From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 108 Future Box
In the early morning of August 8, Chen Zhou stayed up all night to wash the apricot kernels and placed them on a wooden board to dry.

As for the relatively complete autumn white apricots, he wiped off the sand on the skin, put them into a silver plate, and placed it on the bedside table. He ate a few before going to bed to reminisce the taste of his childhood.

……

On the new 15th day, he first took time to tidy up the wood and stone walls on the beach and build new ones.

While building the new wood and stone wall, Chen Zhou also built a new rain shelter on the beach to protect the rewards.

The new rainproof awning is small in size and can only shelter small rewards. It seems a bit useless, but it is better than nothing.

After taking care of the chores left on the beach, Chen Zhou returned to his work in the cave.

His daily work is very similar.

If the rain is not heavy or it is cloudy, he will go to the sunroom and the mountain stream in the morning to check on and take care of the plants.

Grapes, aloe vera, sugarcane, etc. are still in the reproduction stage and have not yet bloomed. Tobacco is ripe, but Chen Zhou has no need to use it in the short term.

Moreover, there was still a lot of dried tobacco left from the ship, so he did not harvest it, but let it grow freely and cut or pull it out when it was needed.

If there is no rain in the afternoon, he will go to the cave to add salt to the goats and check on the condition of the female goats.

If an accident happens now, there will be two or even three deaths.

When it was windy and rainy, Chen Zhou could not go out, so he huddled in the cave and built stone walls between the kitchen and bedroom or between the bedroom and the storage room.

When building the stone wall, he reserved space on the wall for installing door frames, which would be used to install doors in the future.

When he was not building walls, he would occasionally go check on the grapes or baby mice.

Xiao Huihui's shameless father never changed his ways despite repeated warnings. He often snatched milk from the kittens and was often beaten for this.

However, Tizi and it have a deep affection for each other and don’t mind the big guy Xiao Huihui suckling his baby’s milk.

Chen Zhou was too busy to keep an eye on Xiao Huihui 24 hours a day, so sometimes he just let it go and regarded it as a special hobby of the couple.

In order to prevent his life from becoming too boring, Chen Zhou basically only works for four hours each time he builds a wall.

The rest of his time is usually allocated to making wooden models or expanding the storeroom.

The number of poison-testing rats is increasing, and keeping them with cats is not a solution.

Now Tizi is in confinement after giving birth and the kitten has not grown up yet, so they can maintain harmony for the time being.

When the kittens are free and grow up to be naughty and lively, they will definitely squat outside the mouse pen and stimulate the mice's nerves all day long.

Chen Zhou was eager to expand the storage room in order to avoid this kind of thing from happening in advance.

Instead of expanding the storage room inward, he dug a 2.5-meter-high and approximately 2-meter-deep passage through the sandstone wall of the storage room.

At the end of the passage is a small separate room used specifically for raising mice.

In fact, if possible, Chen Zhou still hopes to raise the mice outside the cave.

Although this thing has no lethality, it is still disgusting to look at. When there are a large number of them, they will grind their teeth, squeak or fight all day long, which is even more disgusting.

……

Building interior partition walls is the main task at this stage.

Because the outer walls of the kitchen and storage room have not been built yet, no matter it is rainy or dry season, there is always wind blowing leaves or sand into the cave, and the ground outside has to be cleaned every few days.

Sometimes the wind is so strong that it can even blow sand and stones onto kitchen utensils or into water buckets, greatly affecting the quality of life.

In addition, barrier-free communication between internal and external spaces also destroys the sense of security during rest.

When the outer wall of the bedroom was not yet completed, Chen Zhou was often woken up in the middle of the night by the wind blowing into his quilt.

After the outer wall of the bedroom was built, the wind that blew directly into the quilt from the soles of the feet disappeared, but there was still wind blowing in from both sides, disturbing people's sweet dreams.

When you are sleeping soundly and suddenly get hit by such a gust of wind, you will always feel like you are in the wilderness instead of living in a warm and safe home.

The indoor partition wall is an important way to solve this problem.

Chen Zhou not only decided to build two walls to separate the kitchen bedroom and the bedroom storage room, but also planned to create a long shelf connected to the ceiling in the bedroom to separate the bed and the work area, which would be more conducive to his work and rest.

The shelf can be used to place some flowers and plants, as well as the wooden models and small pottery he made when he was bored, which can also serve as a decoration and have practical value.

……

Starting from the afternoon of August 8, Chen Zhou has been completing his planned tasks step by step.

After the two interior walls were built, the brightness of the bedroom dropped significantly.

This is partly because the lighting in cave dwellings is poor.

On the other hand, the windows on the outer wall of the bedroom are too small, allowing less light into the cave.

Moreover, it is the rainy season, and the cave house is built in the shade with even less sunlight, so the lights in the bedroom have to be turned on in the afternoon.

However, these did not have much impact on Chen Zhou's daily life, because he usually worked in the bedroom late at night, and he had to turn on the lights no matter how good the lighting was.

As for the daytime working area - the kitchen, the exterior walls have not been built yet, so it is very bright.

……

After completing the interior walls, Chen Zhou chiseled wooden boards, glued the shelves together with fish bladder glue, and laid floor tiles in the storage room and kitchen.

At the same time, he also used his free time to study how to create vaulted ceilings and made several models for this purpose.

Time flies, and soon it is September.

The planted garlic sprouts are almost mature. In early September, Chen Zhou cut a batch of garlic sprouts to stir-fry meat.

This home-cooked dish, which is common in both the north and the south, requires few ingredients.

Garlic sprouts, shredded or sliced pork, onion, ginger, cooking wine, light soy sauce and salt. You can also add chili or sugar according to your personal taste.

Chen Zhou did not use any onions, ginger or light soy sauce. He only used fresh garlic sprouts, some shredded jerky seal meat and rabbit meat, rum and salt to make a large dish of stir-fried meat with garlic sprouts.

Dishes cooked with seal oil have the taste of fish oil and are slightly fishy.

However, Chen Zhou has been consuming seal oil for a long time, and he can completely accept the taste.

Besides, the focus of stir-fried pork with garlic sprouts is the garlic sprouts and the meat. The taste of the oil is not important.

Chewing the hot stir-fried vegetables, the unique spicy flavor and tender taste of the garlic sprouts blend with the aroma of the meat.

Serve with freshly cooked rice.

Chen Zhou was very satisfied with the meal, and Lai Fu was drooling with envy.

……

By September 9, the kittens began to open their eyes one after another.

At this time, their limbs are not very coordinated and their legs cannot straighten up at all. After being taken out of the cat bed, they can only crawl on the ground like turtles.

When crawling, the kitten always holds its tail straight, making it look more like a turtle.

Fortunately, the bedroom floor was laid a long time ago, otherwise they would have been covered in dirt.

Maybe because the kitten has lived next door to Chen Zhou since childhood, the kitten is unusually close to Chen Zhou. Apart from their biological mother and milk source, the kitten likes Chen Zhou the most.

As for Xiao Huihui, their performance can only be summed up in two words - unfamiliar.

The kittens' eyesight is not much better than before they opened their eyes. Their eyes are still covered with blue film. They crawl crookedly and often bump into the furniture in the bedroom, then cry out in pain. Laifu has sharp hearing and can't stand these noisy little things, but he can't attack them.

Whenever the kittens meowed loudly, Lai Fu, who was always annoyed, would "sing" along with them. The voices of the three small and one big kittens echoed one after another in the cave, like a unique concert.

After being able to see what the world really looks like, the kittens became more and more naughty, and they became more and more interested in "prison breaking".

So Chen Zhou often saw the helpless Ti Zi holding the kitten by the scruff of the neck, walking around the room and putting the kitten into the cat bed.

……

Unlike the kittens living in the honey pot, the situation of the baby mice can be said to be more miserable.

There is no sign of completion for Chen Zhou's expansion of the storage room, so the baby mice are crowded in the "apartment building" with their mother.

29 baby mice and 6 mother mice turned the already limited "apartment building" into a crowded and messy "cheap rental house".

In addition, Chen Zhou didn't care about them as much as he did the kittens. He had already sentenced them to "death" in his mind and threw food into the pen rather casually.

After a few days, two baby mice were accidentally injured in the inexplicable fight between the mother mice and unfortunately died.

In order to avoid the annihilation of his "poison-testing rats", Chen Zhou could only reorganize and clean the "apartment building", and completely seal off the independent rooms that were originally connected to each other into small rooms, so as to fundamentally prevent the female rats from fighting.

At the same time, he stepped up the construction of the "poison testing rat" breeding room, spending more time digging the cave walls every day.

The "pickaxe head" cut out of solid steel plate is sturdy and durable, and is many times stronger than the wooden shovel inlaid with iron, which greatly speeds up Chen Zhou's digging speed.

Even so, digging a tunnel to the rodent breeding room is still a major project, and Chen Zhou expects he will complete the work around mid-October.

……

From late August to early September, construction work occupied most of Chen Zhou's life.

Apart from this, there are a few other small things worth mentioning.

The first thing is the germination and planting of autumn white apricot.

When the Autumn White Apricots were distributed as rewards, they were already fully ripe and the almonds were plump.

After prying open the solid shell, Chen Zhou placed the almonds in a glass jar, covered them with a thin wet cloth, and waited patiently for the almonds to sprout.

The germination process of tree fruits is much slower than that of rice or wheat. It takes nearly fifteen days before a tender green sprout appears.

There were enough seeds brought back from the beach. After a rough count, Chen Zhou felt that he could plant at least two hundred apricot trees and artificially create an apricot forest on this isolated island.

Unfortunately, it takes several years for an apricot tree to bear fruit from the time it is planted, and the amount of fruit produced in the first few years is very small. It is impossible for him to achieve freedom of autumn white apricots in a short time.

The second thing was an unexpected gain.

When going to the beach to build a wooden and stone wall, Chen Zhou accidentally discovered something that looked like a turtle shell floating on the beach not far away.

It was drizzling at the time and visibility was poor.

Chen Zhou couldn't be sure whether the black thing was the sea turtle or hawksbill turtle he was thinking about.

In order to avoid disturbing this living treasure bag, which also served as a "turtle egg storage box", he retreated dozens of steps and shrank into the woods near the shore, gripping the axe handle, expecting a battle similar to the one he had fought when he slaughtered seals.

However, this matter started well but ended badly, and ended in a disappointing way for him.

Perhaps sensing an inexplicable crisis on the island, the giant turtle lingered around the coast for a few rounds before retreating back into the sea, swimming off to an unknown destination.

Chen Zhou was fooled by this sea turtle. He was so angry that he cursed for a while, but there was nothing he could do.

If it was the dry season and the weather was fine, and the turtle was close enough to the shore, he might even muster up the courage to go out into the sea with the rigging, tie up the turtle and try to tow it back to shore.

But this was the rainy season and it was raining. Although there were no strong winds or waves in the sea, the smaller waves continued to rise and fall.

Even if he is a white shark, going to the sea in this weather is like looking for shit (death).

A turtle and some unknown turtle eggs were not worth the risk.

The third thing is a good thing worth celebrating.

When Chen Zhou was heading to the mountain stream to check on the condition of the sugarcane and aloe vera, he was bored and wandering around nearby, and accidentally discovered a citrus tree.

An orange tree to be exact.

After his heroic devotion as a “rat tester,” he determined that the small fruits on the tree that looked and smelled like oranges were indeed oranges.

However, the taste of this wild orange is not as sweet as modern oranges, and it always tastes like lemon.

There are also a lot of seeds inside, and your mouth is full of orange seeds when you eat it, with not much flesh at all.

Despite this, Chen Zhou happily included oranges in the list of essential foods in his life.

No matter how bad this thing tastes, it is much better than lemon.

It is convenient to eat it after peeling.

Put a few in your pocket or hiking bag on a daily basis, and eat two when you are hungry. They can replenish sugar and water, and are more cost-effective than boiled water.

After eating the oranges, Chen Zhou did not waste the remaining orange peels and orange seeds.

He soaked orange peels in water and scattered orange seeds on the flattened fields and woods. If these seeds were lucky and tenacious enough, they would turn into an orange grove in a few years, providing him with a steady supply of fresh fruits that were easy to pick.

……

On September 9, only 10 days away from the first anniversary of landing on the island, Chen Zhou received his 20rd mysterious reward.

This reward was the second to last reward in his first year on the island, and it was also the first strange reward he had encountered since arriving on the island - the second was the safe.

Honestly speaking, the moment he saw this reward, Chen Zhou even thought that the Space Administration had finally shown kindness and gave him a product of "future technology".

Because the appearance and properties of that object are so sci-fi——

It is the size of a fist, emitting blue light, and looks like a strange creation projected from a 3D model in a computer into the real world.

Its overall appearance is like a "Sword in the Stone", with a small handle in the shape of a hilt and half a blade inserted on it.

The lower part is a cube, something like a box.

On each side of the box, there are four small squares shaped like puzzle pieces, glowing with a faint blue light.

When Chen Zhou arrived at the beach, the small box was suspended in the air. Rain fell from the sky, passed through the box, just like passing through the air, and dripped directly onto the simple rain shelter under the box.

The scene was so weird beyond imagination that it seemed to pull Chen Zhou from the real world into a science fiction movie.

When he touched the small box with mixed feelings of shock, curiosity and confusion, something even more bizarre happened.

This object that could be penetrated by rain and wind turned out to be a solid entity in his hand. Apart from the strange blue light, it seemed to be no different from a metal cube.

Of course, the material of this box has nothing to do with metal.

In fact, Chen Zhou had no idea what it was made of, let alone what the box was used for. He just relied on his intuition to think that this thing should be a puzzle similar to a safe.

However, this time, the Time Travel Administration fixed the "BUG" of violent dismantling, making it impossible for him to obtain the reward through any tricky means.

Based on the special behavior of rain water passing through the box, Chen Zhou judged that even the method of using the super-space cutting machine to destroy the box would be ineffective this time.

After all, there is always a devil who is always one step ahead of you. The Time Travel Administration blocked all his shortcuts and left this puzzle in front of him, forcing him to solve it with his own intelligence.

The most disgusting thing is that there is no clue as to what is in the small box.

The same doubts as last time he opened the safe arose again - after he worked hard to solve the puzzle, the reward in the box might even be a piece of chewing gum.

(End of this chapter)