Most of the houses just had bare earth floors, which, from frequent trampling, had become very solid, even appearing smooth.

Ethan Clark’s private residence was the only building with wooden floorboards.

His family was a minor noble clan in the state of Jin, and they held a fief.

If a noble’s fief was confiscated, as long as they hadn’t committed a crime, they became impoverished nobles; if they left their homeland, they became wandering nobles.

If the loss of the fief was due to a crime, but their noble status wasn’t stripped, there was still a chance for a comeback; but losing both the fief and noble status usually meant a violent death. (Those who acquired the land wouldn’t want them alive.)

Ethan Clark had traveled back to the spring of 582 BC.

As for the exact month, the Taichu calendar, which used the lunar calendar for dating, wasn’t established until the Western Han dynasty.

Looking at historical records, accounts of the Spring and Autumn period usually just mention “spring of a certain year” or “autumn of a certain year,” rarely specifying the month.

That’s why later generations simply named this era the “Spring and Autumn” period.

Last year, due to the machinations of Emily Carter (the woman married to Mr. Carter), the Ji-surnamed ruler Niu (Duke Jing of Jin) rallied the nobles to attack the Zhao clan.

David Carter and William Carter (not the “armchair strategist” one) were caught off guard and brutally killed.

The Ji-surnamed women, resenting the Zhao clan’s monopoly over Yuan and Ping (the Zhao clan’s fiefs), raised the knife against their own kin, venting years of accumulated hatred from being suppressed by the Ying-surnamed Zhao clan.

For a time, blood stained the ancestral temple, and the Zhao clan was nearly wiped out.

The Zhao clan’s property, fiefs, warriors, and servants were divided up, leaving only one child.

This was the orphan of the Zhao clan.

Of course, all that was far removed from Ethan Clark.

He had already set a small goal for himself: to improve his current living conditions and make his life a bit more comfortable.

As for the rest?

Of course, first stabilize things, figure out more about the situation, and then set longer-term goals.

Ethan Clark’s family was a minor noble house.

How minor?

They called it a fief, but it was only ten li on each side.

Major nobles’ fiefs were measured in thousands of li as the basic unit.

Over the past half month, he had surveyed his own fief and found that it contained only one village.

This village was the food town of their small noble house, with over five hundred villagers—considered subjects, or in modern terms, tenant farmers.

Fortunately, most of the fief was flat land, with a low hill and a stream included.

If the surrounding mountains and rivers weren’t assigned to a noble, they belonged to the ruler.

If you weren’t the owner, you couldn’t touch them.

The restriction on “not touching” applied to all activities.

So, if you took it seriously, even going up the mountain to cut grass or firewood, digging a canal from the river to irrigate fields, fishing, or boating—all would be considered crimes.

If it was a noble’s fief, all resources except copper mines belonged to the lord.

He arrived at the back courtyard.

Ethan Clark headed straight for a row of wooden shelves.

On them sat several pottery vessels of various shapes.

After inspecting them one by one, he grinned and said, “Excellent!”

He still remembered those first few days after waking up, when his body was so weak, the food was monotonous, and everything tasted like pig slop.

Calling it pig slop wasn’t just about the taste; it was that all the ingredients were boiled to mush, sometimes turning into a sticky, unidentifiable mess.

Without good cooking utensils, even the best ingredients couldn’t be made into anything special.

The current methods of cooking were very crude: either boiling things directly in a clay pot with plain water—if you could afford to sprinkle some salt, that was already a delicacy; or roasting, with no seasonings at all, completely natural; or eating “kuai”—slicing fish or meat thin and eating it raw, though usually only seafood was eaten raw.

For now, food couldn’t be too particular.

Besides the limitations of ingredients, the bigger issue was the lack of spices.

But Ethan Clark wanted to decide for himself what kind of tableware to use, including what tools to cook with, instead of just putting everything in a clay pot and boiling it into a mush.

For a modern person, this era basically had nothing; anyone who traveled back would get to indulge their inventor’s itch.

If you had a wealth of knowledge and hands-on skills, becoming an inventor was a sure thing. (Assuming you weren’t burned as a monster.)

He had put in a lot of effort to make pottery—not only teaching by hand, but even making a potter’s wheel.

“The smaller ones are bowls; the soup tureen can be used for soup; the clay pot can be used for stir-frying; plates… we’ll make those after we get stir-frying going; cups, of course, are for water…” Ethan Clark wasn’t talking to himself—he ran through it in his mind, then looked at the family elder and asked, “Can we sell pottery on a large scale?”

The family elder replied with difficulty, “Master, pottery is sold by the Baker Clan…”

The family elder wasn’t just a steward, but also an old retainer of the household.

He was a kind of subordinate of subordinates, having served the The Clark Family loyally for many years.

The first batch of pottery wasn’t exactly exquisite, but it looked better than what was on the market, and the clay Ethan Clark chose made the pottery more durable.

Most importantly, there were many styles!

Baker Clan?

Ethan Clark hadn’t inherited the memories of his “predecessor,” but he had retained some functions.

For example, he could understand and speak the current language.