King of the Wilderness

On this day, Lin Yu’an didn’t wake up from piercing cold or the howling wind.

He naturally opened his eyes in an absolute deep silence and warmth.

Inside the shelter, the light was dim, and the wood in the fireplace had long burned out.

But the thick stone walls and the roof’s insulation layer still firmly locked in the heat from the previous night within this small space.

He reached out his hand and touched the wooden wall beside him. The touch was warm and moist, with none of the piercing cold from outside.

”Good morning, everyone.” He spoke to the camera, his voice exceptionally clear due to a good night’s sleep.

”This is my sixteenth day in Labrador, and it feels... fantastic.”

”However, with passive traps no longer reliable, I must adopt a new food acquisition strategy!”

He stood up, stretched his muscles, walked to the corner’s makeshift rack, and picked up the gloves hanging there from last night, now warm and dry from a night’s baking.

He didn’t rush out but instead calmly reignited the fire in the fireplace, then put on a pot to boil a kettle of hot water.

He took out a few Labrador tea leaves and tossed them into a cup, letting a refreshing aroma begin to fill the shelter.

Reheating the leftover mussel soup from yesterday, he took out two Bulrush Roots from his bag and directly put them into the fire coals to roast.

A few minutes later, sipping a cup of hot tea and eating hot mussel soup and crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside roasted Bulrush Roots, he enjoyed a truly ”hot breakfast tea.”

After finishing breakfast, he went to the door, pulled aside the heavy wooden latch, and pushed open the thick wooden door with effort.

”Creak—”

Accompanied by a reassuring friction sound, the door was pushed open.

A gust of biting cold wind mixed with snow foam, along with a somewhat dazzling snowy white world, rushed in instantly! Creating a stark contrast with the warmth and dimness inside.

He squinted his eyes, looking out at the slowly freezing lake surface.

”The completion of the shelter marks the end of the defensive phase.”

He looked at the camera, his tone became incredibly firm: ”From today, our strategy must change. I need to shift from passive survival to proactive management!”

He didn’t immediately rush out to hunt. There was a preparatory task he needed to complete before hunting, which was to make a pair of snowshoes for himself.

Lin Yu’an planned to make classic ”teardrop-shaped” snowshoes, which perform best in deep, fluffy snow.

”The key to making snowshoes is the frame, which must have two seemingly contradictory properties: it needs to be extremely tough yet flexible.”

He dressed appropriately and walked into the quiet forest covered with white snow. He didn’t look at those tall and straight spruce trees, as their wood was too brittle.

His target was those broadleaf trees tenaciously growing under the forest canopy.

”In a place like Labrador, the best choices are birch or willow shoots.”

”Their fibers are long and tough, high in water content, ideal for thermal bending treatment.”

Finally, he found a dense patch of willows by the river. He selected two healthy branches roughly two meters long and of uniform thickness, sawed them off at the base with a handsaw, and then dragged them back to the shelter.

First, he carefully placed the two long willow branches above the fireplace, letting the heat from the flames evenly bake the wood’s interior.

When the branches were slightly hot and even emitted a faint wood fragrance, he took one down, stepped on the middle section with his foot, and then, with stable and continuous force, slowly pulled it upward with both hands.

The sturdy willow wood made a slight ”creak” sound under his force, forming a graceful arc like a fully drawn bow.

He dared not exert excessive force, only maintaining this arc, allowing the wood’s internal fibers to gradually adapt and extend.

Then, he placed the branch back over the fire to heat again before bending it once more.

After repeating this process four or five times, he seized the perfect moment to cross the two ends of the branch and used a pre-prepared rope to tie them tightly in place.

A perfect ”teardrop-shaped” snowshoe frame with a slightly narrow front and a rounded back was formed. He used the same method to create another entirely symmetrical frame.

He placed these two frames in the corner of the shelter to continue shaping, a process that would take at least several hours.

Once they had cooled sufficiently, Lin Yu’an began weaving directly.

He first carved shallow grooves with a knife at the front and back ends of the frame to secure the starting points of the warp threads.

Then, he took out the tough nylon threads and started laying the longitudinal warp threads.

He tied one end of the thread tightly in the groove at the front end of the frame, pulled it straight, wrapped it around the crossbeam at the back end of the frame, and then pulled it back to wrap it at another position at the front end.

Repeating this process quickly filled the frame with rows of warp threads strung as tautly as strings, parallel to each other.

Next came weaving the transverse weft threads, the part of the entire process that truly tested skill.

He took another long piece of nylon thread, started from one side of the frame, and, like an experienced fisherman mending a net, began shuttling back and forth between the warp threads.

He used a winding weaving method, tightening the weft thread around each warp thread it crossed to form a locked knot before proceeding.