I let out a long sigh and gazed up at the dark night sky. I wondered how my family was doing, whether they were worried sick about my disappearance.

Now that I have the metal tools, I should be able to figure out a safe way to get to that mountain soon.

Only by reaching the top of that mountain can I possibly see where I am now; that is my only hope.

Little sister, wait for your brother, he'll be back to find you soon.

My thoughts drifted away, and I don't know how much time passed before I drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Top smashed a wild fruit right on my head. These days, as it's gotten more and more familiar with me, its sense of boundaries has become increasingly blurred.

Sometimes this polite monkey does some mischievous things, like it discovers that throwing wild fruit at me wakes me up.

The game makes it seem fun, so every few days it will find some fruit and throw it in my face.

At that moment, Top was looking at me from the branch, squeaking and making strange noises, but its signature grinning gesture showed that it was very happy.

I didn't blame the monkey. I just picked up the wild fruit in my hand, took a bite, pointed at Top, and shook my head. After all, it was far more civilized than the mischievous monkeys of Mount Emei.

After climbing down the tree, I made some breakfast. Today I want to go to the lake to see if I can find some suitable stones to make whetstones.

If it's just ordinary stones, there are plenty here. What I'm looking for is a finer, harder whetstone.

These kinds of stones can generally be found in mountains and near water. However, most stones from mountains are weathered and fractured, so stones from near water are generally of better quality.

The biggest difference between this stone and ordinary pebbles is that the particles of this whetstone are finer and the density is higher; it is a type of sedimentary rock.

If I could find such a stone, I could sharpen my knife to an extremely sharp point, even to the point of being able to shave.

To be honest, I haven't shaved for over a month, and now my beard has grown thick and bushy. In this hot and humid rainforest, these beards are extremely prone to harboring bacteria and insects.

The rock ledge I went mining on before seemed to be basalt, which is usually a product of magma cooling after a volcanic eruption.

There are several types of basalt. Some are porous, air-filled stones that are very light. In some places, they can be used to scrub the body, so they are also called scrubbing stones.

However, what I'm looking for is a dense and fine-grained stone, and maybe this basalt contains the kind I'm looking for.

And as I expected, the basalt shelf was indeed a product of a volcanic eruption.

The discovery of air bubbles proves everything; these things can only be formed when magma cools rapidly.

In other words, the large lake I saw must have been a volcanic crater a long time ago.

It later stopped erupting and became an extinct volcano. Over time, the rainwater accumulated and formed the vast lake we see today.

This is somewhat similar to the extinct volcanic lake, Tianchi, in Changbai Mountain. I just hope there's no lake monster in this lake.

But I'm not some geological researcher anymore. I'm just a poor guy who needs to find a good whetstone to sharpen my knife and then shave my damn beard.

After searching the rocky outcrops by the lake for a while, I found a few stones that looked pretty good. However, these stones were somewhat irregular and needed to be flattened.

Anyway, I didn't need that many whetstones, so I chose two stones of suitable size and started working on the spot.

Basalt is hard and has a good texture. It is usually quarried to make stone tablets, and it is also used to make stone slabs directly, which are very wear-resistant.

I've been making stone tools for a while now, and I have some experience in making simple stone tools.

I picked up a pebble at random, then found a cool willow tree to sit on. First, I chipped away at the irregular parts of the two stones, then started tapping along the grain of the stone towards a single point.

Soon, the entire surface at the point of stress will break off, forming a flat surface. The same process is performed on the other stone to create a flat surface.

The stones that have just been broken open are still quite rough. Here's a simple way to quickly make the surfaces of the two stones equally smooth, to a level suitable for sharpening knives.

The specific method involves placing two whetstones face to face in water and then rubbing them rapidly. Continue rubbing until the stone surfaces are relatively smooth, and you feel a slight resistance when pushing them with your finger – that's the ideal state.

Having found a decent whetstone, I didn't plan to linger here any longer, because I couldn't wait to sharpen my knife into a razor.

This beard and hair have been bothering me for over a month. Even though my hairdressing skills aren't great, I can still shave my hair off just like I shave my beard, so it's not a big problem.

Back at my lodgings, I ignored the axe. What I needed now wasn't to chop down trees, but a sharp razor.

I poured some water onto the polishing stone, and the water seeped into the stone very evenly. It truly is a fine stone!

I picked up the knife and started sharpening it. Sharpening knives is practically an essential skill for men in the countryside; sharpening sickles and kitchen knives is a daily routine.

This knife was specially forged to my specifications. Its overall shape is very similar to that of an old-fashioned razor, but I was too lazy to make the handle, so I just cast it as a single piece.

Sharpening razors requires a high degree of sharpness. Therefore, the grinding angle must be flat, not steep.

The general rules for grinding angles are also very simple: place the blade and the whetstone flat.

The blade should be slightly raised, just enough to push the entire thumbnail (with the pad of the thumb pointing upwards) inside.

Then remove your thumb and use both hands to stabilize the angle and continuously push and grind evenly back and forth on the whetstone. Add water to the whetstone from time to time so that it can sharpen the tools faster.

Sharpening this kind of razor requires extreme patience; if you want a steel knife to be sharp, it generally takes no less than two hours to sharpen it by hand.

But my knife seems to be an exception; it doesn't seem to be as hard as I imagined.

My whetstone is fairly fine, but I still used the same method to sharpen it. In just over half an hour, the blade had become an extremely thin line, with a faint glint of cold light visible.

It seems my copper is not very hard, otherwise it wouldn't have been able to grind so quickly.

But I can't worry about that now. At least the knife in my hand is good enough to shave.