Although Lu Zhe had plans to search for a new campsite, it was not possible in the near future!
Although the rain had stopped, it would take a few more days for the rainwater absorbed by the mountain and on the ground surface to recede.
During this time, the slippery mountain terrain and muddy mountain roads made it extremely dangerous to walk through the jungle after the rain. It was simply impossible to climb up rock cracks and reach the highest point.
But without climbing to the highest point, how could they observe where a more suitable campsite was?
Therefore, while surface fresh water was still abundant, building a reservoir to store fresh water would be prudent preparation.
However, building a reservoir was easier said than done.
The biggest problem was waterproofing.
The permeability of the surface soil was extremely high. A reservoir built with this kind of material would neither hold water well nor be sturdy enough.
They had to choose better materials.
But what?
Lu Zhe decided to take a walk around the jungle to see if he could find suitable materials.
He carried a bamboo basket and a shovel, trudging through the mud towards the edge of the mountain ridge and jungle.
"Hey, where are you going!" Shen Bing felt uneasy and hurried to catch up with him.
"It's nothing. I'm just taking a look around."
"Let me go with you. It's better to have someone watching your back."
"Alright, bring a bamboo basket too."
The post-rain jungle was more dangerous than usual.
The loosened terrain, landslides, and shifting rainwater posed constant threats. It was easy to slip down and get impaled on thorns or broken trees, receiving an instant game over.
The dormant poisonous insects, snakes, and ants had also emerged seeking food. Shen Bing felt somewhat concerned.
"Hey, what are you looking for?"
"Ant nests."
"What do you need those for?" Shen Bing looked around. "Wouldn't they have been washed away by such heavy rain?"
"I'm looking precisely for the kind that did not get washed away."
"You can't be wanting to catch the ant queens to eat!"
"I heard they're quite tasty. We could try catching one to find out."
"Do you know how dangerous tropical ant nests are?"
Lu Zhe seemed unconvinced. "Are they that dangerous?"
Shen Bing pondered, "I remember during World War II, a German troop entered the tropical jungle, but they encountered army ants and the entire 1,800 men troop was eaten by them, leaving only 1,800 skeletons behind."
Lu Zhe nodded. "I've heard that story at campfire gatherings."
"You don't believe it?"
Lu Zhe shook his head. "Army ants are aggressive and some are venomous, but they are small in size and move slowly. When humans start running, they simply cannot catch up. Even if all the hundreds of millions of ants in a large nest worked together, they would only amount to 20-30 pounds in total. There's no need to worry about that kind of situation."
"So they're not as dangerous as you say?"
"They are dangerous, but not because they eat humans. Rather, it is because they can sneak into your clothes without you noticing and bite your skin, causing infections. Since effective treatments are hard to find, the skin swells and ulcerates, becoming life-threatening!"
Shen Bing shuddered involuntarily.
"But don't worry. The army ants on this island are not as aggressive, and they even have the benevolent heart to save lives! To suture your leg wound, they selflessly sacrificed their own lives."
"Yes, Guo'er did tell me about that..."
Just then, Lu Zhe discovered what he was looking for.
"There it is!"
Shen Bing squatted down and saw a tall earthen mound about 20 meters ahead, nestled among the bushes.
It was around 1 meter tall with a diameter of 2 meters.
"A grave?? No... This really is an ant nest??"
Shen Bing still felt some trepidation towards these things.
"Surprised? After such heavy rains, it remains perfectly intact. It's simply a miracle of life!"
"I am surprised, but not because it survived undamaged. I'm shocked that it's so close to our camp!"
"That's normal!"
"What's normal about it? It could crawl into our camp!" The thought of these things sneaking into her clothes gave Shen Bing chills.
"Don't worry, these aren't army ants, they are termites!"
"Termites? Don't they eat furniture?"
"Rest assured. With abundant food here, they generally won't go out of their way to chew up wood in homes."
"What are you going to do?"
Lu Zhe walked over to the ant nest and admired,
"With their own saliva and mud, these engineer ants built such a sturdy and beautiful nest that withstands even seven days of storm and torrential rain. It's truly a miracle of insect architecture worthy of respect!"
Saying so, he raised the iron shovel and shoveled away the ant nest.
The termites left homeless were washed away by the flowing water, about to embark on a new termite journey.
Lu Zhe shook off the nest fragments and threw them into the bamboo basket.
"What are you collecting those for?"
"These ant nests are excellent building materials with superb water resistance. I plan to use them to build a small reservoir when we get back!"
"I see!"
Shen Bing finally understood why Lu Zhe was looking for ant nests, and the importance of a reservoir for them.
But the termites probably wouldn't be too happy about it!
Who cares!
She also started gathering the nest fragments.
On their third trip, Lu Zhe finally discovered the queen!
The upper half looked like an ordinary ant, but the lower half was a 10 cm big worm-like body.
The pale, plump, fleshy body rippled in waves.
"This is the queen ant."
"It looks so gross. Are we really going to eat it..."
"Of course! It's rich in protein and can be eaten raw. Grilled over charcoal with salt and chili powder, it's simply a delicacy!"
And so, he took away their mother.
Outside the cave, Lu Zhe cleared a dry area and made a circle with rocks. He piled wood and dry grass underneath and laid the ant nest fragments on top.
Lighting a fire!
The remaining termites in the nest unfortunately experienced cremation.
Next, Lu Zhe ground the nest fragments into powder and mixed them with ashes from the burned grass and wood, adding water to make cement.
Lu Zhe measured out the amount of cement needed. 8 meters to the right of the cave entrance, he outlined a circular pit and started digging.
The pit had a diameter of 1.2 meters and was about 1.5 meters deep.
Then, he plastered the cement mix on the surrounding walls of the pit.
Plastering the sides was easy, but the bottom required some effort. He needed a thick stick propped over the pit with a rope tied in the middle to lower himself down.
As Lu Zhe wondered where to find such a thick stick, Tang Xiaoguo came running over. "Lu Zhe, we're building a barbecue grill. Come join us... Oh? What's this?"
"Guess what it is?"
Tang Xiaoguo thought for a bit and nodded. "Not only did you build us a shower and soap, you even built such a pretty bathtub for us! It seems you went through a lot of trouble just to watch us bathe!"
Lu Zhe smiled wryly, "If the tub is this deep, wouldn't that be unfriendly to you?"
"How so?"
"You'd have to jump up just to breathe, right?"
Seeing Tang Xiaoguo's annoyed expression, a simple idea came to Lu Zhe. "Xiaoguo, come help me plaster the bottom!"
"I won't help... Hey!"
"Be good!" Lu Zhe had already lifted her up by the ankles and held her upside down. Her skirt dropped down.
"What are you doing?"
Shen Bing laughed behind her palm. "Let me bring you the cement!"
Tang Xiaoguo yelled, "I'm a fairy. How can a fairy do menial labor like plastering? And you're seeing my underwear!"
While she said so, she secretly berated herself. She should not have worn granny panties. Compared to the class leader, she was clearly far less cunning.
] This is a dark fantasy-themed dating simulation game. The main gameplay involves containing various monster girls and investigating the truth of a world shrouded in mist alongside your companions. However, due to his love for the dark and bizarre atmosphere, Luo Wei ended up turning a dating game into a detective mystery game. Women? Women only slow down his quickdraw! To Luo Wei, the female leads in the game are more like tools to perfectly clear levels and squeeze out rewards. For Luo Wei, flirting with every girl he meets and then discarding them is standard procedure. Worried about characters losing affection points? No need. With his maxed-out charm stat, Luo Wei is practically a "human incubus." A little psychological manipulation and those points come right back. It's a bit scummy, but the paper cutout heroines in the game won't actually come at him with real cleavers. However... Luo Wei has transmigrated. He's accidentally entered the second playthrough of this game. His past actions have caused all the girls to transform into terrifying yanderes. Due to the game's setting, most of the heroines he once contained are "troubled girls." Obsessive, twisted, mentally unstable, all aggressive yanderes... The type who will kill you if they can't have you... Luo Wei wants to cry but has no tears left. "I really just want to survive..." In short, this is a story of battling wits and engaging in a love-hate relationship with yanderes.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
