From Robinson Crusoe

After a night's rest, Chen Zhou and Paul, whose condition had greatly improved, embarked on their mountain climbing journey the next morning.

The paracords used to secure the wooden beams of the shelter were all untied and woven into a net bag to hold the ninja and American soldier's clothes, as well as half a roasted bird leg.

Paul carried this net bag, which was full of things and weighed about 20 pounds.

Chen Zhou originally wanted to carry other things himself, such as the army cooker, but Paul insisted on sharing the burden with him. Seeing that Paul's expression was already good, Chen Zhou did not refuse.

……

On this rare calm morning, the grassland was bathed in cold, white sunlight, making the wild grass appear as if it had turned white-haired, creating a serene scene.

The two left the camp, leaving behind only the dismantled semi-permanent shelter.

The embers of the fire, now burnt out, gleamed red in the stone-encircled campfire, and scattered among the hardening mud were footprints and the remains of a large bird.

As for the whereabouts of the other two challengers, the bloodstains left on the ground have long since disappeared with the passage of time.

……

To take care of Paul, who had just recovered from a cold, Chen Zhou did not speed up his pace.

The three little sawtooth tiger cubs were eating meat before they were even weaned.

While the nutritional value of animal meat is certainly not as high as that of a tigress's milk, it is plentiful and filling. Paul also likes to cook the food for them, as the protein is more easily absorbed when it is boiled or roasted. In addition, the animal's internal organs also help the little guys grow taller. In just a few days, they have grown noticeably larger and are walking more steadily.

Since the location chosen for building the shelter was relatively slow, Chen Zhou simply didn't carry the little creatures and let them follow along on the ground.

After spending a few days together, the little sawtooth tigers had come to regard themselves as members of this "group." Chen Zhou walked in front, and they followed happily behind.

Too short for them to see Chen Zhou's head, they could only see his two legs walking back and forth. So they spotted the sweaty boots and followed closely behind with their short, thick tails wagging.

Sometimes, when they entered areas where the grass was taller, Chen Zhou and Paul would speed up slightly, and the tiger cubs would lose sight of their boots.

The largest one was the smartest.

It might be because its head is a size bigger than its two younger brothers.

As soon as Chen Zhou disappeared, it opened its mouth wide and howled loudly, chasing after him haphazardly, which caused the other two tiger cubs to also wail and howl.

Thus, as soon as Chen Zhou heard their cries, he knew they couldn't keep up, so he turned around to help them.

Of course, even if they were well-fed, the stamina of the little tiger cubs was still far inferior to that of adult tigers. They would run out of energy after walking for a short while, and by then, even if they tried their best to keep up with Chen Zhou and Paul, they would be unable to do so.

Chen Zhou and Paul then picked up the little ones and continued forward.

……

Although battles on the grasslands are relatively frequent in early autumn, they haven't yet escalated to the life-or-death struggles of winter.

At this time, the mammoths, the dominant land predators, were still comfortably seated on their "thrones," and neither the saw-toothed tigers nor other ferocious beasts had been driven to the point of hunting mammoth calves in a frenzy.

Many exotic species sent by the Time and Space Administration have been added to their menu.

Herbivores from other continents, such as tapirs, takins, giant tortoises, saiga antelopes, camels, and llamas, as well as smaller carnivores like North American cheetahs, dire wolves, and cave hyenas, greatly enriched their prey options, thus preventing premature and intense conflicts.

……

Over the past few days, while searching for a site to build a shelter with Paul, Chen Zhou had gained a basic understanding of the terrain and topography of the area they were in.

To the north lies a vast and boundless grassland, named "Maoxiang Grassland".

It is not called the Mammoth Plains to distinguish it from the whole of ancient Siberia, which stretches across the entire Eurasian continent from the Iberian Peninsula to the Bering Land Bridge, including Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

Further north from the Mammoth Grassland, the closer one gets to the polar regions, the sparser the wild grasses become, replaced by a large number of cold-resistant plants, such as mosses and lichens.

Heading south, a completely different scene unfolds—

The area is rich in aquatic plants, with meandering rivers, sparse woodlands and small forests, and even fertile soil suitable for planting.

Paul was quite familiar with the topography of the Arctic Circle and Siberia. He guessed that the great river that ran through the entire Mammoth Steppe might be the Angara River, a tributary of the prehistoric Yenisei River. He believed that Lake Baikal could be found by following the Angara River eastward. Chen Zhou neither confirmed nor denied this.

While 10,000 years may not be enough to change the face of an entire continent, it is quite normal for rivers to change course or even for an entire river to disappear. It is obviously unrealistic to apply the terrain of 10,000 years from now to the terrain of today.

However, in order to make it easier to accurately describe their destination when making plans in the future, he adopted Paul's suggestion and named the several major rivers they discovered the Angara River, the Little Yenisei River, and the Ider River.

Of course, these rivers combined cannot compare to the Yenisei River of later generations, which is the largest river in Russia in terms of water volume, with a drainage area of ​​260 million square kilometers. The entire Challenger region is just a fraction of its drainage area.

In the southeastern part of the Maoxiang Grassland, there is a towering mountain range that intermittently separates the grassland, and at its foot is a large area of ​​dense coniferous forest.

The shelter that Chen Zhou and Paul chose to build was located on this mountain.

He named the mountain range the Baihar Mountains.

Baihar was the name of Lake Baikal during the early Qing Dynasty. From the mid-to-late Qing Dynasty onwards, Lake Baikal fell under the control of Tsarist Russia, a painful memory for every Chinese person.

Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake and the largest freshwater lake in Eurasia. Its freshwater reserves account for 20% of the world's total liquid surface freshwater reserves in rivers and lakes. It is rich in aquatic products and supports Russia's freshwater fisheries. It is also the place where Su Wu herded sheep.

As a true-blue Chinese, even in the prehistoric world, facing a partner from a more powerful Soviet Republic, Chen Zhou would still unhesitatingly "smuggle in his own ideas," incorporating his own expectations into the naming—

If the eastern side of the mountain range really is Lake Baikal, he hopes that one day this "North Sea" that has belonged to the Chinese people since ancient times can return to China as soon as possible.

……

The shelter is located above the mountainside, some distance from the summit, and is mostly constructed of stone and wood.

Chen Zhou originally wanted to dig down half a meter like the American soldiers and build a sunken shelter.

However, the Baihar Mountains are almost entirely rocky, and when you poke around with a simple wooden shovel, you can hardly find any loose soil. It's mostly large and small rocks, or tree roots, so you can't dig very deep in a short time.

Left with no other choice, he could only choose a naturally formed, irregular depression and begin construction right next to both sides of the depression.

In order to excavate this hard land more quickly, Chen Zhou abandoned the wooden shovel and chose to pick up stones and chisel, gradually shaping the outline of the pit.

Paul was responsible for preparing the stones and timber for his construction.

This place is covered with pines and firs, and the mountains are full of rocks; these two materials are the most abundant.

During their work, the two filled in the ground in front of the pit and built a makeshift stove using mud and stones.

If you go down the mountain from here, you can find a small river about 2 kilometers away, where you can get drinking water.

You can also climb up the mountain, where it is covered with snow that never melts, and underneath the snow is a layer of ice that can be drunk after it melts.

By placing the cooking pot on the stove and cutting pine or cypress branches, food can be cooked or roasted on the spot.

However, being so close to the snow cover, this place offers almost no advantages other than a wide field of vision.

First, there are few animals. Apart from a few native Eurasian animals, such as a herbivore that looks like an antelope and a small deer, it is difficult to find other medium to large animals.

These two animals are not often seen. Even if Chen Zhou is more than 90% confident that he can hunt them, whether he can actually encounter them depends on luck.

Therefore, during the time it took to build the shelter, Chen Zhou and Paul changed their hunting targets from medium and large animals to small animals, such as a type of squirrel that lives in rock crevices and likes to collect pine nuts as food, and a type of large, fat rat.

These two animals are extremely numerous. Squirrels have little meat, but when catching them, their nests can be emptied, yielding a large quantity of pine nuts.

Squirrels have poor memories and, like most rodents, suffer from severe food scarcity phobia. Even if their nests are full of pine nuts, they will still diligently continue to collect them.

Since the pine nuts haven't matured in large quantities this year, there are hardly any fresh pine nuts in the squirrel's nest. They're all old stock from last year. If the rock crevices weren't dry enough, these old pine nuts would probably have all sprouted and grown into pine seedlings.

Pine nuts can be eaten after being roasted. They are rich in carbohydrates, protein, and sugars, and can be used as a staple food.

The only drawback is that aged pine nuts can never taste as good as fresh pine nuts, and they are also less oily, resulting in a bitter and mediocre taste.

As for the giant rat, it is an omnivore, especially fond of gnawing on tree roots and eating insects. Although it cannot find food in its burrow, it is covered in grease.

Fearing that eating this thing would cause him to contract the plague, Chen Zhou didn't even skin the giant rat after killing it. He simply threw it into the fire to roast it. After the fur burned off, he used a knife to cut open the skin and extract the oil inside.

These oils were not consumed, but stored in "stone bowls" with carved-out depressions, to be used as kindling or fuel for oil lamps.

Although squirrels and these giant rats are both rodents, there are differences between rodents.

As far as Chen Zhou knew, squirrels posed a much lower danger than rats.

Although theoretically all rodents could potentially carry the plague bacillus, historical research has shown that squirrels have never been a major source of plague infection because their incubation period after infection is very short, and they usually die within one or two days, thus they have virtually no ability to spread the plague.

As for squirrels carrying the rabies virus, clues can be gleaned from their abnormal behavior, so eating squirrels is a relatively safe behavior.

Of course, since squirrel meat is so scarce and bones are so plentiful, Chen Zhou and Paul usually rely on pine nuts and some berries as their staple food. Occasionally, they can hunt an antelope or a small deer, which, if they are frugal, can last for two days and can basically sustain them until the next harvest of medium to large prey.

The three tiger cubs suffered the most. They used to eat all the delicacies they could, but now that they were in the high mountains, the climate was cold and their food was much worse. They even had to fight over roasted squirrels.

……

Besides the scarcity of animals and the low temperature, there is also the disadvantage of strong winds on the mountain.

Before the shelter was built, Chen Zhou and Paul had to pile up the felled trees to build a small shack before they could sleep peacefully.

Chen Zhou was alright, but Paul was in poor physical condition. He not only couldn't sleep, but he was also showing signs of catching a cold again.

This situation only improved slightly after Chen Zhou repaired the edge of the pit, chiseled out a neat rectangle, and then built stone walls on both sides.

Although the shelter at this time had no roof, the stone walls on both sides, held together by the weight of the stones, still let in drafts, but at least they could block out much of the cold and prevent body heat from being lost quickly.

Even the little sawtooth tiger cubs know where it's comfortable. When they have nothing to do during the day, they always lie down by the wall, staring blankly at Chen Zhou and his companion as they work. Occasionally, they get up and play around for a while, and then lie down in the old spot where they've already made a hole and stare blankly.

……

However, disadvantages and advantages always coexist.

The scarcity of animals means there are no carnivorous predators around, and without food, they won't come to this godforsaken place.

Strong winds mean a wide field of vision. The shelter is located on a sunny slope with sparse trees around it. Standing on the mountain, you can see more than 30 kilometers ahead.

Sometimes, when the weather is good enough, Chen Zhou can even see the mammoth herds moving around on the Mammoth Grassland. He believes that if anyone is making a fire or hunting a group of animals on the grassland, he will be able to detect it and prepare accordingly.

As for the low temperature, it also has its advantages, namely, it helps preserve food.

After the medium to large mammals they hunted were decomposed, the meat that they couldn't eat could be taken to the mountaintop, where an ice cellar was dug in the snow, and the meat was then thrown inside to freeze.

Unfortunately, due to the scarcity of large animals on the mountain, and Chen Zhou and Paul's busy building shelter with no time to go down the mountain to hunt, coupled with the need to feed three increasingly hungry baby sawtooth tigers, there was never enough meat at home.

If we want to use ice and snow to preserve food, we'll have to wait until the shelter is built before taking any action.

……

After thirteen days of hard work, the shelter built from stones and wood was finally completed.

The entire shelter is 2.1 meters high and has an area of ​​approximately 25 square meters. It is built along a rectangular natural depression.

The shelter has thick stone walls on both sides, with moss and bark stuffed inside and out, pine resin applied for bonding, and a layer of soil mixed with pine needles applied to the outermost layer. After completion, it has good heat insulation properties.

Its entrance is sealed with pine wood, with tree trunks stacked on top of each other using simple mortise and tenon joints. They are then reinforced with paracord, and moss is stuffed into the gaps between the trunks and pine resin is applied.

Unable to make a good door hinge, Chen Zhou had to settle for a "detachable" door for the shelter.

The entire gate is constructed from tree trunks as thick as a thigh, weighing over 100 kilograms. When closing the gate from the outside, a single log is sufficient to prop it up. Once inside, the parasol rope must be tightly tied to a post inside the house to prevent the wooden gate from tipping over.

If given enough time and with his knowledge, Chen Zhou could build a more spacious, beautiful, and exquisite shelter.

However, since autumn began, the temperature in the Baihar Mountains has been dropping day by day. Looking down from the mountains, the vegetation of the Mammoth Grassland has turned a yellowish hue, indicating that harsh winter is approaching.

Perhaps in another half month or a month, the first frost will whiten the whole world.

At this critical juncture, storing food is far more important than building a perfect shelter. Moreover, in order to seize future airdrop supplies, Chen Zhou also needs to manufacture weapons and armor and prepare for battle.

At a time like this, how could he dare to neglect the essentials and pursue the trivial? (End of Chapter)