Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 410: Chapter 254: A Man Who Cooks Seriously is the Most Handsome (Part 2)

"Of course you deserve praise! It’s a good thing, so why shouldn’t I say so? Don’t be shy. Be more open. Isn’t it totally normal to be attracted to the opposite sex? It just means you’re healthy~"

Even though he knew this was just how foreigners normally interacted, the memory of being caught in the act made his cheeks burn. He couldn’t bring himself to look Erica in the eye.

Seizing the opportunity while she wasn’t looking, he shot up, pushed her back onto the bed, and scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the camera and bolted outside.

"Whoa~"

Erica propped her head up with one hand, a grin on her face as she watched his flustered retreat.

’He just pounced on me, didn’t he? That was so sudden, it made my heart THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. Is this his way of playing hard to get?’

The bed still held the warmth of his body. She lay down comfortably, closed her eyes, and soon fell into a deep sleep.

It was unclear what she was dreaming about, but a lovely smile graced her lips.

「Outside.」

Facing the rising sun, Lin Chen quickly splashed his face with the cool stream water, which finally helped him calm down.

’Dude, did I just get a confession?’

’Ha!’

’And from a rich, beautiful woman, no less!’

At the thought, he couldn’t stop a huge grin from spreading across his face.

He quickly slapped himself a few times.

’Don’t get ahead of yourself. She’s probably just messing with you again. How can you be so gullible?’

’It’s also possible she feels insecure out in the wild and just happened to find that sense of security with me, so she’s mistaking that feeling for attraction.’

He’d actually seen videos explaining this principle before. It was called the suspension bridge effect, and it usually happened to women.

The idea is that in a tense and stimulating environment, like a suspension bridge, women feel a profound lack of security. They might then convert any other feeling that brings them a sense of safety into romantic attraction, mistaking it for love.

A similar effect could happen to men, but the triggers were different and much more straightforward.

Looks, figure, and charisma.

In short, love at first sight.

To put it simply, under normal circumstances, women develop feelings for men who make them feel safe, and men develop feelings for beautiful women.

This didn’t involve complex factors like money or status. It was purely about human instinct.

After squatting by the water channel and secretly gloating for a while, he stood up again, ready to test out the bamboo bow and arrows he had finished sanding.

These bamboo arrows only had the most basic shafts, with no fletching or arrowheads. The tip was just a simple diagonal cut, with the slanted surface acting as the point.

He planned to test them out like this first. As long as the arrows didn’t veer off course, they were usable. He could make improvements later.

The targets were the same stacks of bamboo-leaf scarecrows. He didn’t bother setting them up, just leaving them scattered haphazardly on the ground.

He nocked an arrow and drew the bow.

SWISH—

The bamboo arrow traced a green line through the air, disappearing into a scarecrow with incredible speed.

"That fast?"

He hadn’t expected the arrows to be so effective with just the shafts sanded down. Their trajectory was almost a straight line.

It seemed all he needed to do now was sharpen the tips; no other steps were necessary.

The main purpose of the bow and arrows was just to injure the American Crocodiles. Killing them outright was nearly impossible, unless he could land a headshot straight through an eye.

But a crocodile’s eyes were negligible in size compared to its massive body. Plus, when hunting at night, they only exposed the top of their heads above the water and could submerge at any moment.

Unless he was using bullets, hitting their eyes was practically impossible.

Even an Olympic archery champion wouldn’t be able to guarantee a perfect shot with such crude equipment.

For his purposes, the bow’s only function was to hit their legs, bellies, and necks.

As long as he could hinder their movement, the rest would be much easier.

He test-fired all ten arrows. Once he confirmed they worked, he began to sharpen the tips.

He just needed to grind the two sides of the slanted cut to form a drill-like point. Given the texture of bamboo, it was a quick job.

While sharpening the arrowheads, his mind kept returning to what Erica had said about the cutoff point.

He had lived in Canada for all these years and had never been to the United States, so naturally, he didn’t know what it was like there.

However, homeless people were indeed a common sight in Canada. Especially after 10 p.m. and before 6 a.m., walking through the empty city streets, he would often see them lying on subway grates for warmth, or in bus shelters and subway stations.

According to Erica, things were much better in Canada than in the United States, yet there were still so many homeless people. Didn’t that mean the situation in the United States was...

Thinking back, it seemed Canada had never committed any major acts of aggression in its history. At least, its name never came up in the sections on wars of aggression in his history textbooks.

On the contrary, it had produced famous international doctors like Norman Bethune.

As a nation that championed peace, it naturally took better care of its citizens.

But the United States...

He suddenly recalled a very popular American TV show he used to watch, *The Big Bang Theory*.

Back then, he’d been puzzled. Why were the main characters, who were so highly educated, still worrying about mortgages, car loans, and student debt? They couldn’t even scrape together any savings.

From an Asian perspective, people with their level of education would be professors or top-level researchers. Making money should have been a piece of cake.

How could they possibly face the risk of becoming homeless?

He decided to ask Erica for more details after she woke up.

「Two hours later.」

Erica woke up to an enticing aroma.

It was a scent she had never smelled before—a faint hint of fish, the fragrance of coconut, and something else she couldn’t quite place.

"What are you making that smells so good?"

She walked out of the hut, crossed her hands over her head, and gave a big stretch.

The tight-fitting sports tank top perfectly showcased her fine curves, especially the deep V of the neckline and her flat, pale stomach, which seemed to glow in the sunlight.

"Where’s your jacket? Aren’t you afraid of getting a tan?"

Lin Chen cautiously glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Sensing danger, he forcibly resisted the urge to turn his head and kept his eyes fixed on the stone slate in front of him.

"A little sun is good for you. The morning sun isn’t that strong. A little while won’t give me a tan."

Erica grinned and walked over to squat beside him. Resting her hands on her knees, she stared curiously at the yellowish-white flatbread on the stone slate.

"Making crepes again? Why do I smell seafood?"

"This isn’t a crepe. ’Crepe’ is the European term for a fruit-based dessert. In the Great Xia, we just call this a ’bing.’ We add different prefixes depending on the ingredients, and it’s usually eaten as a main course."

"Here, try it. See if you can tell what it’s made of."

This one happened to be just about done. He folded it, cut off a piece from the edge, and offered it to her.

He expected her to take it with her hand, but the lazybones simply opened her mouth and took a bite right off his chopsticks.

’Hey, hey! Isn’t this basically me feeding you now? Can’t you tone it down a bit for the camera?’

"Huh?"

Erica wasn’t thinking about that at all. After a few chews, her eyes suddenly lit up.

"It’s a flatbread, but why does it taste like fish? And this aroma... did you use coconut oil?"

"That’s right," Lin Chen nodded, pointing to the nearby bamboo tube. "I chopped up the coconut meat I’d collected, pressed it into coconut milk, and then heated and cooled it to extract this coconut oil."

"Coconut oil solidifies at a relatively low temperature, so it can be stored in the cellar for quite a long time. When you cook with it, especially with desserts, it gives off a really rich fragrance."

"I mashed the fish from last night into a paste and mixed it with sweet potato starch to make a batter. Then I fried it in coconut oil. Once this flatbread is done, I’ll cut it into strips and stir-fry it with some chilies. You’ll get to taste a different kind of Chinese food."

Lin Chen explained the steps as he worked, never pausing as he poured the last ladle of batter onto the stone slate.

Listening to the wonderful SIZZLE beside her, Erica cupped her cheeks and stared intently at his profile.

’A man who’s serious about his cooking is so handsome...’