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An eight-hundred-thousand reward, back in normal Sheng Tang Group days, would have been enough to make a bottom-rung salesman work himself to death for six or seven years.
Offer enough money, and someone will always step up. In civilized society, that was an iron law.
But right here, on this desert-island beach where even a compass spun like a fan, it had become a huge joke.
The sea wind howled.
The temperature had dropped below ten degrees.
That group of urban elites, dressed in thin shirts, tight skirts, and even one-piece swimsuits, was now being slowly tortured.
Extreme hunger, dehydration, and rapidly draining body heat left everyone shivering violently on the edge of collapse.
Click.
In the darkness, a beam of cold white light snapped on.
Zhang Tao, trembling, pressed the switch on a tactical flashlight in his hand.
He had just found it while rummaging for dead coconuts by the tree line, dug out from a pile of broken wreckage.
The beam wavered across the beach, and its pale light swept over face after face, frozen blue, lips dark purple, like ghosts.
“Brother Qiang… Ms. Su…” Zhang Tao’s teeth chattered as he held the flashlight forward. “I found a flashlight! This light is really bright. I’ll hold it for you while we go get some dry wood and drill…”
Before he could finish, a gust of force swept in.
Wang Qiang snatched the flashlight away.
“What the hell good is a flashlight!” Wang Qiang jumped up and down with cold, his eyes blood-red. “Can a flashlight roast you like a fire? Can it keep you warm?”
He turned and cursed at the male colleagues sprawled on the ground.
“Eight hundred thousand! Ms. Su said it herself — whoever lights a fire gets the money! All of you, move!”
Wang Qiang shoved the flashlight backhanded to Li Bin beside him.
“You, hold the light! I refuse to believe this. Primitive monkeys could drill wood to make fire, and we, a bunch of highly educated people, can’t handle a few broken sticks!”
Zhang Tao froze where he stood.
He had wanted to use this flashlight to show his face in front of Ms. Su, and to take charge of the fire-making work, snatching the eight-hundred-thousand first prize for himself.
Now the flashlight was gone, and his moment in the spotlight had been hard-cut by Wang Qiang.
He lowered his head and retreated into the darkness.
His seawater-bleached fingers dug desperately into the sand, blood seeping from beneath his nails.
The hatred from having his life-saving coconut stolen by Wang Qiang just now, plus the humiliation of this moment, churned wildly in his hollow chest.
Wang Qiang had no time to care about a subordinate’s feelings.
The temptation of eight hundred thousand, plus the fear of freezing to death, squeezed out his last potential.
He found a relatively dry, rotten board from the beach edge to kneel on, and a reasonably straight dead stick.
“Aim it!”
Wang Qiang imitated the wilderness-survival poses from short videos, clamped the dead stick between his hands, pressed it desperately against the board, and rubbed it frantically.
Squeak… squeak… squeak…
Rough bark rubbed wildly.
One minute.
Three minutes.
Wang Qiang panted harder and harder. His palms were pierced by barbs on the stick, rubbed raw into several blood blisters, blood mixed with wood shavings sticking messily to his hands.
Li Bin held the flashlight dead on the friction point. In the pale circle of light, there was only a small pile of bloody wood shavings.
Never mind a spark — there wasn’t even a trace of heat.
“Brother Qiang… there really is no smoke…” Li Bin’s voice was weak. “This wood looks dry, but its core is soaked through with seawater salt. You simply can’t rub it into a fire…”
“Get lost! Useless!”
Another director, his eyes red with urgency, shoved Wang Qiang aside.
He clutched two black stones he had knocked from the rock pile and smashed them wildly together over a pile of rotten grass leaves he had just gathered.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A few sparks did fly off. But the grass leaves had long since absorbed all the moisture from the sea wind. The sparks landed on them and didn’t even leave a scorch mark. They died instantly.
They struggled for a full half hour or more.
Five or six men collapsed on the sand, gulping down cold wind.
Despair, like a rising tide, completely drowned what was left of the group’s reason.
Drilling wood for fire? Striking stones for fire?
Without professional kindling, in an environment with explosive humidity, for a group of modern people with no wilderness experience at all, it was more absurd than building a lithography machine by hand.
“It’s over… it’s all over… it can’t be lit…”
Liu Feifei curled up in a sand pit at Su Qingxue’s feet, her exquisite makeup long since smeared into a muddy mess.
She couldn’t even cry out loud anymore, only panting heavily.
Su Qingxue leaned against a female subordinate’s back and raised her head.
Her gaze crossed the rocky slope and fixed on the mountainside.
There, the orange-yellow firelight was stable and glaring.
The smell of roasting luncheon-meat fat drifted along the wind, mercilessly drilling into her nostrils, tugging at her convulsing stomach.
She could even clearly see Lin Fan using a stick to pick up a golden, crispy piece of meat and leisurely put it into his mouth.
That stark contrast was like a loud slap, landing solidly on the face of this billionaire CEO.
High and mighty? Capital queen? He was up there eating roast meat by a fire, while she couldn’t even light a fire down here!
“One million five hundred thousand.”
Su Qingxue squeezed a few hoarse words out of her throat.
She struggled to stand upright and issued her final order to the men lying on the ground like dead fish.
“I’m offering one million five hundred thousand. Whoever can make a fire, the money will be paid as soon as we’re on the plane.”
Dead silence.
Apart from the wind, no one on the beach responded at all.
Wang Qiang buried his head in the sand, playing dead.
This wasn’t a question of more money or less money. In front of the laws of physics, one million five hundred thousand couldn’t violate thermodynamics either.
Just as the atmosphere froze to its breaking point.
At the edge of the main group, in an unremarkable shadow, a slightly thin figure slowly stood up.
Chen Jian.
The husband of Wang Lan, the finance department’s female supervisor. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
This Sheng Tang luxury team-building trip allowed executives to bring family members, and Chen Jian, an ordinary structural engineer, was, in the eyes of this group of glamorous sales elites, just a transparent tag-along son-in-law.
During the water grab and the coconut opening just now, he had hidden at the very back the whole time, without a word.
Now, he pushed up his salt-stained, half-frame glasses, stepped across the sand, and walked up to Su Qingxue.
“Ms. Su, I have a way to make fire.”
Hmm?
Every gaze instantly locked onto him.
Wang Qiang shot up from the ground and pointed at Chen Jian’s nose, cursing.
“Has Wang Lan’s husband’s brain frozen solid! I rubbed my hands raw and didn’t get a single spark, and he, a coward who draws blueprints, is pretending to be some big shot here? Get him out of here, stop being an eyesore!”
Chen Jian completely ignored Wang Qiang’s barking.
He looked directly at Su Qingxue.
“Conventional friction fire requires extremely dry kindling and an extremely high rotation speed. The energy you just expended was, in physics terms, completely wasted effort.”
Chen Jian’s tone was extremely calm, his analysis methodical. “Striking stones for fire similarly requires high-carbon steel and flint. With two broken pieces of limestone, even if you smashed your hands to pieces, you couldn’t ignite seaweed soaked full of water.”
Su Qingxue stared at him. “You can light it?”
“Yes.” Chen Jian nodded.
“Good, the one million five hundred thousand is yours. Start now.” Su Qingxue ordered.
Chen Jian didn’t move.
He held up two fingers and waved them in the air. “Ms. Su, one million five hundred thousand isn’t enough. I want twenty million.”
The beach fell silent for an instant.
Then Wang Qiang exploded.
He rushed forward, grabbed Chen Jian by the collar, spraying spit all over Chen Jian’s face.
“Twenty million?! Why don’t you go rob a mint! Profiteering from a crisis right in Ms. Su’s face? Your wife wouldn’t even dare talk to Ms. Su like that! Believe me, I’ll throw you into the sea to feed the fish right now!”
Wang Qiang swung his arm, his knuckled fist flying straight at Chen Jian’s face.
“Stop.” Su Qingxue cut Wang Qiang off in time.
Twenty million.
A day ago, that was just a rounding error swept past on Sheng Tang Group’s financial statements.
But tonight, that money was buying Su Qingxue’s life through the extreme cold.
Extreme dehydration and hypothermia had already pushed her proud rationality to the edge of collapse. If she didn’t even have a fire, she wouldn’t live until the helicopter landed.
“Fine, I agree.” Su Qingxue raised her chin, maintaining her superior posture. “As long as the fire can be lit, once we’re on the plane, twenty million will be transferred to Wang Lan’s account, not a cent less.”
Chen Jian brushed the sand from his collar and unclenched the fist he had been holding tight.
He turned and, without ceremony, held out his hand to Li Bin.
“Give me the flashlight.”
Li Bin hesitated and turned to look at Wang Qiang.
Wang Qiang spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the ground and turned his head away without a word.
Only then did Li Bin hurriedly hand over the tactical flashlight.
Chen Jian took the flashlight, didn’t touch the pile of rotten wood on the ground at all, and instead unscrewed the metal tail cap at the bottom of the flashlight with his other hand.
“What are you doing! That’s our only light source!” Zhang Tao limped forward, his voice sharp.
Chen Jian didn’t even give him a proper look. He turned the flashlight upside down, and with a clack, a thick 18650 industrial lithium battery dropped into his palm.
He raised his head and surveyed the group of freezing social elites.