Chapter 280: Stone Eaves in the Snow |
Wrapped in the animal skin and down jacket, Bai Mu quickly left that bush.
Relying on the Mobile Guard, before it completely turned dark, he found a place sheltered from the wind.
The wind howled past both sides of the rock, but on the back was a triangular area of calm. The snow here was thin, exposing the dark brown crushed stones underneath. This triangular area was located beneath a natural rock formation; the rock wall faced away from the main wind direction, and above it was a natural stone eave protruding out, capable of blocking most of the snow swirling down from above. It was a very suitable location to spend the night.
After walking in, he first observed his surroundings, ensuring there was no animal fur or feces on the ground and rock wall before setting down the bundles he had just found and the supplies he scavenged from the village.
He wasn't in a hurry to start a fire. He took out the Book of the Witch to synthesize a small wooden shovel and dug the snow outward, exposing the permafrost.
After that, he moved a few head-sized stones from nearby and stacked them into a half-moon-shaped low wall towards the outside. The purpose was simply to block the wind rushing in close to the ground. In this way, this place barely qualified as a suitable shelter.
Then, he stuck the Guard Mushroom on a slightly higher rock wall to ensure he could clearly see the surrounding situation. He returned under the stone eave, threw the remaining firewood on the ground, and used a fire talisman to start a fire.
The orange-red light danced on the rock wall, driving out the shadows. He laid the stiff animal skin on the ground, padded underneath with a stone, and sat down. His cold, red fingers neared the flames; first came a needle-like numbness, and then the heat slowly penetrated, gradually warming up his body.
He used small stones to build a small stove next to the fire, took out the water canteen he found earlier, scooped a canteen of snow outside, and placed the somewhat rusty canteen on the stove.
He had found a total of three bundles of varying sizes. After opening all of them, he laid out the contents one by one.
The first bundle contained a small piece of cheese wrapped in cloth, a roll of bandages, and some hay that smelled slightly bitter, like some kind of herb. It also contained a flint and steel for starting fires.
In the second bundle, there was a short-handled hand axe, a dagger, a set of whetstones, two pairs of thick wool socks, a felt hat that could cover the ears, a few pieces of smoked and air-dried jerky, two sausages, and a small metal flask.
The liquor inside the flask hadn't frozen yet. Hard liquor didn't freeze as easily as water; pure alcohol would only freeze at over minus a hundred degrees Celsius. The higher the proof of the liquor, the lower the freezing point. Therefore, liquor was a very suitable drinking water resource to carry in extremely cold environments.
In the third bundle, he found a few pieces of black bread similar to those in the village, a wooden carved idol, a small handful of dried berries, and half a jar of an unknown jam emitting a sweet and sour smell. There were also a few pieces of paper with writing on them, but he couldn't read the text.
Overall, it was still much richer than what he found in the village. This food was enough for him to eat for another five or six days. He tried putting on the wool socks and the felt hat; they were very warm.
The only drawback was that the sizes of the socks and the felt hat were a bit small, but it wasn't a big problem. He used the Book of the Witch to slightly modify them, and they became fitting clothes.
At least the problems of food and keeping warm were temporarily solved.
What was a pity was that he still hadn't figured out where he was. The few things he could be certain of were that humans survived in this place, and there was a type of monster that fed on humans.
What was more troublesome was that these monsters were very hard to kill, and after being killed, they wouldn't leave a corpse. Encountering them was truly a thankless task.
Therefore, he wanted to avoid exposing his whereabouts as much as possible. He wanted to find a human settlement as quickly as possible. Since this world had standard knight squads and villages, there definitely had to be large-scale cities as well.
Compared to an outsider like him, the locals definitely had more experience dealing with these monsters. As long as he used his reporter's disguise skill to enter those cities, he wouldn't have to live in fear and constantly guard against monster attacks.
He could focus his energy on other things, like learning new skills, practicing Cotton Palm, or even searching for places with corpses to level up the 'Profound Yin Corpse Nurturing Secret Record'.
The 'Corpse Raising' special effect required consuming 10 fresh corpses to add one controllable raised corpse slot. Currently, he could only control 10 raised corpses, but if he had 100 corpses, he could increase this number to 20. For every 10 control slots, the number of corpses required for the next upgrade would increase by 10.
When reaching a capacity of 20, further upgrading would require 20 fresh corpses. So the higher he leveled up, the greater the difficulty. However, it was still relatively easy to manage at lower levels.
He set his goals. In these 30 days, he had to at least train Cotton Palm to the max level of 5 and find 100 fresh corpses to upgrade 'Corpse Raising' to a capacity of 20. On top of that, if he could learn a new skill, it would be a huge profit.
Even if he couldn't learn a new skill, he felt he had a good chance of finding a swordsmanship teacher to instruct him.
He now had five sword and blade weapons of different attributes, yet he had never undergone systematic swordsmanship training. Although he had hacked many zombies and mutants to death with a machete, essentially, he was actually somewhat weak in terms of fundamentals.
Against weaker opponents, he could still manage with Quick Draw and Secret Sword Art. But when facing evenly matched enemies, his lack of experience showed.
Last time when he clashed with the broadsword zombie, he could faintly feel that he couldn't gain any advantage in close-quarters combat. Almost every move, including Quick Draw, was anticipated by the broadsword zombie. The opponent even found flaws in his attacks and nearly hacked him several times.
Being able to kill that guy was actually purely relying on the brute force of 'Sacrificial Passage' and 'Flame of Earth Yang', recklessly crushing it to death using raw stats and counter mechanisms.
Being able to gain some combat experience was definitely a good thing. After all, he wouldn't really die in this place.
While thinking, Bai Mu used a dining knife from the bundle to cut off a slice of black bread, spread jam on it, and roasted half a sausage.
The water came to a full boil. He took the canteen off the fire, poured some into the lid, and took a sip of hot water. At the same time, he picked up the roasted sausage and took a bite.
The sausage tasted pretty good, with a simple smoky and salty flavor. The meat inside wasn't the common pork, beef, or mutton. In short, paired with jam, sausage, and soaked in hot water, this rock-hard black bread wasn't so hard to swallow anymore.