New discovery!

All the work and thinking made me tired.

We have reached the point of exhaustion, so we went back to the Floating Mountain and asked the cooks to prepare meals.

There surprisingly a few survivors who were good at cooking. And with only salt and wood fire, they made good work of the fishes caught earlier.

We maintained a rule in fishing, we would throw all the small fishes back into the water.

These small fishes will take time to grow back and become big and anyways we couldn't get even a small piece of meat from small fishes.

After the meal, I was resting near the bonfire, when a cook placed a metal container on the remaining fire to boil water.

The fire that was almost gone immediately became stable and bigger in size.

These changes caught me off guard.

I later went forward to inspect to see the cause of the sudden increase in the flame.

The flame increased even without adding more or additional fuel (where fuel here is wood).

In the light or pale color of the flames, I saw a piece of burning cloth or rag.

I picked a metal pole nearby the fire and dragged the rag out of the fire to take a clear look at it.

Normally even if the rag was soaked in oil and then set aflame it will burn in the same manner but it will give out a sort of smell that can be differentiated from that of burning wood.

But here no strange smell is coming even when I was sitting beside the flame and even as I leaned forward for earlier inspection.

I tried to put off the flame by stamping it on it, but it was of no use.

The flame kept on burning.

The rag seems fine except for a few wrinkles on it.

Then, I poured a bit of water on it and it stopped burning.

After closer inspection, I found out that the rag was weird as it was not even burnt black even after a few minutes of burning.

I took it into my hand and observed closely.

I couldn't make out what kind of thing it was and there was a smell of salt on it...I thought that when the fishes were fried on the bonfire some of the salt fell on the rag.

But no smell of any sort of fuel made me unsure of the reason for the strange happening...

I then looked at the cook who placed the container on the bonfire.

I asked him if he cleaned the container before and if any chance of any fuel like oil etc were stuck at the bottom of the container.

He said there was no such thing and he cleaned the container thoroughly before placing it on the bonfire.

I asked him if he placed the container near any fuel after cleaning.

He still replied in the same way but he started thinking about the things that happened after cleaning.

He finally remembered that he placed the container on a rock nearby the bonfire to get a proper grip of the container handles.

We went to the rock to find there were a few pieces of dried algae on it.

The new type of algae is a mutated or evolved form of the previous normal algae.

They die if left outside water for a long time and if it has no water in their body.

These were the first batch of algae that we caught and brought back after we discovered the purification properties of the new algae.

Also, these algae dried up because we were busy finding and storing more of such algae.

The water was squeezed out of them and then they were placed on the rock, later they were forgotten in the excitement and finally dried up, so we couldn't do anything about them.

Even when placed in water they will not absorb water after they dried off one time.

For these new algae drying means death.

So when taking care of these algae, we had to be careful.

That is one of the reasons for asking few survivors to take care of them carefully and also give them enough rest in between the purification process.

We cleared a spot that had a pit in the middle of a huge rock and poured water and placed the algae in it so that they will feel that there is abundant water surrounding their bodies.

They could only survive in water with enough carbon dioxide.

Though they can absorb some carbon dioxide from the air, the quantity seems not enough for them.

So we had to change the water regularly. and this formed a complete cycle.

The dried-out algae were left out on the rock as they were useless.

But we might have found a new use for them.

these dried-out algae might be useful as fuel.

This, if proved true will be a piece of very good news for us as there was less wood in stock.

I experimented on it by lighting it on fire and it immediately caught fire.

Then I put out the fire with water and cut a small piece of it to see the interior structure of the dried-out algae. It looked like a dried-out piece of wood and was like a hard-pressed sponge.

I then lit up a piece and then put it in the bonfire and it burned the same as before.

I continued to note the time taken for this piece to burn out and after many similar observations, I found that even one square centimeter of dried algae will burn for a long time about 1 hour.

And we need several pieces depending on the area of the container placed above it or the area of the bonfire needed.

Thus. our problem with fuel is also solved.

So, from now whenever we make a bonfire or lit a fire, we just need to add a few pieces of dried algae to make the fire last longer than usual.

Happy for this new discovery, we went forward and tried to finish the remaining part of the bridge to the barrier around the Floating mountain.

The construction of the bridge was not an easy task.

Before starting the construction we had to check out the direction in which we need to construct the bridge and also the position from which the bridge will be connected with the Mountain or will it be connected to the Floating steps and so on...

We know that the water below might have many unknown things (like fishes which can jump out of the water of the fishes that can glide above the water and so on...) so we ruled out connecting the bridge with Floating steps.

The direction was another problem.

We couldn't construct the bridge in a random direction.

So, after the surrounding dust started to clear up, we observed the surroundings and places near the barrier and found out a side was more clearer than the other directions.

This was strange and we decided to build the bridge in that direction.

The bridge was constructed straight from the base of the Floating Mountain to the outer part of the barrier in that direction.

We had to do this carefully as there is a chance of falling into the water below and that might prove dangerous.

So, we always tied one end of the rope to the boulder we were dragging and the other end to our waist.

This ensured that even if we slip we will not fall down into the water.

Those who slipped were like hanging on a one rope swing that children use to play in parks etc.

We placed similar but smaller boulders CB1 (CB1 = carrying capacity of one person) above or near the Floating Platform to ensure the safety of those who were fishing.

Now anyone going out had a rope around their waist with the other end tied to a CB1 boulder. They were like children with a balloon (with a long rope) tied to his waist.

During these fishing sessions, we got a lot of miscellaneous things from water.

Twisted metal parts, floating objects, and lightweight plastic stuff.

Small pieces of plastic were the most useless and most numerous among things found.

Even inside the fishes, we caught in the net, Plastic pieces were found inside their stomach and this was not a good sight.

As we got nearer to the barrier the surrounding got stranger and we could feel the difference in our surroundings...