Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 77 - 28: Gaining Both Mother and Son

Chapter 77: Chapter 28: Gaining Both Mother and Son
A beautiful day began with the discovery of a nail clipper set.
Love extends to one’s house and its crows, and even the worn-out cardboard box seemed much more pleasing, so Chen Zhou took it up and placed it in the wooden crate for safekeeping.
After a simple breakfast, Chen Zhou had managed to deduce some patterns regarding the mysterious rewards.
Based on the two rewards he received, it seemed they were mostly inexpensive small items that wouldn’t have a significant impact on his challenges.
Within this limited scope, the likelihood of items such as lighters, hand-cranked flashlights, socks, gloves, underwear, and even transparent tape, folding knives, and carbon pens was not low.
If luck was on his side, perhaps next time or the time after that, he’d finally get the lighter he longed for.
With hope for the future, Chen Zhou began a new day of work.
According to his plan, he needed to transport the carpenter’s toolbox to a cave halfway up the mountain, where he would use ironwood to create a hammer and a shovel head.
From "Robinson Crusoe," he had learned in advance that while ironwood is hard, it is not wear-resistant, and it’s best to wrap it in a layer of metal to extend its lifespan.
However, he had no metal, only some lead plates.
The lead plates stored on the ship were too thick and lacked flexibility, easily breaking in the middle with excessive bending, making it nearly impossible to use lead to cover a pickaxe or shovel.
Robinson, in despair, could only replace the pickaxe with a crowbar and barely manage digging with wooden tools.
Having learned from Robinson’s lesson, Chen Zhou came up with a unique idea.
He intended to directly replace the tip of the hammer and the edge of the shovel with metal.
Some of the iron corners removed from the ship roughly matched the required shapes. After tidying the shapes with a hammer, he planned to carve suitable grooves into the ironwood, embed the parts, and secure them with nails.
The pickaxe and shovel made this way might not be as sturdy as pure metal products, but they still offered some improvement in quality. Especially when facing sand and gravel, the advantages of metal materials were more apparent.
However, plans are always ideal, and it’s uncertain whether the execution will be good or bad.
All he could do was constantly try and improve.
Equipped with a crowbar and carrying the toolbox tied with rope on his back, along with some pieces of bread and a bottle of cool water in his arms, Chen Zhou set off with heavy steps.
Dressed in thick clothing and carrying nearly thirty kilograms uphill, he felt a long-lost fatigue.
Unlike the initial weakness when he first arrived on the island because of lack of exercise, this fatigue was entirely due to insufficient physical strength. To put it bluntly, he lacked muscle mass.
Furthermore, the corners of the wooden box often poked painfully into his back, and the rope dug into his shoulders, pulling the weight backward, adding discomfort.
He moved in fits and starts, and every two hundred meters or so, he had to set the box down for a rest, taking a bite of bread or a sip of water.
Slogging along like this, he finally reached the cave by afternoon.
One piece of bread remained, and the cool water was long gone.
Setting down the wooden box, Chen Zhou sat heavily on it, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his hair soaked, and he looked as if he’d been washed by water.
Never had he done such heavy physical labor for such a sustained period since he was a child.
Now he was seeing stars, his ears buzzed, and his heart pounded relentlessly.
The last two hundred meters of the journey had been even steeper.
The dim light and damp ground in shaded areas caused him to slip frequently, forcing him to spend extra energy to maintain balance; otherwise, he risked falling or rolling down the slope.
He had almost exhausted every last bit of his strength, and many times Chen Zhou felt his physical limits had been reached, yet somehow, he gritted his teeth and pushed through.
Finally able to rest properly, he closed his eyes, lying on the cave’s rough ground, like a dead man.
The wounds on his shoulders and back, scraped raw, burned like fire, but he paid them no heed, just lay there.
Soon, his breathing steadied, and he fell asleep from exhaustion.
It wasn’t a long sleep; turning over and pressing against his wounds, a sharp pain woke him.
Sore all over, he got up, shook off the fatigue, and only then did he notice the emptiness around him; Lai Fu was nowhere in sight.
During the climb, Lai Fu had originally followed him, but probably got bored from the frequent rests and wandered off on his own.
Chen Zhou knew Lai Fu could smell snakes; wildcats in the forest couldn’t challenge him, and the mountain goats near the hillside posed no threat to dogs, so Chen Zhou hadn’t worried.
Unexpectedly, Lai Fu hadn’t returned even after such a long time, making him quite worried.
Standing up, Chen Zhou lifted his jacket to check the dried scabs on his collarbones, casually patted the dirt off his back, and fastened his clothes before stepping out of the cave.
The weather today was different than usual; the air seemed much less humid, as if the rainy season had abruptly turned into a dry season.
The green below the hillside appeared wilted; the sun was about to set, and shadows were progressing inch by inch, gradually engulfing the land.
"Lai Fu!"
Chen Zhou called towards the forest.
The sound drifted with the wind, startling a few birds, and faintly, he heard a bark from the other side of the hillside.
Moving away from the cave entrance, he took a few steps eastward and called again.
This time, the barking was clearer but stopped abruptly after two cries, as if encountering some danger.
Remembering the scratch on Lai Fu’s ear from a cat, Chen Zhou grabbed the crowbar and rushed hurriedly toward the source of the sound.