Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 253: Chapter 184: Ancient Stone Clam, Goose-necked Barnacle

The rain had just stopped, and Lin Chen wasted no time heading for the wooden cabin.

As he reached the area of the tobacco field, he could see from a distance that the makeshift rain shelter he’d thrown together was still standing, unharmed.

’Whew... As long as it didn’t collapse.’

It had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, after all, so he wasn’t sure how long it would hold up.

Thankfully, the recent rain hadn’t been too heavy, and there hadn’t been much wind.

A closer look revealed that the surrounding ground was soaked and had turned to muck. The pit itself, however, looked quite dry, with only some traces of water having trickled down the earthen walls.

This was unavoidable. He had only built a rain shelter and hadn’t considered drainage. If the water running off the leaves to the sides accumulated, it could potentially overflow and run back into the pit.

He had no intention of going down into the pit. After confirming it was dry, he shouldered a rotting log he had previously split and started walking back.

The ground was covered in mud, and he didn’t want to get coated in it.

His choice proved to be the right one. The split log was only about half the size of a full one, but even so, carrying it for just one or two hundred meters was a struggle. He had to rest for a few minutes before he could continue on his way.

If he had chosen a whole log, he likely wouldn’t have made it more than a few steps.

In his current condition—lacking carbohydrates, having skipped breakfast, and after a great deal of physical exertion—he had very little strength left. Even carrying half a log was strenuous.

By the time he finally made it back to his shelter, it was already noon.

He didn’t rush to start a fire. Instead, he went straight to the nearby mango tree.

Sure enough, several overripe mangoes were scattered on the grass. He quickly gathered them all to keep the monkeys from getting to them.

He devoured two palm-sized wild mangoes, feeling the sweetness slide down his throat. Only then did the feeling of weakness begin to subside.

After resting a little longer, the dizzy, weak feeling gradually faded, and strength began to flood back into his body.

Only then did he pick up his bamboo knife and sit at the mouth of the cave, splitting the rotting log bit by bit.

The surface of the rain-soaked wood was noticeably darker. After he split it open, he could see the clear line dividing the dry interior from the wet exterior.

He first stripped off the outer, damp layer of wood and leaned it against the earthen wall to air dry.

He set down the bamboo knife and picked up his military knife. Holding the blade flat, he quickly scraped the surface of the wood dozens of times.

Each pass raised a few wood shavings, much like a wood plane. Soon, he had collected a fist-sized bunch of shavings.

"When you can’t find dry tinder, this stuff is your tinder. But the precondition is that the wood must be dead, not green."

The ground was wet everywhere, so he had no choice but to pile the wood chips, shavings, and tinder inside the cave.

After dealing with the firewood, he slung the basket over his back and prepared to head to the seaside to gather some lunch.

The tide schedule had shifted over the past few days, and low tide was now around noon. That meant the tide had just started to recede. Combined with the recent rain, it was the perfect time for foraging on the shore.

This time, he didn’t head for the sandy beach. Instead, he made his way to the reef-strewn shore, curious to see if the different terrain would offer a greater variety of finds.

「On the reef-strewn shore.」

Waves crashed relentlessly against the surface of the reefs, sending silvery droplets of water flying.

He waited quietly on the shore for a moment, noticing the line of crashing waves gradually moving further out.

As the seawater receded, dark, jagged reefs slowly revealed themselves.

As he was watching the waves, a large, dark, unidentifiable mass suddenly drifted in from the sea.

’Could it be kelp?’

He had found kelp on the sandy beach before, so his first thought was that this was more of the same.

He carefully stepped onto the moss-free sections of the reef and made his way over.

As he got closer, he realized it wasn’t kelp, but a reddish-brown, paper-thin type of algae.

To put it simply, it was laver.

He squatted down and scooped up a handful. It was thin, slick, and felt like a wet piece of gauze.

’Algae isn’t covered in the Encyclopedia of Plants. I wonder if this stuff is edible...’

He stared at the hair-like, reddish-brown seaweed in his hand, lost in thought.

Come to think of it, kelp was a type of algae too. He really didn’t know much about the subject.

When you weren’t sure if something was edible, there was usually only one logical conclusion.

Don’t eat it.

Lin Chen tossed the red algae back into the sea and sighed with regret.

’Another piece of knowledge about algae I’ll need to redeem. My Happiness Points are really in short supply lately.’

As he started to stand up, a strange bump on the reef near his feet caught his eye.

Looking closer, he saw that the surface of this oval ’stone’ was covered in armor-like plates. Its overall shape was somewhat similar to an abalone.

’What is this...’

He frowned, frantically racking his brain for the limited knowledge he had about shellfish.

Before the competition began, he had planned to survive by the sea, so he had spent considerable effort researching coastal environments and various types of edible seafood.

In addition to common seafood, his research had turned up some strange, unheard-of creatures.

"Oval... abalone-like... plated shell..."

Muttering the features he saw, he took out his military knife. He pressed the blade flat against the rock, right at the base of the mysterious shellfish, and sliced inward.

The creature was attached more firmly than he had expected. It took a bit of effort to pry the whole thing off.