Since the goal is to make soap, animal fats are essential.

I do have some rendered fish oil, but it's not as effective as the oil from those mammals with thicker fat layers. What I want is to make soap that's a bit firmer, but the fish oil makes it a bit too soft.

I've thought about hunting wild boars, but they're too dangerous, so I can only use traps to catch them.

Furthermore, I've been around here for so long, but I haven't seen any wild boars in the areas I frequent.

Wild boars are actually very cunning animals. They are often unpredictable and will not stay in one place for long. They also do not have fixed dens, so hunting them is quite difficult.

I remember an animal stealing my fish from the lakeside before; it must have been an otter. These animals usually live nearby, so I can catch them with a suitable trap.

This animal has a thick layer of fat, making it ideal for soap making. Its fur is also excellent for leather, making great for warm clothing.

Trap traps like snares are not suitable for hunting otters. Although their teeth are not as sharp as beavers, they should be able to bite through my rope without much trouble.

So I decided to use bamboo to make ground arrow traps to directly kill this animal. To do this, I spent a whole day searching for the animal's burrow.

However, I underestimated how cautious this creature was. Generally, their nests are built near rocks or tree holes, but they are very good at hiding their nests, so I searched for a whole day and still couldn't find their nest.

Just when I was feeling disheartened, I saw a pile of tall, protruding branches beside a small river. The cross-sections of these branches had bite marks, clearly the work of rodents.

I was overjoyed. The only animal that could build structures in the water was the beaver. Unlike otters, their dens were easily exposed by the high branches rising above the water.

Their entrances are also different from those of otters; their entrances are all located underwater, and they dive in and out of their burrows.

However, I know how to find its burrow entrance; beavers have a habit of building dams. They build their burrows first, and then build dams to flood the entrance with water.

If I follow its nest downstream, I will surely find a dam that the beaver has built up with branches and mud.

Soon I discovered that there was indeed a dam made of tree branches downstream. I then broke a large gap in the dam, and a large amount of water poured out in an instant.

I took my tools and went upstream to find the beaver's den. I waited patiently for about half an hour. The water had receded most of the way, and a round hole was now exposed to the air.

I came to the location of the hole, took out two thicker, sharpened wooden stakes, separated them, and nailed them to both sides of the hole.

Then, at the horizontal position of these two wooden stakes, dig a hole about two fingers wide a few centimeters down. Next, insert a suitable bamboo strip into these two holes.

Next, I used hemp rope to slightly bend both ends of the bamboo strip and then tied them together, so that the hemp rope could be taut like a bow.

Since it's a bow-and-arrow trap, it must also contain arrows as the primary trigger mechanism for killing.

The arrows here are made by sharpening bamboo strips about the width of a finger. To increase the strength of the arrowheads, after sharpening them to a certain extent, I used a knife to slowly scrape the arrowheads until they were smooth and sharp.

The bamboo arrow made of flat bamboo strips also needs to have two dovetail grooves carved on opposite sides. One groove is used to fit into the bow slats of the bamboo bow, and the other groove is used to insert a thin twig through the soil at the top of the cave and place it at the entrance of the cave as a trigger mechanism.

These traps are typically used to hunt ferocious animals such as hog badgers. The advantage is that once the trap is triggered, the arrows will pierce the prey's head, leaving it no chance to escape.

Beavers have very strong teeth; they can even bite through trees as thick as a bowl, almost as efficiently as a chisel. So, to be on the safe side, this is the only way to hunt them.

The next morning when I went to check the trap, a large beaver was already firmly pinned to the ground by the ground arrow and was fast asleep.

I pulled out the arrow and dragged out a large beaver. This beaver was quite large; its round body was difficult to lift, and I estimated it to weigh over forty pounds, about the size of a half-grown mongrel.

After acquiring the beaver, I returned to my lodgings and began processing it. First, I took care of the beaver's pelt, removing its four paws and then skinning it by opening its back.

The beaver pelt was easy to peel off, and then I peeled off the skin from its tail completely as well. Its tail skin is much thicker and harder than its body skin, making it excellent for making knife sheaths.

My Nepalese kukri is just missing a suitable sheath, and this beaver's tail skin would be perfect for making one.

As for the internal organs, I cleaned and kept them all, and they were just enough for dinner.

Next, I scraped off all the most important fat from the beaver's body with a knife. This is the raw material I used to make soap.

As for the beaver meat, I won't waste it. As I mentioned before, I still have a lot of sugarcane residue left, which is a great ingredient for smoking meat.

Beaver meat is smoked for about a week, resulting in a bright red and shiny texture, and it tastes much better than cured pork. Stewing a pot of this cured meat is simply amazing.

I used the coarse salt I had on hand to rub the beaver meat inside and out thickly, and then put it in a bamboo basket to marinate and dehydrate for a day.

Once dehydrated, the beaver can be placed on a simple frame and smoked at a low temperature using firewood and sugarcane residue.

I have to wait another day. First, I'll render all the fat into oil in a pot. This oil is edible, so I'll put it in a gold jar.

I poured out half of the oil; I felt that this was enough to make soap.

I put some wood ash into the gold basin, then added water and stirred constantly to mix it thoroughly.

Then, a bamboo tube filter made of sand, gravel, weeds, and charcoal is used to filter out the wood ash water inside.

The filtered wood ash water wasn't alkaline enough at this point. I then poured the wood ash water into a pot and started heating it while stirring.

After some of the moisture evaporates, the wood ash will turn a deep red color. To test the alkalinity at this point, simply drop an egg or potato into the ash; if it floats, it's ready.

However, I couldn't bear to add eggs, and I didn't have any potatoes on hand. I dipped my finger in the red liquid and put it on my tongue; a slightly spicy sensation came over me—the lye solution was a success.