Chapter 784 - 8: Going Home
During the day, the interior of the shelter located halfway up the mountain is always pitch black.
When constructing it, neither Chen Zhou nor Paul considered leaving a window; they couldn’t afford a big ventilation opening, nor did they have glass to let light through.
If they wanted the house to be brighter, they could only move the heavy wooden door at the entrance.
At that point, sunlight could shine into the house, but the hard-earned warmth inside would be scattered by the cold wind, and once the sun set, after returning from work, both the bed and walls would be as cold as an ice cellar.
Therefore, once Paul got up in the morning and went out to work, he would block the entrance with the wooden door to prevent the escape of warmth.
After completing gene modification, his cold resistance had greatly improved. Coupled with the Slavs’ natural adaptation to Northern Siberia’s frigid climate, the present cold didn’t bother him much; it just exacerbated food consumption.
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Getting up early, after fumbling around to dress in the dark, the first thing Paul needed to do was go out and make a fire.
Although Chen Zhou had brought back some coal, saying it could be used to fire a clay oven, this task had yet to be implemented.
To avoid a fire source indoors that could ignite the shelter and prevent deadly carbon monoxide poisoning from burning coal, Paul would rather cover himself with several thick and heavy animal skins, endure the night’s cold while sleeping, and not make a fire indoors, even if there was a small fireplace.
Chen Zhou hadn’t returned yet; if something happened to him, there wouldn’t even be anyone to save him.
Paul admitted that he indeed had a tendency for self-destruction but didn’t want to sacrifice himself without cause.
The military pot and baskets of pine nuts were placed inside.
When going out, Paul would take the military pot with him.
There was no water source on the mountain, but there was plenty of accumulated snow. The water from melted snow was naturally not that clean; in the pot, after completely melting, one could see a pile of fine gravel at the bottom, and the water looked somewhat cloudy.
However, boiling such water always made it warm. If slightly waited for the impurities floating due to boiling to settle at the bottom, one could scoop out the pine nuts and chunks of meat thrown into the pot to feast on.
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The stove used for cooking was located at the shelter’s entrance, and while Chen Zhou was away, it had snowed several times on the mountain.
In high-altitude areas, snowfall is always much more frequent than in lower areas. Sometimes the plains may just have a thin layer of snowflakes, while the mountains accumulate thick snow.
To clear the entrance, Paul carefully selected and cut down a pine branch thick and lush with needles to use as a broom to remove the snow.
This natural broom was indeed quite convenient to use, except pine needles would frequently fall off during the sweeping process, and before long, it would become bald, forcing Paul to find a new broom.
Due to this, although the ground at the shelter’s entrance looked clean, upon closer inspection, one could find many tiny pine needles.
And the stove was amidst these rows of pine needles.
The preserved animal meat was frozen on the mountain, wrapped in animal skins, and buried in the snow.
Every two or three days, Paul would retrieve a chunk of meat from the mountain to hang at the shelter’s entrance, cutting a few pieces with a military saber in the morning when cooking pine nuts and throwing them into the military pot.
The wild animals hunted by him and Chen Zhou generally had little fat, more red meat than white meat; thus, eating simply stewed meat was not aromatic at all. Due to the lack of fat, one could only feel the toughness of the meat.
This was fortunate that the military pot was a pressure cooker; otherwise, the meat wouldn’t stew tenderly anytime soon.
What to do about the poor taste?
Then reliance was only on pine nuts and marrow.
Fresh pine nuts contained high oil content, along with marrow stewed from crushed bones, making pine nut stew with meat relatively nutritious.
With a small handful of dried berries, carbohydrates, protein, fat, and vitamins were all there.
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For convenience, Paul would prepare meals for the whole day in advance every day.
After having breakfast, he would go out with an axe to fell trees—
His leg hadn’t completely healed; he still limped slightly when walking.
Despite his young age, the injuries to his shoulder and knee had left him with a minor ailment; before snowfall, once the sky became gloomy, his old wounds would ache faintly.
Due to the injury’s effect, Paul dared not carry too much; transporting firewood next to the shelter, he would rather make more trips than try to carry everything at once.
After working all morning, the leftovers in the military pot were already frozen solid by noon.
Luckily, by that time, the sediment had settled at the pot’s bottom, all frozen and formed into a layer.
Paul would pry up the frozen leftover, shave off the muddy sand at the bottom with an axe, and put the ice block back into the military pot for heating. This way, it was possible to stir, without worrying about grits in the teeth anymore.
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Living alone on the snowy mountain, life was meant to be very tough.
But thanks to the "family wealth" Chen Zhou left for him, life wasn’t too bad.
Besides the cold inside the shelter after nightfall and the extremely long, hard-to-endure winter nights, what plagued him the most was loneliness.
Paul regretted not asking Chen Zhou to leave a Saw-toothed Tiger behind to keep him company. He would rather spend extra time hunting with a small Saw-toothed Tiger every day, even eat a little less himself, rather than feeling so alone.
Moreover, this torment intensified as Chen Zhou stayed away for an increasingly long time.
Sometimes, unable to sleep, Paul would have random thoughts, worrying about the dangers Chen Zhou might encounter outside.
Yet, such worries would be dispelled by his trust in Chen Zhou’s strength.