Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 281: Chapter 193: Just to Be Clear, I Wanted to Dig It Myself (Part 2)

On land, the only prey available was the Green Iguana. That creature was incredibly fast; without some kind of throwing expertise, hitting one would be highly unlikely.

’Forget it. I’ll just use a relatively heavy branch for the fish spear. No rush.’

As he stood up from the rock by the stream, the last sliver of the setting sun sank below the horizon, and the final trace of light vanished from the world.

He had been sitting for so long that his rear and legs had gone numb. He stood there for several minutes, waiting for the feeling to return.

Carrying two bamboo knives, he returned to the shelter. From a distance, he could see the bright campfire flickering gracefully in the darkness.

However, Erica was nowhere to be seen by the fire.

’That’s strange. The fire is burning so brightly; it must have been stoked recently. Where is she?’

He glanced around in confusion but saw no sign of her.

’The visibility in the dim forest was poor. If she had gone out, she should have been wearing her Hat Lamp.’

With that thought, he strode to the campfire, preparing to grab a handful of soapnuts from the shelter and go wash up at the stream.

He had just crawled halfway into the opening when a dark figure suddenly shot out from inside, nearly colliding with him head-on.

"HOLY SHIT!!"

Lin Chen jumped, thinking another one of those annoying monkeys had snuck in. He instinctively raised the bamboo knife in his hand, ready to drive it away.

"Don’t! It’s me!"

Erica’s clear voice rang out.

"Oh, it’s just you. You scared me," Lin Chen said with a sigh of relief, backing out of the cave. "Not even a torch? What kind of mischief were you getting up to in the pitch-dark?"

"Digging~"

Erica scrambled out of the cave right behind him. Her once fair and smooth face was now smudged with dust, yet it failed to dim the brilliant, jewel-like sparkle of her different-colored eyes.

She was holding a piece of bamboo, its tip clearly worn down from use.

In the firelight, he could faintly make out that the knuckles on the hand gripping the bamboo were slightly red.

Noticing his gaze, Erica instinctively tried to hide the bamboo sliver behind her back.

"Uh, I was too lazy to go get my own... so I used one of your bamboo stalks. I’ll get you a new one another day, okay?"

Lin Chen’s brow furrowed. He held out his hand and said in a low, serious voice, "Let me see your hands."

For some reason, his serious expression made Erica feel a pang of guilt, and she obediently held out her hands.

Only then did he get a clear look. The pads of her fingers were rubbed raw by the bamboo, and in the worst spots, the skin looked like it had started to break.

"What’s all this? I don’t recall us making any verbal agreement. Why are you suddenly digging a new room?"

"That’s true, but I felt... "

Erica scratched her cheek, looking a little embarrassed. "After all, I’m the one who just showed up, crashed in your shelter, disturbed your rest, and ate your food. As a proper fan, I feel like I can’t treat my idol that way."

"Since you wanted me to dig my own little room, then I’ll dig it. It needed to be expanded sooner or later anyway."

Lin Chen had no idea what had gotten into this woman, for her to suddenly shake off her lazy personality and start digging.

The slight resentment Lin Chen had been holding against her completely vanished when he saw her fair, tender hands covered in red marks.

"And just to be clear, I wanted to do this myself. You didn’t force me," she added. "Even my own mother can’t make me do something I don’t want to do."

Lin Chen glanced up at her. "Wait here."

As Erica watched, he crawled into the cave, brushed aside the moss on the ground, and revealed a shallow pit used for storing small items.

Inside were about two fistfuls of soapnuts left, along with some spices like allspice and bay leaf.

After a moment’s thought, he simply took out all the soapnuts.

"Come with me."

"Oh..."

Erica obediently followed Lin Chen to the side of the stream. She then watched as he pulled a wrinkled, brownish-yellow fruit from his pants pocket and handed it to her.

"This is...?"

Bathed in the bright light of her Hat Lamp, Erica stared at the fruit, her delicate brows knitted in concentration. For a moment, she couldn’t quite recall where she had seen this thing before.

Soapnuts usually grow in warm, humid environments, primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. However, they also possess a degree of cold resistance, allowing them to grow in environments as cold as negative fifteen degrees Celsius.

Any colder, and they would need a protective covering to keep the tree from sustaining frost damage.

Therefore, although the climate of the North American Forest is cold, it is also suitable for soapnut trees to grow, as long as one avoids the areas near the Arctic Circle.

Lin Chen didn’t have the patience to let her puzzle it out. He grabbed a soapnut, dipped it in the stream, flattened it, and began rubbing it briskly. A thick white lather quickly foamed up in his palm.

He spread the lather onto Erica’s palms. "Rub it in yourself. Use it like soap. It has anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties. The soil is full of bacteria, and an infection would be bad news."

"Ah!"

Seeing the lather, Erica suddenly cried out.

"I remember now! It’s a soapberry."

"No wonder. I was wondering yesterday why you and your hair looked so clean. It turns out you’d found this stuff."

Recalling how Lin Chen had found some unusual "weeds" to wash himself with back during the Alaska Chapter, Erica couldn’t help but sneak a few more glances at him.

In a rugged environment like North America, cleanliness in a man was an incredibly rare and precious trait.

While maintaining good hygiene is a basic tenet for any competent chef, this was a wilderness survival situation. Under normal circumstances, building a shelter, procuring food, and securing a water source should have been the top priorities.