by Lazy Bird
For the time being, he left a one-meter-wide gap in the middle as an access area, which could also serve as a chimney.
Then he retrieved some rocks, rearranged two fire stoves, and raised their height by one meter. He placed them in the gaps and set up a bonfire on them.
In this way, the smoke could be dissipated easily, and could also form as a deterrent to the beasts that try to sneak attacks at night. Most importantly, it could speed up the drying of wild boar meat.
This would consume twice as much dry wood. Hehe, but he had no lack of dry wood at all.
When night fell and the bonfire was lit, Li Siwen hung strips of pork on both sides of the bonfire. He used a mountain axe to quietly cut the remaining four hardest logs, preparing to cut them into three meters long. He would then carve them into a giant wooden spear and a spare handle for the mountain axe. If he encounters colossal beasts like the big snake or the old wild boar in the future, he could deal with them.
Carving into the middle of the night, Li Siwen yawned regretfully. He originally hoped to use this method to enter the mysterious state of enlightenment.
After adding enough firewood to the two fire stoves, he found a corner, held his mountain axe, and rested for a while. It was impossible to fall asleep. After all, he hoped that there would be a reckless beast to charge in to become his snack.
Nothing happened that night. The beasts’ prudence left one speechless.
If they were all like the leopard from before, it would be troublesome.
But Li Siwen was curious. What had the wild beasts experienced? Why were they all as sly as foxes?
After daybreak, Li Siwen first checked the wild boar meat. He was quite proud of it. He had started to air-dry and roast it since yesterday afternoon. Not only did he dissipate the pollution from mosquitoes and flies to the greatest extent, but it also sped the drying speed up. Until today, the process of air-drying was already half done.
“There will definitely be heavy rains these days, and my chance will come. That is if the beast team still wants to devour me.”
He sneered and continued to add firewood to the bonfire to smoke and roast the wild boar meat. Then, he leaped out of the treehouse with a mountain axe. He looked around and the coast was clear.
There were no signs of the wild beasts outside. But they could definitely appear silently out of nowhere.
Li Siwen pretended not to care and jumped straight out of the treehouse holding a mountain axe. He split the crown of the big tree and placed it in the sun. There was no shortage of dry firewood.
As for the small branches with leaves, he gathered them to spread them on the roof of the tree. Speaking of which, it was troublesome to rainproof the treehouse. He could only spread the leopard skin and wild boar skin on top temporarily.
In addition, as he had cut down the big trees around the treehouse, only four big trees were left as the support of the treehouse. Next, he had to cut the four big trees in half to prevent being struck by lightning.
Well, he would use his Level 3 woodcutting skill and preserve the Vitality Points to strengthen these four trees as much as possible.
As Li Siwen was thinking, a lurking grey wolf suddenly pounced on him from more than ten meters away and attempted to bite his neck.
Li Siwen appeared unaware. But in the next second, he suddenly turned around and in a violent flash of movement, the sound of air being cut was heard. The grey wolf was cut into half before it had the chance to howl.
Even its blood did not splatter on Li Siwen.
As though he had done a trivial thing, he looked up more than a hundred meters away with a faint smile. In addition to the black leopard from yesterday, there were two more leopards, and a fierce one one-eyed black wolf more than two meters tall. They didn’t charge at Li Siwen but watched carefully.
Needless to ask, the grey wolf was just a small test.
Li Siwen understood that. In fact, he had been pretending to clean up and establish domination, telling these beasts plainly that they could kill him, but they would have to pay a heavy price.
After the Broken Fang Tiger left the day before, he had guessed that it was not a herd of wild beasts that slaughtered the wild boar family, but a group of beasts that were singled out.
Seeing it today, it was as he guessed.
The black wolf was several times fiercer than the grey wolf from earlier but was lacking one eye. It was obvious it had experienced a very tragic fight.
The black panther looked mysterious, but a part of its tail was missing.
As for the other two leopards, one was lamed, and the other appeared weak.
Hence, they formed a temporary gang.
It sounded very strange.
Of course, they wouldn’t be able to take down the wild boar family themselves.
Li Siwen turned around and saw another gang of wild beasts in another direction.
A lion more than two meters tall, a red fox, and a black bear three meters tall. But what surprised him more was the old sow and twelve little wild boars following obediently behind them. What was the meaning of this?
chapter 51
A human, two strange gangs of wild beasts confronted each other like this.
A few minutes later, the lion disappeared into the forest, followed by the fox and the black bear. The old sow and little wild boars followed behind. Their obedience was unbelievable.
Did they accept the wild boars as their partners, or did they learn to raise wild boars like humans?
All possibilities were horrifying.
On this side, the black panther’s gang didn’t attack Li Siwen. They were more cautious than Li Siwen.
However, their gang didn’t take away the live wild boars, but dragged away the corpses of two old wild boars. As for the remaining wild boars, they were all eaten, of course. The food intake of these beasts was no weaker than Li Siwen.
“What a strange world! I have to be more cautious. These lonely wandering beasts are not so simple themselves, but they are willing to form a team. This shows that there are still existences that make them all tremble. Faced with this unknown existence, what advantage can I have?”
Li Siwen thought about it and dealt with the gray wolf’s corpse. He kept the wolf skin and dried its meat.
“I need a more sturdy treehouse, but I also need a more handy hoe and shovel. Unfortunately, I only have 5 Heavenly Workmanship Points left. I shall get a shovel. It’s not too convenient to dig using a hoe.”
Next, Li Siwen covered the fire stove in the treehouse with two stone slabs to prevent a fire from breaking out. Then, he sealed the treehouse securely with logs..
Then, he went more than a hundred meters away from the flooded valley directly, where he remembered that there were many big rocks washed down by mountain torrents with high iron content.
He didn’t know how to make iron, neither did he know how to build a furnace. But time didn’t allow him to explore slowly, so there was only one way. He would see if he could make use of the Heavenly Workmanship Points to do so.
He picked a big rock that appeared to have the highest iron content and hit it directly with the back of the mountain axe with brute force. Now he felt like he really had foresight. If this had been a machete, how was he going to knock it?
The rock was very hard, but Li Siwen’s Stamina and Strength was enough. The weight of the mountain axe was also sufficient. The 10-centimeter wide axe back did not differ from a sledgehammer. Following a crack, more cracks appeared and fragments fell off.
Li Siwen wrapped the fragments around a piece of rag for future use. Then, he continued knocking on the rock, and at the same time observed the direction of the treehouse. He would look back every ten minutes. After all, there were more than a thousand catties of meat there. He could not be negligent.
However, it seemed the two wild beast gangs had really left. He spent half a morning in the flooded valley knocking on the rocks and accumulated more than two hundred kilograms of suspecte
d iron ore fragments. Nothing happened during that time.
After transporting these iron ore fragments back to the treehouse, Li Siwen rested for a while, then put his hands on the pile of fragments anxiously and extracted two points of Heavenly Workmanship Point. He focused on refining the iron.
In the next second, a soft glow flashed. The pile of iron ore fragments liquefied at an incredible speed and finally turned into a black iron ingot.
At this moment, Li Siwen was overjoyed. He picked up this iron ingot and estimated its weight to be at least a hundred kilograms. Didn’t that mean that the iron ore in the flooded valley contained at least 50% iron?
“Continue refinement?”
Li Siwen hesitated for a while. He looked at the 3 Heavenly Workmanship Points left in the blue orb. It was too little.
At the moment, he used the most conservative method. He first extracted a little Heavenly Workmanship Point and made a most common shovel with a bit of the pig iron. The quality of this thing was very inferior. Even a bit of force would break it.
Then Li Siwen put the shovel on the iron ingot and extracted the last two Heavenly Workmanship Points. He strengthened it as much as he could.
The result was not beyond imagination. One Heavenly Workmanship Point transformed it into a wrought iron shovel, and another transformed it into a stainless steel hovel, which was the same level as his hoe.
Even so, Li Siwen was relieved. Now, he had a mountain axe that he could fight with and cut wood, a hoe that could weed and farm, and a shovel that can be used for infrastructure. Well, the mountain axe could be used as a sickle and a hammer. Not bad, he could finally set sail for his light industry.
His top priority was to strengthen the treehouse and deal with heavy rains in the future.
Without taking a break, he used his Level 3 woodcutting skill on one of the four pillars of the treehouse, focusing and choosing to leave the Vitality Point alone. He slashed it six meters above the ground. He removed the crown of the tree trunk, leaving only a sturdy trunk double the hardness.
After that, he put a wooden handle on the stainless steel shovel, and dug frantically outside the treehouse again. This time, he was going to dig a trench five meters deep. It was not to make a moat, but to erect logs.
He had cut down a lot of big trees these days. Among them, the gigantic trees as thick as buckets were cut into pieces of logs that were ten or eight meters long, and those which required two or three people to hug it were left.
Li Siwen planned to chop these thicker trees into ten-meter-long log sections, then put them into the trench and tamped with mud to form thicker wooden walls.
He would leave a one-meter gap between this wooden wall and the second wooden wall and fill it up with soil to further strengthen it.
In short, this was an extensive project. Before Li Siwen had the stainless steel shovel, he didn’t even dare to think about doing it.
But it was no problem now. There was sufficient food supply, enough Stamina and Strength to squander, and sophisticated tools to use. He worked hard without resting the entire afternoon and dug out a one-meter-wide and five-meters-deep trench with a circumference of about 40 meters in one breath.
He consumed 30 Stamina points. Even so, he still had 20 points left.
After resting for half an hour, Li Siwen ate some dried meat and took his mountain axe to chop wood. He was stronger than a bull with his 24 Strength. Together with the sharp mountain axe, it only took a moment to cut a tree that required two people to hug it.
At about 9 PM, he gathered up the required log segments, carried them back one by one, and erected them in the trench. It was exactly five meters underground and five meters above the ground. Tamped with soil, it became very firm.
Only with such a barrier could Li Siwen feel relieved.
After he filled the trench and rammed it down, it was almost midnight. He gave up persevering and returned to the treehouse. He sealed the entrance with logs, left a small trap, and dropped asleep.
chapter 52
This night, Li Siwen did not sleep well.
He woke up every half an hour or so, observed the surroundings, and checked the treehouse.
Fortunately, his Spirit Development was now 40%. Even if he couldn’t really fall asleep, he wouldn’t feel tired because of it. Moreover, this was only for a short period. Once the treehouse was completed, he no longer needed to be so vigilant.
At dawn, Li Siwen glanced at the Attribute Bar. His Stamina had been restored to 45 points, which was not bad. After all, he consumed his Stamina to the 15-point red zone last night.
He jumped out of the treehouse and checked on his farmland first. Although it was trampled on by wild boars the day before yesterday, one-third of the seeds of anti-inflammatory herb and hemostatic herb had sprouted.
The dog’s tail grass, some other wild vegetable seeds, and bush berry seeds he planted yesterday had not sprouted.
Then Li Siwen took a few leaves and collected dew on the grass. He was really helpless. He had just resolved the food crisis, now came the drinking crisis.
He went to the river to irrigate the water the day before yesterday and drank his fill. Then he declared war against the wild boar family. Later, he had to guard over a thousand catties of wild boar meat and a hundred catties of wolf meat, so he never had the chance to leave.
The water in the seven water gourds had been drunk last night. He could last till evening at most, if it didn’t rain today.
When the sun came out, the dew he collected was enough to fill a whole water gourd. Probably because it was in the forest and was close to the river, there was more water vapor.
After taking a few sips, Li Siwen covered it and continued to reinforce the treehouse.
He had completed the construction of the double-layered wooden wall the day before. Today’s task was to fill soil into the one-meter gap between the wooden wall and compact it.
There was no technical difficulty in this matter, but it required physical effort. It was also a hassle to get the soil.
The soil that had been dug out before was filled between the two wooden walls in advance by him. But it only filled less than two meters high. He had to fill it at least two more meters higher.
After some observation, Li Siwen took soil from a location five meters away from the treehouse, but he would try not to dig. In the future, he would move stones to pave this area, which could be used as an outdoor storage yard. Logs, dry firewood, iron ore, stones, etc., that couldn’t be placed in the treehouse could be stored here.
The filling work was very monotonous and took a very long time. Every half meter of filling required him to fully tamp once. Just before noon, Li Siwen finally filled the gap between wooden walls to his desired height. It took him over five hours.
Around this time, the weather was already boiling. Gray-white water vapor rose into clouds and mist, filling the sky. There should be rain in the afternoon, right?
Li Siwen observed the sky, drank the water in the water gourd, and continued to work. What he had to do now was to reinforce the roof of the treehouse. He uses two layers of logs, spreading them out in a cross shape. The cross-sections need to be tied up. But there were not enough vines.
So, he cut the boar skin and wolf skin into thin strips and used them in some key positions so that the roof of the treehouse became one and connected with the outer wooden wall. It was okay, even if there were some sizeable gaps.
Next, he spread some thick branches evenly on the two layers of logs and tried to form an angle of about 30 degrees to facilitate the flow of the rain.
Then, he used the small branches with leaves to layer on top thickly and covered it with a layer of soil. He continued to spread a thick layer of weeds and finally covering it with another layer of soil.
He considered the defense of such a treehouse roof done. But if it rained heavily, it might not be of much use.
Therefore, Li Siwen peeled some larger pieces of bark and got some larger and f
latter stones from the flooded valley. Both materials were placed evenly on the roof with the upper layer compressing the layer below. Although these were not comparable to standard bricks and tiles, it should minimize the penetration of rainwater into the roof.
As busy as a beaver, he managed to finish before the storm came. The moment he blocked the entrance and jumped into the treehouse, he finally felt a sense of security that one would only feel at home.
Outside, the storm came and thunder rumbled.
In the treehouse, Li Siwen leaned in a corner, his breathing steady, and slept soundly.
An unprecedented sense of security!
When the heavy rain stopped, he woke up and found that the surrounding area was wet. Undoubtedly, the treehouse was still leaking, but it was not serious. It was within the acceptable range because quite a few places were completely dry.
After removing the skylight on the roof, and after a shower of rain, the refreshing air greeted him. Li Siwen didn’t jump out directly but activated his Level 4 Spirit Vision. He crawled out after he confirmed that there was no danger within 30 meters of the treehouse.
Standing on the roof of the tree, Li Siwen was proud and self-satisfied. The feeling of the immense pressure from before was completely gone.
Now, he finally felt everything was in place.
Looking around, there was no sign of flooding in the small hill where his treehouse was after such a storm.
To the north of the flooded valley, the water rushing down from the top of the mountain made a rumbling sound, but the terrain in this area had become much flatter. Hence, most of the stones that were washed down from the mountain were collected here.
A few hundred meters to the west, he could see the back-flowing river water.
A few hundred meters to the south, he could even see the river water pouring into the forest. It spared only this little hill that Li Siwen had chosen.
After a while, at about 4 or 5 PM, the dark clouds in the sky had mostly cleared. The sun shone warmly. There was not the slightest bit of sadness. At this moment, the world was so pure and beautiful that people would immediately fall in love with it.