Chapter 282 - 125: Building Yaodong Dwellings (Part 2)
Rather than wasting these years, it's better to do something real.
Chen Zhou thought, if you give those wealthy elderly a chance to spend millions to gain 28 more years of life through challenges, a large portion would be willing to participate.
Sometimes he even felt that the material rewards marked in the challenge or the wealth and treasure loaded on the Spanish plunder ship are not the true rewards of completing the challenge, but the 10,300 days themselves are the most precious.
...
The kittens grew bigger day by day, and the lambs became increasingly robust.
Little Dragon Cat moved into the new home Chen Zhou customized for it, no longer squatting all day in a dark wooden box.
Its "new house" has a bright glass window, divided into three levels: feeding, bathing, resting, and playing areas, and even a green plant is grown.
Simple wooden fences separate each area, and the green plant is protected in the middle of a wooden lattice to prevent Little Dragon Cat from gnawing.
Every corner of the well-arranged "Dragon Cat Villa" was carefully polished by Chen Zhou, without splinters and even felt smooth to the touch, enough to make even Tizi a bit envious and want to crawl inside.
Of course, to protect Little Dragon Cat, Chen Zhou wouldn't give it such an opportunity.
The newly built Dragon Cat villa was placed next to the bed, with the silvery-gray little fellow matching well with the newly changed bed sheets and quilt covers.
As morning sunlight streamed through the large bedroom window, the first thing Chen Zhou saw upon waking was the little fellow.
...
After establishing a work plan, his efficiency was always high, completing the bedroom ceiling on January 14.
On January 15, he spent a whole day doing a thorough cleaning of the bedroom, clearing out accumulated sand, insect corpses, and animal bones and remnants that the cats somehow brought back from the corners.
Luxuriously using soap to wash the used bedding clean, he replaced them with a bed set gifted by the system.
Apart from cleaning the floor, he also wiped and rearranged the furniture layout, moving some of the less aesthetically pleasing wooden boxes to the kitchen or storeroom, where space had been expanded recently.
The newly changed ceiling blocked falling sand and stones, providing a support point for ceiling lights.
Chen Zhou selected several of the largest, most oil-containing ceiling lights to fix under the ceiling, offering better quality lighting for the room.
However, lighting up and extinguishing the oil lamps was much more troublesome than electric lights, always requiring a stool for assistance.
Fortunately, a few days later, he tore down the exterior wall of the bedroom and replaced it with a brand new window.
From then on, indoor brightness increased significantly, making oil lamps less necessary.
For reading and study at night, moving a homemade floor lamp was sufficient.
Unless large illumination was needed, ceiling lights could totally serve as decorations, hanging below the ceiling without needing to be lit.
...
The completed bedroom resembled a model room, providing inspiration and experience for subsequent kitchen and storeroom constructions.
Realizing the serious impact of small windows on lighting while living in the cave, Chen Zhou no longer scrimped on wall space.
While erecting exterior walls for the kitchen and storeroom, he pre-arranged considerable window installation spaces for both walls and customized two large windows.
The kitchen window was the most extravagant, nearly qualifying as a floor-to-ceiling window, bright-lighted.
The storeroom window was slightly smaller, positioned higher near the eaves, giving the storeroom a rural warehouse feeling, which was precisely the effect Chen Zhou desired.
...
During the erection of exterior walls and installation of doors and windows, he received the thirty-second mysterious reward.
It was January 23, 1661, a rare cloudy and drizzly day during the dry season on the isolated island.
Experiencing the long-missed coolness en route, reaching the beach, a refreshing sea breeze lightened their hearts.
Even Lai Fu was more spirited than usual, leaping and frolicking, like a mad little colt scrambling around on the beach.
Carrying the joyful mood to the beach, picking up the package and opening the outer packaging, Chen Zhou's expression stiffened.
Maybe it was a rebound from the bottom, this reward's price soared from a few dollars to thousands, but in terms of practicality, it's less than a roll of toilet paper—
This was a box set of lipsticks, with two luxuriously styled but shaped quite similar to plugs, in various colors.
Curiously checking the accompanying instructions, Chen Zhou found one was named "Fiery Red Brown," and the other "Seductive Rose."
He curiously tested both lipsticks on his sun-darkened forearms, discovering they indeed lived up to their names, one was fiery enough, the other captivating enough.
His understanding of cosmetics was limited to the few frequently advertised brands on TV.
Chen Zhou genuinely did not know the brand of these two lipsticks, whether they belonged to high-end cosmetics or regular ones, he could only judge from the packaging that they were definitely not cheap.
Just a pity these expensive lipsticks were of no use to him, at most moisturizing dry cracked lips.
But the island was humid enough, lips rarely cracked.
Even if his lips did crack, he wouldn't apply these things to his lips, he'd feel uncomfortable seeing it in the mirror.
...
Before the first rainy season of 1661 arrived, Chen Zhou completed erecting the kitchen and storeroom exterior walls, installing doors, windows, and ceilings for the two rooms.
With exterior walls enclosing them, decorated with ceilings and floors, the cave finally somewhat resembled a home.
Even if the storage had a bit more supplies, the space was cramped.
Walking through, seeing neatly arranged furniture, wooden shelves, clean bowls and chopsticks, along with hand-painted scenery and homemade pottery, his mood brightened.
...
Now it was February, before the frequent rains started, Chen Zhou seized every minute to mass-produce ceramic chimneys and square ceramic bricks.
He wanted to build the kitchen stove and fire wall as soon as possible.
Now the kitchen had exterior walls, conveniently opening doors to release smoke was a past affair.
Indoors, if the wood was slightly damp, thick smoke soon billowed, hurting eyes painfully, tears streamed down, blackening the ceiling above the stove.
Long-term, aside from the dirty ceiling, people, cats, and dogs at home couldn't tolerate it either.
Building the new stove became imminent.
...
Referencing the three main cooking utensils at home—frying pan, large iron kettle, and large iron pot—Chen Zhou custom-designed two stoves for them.
The smaller frying pan and large iron kettle shared a dual-stove, while the largest iron pot had a stove to itself.
While waiting for the ceramic chimneys to finish firing, Chen Zhou didn't idle, using his self-cut flathead shovel and pickaxe, setting up scaffolding and digging out a flue above the kitchen eaves.
This flue wasn't long, not difficult to excavate, with a diameter matching the ceramic chimney.
Once all ceramic chimneys and bricks were ready, he assembled all these essential components.
Because the design was meticulously planned, the assembly process was unexpectedly smooth, to his surprise.
While erecting the two stoves, he also conveniently opened up the partition wall between the kitchen and bedroom, building a fire wall.
The fire wall was approximately 1.5 meters long, 1 meter high, connected to the stovepipe of the large kettle used for boiling water, capable of pushing smoke and heating the fire wall, adding a heat source to the bedroom.
After completion, Chen Zhou placed a slab on the fire wall and set the box storing crucibles on it.
Over these months, to prevent the crucible moisture, every few days he had to replace charcoal and lay a layer of dry ash inside the box, exhausting himself.
On the day of fire wall completion, his hard days seemed to come to an end.
...
After the bedroom gained a fire wall, Chen Zhou immediately moved his work area beside the fire wall, swiftly manufacturing a clothes rack, right in front of the fire wall.
With this fire wall, even during the rainy season and the island's most humid period, he no longer worried about the washed clothes not drying, or the risk of mildew.
Simply adding more firewood while boiling water, roasting the washed clothes for two to three hours, allowed him to enjoy dry, warm, and non-musty clothes, incredibly comfortable.
Of course, Chen Zhou hoped the expanded bedroom would eventually have a fireplace, occasionally baking in front of the fire was also a pleasure.
Unfortunately, time waits for no one, as a generous rain soon poured down, marking the official arrival of the island's rainy season.