From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 53 The last reward before the rainy season

On February 2, Chen Zhou got up a little late.

He picked up the wooden cup on the bedside table and took a sip of water. Looking at the gloomy weather outside the cave, he knew it might rain today.

The closer we get to the rainy season, the more this kind of weather will occur.

The drizzle is just an appetizer. When the rainy season arrives, raging storms and continuous rainfall for more than ten days will become the norm.

After getting dressed, I went to the kitchen to look at the seal skins on the drying rack.

After a whole night, the brain fat mixture on the fur has fully reacted with the fur.

At this moment, the whole fur no longer looked so greasy. It felt slightly damp and extremely soft, which made Chen Zhou give up the idea of spreading it on the ground - that would be a waste of things!
Tanned seal skin looks great and feels great, its only drawback being the smell.

It might be because the seal brain had been stored in the can for too long and had gone bad, and the fur itself didn't smell very good.

The two mixed together and then heated made the whole seal skin emit a faint stinky smell. It would probably take some time to dry in the sun before it could be hung on the wall of the room.

The large seal skin has been tanned successfully, and the small seal skin will need to be dried in the next day.

They are much easier to handle than large seal skins. Even if you wrap them with stones, they don't need to be too big, and the soaking process will probably be faster.

Chen Zhou hasn't figured out what to do with the seal skin. After all, he has only been on the isolated island for more than four months, and there is no huge gap in clothing and shoes. He doesn't need to make his own clothes for a while.

And he estimated that even in his last ten years, he wouldn't worry about clothes.

Because he moved all the clothes from the entire ship down, even if he wore out two sets of clothes a year, it would be enough for him to get through the twenty-eight years.

In the short term, the seal skin will probably only be used as a rag or collected dust in the storage room.

While making a fire and eating, Chen Zhou thought of a new problem - how to build a chimney for the stove.

The old-style cave chimneys in the Northwest region usually extend from the top of the house. After the iron chimney is installed, the cave chimney can also turn a corner and extend from the side.

But Chen Zhou's cave is different from the one on the Loess Plateau. It takes at least ten meters to dig upwards, and there is no suitable flue material to turn to the side.

After the outer wall is built, the interior is closed and there is no passage for smoke to disperse. It is okay to burn dry firewood, but burning wet firewood will suffocate people to death.

Chen Zhou knew that there was a kind of stove called a smokeless stove. Most people who had served in the army would dig this kind of stove. It was said that it produced very little smoke and could avoid being discovered by the enemy.

He really wanted to dig a smokeless stove in the kitchen, but sadly, he didn't know how to do it.

The rainy season is approaching, and he cannot dig a long chimney for the time being. He can only build half a wall for the kitchen first, and build the remaining half after the chimney problem is solved.

After dinner, Chen Zhou fed the cats and dogs.

After more than half a month of living together and desensitization training, Tizi no longer resists human touch and has gradually adapted to being fed. Now he can eat comfortably even if being stared at, and is no longer so cautious and fearful.

Worried that Grape would gradually turn into a small gray creature after a period of carefree life, Chen Zhou decided to let it out today, tie it up in the kitchen, and let it get familiar with its job tasks first.

He was so lucky to catch such a nimble wild cat, he didn't want to ruin his second one.

……

It has been a long time since Tizi stepped out of the wooden box and saw the outside world. His every move still reflects the cautious nature of wild animals.

The thin rope tied around its neck made it uncomfortable, and as it moved slowly forward, it raised its paws from time to time to fiddle with the rope, trying to remove the troublesome thing, but to no avail.

Xiao Huihui followed closely behind Tizi, stretching his neck like a perverted pervert, sniffing Tizi's butt non-stop, and looked as if he wanted to lick it with his tongue.

Tizi had no friendliness towards this fat and strange-looking fellow and hit it back with a claw.

Although Xiao Huihui is fat, his reaction speed is not slow at all. Before the sharp claws of Grapes can grab his body, he jumps away nimbly like a ball hitting the ground.

After a while, seeing that Tizi had calmed down, Xiao Huihui came over again, licking his face. Then he attacked and dodged again, which gave Chen Zhou a headache.

He tied Tu Zi to a wooden leg inside the kitchen and placed two cat food bowls for it, one filled with water and the other with meat. After patiently observing it for a while and making sure that Tu Zi had no stress response, he took Lai Fu and left the cave.

Not long after Chen Zhou left, Xiao Huihui tiptoed towards Ti Zi for the Nth time, trying to get close to this beautiful sister.

Somehow, Tizi's attack this time was much faster than before. Xiao Huihui was unable to react and was hit hard by the claw.

Ti Zi's sharp claws directly scratched Xiao Huihui's neck, and the cat's hair flew.

Hey~
Little Huihui let out a cry of pain, and like a cannonball fired from a gun, it exploded at an unprecedented speed, raising a cloud of dust on the sandy ground, then rushed into the bedroom and shrank into its cat bed, without making any sound.

It has thick skin and flesh, and the injuries are actually only superficial, but the physical pain cannot be compared with the pain suffered by the soul.

Little Huihui used his little brain to figure out why he was beaten. He had been communicating with this beautiful lady through the box for such a long time and they had become familiar with each other, so he didn't understand why he was beaten.

……

Chen Zhou had no idea what had happened to Xiao Huihui; he was weeding in the fields.

Recently, the cleanliness of the fields is no longer there, with weeds popping up every few days.

For this purpose, he specially made a small wooden hoe.

This weeding hoe has a crescent-shaped head with a thin, usually bladed edge.

In Chen Zhou’s hometown, it is called a hoe, which is a tool specifically used to deal with weeds.

The wooden hoe has no blade and cannot effectively cut the roots of weeds. Fortunately, the soil is loose, and if all else fails, Chen Zhou can still pull out the weeds by the roots.

There are more than 200 crops in total, so it won’t take long.

While clearing weeds and counting the crops, Chen Zhou slowly walked to the end of the field and found that a rice plant and a wheat plant had fallen down at the very end.

After inspecting the plants, he found clues of the culprit on the stems of wheat and rice - two deep indentations.

That was the distinctive wound caused by the bird's beak.

After working so hard to take care of the crops for so long, two of them were damaged for no reason. Chen Zhou hated this damn bird.

But after destroying the crops, they can just flutter their wings and fly away. Now they may have returned to their nests and are fast asleep. It is too late to take revenge on us.

There was no other choice but to make another scarecrow and place it at the end of the field, hoping that it would work.

The crops are not yet ripe, and there are no seeds that birds like to eat. Except for some birds with mean temperaments and like to cause damage, most birds that eat seeds will not visit here.

However, there are special cases - if flying insects leave the woods and land on crops and are seen by birds, the birds may peck at the insects and damage the plants.

Chen Zhou had nothing to say when faced with such a low-probability misfortune.

The reason why he could not accept the loss was mainly because the total number of crops was so small that every seedling seemed precious.

If the crops were large enough and there were tens of thousands of trees, he would not care about this small loss.

……

After weeding, Chen Zhou took Lai Fu for a walk.

It had been a long time since he had walked the rabbit trap thoroughly and carefully. He only took a look at the rabbit trap when passing by it on the way up or down the mountain.

Such a casual attitude will naturally not be favored by the rabbit.

In fact, since he caught the grapes and the little rabbit in January, he only harvested one and a half rabbits in nearly twenty days.

One, of course, refers to a whole rabbit.

The half rabbit was found too late. The strangled rabbit was eaten by a wild cat, leaving only the rabbit head and front legs.

Even this was found by Chen Zhou with the help of Lai Fu.

If it weren’t for Lai Fu, with his poor memory of forgetting one condom after another, I’m afraid we wouldn’t get anything in another month.

Chen Zhou's attitude was so casual because, on the one hand, he was busy with work and could no longer spend as much time looking for rabbit trails and setting traps as he did before building the wall. On the other hand, he was also influenced by the two seals.

After eating the tender, mellow, oily and delicate seal meat, who would still be reluctant to give up the dry and tough rabbit meat?
As a person with normal tasting ability, Chen Zhou is no exception.

While walking the rabbit trap and playing with Lai Fu, I had walked a long circle in the forest without realizing it.

Seeing that Lai Fu was no longer so excited and knowing that it was tired from playing, Chen Zhou returned to the cave.

The foundation of the bedroom door has been dug, and now there is a 40cm wide and m deep earth ditch. Next to the ditch are a newly made iron-headed wooden pickaxe and a bucket for collecting soil.

After a short rest, Chen Zhou picked up the pickaxe and began to build the wall slowly from bottom to top.

……

The ditch was too narrow and could only barely accommodate Chen Zhou's lower body.

He mixed the mud and built the walls until dark, and he had completed the foundation of the bedroom door, which was about five meters long and one meter high.

Stones are larger than bricks, and most of the time, stacking can be completed by simply selecting stones of the right shape. Therefore, even though Chen Zhou is not a qualified bricklayer, he can still lay the stones so quickly.

At the left and right ends of the built stone wall, the ditch was widened into a square with a side length of 1.5 meters.

That was the reserved foundation for the wall. Chen Zhou would make the wall extremely wide, thick and solid to prevent the outer wall from collapsing during an earthquake.

……

Dark clouds had been brewing for most of the day, and finally dispersed before dark. It did not rain, which was conducive to construction.

Since a stove suitable for flat copper pots had not yet been set up, dinner was still stew.

But today, Chen Zhou's stews are no longer monotonous.

The first dried seal meat has been completely dried. Cut it into small pieces and put it in the batter porridge, then add fried heart and liver, sprinkle some salt and some seal oil.

After it's cooked, drink two glasses of wine and the taste is so delicious.

Thanks to the improved food quality, Chen Zhou did not lose weight even though his working hours became longer and his rest time became shorter. Instead, he gained more muscle mass and became bigger and bigger.

It turned out that he was just tall but thin, and was always called "thin bamboo pole" by his relatives.

Now he has broad shoulders, well-developed latissimus dorsi, his biceps are as hard as an iron egg when he exerts force, his forearms are thick, and the muscles in his thighs and calves have expanded twice. His body shape is already developing towards a "double-door" shape.

If he were to wear a baggy sailor's duty uniform, a wide-brimmed hat, and pick up a long-handled axe, his size and intimidation would go up another level, like a muscular, perverted killer in a Western horror story.

……

2 month 11 day.

Chen Zhou got up early in the morning, picked up the pineapple wood wedge on the bedside table, looked at the mark on it, put on his clothes, and set off down the mountain.

He always had a doubt - after going to bed on January 1, did he sleep for one day or two days?

Chen Zhou felt that he should have only slept for one day, but there were no obvious reference objects on the island, so he always had doubts about the answer to this question.

Human intuition is not accurate, and sometimes it will freely shift according to the answer that humans most expect in order to deceive themselves.

Chen Zhou is very clear about this.

Fortunately, he has an advantage that Robinson doesn't have - a mysterious reward.

The mysterious reward that comes once every 15 days will not arrive earlier or later due to his subjective consciousness. Whether he slept for one day or two days, he will know when he goes to the beach today.

……

Chen Zhou still has no expectations for the content of this reward.

Keep a normal mind and face everything, don't collapse, don't curse, and don't break down.

This is his lottery criteria.

Carrying a hatchet, nails, hemp rope and canvas, Chen Zhou not only wants to take away the prize this time, but also wants to build a rain shelter at the prize refresh location.

The rainy season is about to arrive, and this is likely the last mystery reward before the precipitation.

To prevent future rewards from getting wet and damaged by rain.

Chen Zhou decided to cut down some trees in the coastal woods with the prize refresh point as the center to protect the prizes that would arrive later.

As he didn't know the maximum size of the prize, he brought a large piece of canvas measuring three meters square, as well as nails and hemp ropes, just to build a bigger rain shelter to ensure that the prize could be covered.

If time was not so tight, he even wanted to build a wooden and stone hall there.

He had even thought of a name for the hall - Caigou Station.

I quickly arrived at the beach and habitually glanced at the place where the seal was dismembered.

The blood all over the ground had long disappeared on the ground, the tide surged, and not even a piece of flesh could be seen.

"The power of time."

Sighing silently, Chen Zhou walked to the reward.

Before he even opened the package, he had already guessed what was inside by looking at the long strip of mysterious reward wrapped in black plastic.

That must be a whole strip of toilet paper.

Lifting the reward up and feeling the unknown cylindrical objects crowded together inside, Chen Zhou became more certain of his judgment.

open.

Sure enough, his guess was completely correct.

I took off the black plastic wrapping and counted the toilet paper inside. There were five rolls wide and twelve rolls long, for a total of sixty rolls.

Chen Zhou estimated that each roll of toilet paper was about 13 cm long and seven cm in diameter. He smiled.

“That’s quite generous.”

Since arriving on the island, he has never used paper products to wipe his butt.

Most of the time he would use small stones or branches to solve the problem, and he would have to wash his butt every few days, otherwise his underwear would always be stained with feces, which was disgusting.

Later he discovered that the bark of driftwood was particularly suitable for wiping buttocks, so he cut down a few driftwood trees, peeled off the bark and placed them at home, and took two pieces when he went to the toilet.

Driftwood does a great job of wiping your butt compared to other materials, but it's no match for toilet paper.

Chen Zhou had already prepared himself to use driftwood for 28 years, but he never expected that he would be able to use toilet paper again.

"If you use this whole strip of toilet paper sparingly, it should last you two years without any problem."

Thinking of this, he couldn't help but touch his butt - it seemed that it was not wiped clean this morning.

Although toilet paper is a consumable and cannot provide strong help for survival, it can significantly improve the quality of life.

Chen Zhou was very satisfied with this mysterious reward.

But he did not take the reward immediately. Instead, he took out his hatchet, chopped down a small tree, determined the center point of the toilet paper, and drew a large circle around it.

Since the reward is so useful, we must be more careful in building the rain shelter.

　Thanks to: Book friends 20241207230231916 and Star-Scar Cells for their rewards, thank you for your support!
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　　Double update 4/15, completed.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)