Chapter 397: Chapter 198: Wait, Everyone Else Is Still Struggling with Wilderness Survival, and You’re Already Making Artworks? [First Update!]

The blend of light green with yellow is a sophisticated Morandi color scheme.

Honestly, Li Younan never expected the final product to look like this.

His first batch of ceramics mainly consisted of tableware, including pots, bowls, basins, kettles, cups, and jars.

Then he continued to fire four major items using pottery firing methods—one was a pot similar to a sandpot set, a frying pan, a soup pot, and another was a special design where charcoal could be placed, resembling a little volcano-shaped earthen hotpot.

With these four cooking utensils, Li Younan could basically cook all the dishes he wanted.

As for other plates, bowls, kettles, and cups, Li Younan had them all glazed.

While demonstrating these ceramic tools in front of the camera, he educated his audience: "To be honest, my ceramic-making skills are quite limited; this is the best I can do at the moment."

"If anyone is interested in ceramics, you can visit some of China’s famous ceramic sanctuaries, like Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, Cizhou in Hebei, or Longquan in Zhejiang... These places have been preserving ceramic-making techniques since ancient times."

Taking out this batch of ceramics put Li Younan in a naturally good mood.

At noon, he prepared a delicious pan-fried trout for himself, paired with blueberry jam, which offered a unique flavor.

In front of the camera, he made a pot of floral tea with the newly crafted teapot—there were quite a few flowers and wild tea leaves in the forest suitable for making tea, which Li Younan had collected quite a bit recently, mixing them together to make finished tea leaves.

Now that the ceramics were done, he specifically used a jar to store these tea leaves.

Since tea isn’t food, the consumption is relatively small, and he has enough tea to last through winter.

Sipping hot tea and eating fragrant pan-fried trout, life felt incredibly relaxed.

But this relaxed feeling didn’t last long.

He sighed slightly—as human desires are always endless.

Previously, eating dried pan-fried fish every day, he thought about making fish dishes in different ways.

Later, with clarified butter, his wish was momentarily fulfilled, but having been eating butter-fried fish for days, with occasional fish stock, eating fish daily became bland.

He filleted the unfinished fish, put the bones with wild ginger into the soup pot, and prepared to make a pot of fish soup.

Slow simmering on low heat takes a long time.

During this period, his mind began planning to go further away to hunt large animals.

He had tried it once before; although he didn’t catch a large animal, he brought back a milk-producing ewe, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

Various things delayed him afterward, and he hadn’t gone a second time.

Besides wanting to change the taste, Li Younan planned to make himself a bath barrel.

Currently, Li Younan’s house only has a table, a fireplace, a bed, and a woodpile area, but it’s generally spacious enough to place the bath barrel inside the house.

During this time, for the cleanliness-loving Li Younan, the most painful thing was not being able to bathe.

Because the weather was still fairly warm, he could strip off and wipe his body with a towel during the warmer daytime, but this cleaning wasn’t as comfortable as soaking in a bath.

The freshwater lake on the plateau was icy and murky; it would be foolish to bathe directly in the lake.

In fact, all of Li Younan’s drinking water came from glacier meltwater, and had to be boiled before drinking.

He had been considering making a barrel for quite a while but hadn’t put it into action.

Compared to making other furniture and building a wooden house, the bath barrel wasn’t that urgent, and crafting a large bath barrel would be time-consuming.

Cutting wood into suitable pieces was troublesome without proper tools to create curved planks.

He planned to hunt a large animal first, then return to make a wooden bath barrel.

Unlike other contestants relying solely on luck to find large animal tracks, as an expert zoologist familiar with wildlife, and knowledgeable of geography and terrain, Li Younan could accurately analyze information to judge animal tracks, just like when he searched for carbohydrates nearby.

Previously, he hadn’t had time and food wasn’t in shortage; now he can focus on this task.

But before that, he needs to change strategy, catching more fish at once to reserve food—even though he’s confident, he can’t guarantee success in one day.

Therefore, he’s planning to spend at least a week searching for prey.

Today, he decides to continue exploring the upper area of the valley where he found Little Fire Dragon.

If his guess is correct, going further up will lead to a flat area, where there’s a good chance of finding large animal tracks.

Li Younan estimated it would take about two hours to reach that slope from the shelter, with a round trip taking at least 4 hours, plus search time, meaning he would need to spend at least 6 hours outdoors to have results.

Honestly, going so far from the shelter to hunt large wild animals is quite rare among all contestants.

But there’s no choice; this location randomly placed by the program group doesn’t have many large animals.

The advantage is that except for one lynx visiting the camp one night, there hasn’t been any other large carnivorous animal disturbances, and as for bears, not a trace of one has been found.