Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

15: Chapter 15: Cutting Timber and Picking Fruit, Good News 15: Chapter 15: Cutting Timber and Picking Fruit, Good News Grand Ancestor Long Fist is divided into four paths:

Small Fight, Grand Fight, Free Fist, and United Battle.

In his previous life, Xia Hong mainly practiced this set of fist techniques.

Small Fight focuses on short strikes, mainly defensive.

Grand Fight combines fists, kicks, and waist into one, focusing power on a single point for offense.

Free Fist does not adhere to a fixed routine, aiming to heavily wound the enemy; head, fingers, palms, fists, elbows, shoulders, knees, legs, hips, and arms can all be weapons, valuing timing for decisive strikes.

United Battle integrates battle techniques, suitable for multi-enemy engagements.

Long Fist was acclaimed in the past life as the most practical martial arts routine for good reason.

It not only covers attack, defense, and killing but all four strategies can be applied to weaponry.

Xia Hong had already mastered the four routines in his past life, making it easy to teach Yuan Cheng and the other five men.

After teaching for a while, and through observation, Xia Hong gained a general understanding of the six men’s conditions.

Yuan Cheng and Yue Feng both have the most robust physiques, each over two meters tall.

Although they appear less robust due to long-term hunger, it’s believed they’ll recover quickly once properly nourished.

The Small Fight techniques, with minimal movements and lower posture requirements, are evidently more suitable for the two of them.

Lin Kai, Qiu Peng, and Xu Ning have more balanced body types, with long reach in fists and kicks, and are more agile than the first two, thus suited for the Grand Fight combining fists, kicks, and waist.

The smallest and most agile Lu Yang, with exceptional timing perception, leans towards Free Fist.

Having learned the fist techniques, the six were naturally excited and immediately began practicing, utilizing the energy from the Cold Beast Flesh in their stomachs.

Having finished teaching the six, Xia Hong, after nightfall, grabbed a stone axe and headed out of the cave again.

The original plan was to go out and find Crystal Fruit last night, but unexpectedly ran into Da Shi Camp’s hunting, albeit returning safely with the Snow Mane, not a single Crystal Fruit was picked.

Before having Hunting Ability, Cold Beast Flesh is a rarity; Crystal Fruit is the staple food, thus Xia Hong had to go to the Ice Tree to pick some.

Additionally, the camp’s wood is nearly depleted.

Having only 15 units of wood left after moving from the original cave.

Lasting for over ten days is already quite remarkable.

The small fire pit consumes two units daily; if the camp hadn’t conserved by not lighting fires at night, that little wood wouldn’t have lasted until now.

Compared to the first time, entering Redwood Ridge this time, Xia Hong was much more familiar with the route.

Relying on memories from the last time, he quickly found the location of the Ice Tree.

Xia Hong approached, surveyed the surroundings, confirmed it was safe, then climbed the tree, took out a leather bag, and began picking fruit.

All the fruits on the tree were mature Crystal Fruits, each about the size of a fist, weighing around half a pound; Xia Hong quickly filled over a thousand pounds, and the leather bag in his hand grew heavier and heavier.

Finally, when the bag was completely full, Xia Hong stopped.

With the Crystal Fruit picked, the next task was woodcutting.

Carrying the Crystal Fruit, Xia Hong began heading back; only when almost exiting Redwood Ridge did he start searching for suitable trees around.

It sounds like just cutting down trees, but in reality, it’s not that simple.

Ice Tree is definitely not to be cut—firstly, there might be a Cold Beast on it; secondly, they’re a food source for the camp with already limited numbers, cutting them would be akin to cutting off one’s own livelihood.

Golden Frost Trees are also out of the question—principally, they’re too sturdy for his stone axe to cut through; additionally, Cold Beasts love to sleep on them at night, disturbing them would not end well.

That leaves only the Red Frost Trees as targets.

The outer area of Redwood Ridge indeed has mostly Red Frost Trees, accounting for about ninety percent of them.

But the problem is, these Red Frost Trees are all too large.

Wherever you look, there are trunks with diameters of four or five meters, even six or seven meters, with heights of fifty or sixty meters seen everywhere; deeper inside, Xia Hong even saw ones with diameters exceeding ten meters, and some even more exaggerated.

Seeing these towering giant trees, Xia Hong wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

It can be foreseen that as the camp system advances, the resources required for upgrades will definitely increase, so these seemingly inexhaustible trees should be great news.

But the problem is, he can’t take any of these trees with him right now.

He’d love to choose a thick one to cut, but let’s not mention whether he can chop it down—even if he could, he wouldn’t have the strength to carry it back.

After searching for over an hour, just as Xia Hong’s fear of giant objects was about to flare up, he finally found a suitable Red Frost Tree.

“Over three meters thick, more than twenty meters long, similar to the ones burned in the previous cave, bringing it back shouldn’t be a problem.”

Xia Hong set down the full sack of Crystal Fruit, took the stone axe from his waist, first scraped off a layer of ice from the bark, then spat into his hands and diligently began the task of cutting the tree.

Scrape…

Scrape…

Scrape…

Scrape…

Three hours later

Bang…

The giant tree fell, sending up a spray of snow.

Completely soaked and suffering from backache and exhaustion, Xia Hong walked forward, looking at the felled Red Frost Tree, a disbelieving expression on his breathless face.

Only now did he realize why Xia Ding and their logging team of thirteen only managed to bring back five or six trees each time they went out at night.

Having just broken through the Logging Realm, Xia Hong took three hours to cut down just one tree.

And almost to the point of exhaustion.

He could clearly sense that his body couldn’t undergo such intense activity again in a short time.

Meaning a single Logging Realm can only cut down one tree per night at most.

This still assumes ensuring safety.

And the Red Frost Tree is already the easiest to cut in the outer area.

Before heading out tonight, Xia Hong hadn’t ruled out the idea of gathering the 200 units of wood needed to upgrade the small fire pit in one go, leaving the additional 50 units of Iron for later.

But only after cutting the trees did he realize how hard those 200 units of wood would be.

The moment the giant tree was cut down, the camp system’s resource bar changed.

[Resource: Wood 5 Coal 0 Iron 0 Silver 0 Gold 0]

After an entire night’s effort, almost worn out, he managed just five units of wood.

“The only way to increase efficiency is by raising the number of people; once Xia Chuan and Yuan Cheng break through, the pace should pick up.

Slowly, no rush.”

Xia Hong comforted himself with a few words, rested for a while before getting up, tying the bag of Crystal Fruit to the tree, then hoisting the tree back to the camp.

After encountering the Snow Mane, and now seeing Xia Hong bringing back a tree along with over a thousand pounds of Crystal Fruit, the camp members didn’t react much.

Of course, now that the depleted wood and food supplies were replenished, everyone’s hearts felt more at ease.

Xia Hong understood that without improving their strength, there wouldn’t be significant changes at the camp.

So in the days to come, aside from utilizing the remaining Cold Beast Flesh to train, he made nightly excursions.

Of course, not every outing was fruitful.

The Ice Tree he knew the location of was emptied after picking from it three times.

The next time it matures remains uncertain, so Xia Hong began expanding his search area.

Fortunately, over the next period, he discovered two more trees laden with Crystal Fruit.

In total, he made six trips to pick all the Crystal Fruit from the two trees, bringing the camp’s Crystal Fruit stockpile to over seven thousand pounds.

With more food, not only did everyone’s stomachs get full, but smiles gradually appeared on their faces, no longer as gloomy as before.

Besides Crystal Fruit, Xia Hong cut down a tree each night and brought it back.

After twenty days, the wood resource climbed from 5 all the way to 87.

Although possibilities for Gold, Silver, Coal, and Iron remained at zero, the ability to obtain wood posed no difficulty anymore; Xia Hong remained quite pleased.

Thus, following a steady routine until the twenty-fourth day, dragging a tree back to the camp, Xia Hong heard good news just as he walked into the cave.