HUN Chapter 76: Day Eighty

On this milestone of day eighty.

On the morning shores of Chilko Lake, bitter cold winds swept across Clay's sturdy log shelter, producing deep howling sounds.

Inside, Clay's figure moved in the dim light, his movements skilled yet carrying a mechanical numbness.

He first added a few pieces of split dry wood to the nearly extinguished stove, then put on his heavy coat and walked out of the shelter.

He then went to the shoreline gill net he had expended considerable energy setting up, skillfully using the retrieval rope to pull back the net that was covered with a thin layer of ice.

The gill net was empty. The shore was beginning to freeze, and the gill net would soon be unusable, but Clay seemed unconcerned about this.

He then slowly pulled up the fishing hooks he had previously set from the cold lake water.

Hanging on the hook was a pike weighing about three to four pounds, weakly swaying its tail.

This should have been a decent catch, enough to support his protein needs for the day.

But Clay's face showed no trace of joy.

He simply expressionlessly removed the fish from the hook, cleanly processed it with his knife, then reset the fishing hook and dragged the fish back to his shelter.

"Day eighty, guys."

Clay placed the fish on a wooden board, speaking to the camera in a tone as flat as a weather report.

"Hmm. Another fish. Sufficient calories. Sufficient fuel. Everything seems under control."

His words were concise, devoid of any emotion.

For this professional hunting guide, survival seemed to have become a series of calculable and executable formulas.

He cut the fish into pieces, skewered them on sticks, and slowly roasted them over the fire.

While waiting for the fish to cook, he took out a small object from his chest.

He carefully opened it, revealing a somewhat curled photograph inside.

In the photo were his wife and two children with brilliant smiles, set against the backdrop of their hometown Montana's vast ranch and blue sky.

He just quietly, hungrily gazed at his family's smiling faces in the photo. Those eyes that had remained steadfast in the wilderness now revealed a rare trace of confusion.

"What am I doing here?"

A question emerged without warning from deep within his heart, then like vines, quickly entangled his entire thoughts.

He spoke to the camera, his voice low, as if confessing to himself, "I came here to prove I could do it."

"I hunted a deer, I can steadily catch fish, I built this damn sturdy log cabin. I've proven to everyone, and to myself, that I can survive on this land."

He paused, setting aside the half-eaten grilled fish.

"One million dollars? Yes, that's a lot of money."

"But after staying here for eighty days, you discover that loneliness can make many things lose their original color. Money now seems like just a string of numbers printed on paper."

His gaze fell on that photograph again, his eyes filled with indissoluble longing.

"I miss my wife, I miss my children. I want to hear them making noise in the house, smell my wife's apple pie baking, chase cattle and sheep with my sons on Montana's ranch... instead of being here, alone, gnawing on this damn grilled fish that always tastes the same!"

"I feel now that I'm not undertaking a survival challenge," his voice carried a trace of self-mockery and weariness.

"I'm serving time in a scenic but completely uninhabited prison. Doing the same things every day, seeing no one to talk to. This... this can drive a person insane."

In the following days, Clay's behavioral patterns quietly changed.

He no longer actively explored new areas or attempted to set more complex hunting traps as before.

All his actions were simplified to the minimum maintenance level.

Each morning, he would routinely check the shoreline gill net.

If there were fish, he'd take them back for that day's food. If not, he didn't care, because there were still some dried fish in the shelter, enough to fill his stomach.

Then he would patrol those traps set in distant areas targeting small mammals.

He spent most of his time collecting firewood, as if wanting to numb his lonely heart through this pure, thoughtless physical labor.

"I don't know how much longer I can hold out."

He sat at his shelter's entrance, speaking calmly to the camera, "Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Now, I'm leaving all decisions to God and luck."

"If in the next few days I can still pull big ones from the lake like before, maybe God thinks I should stay and continue this game."

"If... if there are consecutive zero catches... that might be Him telling me it's time to go home, Clay. Your fight is over."

After speaking, he fell into prolonged silence.

At the other end of Chilko Lake, Lin Yu'an's camp presented a completely different scene.

Since seven days ago, during that thrilling life-and-death battle on day seventy-three, Lin Yu'an's entire aura had undergone a qualitative transformation.

If before he was a wilderness survival novice with excellent theoretical skills, now he was more like a true old hunter who had become one with this land, radiating powerful confidence from his bones!

The psychological elevation that came from life-and-death combat with a top predator could only be understood through baptism by blood!

The successful bear hunt had completely washed away the last trace of fear toward this wilderness from deep within his heart!

Unlike Clay's numbness, quite the opposite, his food processing and consumption had become a daily routine full of ritual.

Today's breakfast was bear fat pan-fried venison steak with roasted wild onions.

He first used his homemade chainsaw hand saw to cut off a piece from a block of frozen solid bear fat.

He hadn't rendered all the bear oil at once. In this cold weather, neither fat nor bear meat feared any spoilage.

In the heated stainless steel pot, a small piece of milky white bear fat quickly melted.

He placed several evenly thick slices of bear meat into it, along with several wild onions beside them. The onions quickly became soft and translucent under the bear oil's frying, emitting a fragrant aroma.

Lin Yu'an quietly enjoyed this high-calorie, high-protein breakfast.

Perhaps as an aftereffect of the intense battle with the black bear, even while chewing food, his gaze would habitually scan the tree line around his shelter like radar.

This state was exactly like those old veterans who had experienced brutal wars. Even when resting in the safest environments, their body's senses and muscle memory remained in "standby" mode.

His relaxation was only on the mental level, while his body was like a beast always ready to hunt!

After finishing breakfast, Lin Yu'an began today's daily work.

First, he had to check those snare traps reset on the "rabbit trails."

Wearing his homemade snowshoes, he walked extremely steadily and quickly through knee-deep snow.

Today's luck was good. One trap had successfully caught a plump snowshoe rabbit.

He didn't immediately take it back, but skillfully processed it and hung some fresh rabbit organs near where that young red fox frequently appeared around his shelter.

After all, he couldn't be certain whether that little fox had intentionally diverted trouble or given an early warning out of goodwill.

Lin Yu'an leaned toward the early warning theory, because the little fox's appearance had indeed given him more preparation time.

Completely different from Clay's "leaving it to fate," Lin Yu'an was confronting Chilko Lake's harsh winter with an extremely proactive stance.

He wasn't just storing food and fuel, but even began using bear resources for more creations.

He carefully rendered, filtered, and stored large chunks of bear fat in ceramic jars.

"Guys, since coming to Alone, what I'm most satisfied with so far isn't hunting a deer and a bear, but discovering pottery making in the early stages, so that I now have enough ceramic vessels to store various items."

He used snow to carefully clean the blood from that massive bear hide, packed it with the bear head in willow baskets, and buried them together in the snow.

In this weather, it definitely wasn't suitable for tanning the bear hide.

The ultimate showdown between Clay and Lin Yu'an had evolved into a cruel psychological war of attrition about willpower, about who could persevere longer in this endless loneliness!

Clay's heart was being eroded by solitude, his survival becoming passive maintenance.

Lin Yu'an, after hunting the black bear, had completed a psychological transformation. His survival was a more aggressive conquest of the wilderness.

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