From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 99 Wild Pigeons
On the morning of the 30th, Chen Zhou slowly prepared the necessary tools. Looking at the cave house that looked brand new after being tidied up, he was in a good mood. With this relaxed and comfortable mood, he set off.

In the early mornings of the dry season, a thin layer of mist often shrouds the treetops high in the forest, obscuring the fading moon and sparse stars.

The insects fell silent and the frogs closed their mouths, stopping their noisy croaking.

From a distance, only the clear singing of parrots or other birds can be heard.

The light is still cool, but the temperature is not low.

Walking through the dense forest, surrounded by various plants, Chen Zhou saw many familiar animals.

Among them were lizards and tree frogs of various appearances, as well as the mimic katydids he had seen in documentaries.

Some of these insects disguise themselves as dead moss in the dense forest, while others are completely green and lie on the leaves, blending in with the leaves to provide themselves with protection.

There are also stick insects disguised as dead branches. When Chen Zhou was cutting trees, he often saw them escaping from their collapsed habitats with long legs that looked very similar to branches.

In addition, there are locusts that are green like glass and have a lustrous body.
There is a spider half the size of a palm, which weaves an extremely strong web;

There are giant cockroaches that are nearly eight centimeters long;
There are long, thin centipedes with pitch-black bodies that make your scalp tingle;
There are praying mantises that mimic flowers, young leaves, and dead leaves to facilitate hunting;
There are beetles with thick carapaces that gleam with metallic luster, and gray-brown scorpions with stingers on their tails...

When he saw these strange insects and plants, he often thought that it would be nice if he was an insect lover or a reptile lover.

Although the island is not big, it is unpolluted and retains its original appearance everywhere. Many insects that have become extinct in modern times may be found on this island.

Moreover, the island's climate is just right for raising insects, so there is rarely a need to set up a rainforest tank or use humidifiers, fans and other equipment.

In the past, when Chen Zhou saw landscaping experts who created rainforest tanks on various platforms, he always envied their financial resources and free time. He never thought that one day he would be able to be placed in such a huge "rainforest tank" himself.

Unfortunately, alien species brought to the island by sailors have begun to spread.

Creatures such as rabbits, wild cats and goats have no natural enemies and are expanding at a terrifying rate. If this continues, the island's fragile ecosystem may be on the verge of destruction in a few decades.

During the rest days, when Chen Zhou was bored, he often fantasized that if the challenge was over, the Space-Time Administration would give him a portal to enter and exit this world freely.

In the novels he had read before, there was a type of story about a man who made his fortune by traveling between two worlds and reselling resources.

A one-time reward can never compare to the wealth of resources in the entire world. This is the difference between "giving a man a fish" and "teaching a man to fish."

However, considering the rarity of the mysterious rewards, the probability of getting a portal for free may be lower than winning the Mark Six lottery jackpot.

……

Chen Zhou was already familiar with the road from the camp to the cave. This time, he deliberately avoided the old road he had walked and explored the unfamiliar area.

Unexplored areas were covered with vines and dense vegetation, requiring the use of knives and axes to clear the way.

While swinging the axe to chop down the obstacles in front of him, he observed the surrounding plants.

If he saw any fruit from a plant he had never seen before, he would knock it down with a long wooden stick and put it in his backpack.

Collecting fruits while moving forward is not fast.

Walking from east to west in the dense forest at the foot of the mountain, he estimated that he was about to move away from the top of the camp and enter the depths of the forest, so he stopped in time and walked towards the camp.

It was already noon when we arrived at the camp. We took out various fruits from our backpacks and temporarily stored them in the camp.

After making a fire and cooking a meal and taking a brief rest, Chen Zhou set out again with his lighter backpack on his back.

This time he headed straight for the beach, stopped at the foot of the mountain where the rocks had fallen, bypassed the area where stones were collected and trees were cut down, and explored inside.

The book does not clearly describe where the Pigeon Hole discovered by Robinson was located.

Chen Zhou could only rely on his own guesses and search hard at the foot of the mountain. …

The sun gradually moved away, and Chen Zhou had almost reached the other side of the mountain along the foot of the mountain.

During this process, he did find a few caves, but these caves were small holes less than one and a half meters deep. At most, there were a few empty bird nests hanging on the cave walls. As for living pigeons, there was not even a single hair to be found.

When it was getting dark, Chen Zhou was tired and hungry after walking all day.

He found a rock and sat on it, looking at the forest immersed in darkness. He took off his backpack and grasped the axe handle. He began to doubt his life.

“What happened to the situation being exactly the same as in the original novel?

Where on earth is the pigeon hole hidden?"

His eyes drifted towards another mountain farther away, and he made a bold guess - the Pigeon Cave was not on this mountain at all, but on the mountain in the distance.

After thinking about it carefully, he felt that it was unlikely.

Before Robinson Crusoe saved Friday, he, like Friday, had to take care of many trivial things in life on his own.

Moreover, because Robinson did not know how to make complex machines, he had to rely on weather conditions to harvest his crops. He did not have the help of a "cutting machine" to make furniture, so it was very difficult for him to make a piece of wood. It took him several years to successfully fire pottery.

The fact that a busy man like him could often eat fresh boiled pigeon eggs just shows that the Pigeon Cave was very close to his home.

If the Pigeon Cave is really at the foot of another mountain far away, a round trip would take at least two days. With such a long time, I don't know how much things at home would be delayed.

The problem is that there is only one mountain nearby, and the other side of the mountain faces the ocean. It is a steep cliff and cannot be explored at all.

As for this part on land, he explored it for an entire afternoon and had to circle most of the way around the foot of the mountain, but he still didn't see where the so-called pigeon hole was, which made him very distressed.

“Did we overlook some details?”

Scratching his head, Chen Zhou thought.

He felt that he might be too anxious and ignored the most important part of the whole matter, which led to the result of "hard work but no results".

After thinking for a moment, he actually remembered something that he had overlooked - while walking along the foot of the mountain, he could occasionally see wild pigeons circling over the woods.

If there were no pigeon holes here, how come wild pigeons are seen so frequently?
Thinking of this, Chen Zhou stood up and looked up at the sky.

In the gradually darkening forest, flocks of gray-white pigeons were already flying back.

Locking onto their flight path, Chen Zhou discovered that the group of pigeons were not flying downwards at all, but were flying along the path they came from to the south of the mountain, flying diagonally upwards.

The paths they fly follow a clear sign of where their nests are.

He slapped his forehead hard, as if something had suddenly dawned on him.

Chen Zhou finally understood why he couldn't find the Pigeon Cave. It turned out that the altitude was not high enough.

The pigeon cave is not at all around the foot of the mountain, but on the mountainside or higher.

No wonder he couldn’t find it after walking around in a circle, because he got the most basic direction wrong.

But he was still stuck in a rut, not expecting the answer to the question to be so simple.

　I owe two thousand words today. I will make up for it tomorrow. I am too sleepy and want to sleep.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)