From Robinson Crusoe

The reason why Chen Zhou felt that the mysterious rewards he received in the past month were mediocre was not because he was heightened in sensitivity by those practical tools and expensive luxury goods, but because those rewards were really useless.

The reward received on September 9th was an exquisite belt.

The belt has a black base color, with many skull-shaped metal decorations installed on the surface and countless pink diamonds inlaid.

The entire belt is in an unappealing pink-purple, red-black color scheme, which, combined with the ugly skull, gives it a gaudy and low-class feel.

Chen Zhou felt that it was not as good-looking as the belt he had taken off Robinson, and it was also not very comfortable.

But later, in the spirit of recycling, he still found a use for the belt -

He ironed a few more holes on the belt and then put the belt around Laifu's neck to use it as a dog collar.

Not to mention, Lai Fu's yellow hair and the pink and purple belt really give him a bit of the demeanor of a "spirited young man". Combined with the rows of skulls, it even inexplicably adds a hellhound temperament to it.

The belt is made into a decoration for Lai Fu, which is a good use of it.

But the rewards on August 8 were really speechless.

It turned out to be a set of electronic cigarettes. In addition to the cigarette rod, the package also came with six fruit-flavored cigarette cartridges.

Chen Zhou never smokes. Even if he does, there is natural tobacco on the island that can be dried in the sun. If he wants, he can make a pipe and enjoy the aroma of tobacco.

If you think the taste of wild tobacco is too strong, there is still a lot of high-quality tobacco left in the rooms of Robinson, the first mate, and the captain. Smoking one or two pipes a day would probably be enough for him for two or three years.

Under such conditions, who would smoke e-cigarettes?

Moreover, e-cigarettes need to be charged. He estimates that with the current battery level of this e-cigarette, it is questionable whether it can finish smoking a cartridge.

……

Things that are useless in modern times may not be useful even if placed on an isolated island.

Although the price of e-cigarettes is not low, much more expensive than silicone mobile phone cases and electronic wooden fish, its practical value is almost the same as these two things, or even worse than these two things.

Chen Zhou's attitude towards these useless rewards has always been to keep them in a corner of the storage room - they have a separate wooden box.

At present, the box is already filled with a lot of things of varying sizes.

For example, the first mysterious reward is a silicone mobile phone case, as well as an electronic wooden fish, a butt plug with a tail, a shoe horn, an Ultraman leather case and magic wand, a gift box of lipstick, and a wooden metronome.

In addition to these useless things in the box, there are also some things that were originally useless, but became useful after being disassembled.

For example, edible soil was packed into a small wooden box specially made by Chen Zhou and placed in a dry place for use in firing porcelain, or used as montmorillonite powder to treat diarrhea.

There is also the head-smacking artifact, which has been disassembled into springs and metal knuckles;

The mechanical keyboard was stripped down to a pile of tiny screws and plastic plates;

All the bearings in the casters of the ergonomic chair have been removed;

The umbrella dewatering device was disassembled into metal plates and washing cotton. Its four omnidirectional wheels were placed on the tool rack. Chen Zhou planned to use these four wheels to make a new cart in the future.

The wedding dress was broken down into materials such as mesh, satin, lace and gauze-like fabrics.

The bronze statue of Wang Lingguan was sent to its temple a few days ago. When the natives kowtow and burn incense in the temple in the future, they will probably never imagine that the base of this majestic and solemn statue of the god was once used for cooking.

There are two other special items that Chen Zhou uses as decorations, one hung on the wall and the other placed on the display shelf.

These two items are the "Pure Blue Hell" and the wooden holy sword puzzle in the one-year anniversary gift pack. Their simple appearance hides endless pain and torture.

However, when life was going so smoothly, Chen Zhou occasionally missed the process of solving puzzles - he suspected that he might have a masochistic tendency in his bones.

If possible, he hopes that the solution to the next puzzle can be improved from "exhaustive" to "traces to follow", which will give him more sense of accomplishment.

The assembled pure blue hell has been fused together and cannot be taken apart into puzzle pieces and reassembled.

The wooden holy sword puzzle can be played with at any time, but its material is far less solid than the unknown material. Chen Zhou often feels sluggish when turning it, and he dare not use too much force, for fear of breaking the souvenir.

Fortunately, he had drawn many diagrams of the internal structure in the process of solving the puzzle in the past. As long as he was familiar with the decryption method, he could make a new holy sword by himself, but that didn't seem necessary.

……

On September 9, the island, which was in the rainy season, received heavy rainfall.

The good news is that the rain was heavy but the wind was light.

Chen Zhou was eager to know whether there was any big gift package as the mysterious reward for the second anniversary. He assembled the parasol, carried the big umbrella that was big enough to cover a person and a dog, and headed straight to the beach.

Coincidentally, this umbrella was originally placed in the camp at the foot of the mountain. If you go to the small lake to fish, it is more convenient to get the umbrella from the camp.

The last time he explored the river valley plain, Chen Zhou took the parasol with him when he passed by the camp, and brought it back to the cave on the way back. Otherwise, he would have to wear a leather raincoat and a straw hat when going out.

Arriving at the beach, Chen Zhou was delighted to see the giant packaging placed on the beach through the wooden and stone wall - it seemed that there really was such a thing as an anniversary reward.

The entire packaging box is 1.6 meters high and nearly 1.5 meters wide, and the outermost layer is wrapped in black plastic film.

Because the rain was so heavy, the entire surface of the box was constantly dripping with rainwater, making it wet and slippery to the touch, making it difficult to open.

Worried that there might be items in the box that were sensitive to rain, Chen Zhou did not dare to open the box directly, even though he was eager to know what the anniversary rewards included.

He suppressed his curiosity, placed the parasol on the beach to shield the gift box from the rain, and ordered Lai Fu not to leave the umbrella.

Tying the strap of his straw hat, Chen Zhou walked into the rain alone and opened a hole in the wooden and stone wall.

Then he ran to the campsite at the foot of the mountain - where the cart was.

After working for more than an hour in the heavy rain, Chen Zhou delivered the gift box to the big house in the camp at the foot of the mountain.

He found a piece of canvas to wipe the water droplets on the plastic film, took out the dagger, and under Lai Fu's gaze, he opened the box directly.

Plastic products were rare treasures in the 17th century. Chen Zhou removed the plastic film carefully, while trying his best to keep it intact.

Under the protection of the plastic film, there is a layer of cloth packaging.

This layer of cloth was the same color as the plastic film, and had the same oval pattern printed on it. It looked like bird eggs or pebbles, and was pitch black, leaving Chen Zhou confused.

"I've never heard of any auspicious pattern of this shape. Am I just too ignorant?"

While complaining about the strange piece of cloth, he tore it off, and the mysterious reward under the two layers of protection finally saw the light of day.

The main feature of this reward is that it is consistent inside and out. Inside the two layers of black packaging is a translucent black acrylic square box. From the outside, you can vaguely see that there are many items inside the box.

The lid of the box was not on the top, but on the side. After opening the plastic door, the first reward Chen Zhou saw was a bag of green onion seeds.

"Fuck!"

As if afraid that the bag of seeds would suddenly disappear, Chen Zhou quickly took out the seeds and held them tightly in his hands, feeling very happy.

Onion, ginger, garlic and chili are the four commonly used seasonings for cooking. Today, I have finally collected three of them.

As for the ginger that he hasn't gotten yet, he actually doesn't really like the taste, so he doesn't mind without ginger when cooking.

But ginger is not only a seasoning. As a medicinal ingredient, it can dispel wind and cold, and when boiled with brown sugar into ginger soup, it can induce sweating and warm the stomach. Chen Zhou once heard from old people that ginger can be used to detoxify poisoning caused by eating seafood.

From this perspective, the practical value of ginger is much higher than that of onion.

However, since there was no ginger in this reward, he could only accept it silently. They were all good things anyway, and he would not reject any of them.

After putting the green onion seeds into his backpack, he glanced inside the box, passing over the metal nunchakus placed on the side of the box. Chen Zhou saw a strange box that occupied the largest area.

The surface of the box was not painted, but it had an exceptionally delicate mirror-like luster. It looked like neither metal nor plastic. It felt incompatible with the materials on Earth. Instead, it looked like an unknown material like pure blue hell.

"Is there a decryption in the gift package?"

Puzzled, Chen Zhou moved away several other rewards wrapped in the package and took out the box. The box was pure black, with no logo on it, only a rectangular opening on the side, and a slightly raised button next to the opening.

"It doesn't look like a puzzle at all!"

Touching the smooth box and seeing the button, Chen Zhou couldn't help but want to press it to see what changes would happen to the box.

"Is this a prank trap box? After I press the button, a fist pops out and punches me..."

Guessing what the Space-Time Administration was thinking, he gently pressed the button.

The pure black box suddenly changed. Ripples appeared from the buttons and it began to shake slightly. Chen Zhou was so scared that he quickly put it on the ground, fearing that it would suddenly explode or turn into a human form and attack him like the transforming radio in Transformers.

Even Lai Fu, who had a stable mood, became nervous because of the abnormality of the black box and barked loudly at it.

The shaking lasted only about five seconds, and then a shiny black brick came out of the rectangular opening on the side of the box and fell to the ground with a muffled sound.

Then, the box returned to its dead silence again, lying quietly on the ground, without any signs of movement.

"It's all in five seconds?"

Chen Zhou walked forward and patted the top of the black box first. Seeing that it did not move, he picked up the "black brick" on the ground.

After looking at it carefully, he felt that this strange angular "brick" should be coal, and it was high-quality anthracite with high carbon content and calorific value.

In the cold rural areas of Inner Mongolia, burning coal for heating is still the winter choice for most families.

The burning time of firewood is too short and the winter is too long. If you want to rely on firewood to survive the entire winter, the amount of firewood consumed will be a very large number.

Moreover, there are many restless elderly people in the village. They rush to pick up broken branches and dead trees in the grove adjacent to the village. If you go too late, you may not pick up anything.

Around October every year, the village begins to purchase large quantities of coal.

Inner Mongolia has a lot of coal reserves, but most of them are lignite with low carbon content and calorific value, and can only be sold for 400 to 500 yuan per ton.

In recent years, with the convenience of transportation, people often go to the village to promote lignite with a higher carbon content or anthracite with better quality.

The price of high-quality lignite is usually around 800 yuan per ton.

The price of anthracite is even more expensive. According to Chen Zhou, the highest price can reach 1600 yuan per ton, and the slightly inferior ones will cost around 1400 yuan.

In rural areas, almost no one is willing to burn anthracite for heating, but in cement factories, coal is not a rare commodity.

Whether it is a rotary kiln using bituminous coal or a vertical kiln using anthracite blocks, there are strict requirements on the calorific value of coal, as well as the ash content, volatile matter, moisture content and sulfur content of coal.

Every day, many of the large trucks going in and out of the cement plant are loaded with coal.

It is for this reason that Chen Zhou is no stranger to high-quality anthracite.

Coal like this has a much higher ignition point than lignite. If you use it at home, you need to add firewood to the furnace first, and then add coal when the firewood is burning vigorously.

Although high-quality anthracite has a high ignition point, once it burns, it generates considerable heat and has extremely strong firepower. The inner wall of an ordinary household boiler may be burned through after using anthracite for a year.

Sometimes, in order to reduce the damage of anthracite to the boiler, some inferior coal or coal clay is added when putting in the anthracite to reduce the fire power.

For Chen Zhou, the biggest use of anthracite is metal smelting.

After all, the calorific value of charcoal is not high enough. It is only suitable for heating and forging ordinary pig iron and wrought iron. If you want to process alloys or steel, you still have to use anthracite.

As long as there is enough coal, in addition to ordinary farm tools, he can also forge his own armor and even make lathe parts by himself and assemble a mechanical lathe.

Even if it is too difficult to build a lathe, it would be a good idea to replace some wooden parts in windmills and waterwheels with metal materials to extend their service life.

Holding the lump of coal in his hand and imagining a bright future, Chen Zhou did not forget to weigh its weight.

This special "black brick" in my hand has a much higher density than the red brick. It weighs about six or seven pounds. If you smash it and put it in the stove, it will definitely be able to burn for an hour or two.

……

"So, this black box is a machine for synthesizing anthracite?"

After figuring out the purpose of the black box, Chen Zhou couldn't help but feel puzzled - based on the temperament of the Space-Time Administration, it was impossible for them to give him a cheating machine.

Unlimited coal is a plug-in that can subvert the industry of a small country even in modern society. How could such a good thing be given to him for no reason? It's impossible to think about it.

"Unless there are restrictions!"

Thinking of this, Chen Zhou pressed the button on the black box again.

As expected, nothing happened.

"I knew it wouldn't be that good, it looks like this thing has a CD.

I just don't know how long it will take to recover, one day? Two days? Or a week?
If a seven-pound piece of coal is produced every seven days, this thing won’t be that useful. If the output is saved every time, it will take at least two months to open the furnace. "

It was not clear how long it would take the black box to produce a piece of coal. Chen Zhou moved the black box and the coal aside and took out the other items in the gift box one by one.

……

The biggest advantage of the anniversary gift pack is that everything inside is useful, the only difference is the extent of its usefulness.

In addition to green onion seeds, metal nunchakus, and a black box that produces coal, there was also a box of arrows, a flute, five rolls of rice paper, an inkstone, three large bags of bulk Chinese painting pigments, and two books.

The arrows are packed in a wooden box. There are four types in total, namely three-edged willow leaf arrows, blood-grooved willow leaf arrows, ordinary willow leaf arrows and rotating willow leaf arrows, five of each.

It just so happened that Chen Zhou was not very satisfied with his homemade arrows. These arrows were like timely help. With them, the process of rescuing the natives would surely be smoother.

The flute looks like it is made of bamboo, with exquisite workmanship and a very long body.

Chen Zhou didn't know much about traditional musical instruments. He only knew that this thing was a flute. As for how to play it, he had no idea.

The two books are "Introduction to Fine Brushwork Flower and Bird Techniques" and "Introduction to Chinese Painting Techniques". I think they are used in conjunction with rice paper, inkstone and paint.

But what puzzled Chen Zhou was why only three of the four treasures of the study, pen, ink, paper and inkstone, were given as the annual reward?

He couldn't help but ask.

"Where is my brush?"

With this mood, I searched the entire gift box and even carefully examined the flute and nunchaku.

He discovered that there was no brush in this anniversary reward, and thought it was another little joke from the Spacetime Administration.

However, the most difficult paper and paint to make are already provided, so you can make a brush yourself. Chinchilla hair seems to be a good material for making brushes.

This is not a difficult task for Chen Zhou now.

……

Overall, this anniversary gift package is still unsatisfactory. Apart from the small black box and arrows that produce coal, the rest of the rewards are not very helpful.

Compared with the last anniversary gift package, this reward seems to place more emphasis on spiritual life, as if to add some entertainment to his boring life.

Unfortunately, he is still driven around by various trivial matters and is always busy from morning to night.

Apart from his own hobbies, it was difficult for him to find time to learn to play the flute, let alone practice nunchakus. If he didn't use that thing well, not only would he not be able to hit anyone, but he would also easily get himself covered in bruises.

Moreover, this nunchaku is made of thick steel pipes. If it hits your head accidentally, it may cause concussion at best and death on the spot at worst.

As for Chinese painting, he was very interested in it and was willing to learn fine brushwork techniques from books, draw on the strengths of traditional culture, and improve his painting skills.

But five rolls of rice paper are too few, and even if they were added together they might not be enough for practice.

Chen Zhou doubted whether he could master Chinese painting before using up all the paint and paper. (End of this chapter)