The Top Fishing
Chapter 646 - 277: Building a Wooden Hut_3

Chapter 646: Chapter 277: Building a Wooden Hut_3

After making a round in the trapping area, Lin Yang secured two rabbits and a squirrel, securing food for yet another day.

At night, the temperature dropped below zero, freezing the two prey solid. He brought them back and tossed them into a shady spot.

The shelter, the shelter, thinking of last night’s risks, the word ’shelter’ filled Lin Yang’s mind, taking absolute priority.

Back home, with housing guaranteed, food to eat, and clothes to ward off the cold,

even if life wasn’t going well, or conditions were a bit harsh, the vast majority of ordinary people in most areas wouldn’t feel intense survival pressure, at least not worrying about being attacked by wild animals while sleeping at night.

But in the wilderness, these issues ascended to the top of his list of problems. Just thinking about large animals prowling at night made Lin Yang feel a chill.

Upon returning to camp, he immediately grabbed a shovel.

"Alright, the next task, the most important one, is building a shelter. According to the original plan, lay stones at the base of the shelter, simply leave a shallow cellar, then lay pine for the flooring, and then above that, a single-person wooden cabin structure."

But now that I have a shovel, the efficiency of digging has improved dramatically, so the plan can be adjusted. I’ve decided to first extend the depth of the cellar, at least digging half a meter deep.

The excavated soil will be piled outside the stone walls to enhance windproofing and insulation effects. This way, having storage below and living quarters above should be more comfortable...."

"Nice suggestion there, using the bottom as a storage, just like a basement storage room downstairs. But I’m curious, can the host actually build a cabin? Just with wood and an axe, no nails at all, can he manage?"

"A semi-buried structure will make the cabin lower and warmer to live in. If possible, a fireplace for heating should be included inside the house."

I just checked, entering the Arctic Circle in this high-latitude area, by October, it can reach down to minus ten to twenty degrees, nearly catching up with the Northeast’s winter. To stay for a full two months, one must be thoroughly prepared."

Lin Yang nodded, spat into the palm of his hand, "The structure of the wooden cabin isn’t hard, I’m not afraid of not having nails. I can use the axe to carve out a simple mortise and tenon structure. It’s getting late, time to get to work!"

Well-fed and full of energy, he took the shovel and started getting busy at the selected foundation area.

He moved the makeshift shelter he slept in last night to one side, then began excavating to expand the foundation, methodically piling the excavated soil on the outskirts, gradually deepening the cellar.

This area, filled with broken stones, looked stony, but he didn’t encounter unexpected obstacles while digging. These soils were quite fertile; after digging through the topsoil, the layers below were even looser, saving him a lot of effort.

...

While he exploited his racial advantage in construction, becoming a construction fiend, the other challengers had also mostly settled in.

Leaving Lin Yang aside, of the remaining nine people, it was the number 8 ex-serviceman, a Black guy, who had the most leisurely life.

This fellow named Claude had served five years in the Navy SEALs, boasting an exceedingly robust physique, specializing in close combat and bow hunting.

Compared to Lin Yang’s start, Claude was no less impressive; he had caught a porcupine weighing over thirty pounds just last evening.

Currently free of food pressures, Claude did not focus all his attention on the shelter,

he lived in a makeshift tent crafted from a single layer of plastic tarp and parachute cords. Being physically fit and equipped with a sleeping bag, he didn’t find the nights too difficult to endure.

At the moment, this man was holding a bow and arrow along with a machete, shouldering his backpack, and patrolling the area he had selected for his camp.

In his words, only by thoroughly understanding the surroundings could one make the best choices, and blindly starting to build shelters without any knowledge of the area was incredibly foolish.

His view had some merit, but this man, not worried about food, wandered around an area of several kilometers for a whole day and did not achieve any significant findings, thus wasting quite a bit of time.

By evening, after a busy day, Lin Yang had completely shaped the cellar part of his shelter.

It was a huge space, 2.5 meters long, 1.8 meters wide, with a depth exceeding 60 centimeters. Together with the stone foundation piled up around the perimeter, the height of the cellar was nearly one meter.

At each corner, Lin Yang dug deep holes to firmly plant the foundation of the wooden house, which facilitated subsequent construction.

The pine logs chopped down the day prior were neatly placed on top of the cellar, leaving an exit near the fire. At night, one could crawl into the cellar, and as long as the fire at the entrance did not go out, it was quite safe to sleep inside.

He spent the entire day digging, with his only break being lunchtime, when Lin Yang went to the water’s edge to simply process a rabbit and a squirrel, and incidentally caught a fish to bring back to the camp.

The demanding digging work increased his appetite significantly for a short time; he left hardly any of the fine meat of fish and rabbit, and after eating, he threw the remains far outside the camp.

Before going to sleep, he also set up tripwires around the campsite—several rotten cans hung on a PE line that would make noise if any creature passed by.

That night was still far from peaceful. Not long after dark, the sound of wild animal roars uneven in pitch echoed from a distance. Stimulated by these eerie sounds, the exhausted Lin Yang inexplicably suffered from insomnia, staring with eyes wide open until the middle of the night before falling asleep.

In the following two days, Lin Yang got up early each day to work on the shelter and, after dining and drinking to his fill early in the evening, he would rest, eventually leading a life full of surprises yet free of danger.

After dedicating four full days, he finally finished building his single-person log cabin.

The cellar part has been mentioned before—the upper floor and the walls around the cabin were constructed from raw logs, and the parts where the wooden frame was connected were simply fixed with a Y-shaped dovetail joint structure.

Layer by layer of pine logs were stacked to form the walls of the cabin, and the soil dug out from the perimeter was banked up against the base of the exterior walls to make the house as air-tight as possible.

As for the interior of the house, it was still bare ground, but a chimney was left in the southwest corner. Lin Yang selected various sized stones and paired them with clay to build a simple fireplace, the smoke from which was vented out through the chimney,

When sleeping at night, a fire was lit in the fireplace and the doorway was blocked with a simple wooden fence. Although still not perfect, it ultimately avoided the risk of sleeping exposed in the wilderness.