Culinary God in Wilderness

Chapter 295: Chapter 198: Hey You, Get Your Hands Off

"Bingo!"

"Congratulations, you guessed right~"

Erica beamed at the camera on the ground, flashing a peace sign.

"You’ve been cooking for me these past two days. With this huge storm, I figured you definitely wouldn’t be able to make it back. I was worried the fish would spoil if it sat for too long, so it had to be cooked as soon as possible."

"The question is, how do we start a fire? There’s no spare firewood here."

Lin Chen had already given up on trying to analyze the motive behind this woman’s strange behavior. ’She’s already here, so what’s the point of overthinking it?’

Erica glanced around the inside of the shelter and quickly had an idea.

She dragged a bamboo pole in from the doorway and picked up the other bamboo knife from the ground.

"Let me borrow this, haha. I’ll give it right back~"

’Wait, you call this borrowing?’

Before he could even grumble a few words in his head, Erica was already hacking fiercely at the bamboo pole, chopping it into three pieces in just a few strokes.

Just as he had cut a window into the surface of a bamboo tube earlier, Erica stood the piece of bamboo upright and placed the knife tip against its edge.

Lift, drop, and a sharp pull.

A strip of the hard outer bamboo skin was easily torn away, revealing the pale yellow fibers within.

She continued to peel away the skin, strip by strip, not stopping until the entire surface of the bamboo piece was bare.

Then, completely disregarding her image, she plopped down on the ground, held the peeled bamboo in her lap with one end braced against the floor, and pulled a combat knife from her pocket.

She placed the sharp blade against the bamboo’s surface at a ninety-degree angle, tilted it slightly, and began to scrape back and forth.

As the blade scraped across, curls of bamboo shavings were planed off, fluttering to the ground.

Lin Chen watched her silently, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

’So you can gather tinder this way on a rainy day. This is an unexpected development.’

Bamboo itself is highly waterproof. Since it had only just started raining, the inside was still dry.

Furthermore, he had cut this bamboo yesterday and left it here, where it had air-dried for most of the night, further reducing its internal moisture.

The fact that it could be shaved into fine strips meant it was dry enough to be used as tinder.

He knew you could get wood shavings—what people call plane-cuttings—from wood this way, but he never thought it would work on bamboo too.

However, the shape of the shavings scraped from the bamboo was completely different from plane-cuttings. They weren’t flat flakes, but more like the wood chips used as bedding in a hamster cage.

He picked up a pinch to examine and had a realization. They were simply fragments of extremely fine bamboo fiber, like the split ends that break off an old, well-used mat at home.

Erica didn’t scrape too many shavings. Bamboo was, after all, quite hard, and scraping for too long could cause permanent damage to the combat knife’s blade.

They didn’t need to start a fire from scratch by drilling wood; they already had an ember, they just needed some kindling.

Next, she chopped the section of bamboo she had just scraped off the main pole and split it into strips the thickness of chopsticks.

Lin Chen wasn’t idle either. He gathered the materials and, with a light leap, landed on the earthen steps next to the cellar.

"Good thing I had the foresight. When I was processing the bamboo before, I tossed all the branches and leaves into the cellar."

"Huh?"

Erica paused her chopping, walked to the edge of the cellar, and peered down. Then she started complaining loudly.

"You had all this kindling and you couldn’t have said something sooner? What was the point of me going through all that trouble!"

Lin Chen, who was already at the bottom of the pit, spread his hands with an innocent look on his face. "How was I supposed to know you’d come running over in the rain? It all happened so suddenly I forgot about it. If I hadn’t seen you getting ready to start a fire, I wouldn’t have remembered at all."

These leaves and branches weren’t just from yesterday, but from the day before as well. The earliest batch of leaves had already turned a distinct, dry yellow—a phenomenon caused by chlorophyll changing color as the leaves dehydrate.

Therefore, turning yellow meant the leaves were dry enough to be used as kindling, just like dead leaves.

"This mound of yours... is it sturdy? It’s not going to collapse, is it?"

Erica stood at the edge of the pit, staring at the mound of dirt about a meter away. It looked like it had been packed down firmly, but with no signs of reinforcement around it, she couldn’t help but feel a little apprehensive.

"It doesn’t collapse when I step on it. If it collapses when you do, wouldn’t that just mean you’re heavier than me?"

"Oh, give me a break! What if you just loosened it by walking on it?"

"Have you forgotten what this place used to be?"

"Huh?" Erica paused. "What place? I’ve never been here before, how would I know what it used to be— Oh, I remember now! I think you said... don’t tell me this pit is the Ant Nest?"

If it was built up with earth from the Ant Nest, then it would be fine.

She didn’t hesitate any longer. With a light push off the balls of her feet, she leaped over, landing steadily on the flat top of the mound.

The material had a strong cohesiveness, like clay. Once packed down, it felt similar to stepping on a wet sand pile—offering a bit of cushion while still feeling distinctly solid underfoot.

"Perfect. I was planning to fire the cellar after the shelter was built anyway. You might as well do the cooking down there. There’s no wind, you won’t get rained on, and it’ll be warmer once the fire gets going."

Although the two of them had been talking the whole time, Lin Chen never once looked directly up at her. He mostly spoke with his head tilted to the side or lowered.

After seeing her reach the bottom of the pit from the corner of his eye, Lin Chen picked up a bundle of dry bamboo branches from a corner, placed it in the middle of the floor, then turned and climbed the steps back to ground level.

’Can’t be helped. The girl came over in the pouring rain; her shirt and pants are soaked through. And that thing she’s wearing underneath is a white, tight-fitting tank top. No way I can lift my head, not even a little.’