Chapter 15: Lumberjack and Fruit Picking, Good News |
Tai Zu Long Fist consists of four routes:
Small Battle, Great Battle, Freehand, and Combined Battle.
In his previous life, Xia Hong mainly practiced this set of fist techniques.
Small Battle focuses on short strikes and defense.
Great Battle combines fists, feet, and waist into one, concentrating force to break through a single point and emphasizing offense.
Freehand is not restricted by standard moves; it aims to severely injure the enemy. The head, fingers, palms, fists, elbows, shoulders, knees, legs, hips, and arms can all be used as weapons. It emphasizes timing and is primarily for killing.
Combined Battle is a coordinated fighting style suitable for multiple attackers surrounding an enemy.
Long Fist was praised in Xia Hong’s previous life as the most practical fist technique, and with good reason.
It incorporates offense, defense, and killing techniques and all four battle methods can be applied with weapons.
After a while of teaching, Xia Hong observed the six and got a general understanding of their capabilities.
Yuan Cheng and Yue Feng were the most burly, both over two meters tall. Although their physiques appeared less robust due to long-term hunger, once their flesh and blood recovered, they would quickly regain strength.
The Small Battle route involves smaller movements and lower posture demands, making it more suitable for those two.
Lin Kai, Qiu Peng, and Xu Ning had more balanced builds, long fists and feet, and were more agile than the first two, making them suitable for the Great Battle fist style, which combines fists, feet, and waist.
The smallest and slimmest was Lu Yang, who was agile and sensitive to timing, so he leaned toward Freehand.
The six who had learned the fist techniques were naturally excited and quickly began practicing, using the energy from the frost beast flesh in their stomachs.
After teaching the six, Xia Hong left the cave at night carrying his stone axe.
He had planned to search for crystal fruit last night but accidentally ran into a hunting party from Boulder Camp. Although the encounter was dangerous, they managed to bring back a Snow Mane. However, no crystal fruit was picked.
Before gaining hunting ability, frost beast meat was just a bonus; crystal fruit was the main food source. So Xia Hong still had to go to the Crystal Fruit Trees to pick the fruit.
Besides, the camp’s wood supply was running low.
When they moved from the original cave, only 15 units of wood remained.
That could last for over ten days, which was already rare.
The small fire pit consumed two units of wood daily. If the camp had not been careful and refrained from lighting fires at night, the wood wouldn’t have lasted this long.
Compared to his first time entering Redwood Ridge, Xia Hong was now much more familiar.
Relying on his memory, he quickly found the Crystal Fruit Trees.
Approaching, Xia Hong scanned the surroundings and, after confirming safety, climbed the tree and took out a leather bag to start picking fruit.
The trees bore ripe crystal fruit, each the size of a fist and weighing about half a kilogram. Xia Hong quickly gathered over a thousand jin, and the leather bag in his hand grew heavier and heavier.
He only stopped when the bag was completely full.
After picking the crystal fruit, it was time to cut wood.
Xia Hong carried the fruit back first. When he was about to leave Redwood Ridge, he began searching for suitable trees nearby.
Though it sounded like just cutting trees, it was actually not that simple.
Crystal Fruit Trees must not be cut. First, there might be frost beasts on them; second, they were the camp’s main food source and scarce. Cutting them would be a suicidal move.
Golden Frost Trees were also forbidden. They were too tough to cut with his stone axe. Moreover, frost beasts liked to sleep on them at night, and disturbing them would have terrible consequences.
That left only the Crimson Frost Trees.
Around the outer edges of Redwood Ridge, Crimson Frost Trees were by far the most common, accounting for about ninety percent.
The problem was, these trees were all huge.
Everywhere Xia Hong looked were trunks four to five meters in diameter, sometimes six to seven meters, with heights of fifty to sixty meters common.
Deeper in, he even saw trunks over ten meters thick, some even more exaggerated.
Looking at these towering giants, Xia Hong didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It was foreseeable that as the camp system progressed, the resources needed for upgrades would only increase, so these vast, inexhaustible trees should be a blessing.
The problem was, he couldn’t carry a single one now.
He wanted to cut a thick one, but even if he could fell it, he had no strength to carry it back.
After searching for more than an hour and just as his fear of large objects was about to explode, he finally found a suitable Crimson Frost Tree.
“Over three meters thick, more than twenty meters long, about the same size as the wood burned in the cave before, should be no problem to carry back.”
Xia Hong set down the fully loaded leather bag of crystal fruit, took out his stone axe from his waist, scraped off the outermost layer of ice crystals from the bark, then spat twice onto his hands and began the diligent task of chopping the tree.
Chop... chop... chop... chop...
Three hours later
Bang...
The giant tree fell, scattering countless snowflakes on the ground.
Soaked through and exhausted, with aching waist and weak hands, Xia Hong stepped forward, panting and staring at the fallen Crimson Frost Tree in disbelief.
Only now did he understand why the thirteen lumberjacks in Xia Ding’s team only brought back five or six trees at most each night.
He had just broken through to the Lumberjack Realm and could only fell one tree in three hours.
He was nearly drained.
He clearly sensed that his body could not endure such intense exertion again in a short time.
This meant a single Lumberjack Realm cultivator could cut down at most one tree in one night.
That was assuming safety was guaranteed.
And Crimson Frost Trees were already the easiest to cut on the outskirts.
Before going out at night, Xia Hong had thought about gathering all 200 units of wood needed to upgrade the small fire pit at once, leaving the 50 units of iron for later.
But after actually cutting the tree, he realized just how difficult gathering 200 units of wood was.
At the moment the tree was felled, the camp system’s resource bar changed.
[Resources: Wood 5 Coal 0 Iron 0 Silver 0 Gold 0]
After a night of effort, nearly collapsing from exhaustion, he had only collected five units of wood.
“I can only rely on increasing manpower to boost efficiency. Once Xia Chuan and Yuan Cheng break through, the speed should improve. Take it slow, no rush.”
Xia Hong comforted himself, rested briefly, then stood up, tied the bag of crystal fruit to a tree, shouldered the log, and headed back to camp.
Having seen the Snow Mane and then Xia Hong returning with a tree and over a thousand jin of crystal fruit, the camp members showed little reaction.
Of course, now that the empty wood and food supplies were replenished, everyone felt much more at ease.
Xia Hong knew that without strength improvements, the camp wouldn’t change much.
So in the coming days, besides using the remaining frost beast meat to cultivate, he went out every night.
Of course, not every trip yielded gains.
The Crystal Fruit Tree whose location he knew was emptied after three harvests.
When the next fruit would mature was unknown, so Xia Hong began expanding his search area.
Fortunately, over time, he found two more trees, both full of crystal fruit.
He picked all the fruit from those two trees over six trips, suddenly increasing the camp’s crystal fruit stock to over seven thousand jin.
With more food, everyone in the camp not only had full stomachs but also smiles began to appear more often, no longer as lifeless as before.
Besides crystal fruit, Xia Hong cut down one tree and brought it back every night.
After twenty days, wood resources had surged from 5 to 87.
Although coal, silver, and iron remained zero, at least gathering wood was no longer a problem, making Xia Hong very happy.
On the twenty-fourth day, dragging a tree back to camp, Xia Hong entered the cave and immediately heard some good news.
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