Culinary God in Wilderness

[I’m guessing a triangular one. Just prop some branches against the dirt wall. That has to be the simplest kind of shelter, right?]

[Since Lin is the one asking, I doubt the shelter he plans to build will be that simple.]

[First, you have to consider that he’s building a permanent shelter, not a temporary one. That means there’s a lot to take into account: protection from wind, rain, and insects, insulation for warmth, and a place to store food.]

[Lin is one of the Da Xia People. His way of thinking is different from ours. I say we just stop guessing. We’ll never figure it out.]

[Exactly. Last season when Lin first joined, pretty much everyone was just waiting to laugh at him. And what happened? Heh, the guy won the whole thing!]

[Enough with the guessing games! Hurry up! If he doesn’t get a move on, it’ll be dark in a few hours!!]

Watching the scrolling comments, Lin Chen nodded. He picked up a relatively thick branch and used his combat knife to slowly whittle the end into a point, shaping it like the tip of a flathead screwdriver.

Then, he gripped the branch and violently plunged it into the dirt slope. With a hard upward thrust, large chunks of yellow soil broke loose and tumbled down.

The moment he did that, the live stream chat exploded.

[He’s actually digging a cave!!]

[I’ve seen lots of shelters like this online. It’s definitely one of the best types to build when you don’t have proper tools.]

[This type of shelter is embedded in the earth, a natural, insulated, and windproof cave dwelling. Isn’t this how ancient humans survived?]

[There’s one thing I’ve never understood. Won’t a cave like that be full of bugs?]

"Of course there will be," Lin Chen explained, his hands never ceasing their work while he spoke.

"That’s why you have to bug-proof the cave after it’s dug. The simplest way is to coat the walls with wood ash, but that means I need to make a fire first."

"I don’t have any tools on me right now, so my only option for a fire is the hand drill method. Without a bow-drill, just using your bare hands to spin the stick takes a lot of skill, stamina, and explosive power."

"An experienced person might get an ember in two or three minutes. Someone with no experience could drill for days or even weeks with no luck. The technique is crucial."

To ensure he could make a fire, he had spent an hour practicing the hand drill almost every single day for the month leading up to the competition.

And don’t think for a second that this was cheating. For experienced wilderness survivalists, making fire with a hand drill is a mandatory skill. The time and frequency of their practice far surpassed Lin Chen’s.

As someone who grew up in the city, forget making fire by friction—even the very words "wilderness survival" had only ever existed for him on reality TV, never as something that might touch his own life.

So even with a full month of practice, it was little more than a last-ditch effort, just barely enough to start catching up to the experience level of the others.

And in those thirty-plus hours of practice over the past month, he had attempted the drill no fewer than two hundred times, but had successfully coaxed a flame to life fewer than five times.

Making fire with a hand drill isn’t a case of the wood just bursting into flame as you spin. It simply uses the physics of friction to generate enough heat to make the wood dust smolder, creating an ember.

This ember is incredibly fragile; even a slight puff of air from your nose could extinguish it.

In truth, the hardest part wasn’t the drilling itself, but coaxing that ember into a flame.

Figuring out how to nurture that fragile ember into a full-blown flame is the true heart of the challenge.

He spent a full three hours digging with the branch, bit by bit, carving out a narrow hole one meter wide and half a meter deep.

It was just big enough to lie down in for now, but it was far from adequate as a proper shelter.

"This will have to do for today. I’ll make do for the night and keep working on it tomorrow."

As the sun sank westward, with maybe two hours left until dusk, he was starting to feel dizzy and light-headed from a full day without food or water.

He gathered some nearby moss and spread it on the floor of the hollow, laying the branches he had used for digging underneath. This would act as a barrier to keep the dampness of the earth from seeping into his body.

Cradling the four palm-sized green mangoes he’d gathered, he went to the nearby stream. He gave them a quick wash, then cleaned his own hands and face as well.

The mountain spring water, flowing down from the peaks, was icy cold. Splashing it on his face was incredibly refreshing, and much of the day’s accumulated fatigue seemed to melt away.

He found a rock by the stream’s edge, sat down, pulled off his boots and socks, and dipped his feet into the water.

"Ahhh..." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

A sigh of pure bliss escaped his lips.

[After trekking for two days and one night in the wilds of Panama, enjoying a cool mountain spring to soak your feet. Happiness +1]

’It’s here!’

A jolt of excitement ran through him. ’It’s just as I suspected.’

Earlier, while following the stream down the mountain, he’d felt a faint urge to soak his feet. Now it seemed his hunch was correct.

’As long as some sort of craving arises, I should feel happiness once it’s satisfied.’

It was just like craving barbecue or hot pot. If you didn’t go eat it, you might even dream about it at night.

But once you did, that first bite was pure bliss.

Feeling the babbling water flow over his skin, he picked up one of the large mangoes. He took his clean combat knife and made a small cut at the top, revealing the soft, golden flesh within.

Then, he pointed the tip of the blade downward and gently sliced through the skin. Pinning it with his thumb, he pulled firmly toward himself.

SNAP.

The peel broke after he’d pulled it less than two centimeters.

"Just as I’d expect from a perfectly ripe mango. The peel is so moist, it looks like I’ll have to slice it off."

He shifted his grip, cradling the large mango in his left palm. With the tip of the knife facing away from him, he pressed it against the fruit and sliced down through the peel in one smooth motion.

"For a juicy, slippery fruit like a mango, this is the best way to peel it."