Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 372: Chapter 235: The Vanishing Audience (Part 2)

He’d only gone seven or eight meters down the slope when he found the first problem.

It was a section of heat-bent bamboo. On the ground at the outer edge of the curve, a large patch of soil was clearly damp, though no puddle had formed.

He stared at the overall curve of the aqueduct in this area, pondering for a moment. ’Looks like the curve is too wide, causing inertia to fling the water out as it turns. If that’s the case... let me think.’

’I’ve got it. There are two ways to fix this.’

’One way is to build up the sides of the curve. For example, I could place half a bamboo tube with the same curvature on top. That would stop the water from splashing out.’

’The other option is to change the curve itself, making the turn less sharp. But that means I’d have to adjust the curve of the subsequent bamboo sections as well.’

After some thought, he decided to modify the bamboo’s curve. All it required was reheating it over the fire, which would save time, effort, and bamboo.

After fixing that section, he continued downhill, stopping to inspect each and every curve.

By the time darkness fell completely, he had finally finished repairing the entire aqueduct.

Sitting before the fire outside his shelter, he tore strips from a piece of smoked venison and popped them into his mouth. By the faint glow of the flames, he stared blankly at the aqueduct just a few meters away.

For some reason, now that the aqueduct was built, he felt like something was missing without a small pond near his shelter.

’A drainage trench is a must, but could I maybe dig a small pond between the end of the bamboo aqueduct and the trench?’

To prevent too much water from seeping into the ground, he’d have to line the sides and bottom of the pond with something waterproof.

And without a doubt, that meant using bamboo.

’It won’t be one hundred percent waterproof, but reducing seepage by eighty or ninety percent would still be a win.’

’I’ve got it! For the pond’s sides and bottom, I’ll use the same cross-overlapping method as I did for the roof—one layer facing up, the next facing down. That should leave almost no gaps. Water will only be able to seep out slowly from the joints between the bamboo pieces.’

The moment the idea struck, he couldn’t sit still. After quickly finishing his meal, he immediately began digging a pit in the ground not far from the end of the aqueduct.

He wasn’t planning on making the pond too large; about a square meter would be fine. He could always expand it later if needed. That would be the easy part.

Once he’d dug deep enough, he took the tapered bamboo ends left over from his earlier work and split them in half. He placed them with the curved outer surface against the earthen wall of the pit and the concave inner surface facing the center.

Since these were the thinner parts of the bamboo stalks, they had a smaller profile. He could fit many of them side-by-side, which conserved a significant amount of the pond’s potential volume.

After lining all four sides, he laid another layer of inverted bamboo pieces on top. Viewed from above, the pond’s perimeter now looked like a bamboo wall formed by countless interlocking S-shapes.

But he wasn’t finished yet.

A new thought suddenly struck him. ’If this method can keep most of the water from seeping out too quickly, wouldn’t adding a second layer create a double-waterproofing effect?’

Coincidentally, he had a pile of bamboo cores left over from when he’d been splitting bamboo strips. He usually burned them as kindling or occasionally wove them into things like grilling racks. Since they were just sitting there, they were perfect for reinforcing the walls.

The bamboo cores were relatively straight slats. He could wedge them into the space between the bamboo wall and the earthen bank, using another piece of bamboo or wood as a makeshift hammer to pound them securely into place.

He used the same method for the bottom of the pond—a layer of bamboo slats and a layer of bamboo troughs—ensuring the connections with the side walls were as seamless as possible.

"Phew... Done!"

He dusted off his hands, staring with satisfaction at the small pond before him.

’With the double-layered bamboo wall, the waterproofing should be pretty effective,’ he thought. ’Now I just need to dig an overflow trench to guide the excess water back toward the stream.’

...

RUSH...

Clear stream water flowed from one bamboo section to the next, tracing an irregular arc across the hillside and into the forest.

At the joint between each pair of bamboo sections, the water could be seen cascading down like a miniature waterfall. The crooked aqueduct snaked its way into the forest like a roller coaster on an erratic track.

By the time he jogged back to his shelter, the pond was already more than half full of clear water. The surface was rising at a steady pace and would overflow before long.

He had intentionally built up the other three sides of the pond, leaving the side with the drainage trench as the lowest point. This not only directed the overflow but also created a raised edge to prevent him from accidentally slipping and falling in.

He watched as the water level in the pond rapidly rose, finally spilling out through the gap for the trench and flowing all the way down to join the stream at the base of the hill.

[Successfully constructed an aqueduct on the coast of Panama. Happiness +3]

Success!

The success of the aqueduct was a major shot in the arm. A deep sense of pride swelled within him.

If everything he’d made before had just been simple tools, then the aqueduct was his first and only large-scale engineering project to date.

It wasn’t that difficult to build, but it was still an engineering project, nonetheless.

"Everyone, look! I did it!"

He excitedly pointed the camera at the aqueduct. As he walked back, he raised his wrist, eager to see how the viewers were reacting.

He tapped the screen.

The expected flood of comments didn’t appear. The screen was completely quiet.

"?"

He frowned in confusion, assuming his connection was lagging.

It was morning, a time when the chat was usually already buzzing with activity. It was impossible for it to be completely silent.

But strangely, while his watch still displayed the time, the scrolling comments were nowhere to be seen.

"What’s going on? Is anyone from the production team watching? My watch isn’t displaying the livestream comments anymore."

He assumed someone would come to check on it shortly after he reported the issue to the camera, but he ended up waiting until the next day.

"Lin!!"

Erica rushed in from outside, frantically shaking him awake.

She pointed at her own watch. "There’s a problem! My watch stopped showing comments the day before yesterday. It was the same yesterday, and it’s still not working today. And the production team shows no signs of coming to fix it!"

"Yours isn’t showing them either?"

Lin Chen was wide awake in an instant. He tapped his own watch and saw that, sure enough, it was the same as yesterday—only displaying the time, no comments.

He frowned, pondering for a moment. "It stopped working the day before yesterday, you said? I hadn’t really noticed... The day before yesterday... Huh, wait a minute. Could the production team have done this?"

’The day before yesterday... wasn’t that the day of the routine medical check-up?’

"Are you saying they deliberately turned off the comment feature so we can’t see what the audience is saying?"

"That’s probably it, yes," Lin Chen said, getting out of his bed and stretching lazily.

"Our show is ’Wild Survival,’ after all," he explained. "Loneliness is a core element. Right from the start of the competition, I was thinking that since our watches are connected to the livestream, we effectively have people to talk to anytime we want."

"As long as you have food, water, and a safe shelter, if you also take away the loneliness, then in theory, it wouldn’t be that hard to survive out here indefinitely."

"Robert told me the day before yesterday that the number of contestants has already been cut by more than half. And it’s very likely that another seven or eight people could drop out over the next few days."

"In other words, the remaining contestants are all survival experts. The competition has entered its mid-to-late stage. By deliberately turning off the comments now, they’re trying to bring back loneliness—the most crucial element—to put mental pressure on us."

"Whoa..."

Erica was stunned. "That’s so sneaky! They didn’t even tell us we were entering the final rounds, they just secretly cranked up the difficulty!"

"Actually, I think this is a good thing."

Lin Chen, however, was quite calm. After analyzing the motivation behind it, he pretty much understood the benefits of cutting off the comments.

"Initially, they enabled this feature mainly because they were worried about the dangers of the tropical forest. It allowed viewers to relay information based on what they saw from the fifty different contestants, which increased our safety."

"Now, three weeks have passed. Less than half the contestants remain, and we’re all pretty skilled in wilderness survival. Plus, most of us have moved over to the Dalian Mountain Range. If they kept letting information flow freely, this competition might never end."