough houses to live in.
"This is my fault," Odysseus said, "I didn't expect you to bring back so many people, the supplies were estimated based on the original island population."
In fact, Linley didn't expect to bring back so many people either, there were over a thousand followers alone, plus over a hundred Roman soldier prisoners and the Chamber of Commerce president Empton.
"Then I'll go out and find supplies again, make another list," Linley said.
This time Odysseus quickly made a new list, with the most demand for planks. The island only had bushes, and if you cut them down, you could only use them as firewood, not for construction. The planks from the Thunder had run out, and although some merchant ships had been brought back this time, it would be too wasteful to dismantle the ships and use them as planks.
The list also included cows, Linley asked, "Do we need to transport cows? Wouldn't it be better to transport beef jerky directly?"
"We need milk," Odysseus replied. "There are about seven or eight pregnant women on the island. We need to prepare a cow or two, as there may be a problem with insufficient milk for the babies after they are born. Besides, workers need nutritional supplements when they get injured while working. There is not enough fuel on the island to start a fire to cook porridge, it would be better to have milk."
The milk issue could be addressed through mutual support, with mothers who have more milk sharing with those who have less. This should be sufficient until the babies can eat solid foods. But a more serious problem is disease.
In this era, the population growth rate was not high, although the birth rate was high, the death rate was also high. The surrounding environment was not clean enough, and babies were prone to illness after birth, which would require additional nourishment. If the mother's milk is insufficient, and the baby does not have additional nourishment, it may die.