From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 119 The th Mysterious Reward

The process of catching sheep was much simpler than Chen Zhou had imagined.

It goes without saying that for the ewe trapped in the live capture cage, you just need to remove two pieces of wood, pass the rope through the gap, tie it around the neck and take it away.

The only difficulty is the ewe that is concerned about the lamb. It is still free and can leave whenever it wants. It is difficult to catch it if it is determined to escape.

But this ewe happens to be an extremely maternal individual, and she values her lambs very much. This character can be seen from the fact that she stays here and is reluctant to leave.

When Chen Zhou tiptoed around the ridge and came to the capturing site where the bleating sounds were heard constantly, the ewe had already discovered his whereabouts and had cautiously run to a high place, watching the uninvited guest.

When Chen Zhou thought it was hopeless to catch the ewe and was about to abandon the lamb and leave alone, this guy turned back and attacked him fearlessly.

This ewe is not very big and looks like she has just given birth to her first lamb. She has a very pure and innocent temperament.

It never considered how a creature as small as it could fight against a huge creature like Chen Zhou. Its narrow brain could not imagine that even if it drove Chen Zhou away, it still could not open the strange "bush" that trapped its child.

In this way, Chen Zhou controlled the three female goats effortlessly.

Once the leader is under control, the lambs below are no longer a concern. For him, the only difficulty is the dim environment.

He tied all the big sheep together almost in the dark, and let the hungry lambs eat enough milk. He did not put new bait in the live trap, and even untied the pull-wire mechanism that controlled the cage door.

It won't be long before the female goats give birth to lambs. With these seven sheep, he will have at least ten sheep to take care of.

Life was already busy, and he had a lot of work on hold. If he caught a few more rams, he would be busy to death. He was a self-aware man and was well aware of his limited abilities, so he contentedly stopped catching sheep.

Anyway, the live capture cage is very effective and catching sheep is not a difficult task now. Just let the wild goats continue to wander around the island and reproduce slowly without worrying about them.

Whenever you need them, you can just make a few more live traps and catch them.

……

That night, as planned, Chen Zhou led the goat team to the cave first. After lighting torches, he left the goats in the woods where they could shelter from the rain, and then returned to the cave.

The gains from this trip far exceeded his expectations. He felt very lucky. Before leaving the hillside, he checked the noose trap he had set.

The result was disappointing, nothing was achieved.

This fully demonstrates that the noose trap is a relatively backward method for catching sheep, and its effect is far inferior to the live capture cage with bait.

Of course, it is also possible that Chen Zhou’s skills in setting traps are not up to par - an excellent rabbit hunter may not necessarily be excellent at catching sheep.

……

The anniversary banquet was just like the grand scene during the Lunar New Year. The noise, joy, hope and happiness passed in the blink of an eye. Compared with the more than 360 days of work and daily necessities, it was so short.

Chen Zhou adjusted his work and rest schedule and threw himself into busy work for the sake of his own survival and to improve the quality of life.

After getting up every day, washing, cooking, and feeding the cats and dogs, the first thing he has to do, besides going to the toilet, is to take care of the fields and other crops he planted.

Next, he would go check on his goats, then cut rattan and use the knowledge he learned from the book to process pure natural rattan for weaving.

After finishing all these, it was already afternoon and time to cook for the cats, dogs and rats at home.

The cave is in the shade and it gets dark very early, so the oil lamps have to be lit long ago.

The oil reserves contributed by the two seals were still sufficient, but Chen Zhou did not want to waste this precious oil, so he began to try to boil fish oil.

When there is no rain, he often gets up early and goes down the mountain to catch fish.

The poison-testing rats at home gave him enough confidence. With the help of this group of brave and dedicated poison testers, he could now detect the toxicity of things that he had not dared to eat before.

Therefore, during these times when he went to the beach, no matter what strange things he saw, he would pick up some and put them in a bucket. After returning home, he would chop them up and feed them to the poison-tasting rats for careful tasting.

These include, but are not limited to, purple marine plants, starfish limbs, dead jellyfish, various shrimps and crabs, and insects that look like cockroaches and live on the seashore...

After all, poison-testing rats do not have iron stomachs and could not withstand his harm. Most of them were killed in just a few days, and only the last two lucky ones were left, huddled in the "cell" trembling with fear, waiting for the next feeding.

……

On October 10, the female goat gave birth to two lambs successfully, and both mother and children were safe.

After the delivery, when Chen Zhou was distinguishing the male and female lambs, he was surprised to find that the ewe goat had given birth to two lambs. This meant that his breeding army would soon add two more generals, which really made him happy.

While taking care of the two lambs, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not yet checked how many male and female of the other four lambs there were.

If there are many rams, it is best to keep only one that is strong and well-built as a stud, and sterilize the rest as soon as possible to prevent them from being out of control when they grow up and go into estrus. If they are sterilized at that time, they may easily repeat the same mistake and replicate the tragedy of the previous little ram.

It is said that castrating a sheep is like becoming a eunuch, the younger you are, the smaller the impact will be.

If you wait until you grow up to have abortion, you might bleed heavily or be in extreme pain. Besides, the incision made when you are a child is small and not easy to get infected.

Although he is not a qualified veterinarian and has never learned how to castrate a sheep up close, Chen Zhou has watched the older generation castrate pigs, so he understands some of the tricks.

He thought that all the rams he currently owned were basically kept for food and could not be sold for money, so he should not feel pressured to castrate the sheep and could just give it a try.

If it dies, it dies. At most, I can eat some mutton soup and get goat milk for another half a month. It's not a big loss.

……

On October 10, Chen Zhou, who had a strong execution ability, came to the vicinity of the cave with "surgical tools" and alcohol for disinfection and checked the gender of the lamb.

Two of the four lambs were rams. After observation and comparison, one of the smaller ones unfortunately became a learning tool for him as an "intern veterinarian" and was tied up in a cave for castration.

Having learned from the failure of the last operation, Chen Zhou was much more careful this time. Although the lamb cried out in pain, he did not cut the artery in the end. He only took out the two testicles, which were like molting longans and still had a bit of pinkness.

After the operation, he simply disinfected the lamb's wound and observed the lamb's condition for a while.

The little lamb was naturally not in good condition as it was missing two body parts for no reason. It walked with a limp and its eyes seemed confused and empty, as if it had suddenly lost its goal in life.

However, this state did not last long. When its stomach became hungry, it immediately ignored the pain and lost organs and went to its mother to feed.

……

On October 10, Chen Zhou went to the beach with great anticipation for the first reward of the new year.

Before setting off, his biggest worry was that the rewards would be reset every year.

Over the past year, there has been a notable trend in the rewards: they have become increasingly valuable and useful, and by the first anniversary, they even gave out something called a "skill book," which came with a bunch of practical tools.

In particular, the hand saw that used a modern hacksaw blade was as important to him as the two hand axes.

It is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but it is difficult to go from luxury to frugality. The prize pool accumulated more and more, and suddenly it was reset and turned back into a silicone phone case. Chen Zhou felt suffocated just thinking about it.

However, after careful consideration, he felt that the possibility was relatively low.

It's said to be a reward. Even if there are a lot of spoof elements in it, it can't become a punishment. Otherwise, the rules in the forum should have stated that one random item or a small punishment would be given every 15 days, instead of a reward.

Although the Space-Time Administration is speechless in some matters, in Chen Zhou's heart, it is still relatively trustworthy.

……

According to the rules summarized by Robinson Crusoe in the book, the rainy season should end in early October.

However, according to Chen Zhou's observation, this year's rainy season seemed to last longer than usual, possibly due to the influence of more warm and humid air currents. It was often cloudy and rainy until October 10.

Of course, strictly speaking, October 10th is also within the range of early October, and it cannot be said that there is something wrong with the rules summarized by Robinson.

It was cloudy that day.

The beach was wet as usual, with a few crab cages scattered on it that Chen Zhou had made when practicing rattan weaving, swaying up and down with the waves.

Most of them were torn into pieces due to quality issues, and a few crab cages remained intact, but they were not worthy of the name "crab cages". Not to mention crabs, even shrimps could not be found in them.

……

The reward packaging looked worrying - it was a very small paper box packaging, less than 20cm long and 15cm wide, which reminded Chen Zhou of the familiar mobile phone case with the pink Peppa Pig on it.

With trepidation, he climbed over the wooden and stone wall and picked up the small packaging box.

The weight of the objects in the box gave him some comfort. At least it was not very light, and it felt substantial when held in the hand, indicating that it was filled very tightly.

He shook it gently, but could not hear any sound, which gave him more confidence.

Small, cheap commodities are usually placed directly inside the packaging, leaving a lot of space.

In order to prevent valuable items from being damaged during transportation, they are usually provided with shock-proof and collision-proof sponges or bubble pads. The absence of collision sound is also one of the signs of high-value items.

Holding the box tightly, Chen Zhou interrupted his random guessing thoughts and took out a dagger to start unpacking the box.

Anyway, the reward has arrived, and no matter how much you guess what's inside, it won't change, so you might as well be straightforward.

You don't know until you open the outer packaging. After cutting open the outer packaging, he found that the corrugated cardboard used to wrap the reward was extremely thick and the structure was extremely tight. It looked stronger than the packaging of the two hand axes.

"Oh? There's hope!"

Chen Zhou felt a little excited when he opened the corrugated cardboard, but when he thought about the size of the package, his excitement quickly faded.

Bigger is better, more is beautiful.

Small items are unlikely to be of much help to him.

After opening the carton, Chen Zhou was more convinced of the idea when he saw another layer of packaging box.

It was a black wooden box with a row of gold-plated English letters printed on the surface. The letters were surrounded by a circle of cursive characters. Needless to say, it was another luxury brand that he had never heard of.

Luxury items like this that are expensive to make are generally the most useless.

The packaging box looks very much like the outer packaging of a high-end lighter, which reminds Chen Zhou of his flint, lighter and ignition stick.

"I'll need a kerosene lighter, and I'll have all the tools I need to start a fire..."

With a helpless look on his face, Chen Zhou opened the wooden box.

When he saw the items in the box, he was slightly stunned.

He was stunned not only because the reward in the box was beyond his expectations, but also because the exquisiteness of the reward was enough to shock him.

The layout inside the box is very simple. There is an octagonal groove in the upper right position, which contains a small bottle of ink.

Below the octagonal groove, an exquisite fountain pen is embedded in the horizontal groove. The pen body is covered mainly in gold and black, mixed with a bright red background and complex relief and hollow designs.

If you take a pen and observe carefully, you can see that the themes of all the carvings revolve around the famous Western fantasy masterpiece "The Lord of the Rings".

The vines and patterns that represent Sauron's all-seeing eye, the devil-like Tower of Barad-dur, the golden "Gulu" and the sword, and the vines and patterns that are wrapped around the pen body embody the unity of the theme and the designer's ingenuity in their complexity.

Judging from the unusually heavy weight of the entire pen, all the charming golden color of the pen body should be made of gold, especially the golden nib, which is 18% made of K gold, which increases the cost and noble temperament of the entire pen while ensuring its practicality.

A fountain pen like this, which can be regarded as a work of art, needs no further explanation as to its price.

Based on Chen Zhou's limited knowledge of luxury goods, and the gold used in the pen body, he estimated that the price of the entire pen was at least over 18,000 yuan.

Of course, the price of the pen itself is secondary. What Chen Zhou values most is its practicality.

The quill pens of the 17th century were really uncomfortable to use, and the so-called "fountain pens" he made were also rubbish. They were okay for makeshift use, but they were not at the same level as modern fountain pens.

He was a person who liked to write. He lived in a cave and drew sketches from time to time. The homemade pen could not meet his needs at all and even added a lot of inconvenience.

For example, the tip of the pen cannot hold ink, so you have to dip it in ink after two strokes. Another example is that the tip of the pen is too sharp and it is easy to scratch the paper...

Although this pen is not of much help in improving the quality of life, it is still useful and he likes it very much.

Chen Zhou happily took off the pen cap and unscrewed the pen body. He discovered that this pen used the rare piston-type ink filling method.

In other words, you don't need to unscrew the ink sac. Just rotate the piston at the end of the pen, like winding up a spring. When it stops turning, dip the nib into ink and the ink sac will automatically absorb ink.

Piston-type inking is rarely seen in the stationery commonly used by primary and secondary school students. In China, it has been basically replaced by simple inking methods such as pneumatic inking and replacing ink cartridges. If Chen Zhou had not learned about it while browsing extracurricular reading materials in college, he probably would not have known it.

But to be honest, piston filling is not an unpopular way of filling ink.

As far as he knows, fountain pens also have unique inking methods such as crescent inking, coin inking, key inking and even submarine inking, which are much more interesting than piston inking.

Of course, the practicality is much worse.

……

"New Year, new beginnings. This pen is a great start. It looks like I'm going to have good luck this year."

Thinking in his mind, Chen Zhou put the pen into the box and put it into his backpack. With a vision of future life, he was full of energy to tidy up the wooden and stone walls.

(End of this chapter)