Chapter 240 - 108: The Future Box
In the early morning of August 27th, Chen Zhou stayed up late to wash the apricot kernels clean and placed them on a wooden board to dry.
As for the more intact Autumn White Almonds, he wiped away the sand grains clinging to their skins and put them into a silver plate, placing it on the bedside table, eating a few before bedtime to savor the taste of childhood.
...
In the new 15 days, the first thing he had time for was to tidy up the wooden and stone walls on the beach and stack new wooden and stone walls.
During the process of stacking the new wooden and stone walls, Chen Zhou also built a new rain shelter on the beach to protect the reward items.
The new rain shelter was relatively small and could only shelter small rewards, seemingly useless but better than nothing.
After handling the trivial matters left on the beach, Chen Zhou's work turned back inside the cave.
His daily work routine was very similar.
If the rain wasn't heavy, or on cloudy days, he would check and tend to the plants in the sunroom and the ravine beside it in the morning.
The grapes, aloe, sugarcane, etc. were still in the reproduction stage and hadn't bloomed, while the tobacco had matured but Chen Zhou didn't need it for the time being.
Besides, there was still a large pile of dried tobacco brought down from the ship, so he didn't harvest the tobacco but let it grow freely, only to cut or pull it when it was needed.
In the afternoons when it didn't rain, he would go to the cave to add salt to the goats and check the status of the mother goat——
If something happened to her now, it would be a loss of one life, or even two or three.
When the weather was stormy, unable to go out, Chen Zhou would huddle in the cave, stacking the stone walls between the kitchen and the bedroom, or the bedroom and the storage room.
While stacking the stone walls, he deliberately left spaces in the walls for the installation of door frames, to be used to install doors in the future.
In addition to building walls, he occasionally went to check on Tizi or the young mice.
Xiao Huihui, the shameless father, remained incorrigible and often secretly competed with the kittens for milk, often getting beaten up for it.
However, Tizi and he had a deep bond and didn't mind Xiao Huihui sharing the milk.
Chen Zhou was too busy to watch over Xiao Huihui 24 hours a day, so sometimes he let it be, considering it as a unique hobby between the couple.
To prevent his life from becoming too monotonous, Chen Zhou generally worked on wall building for only four hours each time.
The remaining time he usually allocated to making wooden models or expanding the storage room.
The number of test mice was increasing, and keeping them with the cat was not a solution.
Right now, Tizi was in confinement, and the kittens hadn't grown up yet, so they could maintain harmony for the time being.
Once Tizi was free and the kittens grew to be mischievous and lively, they would certainly linger outside the mouse pen, stimulating the mice's nerves all day long.
Chen Zhou was eager to expand the storage room to prevent such a situation from occurring in advance.
He didn't expand the storage room inward but dug out a passage about 2.5 meters high and roughly 2 meters deep on the sandy stone wall of the storage room.
At the end of the passage was a separate small room, dedicated to raising the mice.
Actually, if possible, Chen Zhou would prefer to raise the mice outside the cave.
Although these creatures weren't very harmful, they're ultimately irritating to look at, and their numbers growing, constantly grinding teeth, squeaking, or fighting, made it even more annoying.
...
Building the indoor partitions was considered the main task at this stage.
Due to the fact that the outer walls of the kitchen and storage room were not yet built, both in the rainy and dry seasons, the wind often carried leaves or sand into the cave, requiring that the outer floor be swept every few days.
Sometimes the wind was strong enough to blow sand and stones onto the kitchen utensils or into water buckets, severely affecting the quality of life.
Moreover, unhindered communication between indoor and outdoor spaces was also a disruption of the sense of security when resting.
When the bedroom's outer walls weren't finished, Chen Zhou was often woken up in the middle of the night by the wind blowing into his bed.
After the outer walls of the bedroom were completed, the wind blowing directly into the bed from the foot stopped, but there was still wind blowing in from both sides, disturbing sleep.
Sleeping soundly, when suddenly hit by such a gust of wind, made one always feel like they were in the wilderness, not in a warm, safe home.
And building interior partition walls was precisely an important way to solve this problem.
Not only did Chen Zhou decide to erect walls to separate the kitchen from the bedroom and the bedroom from the storage room, but he also planned to make a long shelf connected to the ceiling in the bedroom to separate the bed from the work area, facilitating work and rest.
Moreover, the shelf could be used to display some plants and the wooden models and small pottery he made when bored, serving both decorative and practical purposes.
...
Starting on the afternoon of August 27th, Chen Zhou was diligently completing the items on his plan in orderly fashion.
Once the two interior walls were built, the brightness of the bedroom significantly dimmed another level.
This was partly due to the inherent poor lighting of the cave.
Another reason was the small window on the bedroom's outer wall, allowing little light into the cave.
Plus it was the rainy season, and the cave being built in a shaded spot, received even less sunlight, so much so that lights were needed in the bedroom in the afternoon.
However, these circumstances didn't affect Chen Zhou's daily life much, because most of his work in the bedroom was done late at night, requiring light regardless of how good the lighting was.
As for the daytime work area—the kitchen, its outer wall was yet to be constructed, so it remained quite bright.
...
After completing the interior walls, Chen Zhou, while chiseling wooden boards and adhering the shelves with Fish Swim Bladder Glue, also paved floor tiles in the storage room and kitchen.
Simultaneously, he used his spare time to research how to build an arched ceiling, for which he made several models.
Time flew by, and soon it was September.
The planted garlic sprouts were nearly mature, and in early September, Chen Zhou harvested a batch of garlic sprouts to fry with meat.