That night, Ling Shuying slept fitfully.
The threat of an unknown species sharing the deserted island with her kept her nerves on edge.
It felt as if the savage existed within her very consciousness, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
As soon as the sky grew dark, she retreated into her room.
She locked the door with Chain Algae, barricaded it with the sofa, and secured the entire perimeter of the house before huddling into a corner of the study to force herself to sleep.
Even then, she remained half-awake, dozing lightly until dawn, when she finally slipped into a brief, deep slumber.
After a meager night’s rest, Ling Shuying decided she could no longer put this off.
No matter what kind of entity she was dealing with, the unknown was always more terrifying than the known.
This lurking mystery in the shadows had stretched her nerves taut as a bowstring.
The island’s natural abundance had delayed her full adaptation to wilderness survival.
But now, she was gradually adjusting, transitioning from her old role as a scholar into a survivor—or rather, a hunter.
Her gaze grew heavy with resolve.
Whether she was about to face a savage, a wild beast, or refugees from other islands in the Wave Ruins, she needed a handy weapon for self-defense.
Although her strength and speed were currently terrifyingly high, having a tool was always better than fighting bare-handed.
In a primitive environment, her simplest and most effective weapon was the Sword Algae Throwing Belt she had crafted a few days ago.
However, that was far from enough.
Ling Shuying scoured her memory, searching for any helpful clues from the textbooks she had once studied.
She pondered over primitive environments and weapons.
In a flash of insight, she recalled—or rather, visualized—a primitive spear.
Its shaft was crude and wild, but the tip was sharp enough to pierce through any living creature.
It was a spear she had once seen in a museum of human history, unearthed from the He Mu Du Ruins.
The spearhead was willow-leaf-shaped and made of stone.
A long time had passed since that museum visit, yet the spear appeared right before her eyes.
The color and grain of the wood, the jagged, irregular edges of the spearhead, and the scuff marks on its surface all surfaced vividly in her mind.
Ling Shuying touched her head in mild astonishment, wondering if this was hyperthymesia.
She didn’t really need to guess—it was undoubtedly Qing Ling acting up again.
As her diet had improved recently, the abilities Qing Ling granted her seemed to have strengthened as well.
Hyperthymesia was an incredibly rare medical phenomenon where the brain functioned with an automatic memory system.
People with this condition lacked the ability to forget.
When recalling memories, it was as if they were reliving the moment entirely.
The actions, expressions, words, and tones of the people involved, their own feelings, and even atmospheric details like the weather, scents in the air, and temperature were all perfectly authentic.
This automatic memory capacity left the brains of hyperthymesia patients constantly flooded with useless, overwhelming information, often making their lives a living hell.
However, it was clear that she had only ‘seen’ this spear through active recall, completely free of such side effects.
“Qing Ling, how many more tricks do you have up your sleeve that I don’t know about?” Ling Shuying asked aloud, though Qing Ling remained silent as usual.
At least she now had a blueprint for her weapon.
Scanning her surroundings, she searched for a spear shaft of suitable length and thickness.
She soon found a branch near the water tower.
It was over a meter long and relatively even in thickness.
Though a bit light in her hand, it barely qualified as a viable shaft.
Next was the spearhead.
There were many options for this—stone, animal bone, fishbone, or horn.
As long as it was sturdy enough, any of these could be ground into a proper spearhead.
Ling Shuying still had some Obsidian she had gathered from the mountains a few days prior.
While Obsidian was razor-sharp, it was far too brittle.
Forget piercing armor; it would snap with a light bend.
A regular stone would be a much better choice.
Thus, she found a rocky patch near her house and picked out a relatively well-sized stone.
Raising it high, she smashed it viciously against the ground.
It shattered completely, bursting into eraser-sized pebbles.
Ling Shuying sighed helplessly.
She still couldn’t control her own strength properly.
It seemed it would take quite a bit of time and effort to smash out a stone of the perfect size.
And so, she began to endlessly repeat the same motions: picking up a stone, raising it, and smashing it down.
She continuously adjusted her force, throwing the stones at angles calculated by Qing Ling.
Sweat slowly trickled down her forehead.
Finally, on her fifth try, she obtained a shard of the exact size she wanted.
The stone fragment was practically perfect, naturally bearing a willow-leaf shape. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
All it needed was some fine-tuning and grinding to become a proper spearhead—sharp and tough.
Holding it in one hand, she used another stone as a carving tool, continuously chipping away at the edges according to Qing Ling’s calculated angles until the spearhead’s shape was fully defined.
The final step was to sharpen it.
Ling Shuying headed to the beach and sat on a reef jutting out of the water, using the seawater as a lubricant to grind the stone.
Just like sharpening a knife, she angled the blade at thirty degrees, splashed seawater onto it, and rubbed it diagonally against a relatively flat section of the reef.
She ground one side first, then the other, until both faces were polished to a sheen.
Ling Shuying ran her finger lightly across the edge twice.
Feeling its newfound sharpness, she hopped off the reef in satisfaction.
Now, all she had to do was bind the shaft and the spearhead together, and her first weapon would be complete.
As she wondered what to use for the binding, her foot suddenly snagged on something, nearly sending her tumbling.
Steadying her gaze, she looked behind her and saw half a bone protruding firmly from the sand.
It was semi-curved, about two fingers thick, and sun-baked dry; it had clearly been buried there for a long time.
Ling Shuying jumped in fright, wondering, “What is this?
What a massive bone!” A sudden guess flashed through her mind.
She hurriedly set down the stone and began digging with her bare hands.
As she dug deeper, the skeletal structure gradually revealed itself.
The Qing Ling model constantly shifted in her mind before finally locking onto a single creature—a whale.
There was only one kind of animal with this size and skeletal structure that would appear on a beach: a whale that had once beached itself on the shore.
However, it had been buried in the sand for so long that it was severely weathered, making it impossible to identify the exact species.
Its size wasn’t overly large.
She wondered whether it was a beluga, an orca, or some other juvenile whale, and what had caused it to become stranded here.
Ling Shuying stared blankly, her thoughts racing.
Long before the Great Subsidence, the oceans had been ruthlessly devastated by humanity, making survival exceedingly difficult for marine life.
Whales were forced to migrate due to habitat pollution, dying en route, or starving to death from shattered food chains, or tragically ending up as floating carcasses after being hunted by whalers.
Yet the most suffocating and shocking phenomenon was when entire pods surged onto the beaches, collectively stranding themselves in mass suicides.
To this day, the reasons behind this remained a mystery.
After the Great Subsidence, the majority of humanity had perished, and the industrial system had largely collapsed.
With pollution levels drastically reduced, marine life had finally gained a substantial respite.
So why exactly had this whale run aground?