Starting from Robinson Crusoe

The most crucial thing is that purified salt can reduce much of the bitterness, making it easier to consume and more suitable for cooking. This can make their meals slightly more enjoyable, turning them into a pleasure of life rather than just a routine task to maintain vital signs.

Bi Kai has more work to do than Paul.

Paul, after all, has a leg injury. After using a shot of the Regeneration Potion, he was "fully revived," not only restoring his body to peak condition but also regaining his ability to perform Qinggong, completely outpacing Paul in terms of mobility.

Therefore, after joining the team, Paul became the one who stayed home, while he was responsible for going out grazing and exploring the surroundings.

As the weather turned colder, the Large-Horned Deer Herd has started losing weight, using the fat accumulated during autumn to combat the severe cold.

Chen Zhou explained to Bi Kai the concept of "minus sixty-five degrees" in the rules, clearly telling Bi Kai that the Great Horned Deer cannot survive in such severe cold.

Therefore, there’s no need to fantasize about raising the deer herd throughout the winter; that’s a mission impossible.

But for now, the deer herd is still useful as they can help transport firewood, and if traveling far, they can provide strength.

Currently, Bi Kai can try to lead the deer herd to places rich in grass, filling their bellies to prevent them from losing weight too quickly.

When the weather becomes too cold to graze outside, they can slaughter the deer herd in batches, then strip the fur and freeze it next to the shelter as a considerable reserve when food becomes scarce.

Moreover, the Three-headed Saw-toothed Tiger is growing in size, so extra meat is needed to sustain them.

In Chen Zhou’s plan, the required meat is not just from the deer herd; all the medium and large wild animals on the entire mountain are his targets.

Once the cave exploration is complete, and after confirming where to move to, he will start hunting these beasts, sparing neither the 40-50 pound roe nor the tons-heavy Fine-toothed Giant Bear.

...

Two Long Spears or rather short guns fixed with shurikens, a Long Saber, and a Light Armor covering the upper body — that’s all of Chen Zhou’s equipment before venturing into the cave.

Stopping at the downward-tilting cave entrance, the first thing he did was chop down a branch with dense leaves to brush away the surrounding snow, then crouched at the entrance to sniff, trying to catch the scent of wild animals inside the cave.

Perhaps due to the cave’s unique structure, or because of the strong winds at the mountainside dispersing the scent, at least at the entrance, Chen Zhou didn’t smell any odor matching a beast’s stench.

He frowned in slight puzzlement; Chen Zhou didn’t expect such a suitable cave for nesting to be not preoccupied.

But he was only slightly surprised—

There’s already a scarcity of medium to large animals on this peak, which are mostly deer or antelopes, typically herbivores with no burrowing habits, so it’s not surprising that this cave hasn’t been explored.

Testing a step on the cave wall that seemed almost without corners, confirming it’s far less smooth than Paul described, only then did Chen Zhou confidently set foot, tread steadily inward.

The cave entrance is about 3m high, around 1.9m wide, and after stepping inside, the width slightly narrows, though overall it’s still spacious enough for two people to walk side by side.

The distance from the inclined passage into the flat part of the cave is about 9m, longer than Paul estimated.

What slightly pleased Chen Zhou was that this cave surprisingly had a "gourd neck" structure; although the entrance was narrow, upon truly reaching inside, it opened up beautifully.

Moreover, all the way inside, besides some fine gravel, he didn’t find any animal droppings or smell any strange scent, which satisfied him greatly.

This also suggests that this location likely indeed hasn’t been treaded by other animals and counts as a virgin land.

The inner cave is approximately 3m high, the ceiling uneven, showing a blue-black color, resembling a rough surface of a rock.

From Chen Zhou’s stepping spot forward, the cave wall sketches out an irregular oval shape, the overall space about 120 square meters, with the ground mainly composed of gravel, occasionally mixed with solid rocks.

There’s also no animal hair or droppings here, but that doesn’t mean there are no traces of biological activity—

Chen Zhou found some insect corpses long dried among the gravel and discovered a section of incomplete snake molt as thick as a thumb.

Worried about the presence of hibernating snakes nearby, he thoroughly searched around, and even used his Long Spear to turn over some relatively soft gravel, but he found nothing.

The molting snake seems to have only briefly stayed here for a while, then after shedding its skin, it left this place forever.

Further inside, two branches diverge on the cave wall, one wider, about 2m high and 1m wide, allowing one person to pass.

The other is particularly narrow, only 1.7m high and 80cm wide, requiring Chen Zhou to bend and tilt to squeeze in, stopping after a couple of steps to avoid getting stuck.

Seeing the narrowness of this branch, there’s no chance for Paul to squeeze through; however, Bi Kai might attempt it — being the slimmest of the three and a martial artist, his flexibility isn’t inferior either, possibly capable of "bone shrinking" in particularly tight spots.

However, Chen Zhou isn’t particularly interested in this branch; the 120 square meter space is already sufficient; he only wants to know if this branch has ventilation.

If it ventilates, it would be possible to start a fire inside the cave.

Getting close to the narrow branch, listening intently for a while, after perceiving the airflow direction here, Chen Zhou ultimately dismissed this idea.

He neither heard the wind sound passing through the crevices nor felt any cool breeze or fresh air, suggesting this branch likely leads deeper into the cave, even to the ground, making it possible for expelled smoke to surge back.

After forcedly abandoning the idea of ventilating through the narrow branch, Chen Zhou explored the wider one.

Having deep-dived before, he is particularly sensitive to the cave’s internal spatial layout and vertical differences.

The wide branch is very long; during the walk, Chen Zhou can clearly sense this path generally extends downward, which means by moving along this route, he is progressively delving into the mountain’s interior.

During the downward journey, he noticed new branches multiple times on both sides, but these branches were even narrower and couldn’t accommodate his body.

The entire branch path basically forms an irregular fishbone pattern, extremely slender.

Chen Zhou walked almost 200m without reaching the end, deepening more underground as the side gaps increased.

Apart from this, light within the branch path is becoming increasingly scarce.

Even though Chen Zhou has night vision, it doesn’t mean he can see objects in completely lightless conditions— at least a prerequisite of dim light is needed for the motion-sensing neural cells in his retina to function.

Due to nearly lightless conditions here, what he sees is becoming dimmer, getting close to the common perception of "pitch black."

Worried about possibly not clearly seeing the surroundings ahead leading to missteps into a deep pit or colliding with sharp stones, Chen Zhou decisively halted, turned around to return to the open cave area.

...

After exploration, he was very satisfied with this cave, believing it has full potential to be transformed into a shelter.

Of course, those two branches within the cave really spoil the view.

Chen Zhou plans to directly seal the narrow branch with stone, and as for the wider branch, he intends to use it as a firewood storage.

Cut into short blocks, the wooden strips are stuffed deep into the branch; the branch’s several hundred meters can hold enough firewood to last a whole year.

Moreover, the dry conditions inside the cave aid in accelerating moisture loss from the firewood while preventing it from being soaked by rainwater, indirectly reducing the smoke generated during burning.

The only troublesome thing is the cave’s slanted and slightly narrow entrance.

Confirming the decision to transform this spot into the winter shelter, Chen Zhou plans to painstakingly craft a plank staircase, laying it from top to bottom to prevent slipping and reduce the risk of falling.