Time was of the essence, so I immediately took out all the wood ash and soaked it to extract ash water. I also used all the unused jars to boil sulfur and concentrate the wood ash water.

My warehouse is much safer up there now; I could fight wild animals on the ground for months without any problems.

Another issue to consider is the use of fire. Although most of the food can be eaten directly, fire is still needed for lighting and heating.

While I'm boiling sulfur, I plan to build a fireproof earthen stove near my warehouse. This way, I can not only cook, but also solve my heating problem.

Making an earthen stove is not difficult; you just need to take precautions against fire.

I still had some clay in my shed, perfect for making a clay stove. I carried both lumps of clay into the hanging basket and then carried them to the wooden bridge over the warehouse.

After that, I found some suitable stones and bamboo strips, put them in the basket, and pulled them up to the wooden bridge.

My warehouse is quite spacious; there's still plenty of room inside, enough to build a traditional earthen stove.

The first step in building a stove on a wooden floor is fire prevention; otherwise, the high temperature could very well burn through the wooden floor.

I plan to use a two-layer hollow structure to isolate the flames from the wooden floor.

Before making this, you first need to use clay to create a base, and then spread a layer of clay on the wooden floor inside the base.

Then, lay stones of equal height, about ten centimeters high, on the inside of the mud brick to support the frame above.

A layer of bamboo strips is laid on the stone, then a layer of clay is laid on the bamboo strips, and several holes are poked out with the fingers.

The same applies to the top layer, which is ten centimeters high and has holes for air circulation.

Next, you can directly build a stone wall to form the basic structure of an earthen stove, leaving an opening for burning firewood.

A chimney also needs to be built on the side above the stove. The chimney can be built directly from clay and bamboo.

The chimney is designed so that a chimney opening is made in the warehouse wall to allow smoke to escape outside the warehouse. This way, the inside can remain warm without any smoky residue.

The two layers of ten-centimeter-high hollow fireproof walls can effectively prevent heat from being transferred downwards and burning the wooden floor.

Once the earthen stove is heated and dried, the stove is considered complete.

Having solved the problems of food and fire, I began to spend the next 100 meters of my residence setting up traps and mechanisms.

This job is quite time-consuming and laborious, and I don't know when those mysterious guys will return to me.

So I dared not waste a single moment, and even for lunch I would just grab some dried fish and smoked meat before getting back to work.

I made three kinds of traps, forming three lines of defense to protect my shelter.

The first type is the row of spike traps used by American tribes to hunt large prey. These traps are powered by one or more highly flexible materials.

Then, secure the spiked bamboo raft firmly to these elastic materials, and then use a rope to pull the entire bamboo raft backward to deform and store force.

A section of a pre-tied wooden stick is left on the rope used to secure the bamboo raft. This is then held in place by an archway structure and a stake driven into the ground, with another wooden stick bracing against each other to achieve a state of relative balance.

Finally, tie a thin hemp rope to the stick and place it on the path to trigger the trap. The entire trap is now complete.

Because of its rows of sharp spikes, this trap never leaves its prey alive; usually, at least a dozen bloody holes will appear on its body in an instant.

It is precisely because of the ruthlessness of this trap that you must prepare an extra rope before setting it to tie the deformed bamboo raft to a tree.

The safety rope will be removed only after the mechanism has been placed, to prevent accidental triggering during the placement of the mechanism.

The second mechanism is a heavy wooden wrench mechanism. The advantage of this mechanism is that it can cause widespread damage when triggered once.

The logs used to make the traps must be made from trees at least the size of a bowl. The strong winds that came before have blown down a lot of big trees, and I can use these trees to make log traps.

The log traps I make usually require two logs per set. When the mechanism is triggered, the two heavy logs are suspended by ropes on the tree at extremely high speed and slammed towards the center like swinging on a swing.

Any creature located in the middle is highly likely to be hit by the flying log, which can cause serious injury or even death.

The last trap was also the one that took the most time to set up, and it differed from the other two.

The previous two were passively triggered traps, but this last one is an actively triggered trap.

I designed the spring mechanism of this type of trap on the surrounding trees, extending to within ten meters of my residence.

This is a spring-loaded trap that can shoot arrows. The arrows are designed high up in the trees, with all the arrows pointing outwards in the same direction.

The trigger ropes for these mechanisms are also made of thin hemp rope, which runs through the trees all the way to my treehouse so that I can operate the mechanisms.

To help me accurately locate the mechanism, I even numbered the ropes from far to near.

I divided the arrow-shooting mechanism into twelve groups, arranged in a circular pattern radiating outwards, with a layer distributed every ten meters.

When this mechanism is triggered, it will fire forty bamboo arrows in a circular pattern in all directions. These arrows may not be able to kill the mysterious creatures immediately.

However, my last trap overlaps with the previous two, thus creating a combination of active and passive fire coverage between the traps.

I dare say that a trap of this magnitude would be an extremely terrifying weapon even for waging a war between humans.

That's just how I am; when I'm going to make plans, I plan for the worst. These traps are no longer just hunting traps; I've upgraded them to wartime level.

Simply put, I feel a sense of security comes from strong firepower support.

During this time, even though I had set traps, I didn't dare let the monkeys continue to run around, so I came up with a way to lure the monkeys to the vicinity of my residence.

Taking advantage of the monkeys' lack of vigilance, I chained up all of them, including Top, like dogs.

Top was very puzzled by my behavior, and for the first few days they strongly resisted this restriction on their freedom.

Finally, I had no choice but to come up with a solution: I went and found a large basket of pebbles the size of soybeans.

Then, each day, a handful of the remaining raisins were mixed with these pebbles and given to the monkeys to amuse them.

If monkeys want to eat raisins, they have to spend time picking out the stones.

I demonstrated to Top how to pick the stone into another basket and then eat the raisin.