Chapter 23: Escape from the Troubled Times 21

So cold...

It was so cold that I felt like being in an ice cellar, and every inch of my skin was trembling.

Lin Xia folded her arms across her chest, hunched her back, stomped her feet on the ground, and a faint white breath came out from the edge of her mask.

She had not expected the weather to get cold so quickly. She had already wrapped herself in all the clothes she could wear, with the deerskin underneath, the tattered thin jacket in the middle, and two layers of summer clothes outside, but they still could not keep out the cold wind.

It has been four days since we left the monkeys' territory. During these four days, the temperature has dropped drastically and winter has arrived quickly.

Lin Xia estimated that the temperature was only in the single digits now. When she went into the city for supplies, she didn't expect that three months later she still hadn't reached Lingzhou and was still wandering in the deep mountains and forests.

Weak, so weak, Lin Xia, you are a scumbag.

Lin Xia despised herself.

People know their own limitations. Since they cannot leave the mountains in a short time, they have to solve the problem, find a new shelter, find food, and make warm clothes.

After pondering for a while, Lin Xia stopped rushing forward and began to observe the surrounding environment.

First, choose a hilltop without any traces of wild animals as your base.

Secondly, go to a place with a road and try your luck digging traps.

Of course, if you see feline footprints or hear wolves howling, just run, but for the rest, just bet that the beasts you encounter won’t climb trees.

After choosing for a long time, I finally found a satisfactory cave.

It is larger and more irregular than the previous cave. It is located on the slope of the mountain wall and is not easy to climb. Lin Xia is very satisfied with this road, which means it is safe.

The only downside is that the cave is too big and doesn't block the wind.

There is a valley one hour away to the west of the cave. There is a large pool of water at the bottom of the valley and the surrounding terrain is relatively flat.

The moment Lin Xia saw the valley, the genes of the descendants of Yan and Huang awakened. She really wanted to build a small wooden house here and plant an acre of land. It must be very leisurely.

But there are animal footprints beside the pond, so this pond must be one of the water sources for animals.

Although it is unrealistic to live here, Lin Xia has no regrets at all, because it means she might be able to catch prey.

After cleaning up the cave, Lin Xia ran to the woods near the pond where there was an obvious path and started digging a hole.

Digging a hole is not an easy task. As the saying goes, if you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. Lin Xia only had a big knife, a hatchet, two sickles, and a hoe for digging wild vegetables, but no shovel or hoe.

It took Lin Xia four hours to dig a one-meter-deep pit. Perhaps because she made too much noise, she had not seen any animals come to drink water so far.

Looking at the one-meter-deep shallow pit under his feet, Lin Xia sighed.

She wanted to give up. What could be trapped here? Any larger animal could just jump up.

Be depressed for two minutes, then take a deep breath and continue working.

It's worth the hard work for food!

After panting for another two hours, Lin Xia finally climbed out of the pit with a face covered in mud and a look of despair.

That's it.

Put some sharpened bamboo sticks underneath and dip them in the last bit of "anesthetic" mushrooms.

Speaking of bamboo strips, I have to sigh that Lin Xia was very lucky to find a bamboo forest on this hill.

The winter bamboo shoots were harvested, successfully solving half of the food shortage problem, which was also one of the main reasons why she chose to settle down in that cave.

After camouflaging the trap, Lin Xia left and came to the edge of the pond, drooling at the sight of the fish in the pond.

She tried fishing, but had no talent for it. It would be better for her to go back and make fish baskets. As long as she could catch fish, she would not have to worry about starving to death this winter.

Now that food is solved, the only problem left is keeping warm.

It was really too cold, so cold that it penetrated into the bones. Lin Xia sewed two summer clothes together and stuffed them with hay, but it still didn't work.

I don't know where I saw a way to keep warm, which said that you can keep warm by using moss. Lin Xia wasn't sure, but she wanted to give it a try, so she pried a large piece of moss from the edge of the pond and took it back.

Moss is indeed very effective. Wash and dry it, and place it between your clothes and pants, and your body will warm up immediately. So Lin Xia went and brought back a lot of moss, dried it, spread it on the ground, and then put hay on it, and a warm little nest was completed.

In the next few days, Lin Xia went to the pond every day to check the traps, fish baskets, dig bamboo shoots, pick up stones, dig mud, cut bamboo, and cut trees... His schedule was full and he had no free time at all.

Unfortunately, the trap did not work. Not only did it not catch any animals, but so far no animals have encountered her trap, and it is 100% intact.

This made Lin Xia suspect that there were no animals coming to this pond.

The fish basket can harvest one or two small fish about 10 centimeters long every day, which is better than nothing.

The only consolation is that there are a lot of winter bamboo shoots in the bamboo forest. Lin Xia digs about ten pounds every day to improve the diet. The remaining winter bamboo shoots will need to be dug when he has some free time after a while.

*

Lin Xia looked at the pile of stones mixed with soil on the ground with a serious face, thinking about what to do next.

Apparently her house-building project had collapsed halfway due to a stone wall.

If the quality of the product was this bad, she would probably be stoned to death in the middle of the night.

Lin Xia didn't want to build a hut with wood, because there wasn't enough tarpaulin, wind would always get in the gaps between the wood, and straight wood was hard to come by. Most of the wood was crooked and ugly tree trunks. It would be better to build the entire stone house in one go.

I just don’t know why other people’s stone houses are so solid. It’s a headache.

Lin Xia thought for a long time, and became more and more courageous, fighting to the end with the stone.

First, she stuck a row of arm-thick wood outside the cave, then dug a foundation in the ground, and then piled up layers of stones and yellow mud from the wood. This way, even if the cave collapsed, it would not hit her, and the wood could also help absorb the force of the stone wall.

Fortunately, Lin Xia had space to leverage, otherwise, with her small body, it would take her a month to move all the stones.

Even so, it took her a week and made countless revisions before she finished building the stone wall at the entrance of the cave. In the end, she left a 40-centimeter-wide, uneven doorway and a vent at the top so that she could close the door and light a fire at night to avoid poisoning herself in the cave.

Because Lin Xia didn't know how to make a door, he simply cut down a lot of bamboo and tied it into a small bamboo board with the help of vines to serve as a door panel. He would block the door with it before going to bed every day and move it away when he got up.

Looking at the cave stone house in front of him, which was not beautiful but extremely practical, Lin Xia crossed his arms, smiled proudly and nodded, praising himself: "I am so awesome!"

I looked around the house proudly. Apart from being a little dark inside, there was nothing wrong with it.

Now that I have a house, it’s time to start stockpiling food.

Before, the cave was filled with howling cold winds, so she spent most of her time building a house, and the progress of digging bamboo shoots needed to be improved.

As usual, go to the pond to fish out the fish basket first.

Suddenly, Lin Xia saw from afar that his trap was triggered. His eyes widened and he ran over swiftly.

Oh, what is this?

It's a cute little wild boar.

When Lin Xia arrived at the trap, the wild boar was breathing heavily and was still alive, but its body was stiff and it lay motionless at the bottom of the pit. It was obvious at a glance that the anesthetic had taken effect.

This anesthetic was so effective that Lin Xia regretted never encountering this kind of mushroom again after that.

The wild boar was poked with a stick, and it struggled violently, rolling and crashing into the pit.

Huh!

Lin Xia was shocked. The other party was not affected at all. She thought the anesthetic had knocked it down.