Chapter 137 - 55: The Wall Completed
Happy times are always so short.
Grilled meat is delicious, but one's appetite is limited.
After the initial few bites, the stunning feeling fades away, and the fullness intensifies. Chen Zhou gradually finds the seal meat a bit cloying.
Without spicy condiments like chili powder, pepper, garlic, or onion to enhance the flavor, relying solely on the taste of the seal meat, he can't eat much.
The flat copper pan served Chen Zhou himself in the first half, and then Lai Fu, Xiao Huihui, and Ti Zi in the second half.
It is said that dogs cannot handle even two ounces of oil in their stomachs, so considering Lai Fu's health, Chen Zhou dared not feed it too much grilled meat.
Although cats are pure carnivores and can fully digest food, their size is too small to consume much meat even if eating freely.
The banquet concluded, and when the flames in the stove extinguished, Chen Zhou picked up the oil lamp, lay down, and inspected the white clay inside the stove that had been baked by the fire.
Different types of soil react differently when heated.
A stove made with yellow clay doesn't need to be completely dry to light a fire.
A stove plastered with cement must dry before use; otherwise, after being baked by fire, the cement will crack and fall off extensively.
Previously too impulsive, he started the fire without waiting for the white clay to dry properly for grilling meat, leaving Chen Zhou unsure inside.
Barely finished his meal while worried that the white clay inside the stove might crack due to the heating, affecting the strength, he immediately checked.
After burning for over two hours, the stove's interior wall was no longer the fresh gray-white of newly constructed but tainted with a layer of smoky black.
Poking the interior wall with a branch, seeing that the white clay adhered firmly with no cracks or detachment, Chen Zhou breathed a sigh of relief.
...
On February 12th, awakening early in bed, Chen Zhou suddenly thought of an interesting question —
Was the year 1660 a common year or a leap year?
Actually, this question would not affect the challenge.
Assume there are 7 leap years over these 28 years, and if he treated all those leap years as common years, it would at most cause a week's discrepancy.
The timing of the rainy and dry seasons on the island is inherently inconsistent, capable of arriving ten days earlier in extreme cases. To determine the season, you mainly rely on observing the weather, regardless of whether the timing is spot on or not.
But Chen Zhou is a very stubborn person.
For some problems he cannot comprehend or thoroughly research, he would unwaveringly choose to abandon them.
However, he cannot let go of matters which can be figured out in a short span, as they would gnaw at him unbearably.
He vaguely recalls learning how to distinguish common years and leap years in elementary school, yet the mnemonic has been unused for years, leaving him speechless with it.
This feeling of remembering yet not really remembering is excruciating, scratching his tousled hair, Chen Zhou scurried up from bed to find a notebook, drawing and scribbling on it.
"Common year, leap year…"
"2026 is a common year; leap years seem to occur every four years if I calculate backward…"
While writing, it struck Chen Zhou that just calculating every four years seemed wrong because he recalled the mnemonic was more than four words, indicating leap years were more complicated than merely occurring every four years.
Staring at the paper filled with years, biting the feather pen in thought for a while, he jotted "four years a leap" on the paper, then going by feel, he added two lines "xx is no leap" "xx then leap".
Scratching his back of the head again, Chen Zhou reminded himself he should get a haircut, murmuring to himself.
"Ten years? Hundred years?"
"Four years a leap, hundred years not leap, four hundred years then leap!"
"Seems like this is the mnemonic!"
Bringing out the leap years he remembered for verification, confirming the mnemonic was correct, Chen Zhou calculated the year 1660 to be a leap year.
"Which means February will have 29 days this year, better jot this information down to avoid forgetting it later."
Solving a "problem" right after waking up.
Chen Zhou felt great, closed the notebook, got dressed, and walked toward the kitchen.
February 12th unfolded.
...
Building walls continuously for three days, by February 15th, the outer walls of the bedroom were finally constructed to the top of the cave, supporting the sand and stone layer above.
The entire stone wall was extraordinarily wide and thick, the foundation laid with yellow Stone, the part exposed above ground used blue-gray Stone.
Initially, Chen Zhou wanted to carefully select the construction materials, mimicking Xu Sanduo from Soldier Assault by building some geometric patterns with blue-gray Stone to add some artistic flair to this wall.
Yet, ideals were lush with reality being scant.
Without a stone cutter, finding suitable colors from this pile of strangely shaped stones and fitting them into the right spots was rather demanding.
Xu Sanduo's Stone was laid for pathways; as long as the colors matched, laying the stones flat on the surface sufficed.
His three-dimensional stone wall demanded higher standards.
Focusing on color without considering shape, even if completed, it would result in shoddy work.
Patiently picking stones for an hour, noticing his pathetically slow progress, Chen Zhou discarded this notion and honestly went to mix mud.
On top of the blue-gray Stone, finishing off the top part he used flat and highly applicable white Stone.
From top to bottom, the entire stone wall sequentially features a white and slightly protruding eave, a main wall mixed with dark gray and light blue, and the earth-yellow foundation buried underground.
The seams of the stones were filled with smoothed white clay, which appeared gray since it has not yet dried, but once completely dry, the color becomes much cleaner, resembling intersected natural stripes, and accidentally forming irregular geometric patterns.
If you look closely, it inevitably appears a bit rough, but at first glance, it's quite nice.
Apart from the wall itself and the eaves that protrude about 20 centimeters above, during the wall-construction process, Chen Zhou also completed the installation of the door frame and window frames.
He originally wanted to open a door in the center of the wall and then have a window on each side of the door.
After sketching a design on paper, he felt that this design would make the whole wall look like a startled face. Although it was neat and proper, it looked overly amusing.
So Chen Zhou changed his mind and installed the door frame on the left side of the wall, and then placed two window frames right next to each other on the right side of the door frame.
Below the window frames, he also used white stone slabs to make a windowsill. In the future, if he grows some green plants, they can be placed on the windowsill.
Currently, the work is too busy. Chen Zhou thought that once he finished all the tasks he needed to do, he would catch some beautiful parrots in the forest and hang them under the ceiling to keep.
Then he would transplant a few delicate and gorgeous plants to place indoors, or build a fishpond next to the farmland and catch a few colorful small fish to breed in it, which would also be enjoyable.
...
On February 16, the finishing touches on the exterior wall of the bedroom began.
The wooden doors and windows that Chen Zhou had carefully selected were installed into the door frames and window frames.
After opening and closing them a few times to ensure the doors and windows functioned properly, Chen Zhou walked inside, and the light dimmed at once.
The sunlight, wind, rain, and even the scent of the sea were all kept outside the house.
"No longer do I have to worry about being woken up by the wind creeping in from under my feet while I sleep."
Sitting on the bed, looking afar at the slivers of light coming through the small glass on the window, Chen Zhou leaned back into his bedding, feeling a genuine pride for the walls he built.
However, this is just an insignificant step in the long process of building the shelter.
The exterior walls of the kitchen and storage room, doors and windows, wall buttresses, interior load-bearing walls, indoor partition walls, floors, ceilings…
They all require a significant amount of materials, time, and manpower.
After resting for a moment, he climbed off the bed, and Chen Zhou began crafting indoor lighting fixtures.
If he hadn't caught those two seals, his best option would have been to surround a few piles of campfires with stones and rely on charcoal burning for light, given that lamp oil was limited.
Now, with an abundance of lamp oil, he planned to make a stand for the oil lamp and place the oil lamp on it, moving it wherever needed.
The lamp stand is easy to make; it just requires a piece of wood thick enough, with three support legs installed at the bottom and a groove carved out at the top to hold the oil lamp in place.
Each lamp stand weighs over 40 pounds, looking crude and clumsy, but they're very quick to make.
In just three hours, Chen Zhou made four lamp stands.
Placing the lamp stands dispersedly in the bedroom and lighting them all up, he looked at the warm yellow light filling the entire room and nodded in satisfaction—this indeed feels like home.
To celebrate the phase victory, after extinguishing the lamps, Chen Zhou gave himself a half-day off and took Lai Fu out to play wildly, supplementing Little Dragon Cat's feed along the way.
...
Recently, things have been too busy, and after Chen Zhou starts working in the morning, there's simply no time to milk the sheep.
He finally took a half-day off and went to check on the mother goat.
Sure enough, not a drop of milk could be squeezed out.
The little goat had already grown up and now didn't like snuggling up to the mother goat; catching it was becoming increasingly difficult.
Chen Zhou estimated that at this rate, in another month or two, the little goat might leave its mother and go on its own to find the large herd of goats.
But tying them all up wasn't a feasible plan, not to mention the trouble of carrying water for them every day.
Watching Lai Fu rolling on the grassy slope, he sighed.
"If only you could help me herd the sheep while I work, Lai Fu.
I wonder if such a big dog can still be trained into a shepherd dog…"
To prevent the little goat from sneaking away, Chen Zhou coaxed it and deceived it into capturing, then tied it with two leading ropes.
Though the ropes can't restrict the little goat's yearning for freedom, they can slow down its speed. Once its speed is slow, it naturally becomes difficult to run away.
Even if it does run away, it won't keep up with the large group of sheep, making it easy to catch back.
"I should probably go find a herd of sheep; I must expand my herd to ensure they don't disappear for no reason.
Besides, one or two goats don't produce enough milk, making it difficult to supply my daily consumption, let alone make milk tofu or butter."
Sitting on the hillside, allowing Lai Fu to play with the tethered little goat, Chen Zhou's gaze drifted.
He wondered where the large herd of sheep had gone and why, after leaving the platform, there has been no news.
...
Before the sun set, Chen Zhou returned home with Lai Fu and took advantage of the remaining light to fetch a load of water.
After an entire dry season, the flow of water coming from the crack at the mountain stream's source had diminished, requiring more time to collect water.
Boiling water, he washed his head and took out a razor.
Facing the wall, he originally wanted to shave his hair off. However, without a mirror, shaving by feel was really awkward.
After hesitating for a long time, Chen Zhou only cut off a few strands of long hair in front of his forehead that were obstructing his view.
As for the other hair, he planned to tidy it up after bringing up those two large mirrors with brass frames from downhill.
Shaving while looking in the mirror is bound to make the shave cleaner.
Although his hairstyle is a shaved head, if it's not shaved cleanly, leaving a few patches of hair on an otherwise bald head is more unsightly than other hairstyles.