Chapter 266 Harvest and New Camp
The slope in front of them was already very flat, but there was no way to continue exploring.
Because the cave in front of us was at least half a meter deep in water, we had to wade into the water if we wanted to move forward.
The water in this cave is even colder than the meltwater from snow mountains, and it is very dangerous to wade through it.
"Brother, how deep do you think this cave is?" Lin Yue said, looking at the dark entrance in front of him.
"I don't know. It may lead to an endless underground river, or it may end after a few meters. This is just a pool of water."
Lin Heng shook his head and shone the flashlight on the water.
The water is so clear that you can see the bottom, which is covered with fine sand and yellow silt. You can also see a coral-shaped stalactite.
Lin Heng didn't know whether the silt contained rust or what, but he saw a lot of small red stones. He reached out and picked up two, both of which were only the size of pigeon eggs.
This red one is all bloodstone, which was formed by volcanic eruptions in ancient times. It looks as shiny as jade on the outside, but the inside is stained with different colors like ink.
"Are there any fish underground?" Lin Yue asked curiously again.
"I don't know about that. Let's just pick up a few rocks and go back. It's getting late."
Lin Heng shook his head and looked at his watch. It was already five o'clock in the afternoon. If we didn't go back soon, we might have to walk in the dark.
"Okay." Lin Yue stuck the torch on the side and started searching with Lin Heng. There weren't many things and they couldn't carry them all, so they could only pick up the good ones.
There were some bright red stones deeper in the water that were out of reach, and the two men were unwilling to go into the water, so they picked up some, put them in bags and walked back.
“Ouch~”
Xiongba was very unhappy about being restrained the whole way, and he rubbed Lin Heng's legs while walking.
"Silly dog, I'm afraid you'll die from lack of oxygen." Lin Heng glanced at it.
When I was about to leave the cave, the flashlight suddenly revealed an animal corpse. It had died at the edge of the cave and had turned into bones.
"This is a muntjac, with horns on its head." Lin Yue said.
Lin Heng nodded and didn't care much. He thought he had been dead for who knows how long.
“It’s finally out!”
With Lin Heng's sigh, they saw the light again and walked out of the underground cave.
It took a while for Lin Heng to get used to the strong light outside. After a while, he extinguished the torch and turned off the flashlight, then poured out the snakeskin bag to check their harvest.
The biggest one was naturally his eldest brother's bloodstone, which looked like an ostrich egg. Its surface was round and smooth, and it felt cool to the touch, like jade.
The blood color on the red side forms wave-like lines, giving a feeling of a raging sea of fire or a vast ocean.
The yellow side is a little more ordinary, just an ordinary brown, very pure, without any patterns.
"Brother, how much do you think this is worth?" Lin Yue asked curiously.
Lin Heng shook his head: "It's hard to confirm the price of this thing. It's no problem to sell it for a few hundred or a thousand. If you find someone who likes it, you can sell it for a higher price. My suggestion is not to sell it, keep it at home and sell it later."
The economy is not good now, so the prices of these cultural relics are also average. When the economy develops and people have spare money, these things can be sold at good prices.
Just like the antiques and dark wood furniture in his house, he didn't plan to sell them. It wouldn't be too late to sell them when he really needed money. These things would not depreciate.
"I understand." Lin Yue nodded and looked at his other stones.
Lin Hengze looked at his own rectangular bloodstone. The base color of the stone was light white, and red seemed like blood had been poured into it, forming many strange lines. Some places were large areas of blood, and some places were dots of bloody 'raindrops'.
Compared to his older brother's, his looks more jade-colored and has a fleshy texture.
In addition to this he also had a large crystal disc, as big as a human face, disc-shaped, with clusters of crystal pillars growing inside, some of which were transparent and some of which were pink and yellow, which looked better than in the cave.
The other small bloodstones and crystals were also quite good. Lin Heng had six small bloodstones and three crystals, and his elder brother had eight small bloodstones and five crystal columns.
The ones they picked are of very good quality and as round as jade.
Lin Heng estimated that this cave must have had frequent flooding and receding of water, or there had been a period of time when it was like this, otherwise it would have been difficult to form such round stones.
"Leave."
After packing up their things and taking a look at the sky, the two walked back with a smile on their faces.
Although we didn't catch any big prey, the gains from exploring the cave were still considerable.
While walking on the road, Lin Yue said, "Let's find a way to bring the red dates up tomorrow. At worst, we can take a detour. Otherwise, we won't be able to explore much if we walk back every day. Night is a good time for hunting, but we have to walk back."
Lin Heng nodded: "I have the same idea. Let's find a place to cross the river with the red dates. The mountains here are a little gentle, so we should be able to come over."
He has been here for three days, and apart from his eldest brother who caught a decent white rice fish, he has not caught any good prey.
The two were very careful along the way, hoping to find some traces of large animals. After all, they found fresh feces during the day, but unfortunately they didn't find anything after walking out of the river.
It was dark before they returned to the place where the red dates were. They waded across the river and walked down in the dark.
After returning to the location, they saw the red dates lying on the ground and they both felt relieved. Nothing unexpected happened this time.
"Alas, I made a mistake today and haven't even built the shelter." Lin Yue sighed. It took a lot of time to explore the mountain.
Lin Heng smiled and said, "Just make do with it for one night and make a simple one."
This place was chosen during the day because we might not have enough time to build a shelter at night. The mountain on the shore is slanted, forming a small place to shelter from the rain.
They just need to get some stones to build a half-meter-high arc-shaped windbreak wall. There are stones everywhere and it is easy to build it.
It took the two of them only half an hour to build the windbreak wall, and then they started a fire inside the windbreak wall. The heat from the flames was reflected by the windbreak wall onto the mountain wall inside, making the entire area warm.
As long as the fire doesn't go out at night, there won't be any big problems.
The shelter under the mountain wall is all sand, covered with some moss and leaves for insulation, where you can rest.
After the shelter was built, Lin Heng took out the iron pot to cook. He chopped up all the porcupine organs that he had cleaned in the morning and fried them, then threw the last bit of pickled cabbage in and stewed it with water. When the water boiled, he mixed the flour with water into small lumps and added them into the water, making a pork and pickled cabbage lumps soup.
His eldest brother brought two wooden bowls. The two of them ate most of them, and fed the rest to Xiongba, who also added two plum fish to his bowl.
Neither of them ate the porcupine meat, but cut it into strips and prepared to dry it and bring it back to the house for the people to taste. The porcupine skin had been stretched and dried, and the porcupine quills on it were also preserved.
After the meal, they started to process the rice. The rice skin was peeled off and stretched out to dry, and the internal organs were taken to the river to be cleaned and eaten the next morning. The head was stewed in the pot until it was soft, and the meat was removed to feed Xiongba.
After processing the large and small intestines by the river, Lin Heng took the flashlight and said, "Let's see if there is anything good in this river."
"It's just right for digestion. I'm a little full."
Lin Yue nodded, put the processed internal organs into ice water, and followed Lin Heng along the river.
There was a half moon hanging in the sky, dotted with countless stars. The night in the mountains was quiet, and the river breeze blew gently, like a calorie-sucking demon that made people shiver all over.
I looked around the river and there didn't seem to be any special native species. I had seen mandarin fish, minnows, etc. before.
"Damn, what a big tortoise."
Suddenly Lin Heng cried out in surprise and watched helplessly as a giant grass turtle the size of a plate swam into the deep water, completely helpless.
"This turtle runs so fast." Lin Yue said in surprise, not giving anyone a chance to catch it.
Continuing down, we saw some more eels and loaches. The eels in this big river were not easy to catch because there were rocks below and we couldn't get down to grab them with our hands. We couldn't get into the mud and pinch them like we did in a muddy field. Therefore, Lin Heng's professional eel catching skills were useless.
Besides, the water was cold and he didn't want to do it. He didn't come to the deep mountains to catch such things, and it would be difficult to carry too many.
I am quite interested in big turtles like this one. It would be fun to take them home and raise them. I still keep the little grass turtle that I caught before.
After walking along the river for six or seven hundred meters without finding anything good, the two turned around and walked back. When they arrived at the place where the white rice intestine had just been processed, they saw that the white intestine was stretched far apart and a group of fish were gnawing at it but couldn't move.
"Giant salamander, catch it quickly!!"
Lin Yue spotted the giant salamander eating something not far from the shore and ran over to hold it down. But even if the salamander didn't swim fast in the water, it was still much faster than him, and his shoes got wet, so he couldn't even touch the fish's tail.
"Brother, you are too excited. It's too difficult to catch him with bare hands. We have to set a trap."
Lin Heng looked at his elder brother's excitement and said with a smile, it is not so easy to catch a giant salamander in the water with bare hands. Even if you touch it, it is too slippery to catch it.
"I want to give it a try. The shoes will dry overnight." Lin Yue laughed, collected the large intestine and internal organs and walked back.
"Let's set up a maze trap when we have time in a couple of days." Lin Heng thought for a while and said that he could still catch some fish and bring them back in the few days before he left.
Back in the shelter, Lin Yue took off his shoes and socks to dry, while Lin Heng lay down on the dry moss to rest. With the windbreak wall, the fire and the soft sandy ground, it felt better than the previous shelter where one could only sleep upright.
The only thing I'm afraid of is rain.
There was no conversation that night, except for getting up in the middle of the night to add some firewood, the two fell asleep. With Xiongba, there was no need to worry about danger at night, if anything approached Xiongba, he would be able to find it and warn immediately.
It was already seven o'clock when I woke up the next day. I was a little tired yesterday. For breakfast, I had a light steamed plum fish, and the soup was cooked with morels.
I was originally planning on eating white rice offal, but I ate a lot last night and wanted to eat something lighter today, so I chose these two.
"Let's go."
After dinner, the two packed up the bags, put some on Hongzao's back and carried some on their backs. Then they walked down with Hongzao, found a shallow place to cross the river, and then took a detour to go upstream.
After a few days of exploration, it has been preliminarily determined that there are many animal traces near the river where we visited yesterday. Lin Heng plans to build the shelter on the mountain not far from where the black bear footprints were found.
It was troublesome to carry the red dates, so they didn't arrive here until noon. Finally, they found a small sloping land halfway up the mountain and placed the red dates there. They built a shelter near the slope and close to the water source.
"This place is nice, just average."
Lin Heng quickly found a suitable small platform, about five or six square meters, with two huge evergreen camphor trees next to it.
Lin Yue looked at Lin Heng and asked, "What kind of camp should we set up?"
"That kind of conical cactus is not suitable, so just build a slanted shed on the top and make windbreaks around it."
Lin Heng thought for a while and said, he didn’t want to build any luxurious and exquisite shelter. He didn’t have the time and didn’t need to. Maybe he would have to move to another place if he couldn’t catch any prey here.
"Okay." Lin Yue nodded and went to cut down a few small trees to serve as beams for the ceiling.
After it is built, fill it with small branches, then various fresh green leaves. After filling, lay the film paper provided by Lin Hengdai, and then lay some dry leaves on the surface to prevent wind from blowing and it is done.
The surroundings are even simpler. Just use dead branches to surround it one meter high, and then find some moss and leaves to cover it. This will prevent the wind from blowing on you when you lie down. There is no need to make it fully enclosed.
Although it sounds simple, it took the two of them almost five in the afternoon to finish setting it up, wasting a lot of time.
"Finally done." Lin Yue stretched and said with emotion. Although he was tired, building a house with his younger brother was not boring at all.
This shelter is better defended here even if there are black bears. The upper and rear parts are steep and do not need to be defended, so the main defense is in the front and downstream.
"I'll go get some water so we can eat."
Lin Heng took the pot and went to the mountain spring nearby.
It is called a mountain spring, but in fact it is just a small stream of water flowing out from the cracks in the rocks, flowing down along the cracks in the steep stone wall. You have to use a rope to guide the water, otherwise the water will flow away along the cracks in the rocks and you can't catch it at all.
After getting the water, Lin Heng turned around and went back to cook. He cut the innards of the white rice and stir-fried them with morels. Then he added water and brought it to a boil. He then added the blended noodles to make noodle soup.
When they came, each of them brought ten pounds of flour, some pickled cabbage, and a small jar of fermented bean curd. They had eaten five pounds of flour, the pickled cabbage, and less than half of the fermented bean curd.
"It tastes good. I'll find some prickly ash sprouts to try tomorrow." Lin Yue said with a smile. He hadn't eaten green vegetables for several days since he came to the mountains.
"I saw bracken and garlic yesterday. I'll get some tomorrow."
Lin Heng nodded, finished his meal, stood up and said.
It was almost six o'clock when they finished eating. It was dusk, which was the time when animals came out to look for food. The two looked at the sun, put some survival tools they brought with them into their backpacks, and went into the woods with them on their backs.
The two of them advanced quietly along the forest, and before they knew it, the sky had completely darkened. However, the half-moon was hanging high in the sky, and the stars were shining brightly. Although there were a few dark clouds, they could still see clearly at night.
Lin Heng was walking when he suddenly stopped and looked vigilantly at the tree not far away. When he saw clearly what was being taken, he couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat.
(End of this chapter)
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