Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 361: Chapter 230: The Perfect Hiding Place

"It’s missing something."

Hearing this, Erica looked at the raft too. "Why don’t you stand on it? It might not look so empty then."

"No, no, no, that’s not what I mean."

Lin Chen wagged his finger, finally remembering what it was missing.

"A chair!"

"Right, it’s missing a chair!"

"Huh??"

’A chair on a bamboo raft?’

’What kind of combination is that?’

Before Erica could speak, Lin Chen immediately shook his head again.

"Oh, wait, just a chair isn’t enough. It’ll be a hassle if it rains. Let’s just build a pavilion. We can put a chair inside the pavilion. It’ll block the sun and the rain. That’ll be much more comfortable when fishing at sea."

"Building a house on a bamboo raft??????"

Erica’s mouth fell open in disbelief. She reached out and felt his forehead.

"Weird, you don’t have a fever. Did you fry your brain last time you were sick?"

"Stop messing around."

Lin Chen slapped her hand away. "It might seem strange to you, but building a pavilion on a bamboo raft is a completely normal thing in Great Xia."

"It’s not just bamboo rafts. It’s also for wooden rafts, dugout canoes, small boats, and so on. If you plan to spend a long time on the water, they’re often equipped with a pavilion."

"Is that so? It sounds pretty interesting, but I doubt that thing could withstand a storm, right?"

"Isn’t that obvious? What sane person takes a bamboo raft out to sea in a storm? Even cruise ships and yachts have to meekly stay ashore. Only those huge fishing trawlers can tough it out in the open ocean."

Although he had the idea, he didn’t plan to start working on it right away.

He had been busy for two days straight. It was time to let himself relax. He would rest for at least a day before thinking about starting work again.

The surface of the seaside reefs was damp, smooth, and covered in moss. It didn’t take much force at all. With just a small push, the bamboo raft slid right into the sea on its own.

SPLASH.

A large volume of seawater was pushed ashore. The raft sank beneath the surface for a moment before slowly floating back up, bobbing up and down with the waves.

He cautiously stepped onto it to test it out. Other than sinking just a little, the raft showed no signs of taking on water or sinking.

"Phew... It’s a success!"

[Successfully crafted a simple bamboo raft on the coast of Panama. Happiness +3]

He wasn’t surprised by the fact that the raft only brought him three points of happiness.

After all, the reward from yesterday’s saw was completely unexpected. It had stolen the sense of accomplishment that should have belonged to the raft. It was only natural that the sense of accomplishment gained from any item created after it would be diminished.

"Alright, now that the launch was a success, let’s haul it back up."

He waded into the sea without hesitation and pushed the raft back onto the shore from the other side.

Thanks to the buoyancy of the seawater, the raft’s weight was greatly reduced, so it wasn’t too heavy.

"I need to make a tow rope as quickly as possible before the tide comes in. I also need to install a post on the raft to act as a handhold."

Sometimes, after being in the sea for a long time, you can get exhausted. It might be impossible to climb back onto the water-slicked raft. If there’s a post to grab onto, it would be much safer.

"You go on ahead. I’ll keep an eye on things here. I need to gather some more seafood anyway."

Lin Chen nodded and turned to leave in the direction of the shelter.

He hadn’t been tracking the high and low tides for a while, so he could no longer calculate exactly when the tide would come in. As a result, his pace was particularly urgent.

If the tide started to rise during his return trip, the half-hour or so it would take him to get back and forth would be enough to submerge the reef area where the raft was.

Even with Erica watching it, she probably wasn’t strong enough to move the raft. She might even get swept into the sea by the rising tide.

’As for whether she could swim... I really have no idea.’

But this was his own project, after all. He couldn’t completely rely on others, and he certainly couldn’t cause trouble for them.

Getting swept into the sea might seem like a small thing, especially with the raft there to float on, but catching a cold and getting sick would be a major problem.

He quickly returned to the shelter and grabbed all the remaining bamboo-strip rope. He also packed the bamboo knife, saw, combat knife, stone axe, and other things into a bamboo basket. Shouldering a meter-long bamboo tube, he set off for the beach again.

While going down the slope from the pineapple field, he was in such a hurry that he just sat down and slid. The posture wasn’t very kind to his backside, but it perfectly protected vulnerable areas like his waist, abdomen, and ankles, and it completely eliminated the possibility of falling.

"Hiss..."

He got up from the ground, grimacing as he patted the dust off his pants. Ignoring his already numb butt, he hurried toward the beach.

When he saw the raft still lying quietly on the reef flat from a distance, he breathed a silent sigh of relief and slowed his pace.

His gaze swept around, and he spotted Erica’s figure two or three hundred meters away, crouching among the rocks, seemingly gathering something.

Without disturbing her, he put everything down, took out the saw, and began modifying one corner of the raft.

Installing a post on the raft was actually quite simple. You just had to pick a spot, untie one end of the bamboo pole at that location, and then saw out an opening big enough to fit another pole through.

Once the pole was inserted, he would use a cross-bracing method to firmly secure it to the bamboo below, then re-tie the raft’s original pole back into place. That would be the job done.

The tow rope could be tied directly to this vertical pole, but it needed to be long, with at least a ten-meter margin for error.

He sat right down on the raft and took out a bundle of bamboo-strip rope from the basket to unravel.

To braid a long rope, the method was slightly different from before. You needed three bamboo strips of long, medium, and short lengths, which were then braided like a pigtail.