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Su Qingxue looked at the scene inside the cave, and her brain went momentarily blank.
In the dancing firelight, Lin Fan — the bottom-rung intern in the company who hadn’t even dared to meet her eyes, earning a meager three thousand yuan a month — was now sitting boldly beside the warm fire.
And at his feet, Liu Feifei, the nation’s first love who called the shots in domestic entertainment, proud and aloof, was lying naked in his arms.
This visually shocking scene tore apart the class观念 and moral bottom line Su Qingxue had built over more than twenty years!
“Lin Fan… you… you dare…”
Su Qingxue’s voice trembled violently, whether from shock or cold. She pointed at Liu Feifei, then at Lin Fan, and for a long time couldn’t squeeze out a complete sentence.
Liu Feifei heard the commotion and looked up. When she saw that the visitor was Su Qingxue, a flash of panic crossed her eyes, but that panic vanished in an instant.
If this woman died on the island today, that would be the end of it. But if she lived to go back, tonight’s scene of Liu Feifei groveling before Lin Fan, even selling her body, would become a fatal handle in Su Qingxue’s hands.
Since that was the case, the best solution was to drag this high-and-mighty CEO into the same filthy mud.
“Oh, Ms. Su, why have you come up at this hour?” Liu Feifei not only didn’t cover herself, she deliberately burrowed further into Lin Fan’s arms, wrapped an arm around his waist, and looked sideways at Su Qingxue.
“The wind outside is very cold, isn’t it? I could hear the waves hitting the rocks from the cave entrance just now. That sound really did sound like a death knell.”
“Don’t hold out either. That expensive swimsuit sticking to your body can’t feel good, can it? I saw with my own eyes just now how you were smoked by those poisonous fumes below until you couldn’t even straighten your back.”
“Come in, Ms. Su. This fire is so warm. Brother Lin Fan still has meat here, and clean mineral water. As long as you nod and take off that useless CEO’s bearing, this place is paradise. Look at me — I’m not cold at all now, and my stomach is full, too.”
“Anyway, there’s no one else here. No cameras, no bodyguards, none of those annoying fans. Here, who would recognize you as a CEO worth tens of billions? We’re all women. Living… isn’t that stronger than anything else?”
Su Qingxue was disgusted to the extreme by Liu Feifei’s shameless appearance. Her stomach churned violently, and a physiological revulsion made her dry-heave.
“Liu Feifei! Shut up!” Su Qingxue screamed. “You shameless bitch! You’re a public figure! Are you worthy of the fans who like you?”
“You would kneel like a dog before a bottom-rung intern and wag your tail for half a mouthful of food? You’ve completely disgraced women! Entertainment-industry trash, truly living up to its name!”
Liu Feifei’s face stiffened for an instant, then she smiled even more brilliantly. “Face? Ms. Su, you’re talking to me about face? Then what about you, standing at the cave entrance, frozen like a drowned chicken? Is that your face?”
Su Qingxue trembled with anger. She took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the shock and humiliation in her heart, and struggled to prop up her crumbling CEO’s aura once again.
“Lin Fan, I have to admit, you’ve made me look at you in a new light. On this island, you do have more survival experience than us, and you’re ruthless enough, and calm enough.”
Su Qingxue’s voice recovered its usual cold hardness from issuing orders in meeting rooms. “But you should be clear: this is reality, not one of those wish-fulfillment web novels of yours. As soon as my Sheng Tang Group’s rescue helicopter flies over! Then, all order will return to normal!”
As she spoke, her gaze drifted uncontrollably toward the half-box of leftover luncheon meat beside the fire.
That brown piece of meat, roasted by the flames until it sizzled with oil, its rich meat fragrance and焦香 of fat, wildly teased her stomach wall, which had already cramped from hunger and even started producing sour bile.
A stomach rumble sounded abruptly in the quiet cave.
Su Qingxue’s beautiful face, smeared with black ash, instantly flushed bright red. That frustration of being humiliated by her own physiological instincts made her wish she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
She bit her lip hard, forcibly dragging her gaze away from the luncheon meat, and continued to throw out her bargaining chips.
“Lin Fan, I am now, in my capacity as CEO of Sheng Tang Group, formally proposing a deal to you.”
“As long as you hand the fire pile over to me right now, hand all the food and water over to me to manage, and take responsibility for my safety on this island.”
“When rescue arrives tomorrow and we return to Jiangcheng, I will directly promote you to vice president of Sheng Tang Group! Annual salary starting at ten million! Plus a three-hundred-square-meter flat in the city center! I could even send you abroad for further study, so you can completely leave the bottom rung of society behind!”
Su Qingxue raised her chin slightly, a condescending arrogance flashing in her eyes.
She understood these bottom-rung workhorses all too well. Every month they worked themselves to death for a few thousand yuan in rent and living expenses. Faced with ten million in cash and the temptation to leap across classes, no poor loser could refuse this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
In her view, where was this about survival? This was clearly giving Lin Fan a bonus.
Lin Fan, however, didn’t even look at her.
He picked up a piece of luncheon meat roasted crispy on the outside and tender inside, and, under Su Qingxue’s extremely longing gaze, put it into his own mouth.
Crack.
The crispy meat skin broke open, and rich fat burst in Lin Fan’s mouth.
He deliberately chewed very loudly, and after swallowing, he let out an extremely satisfied sigh.
“Ms. Su, did you inhale too much sulfur dioxide down there and fry your brain?”
“Your empty check, on this island, is too hard even to use as toilet paper. Vice president? Ten million? Do you think I’m lacking those numbers of yours right now?”
Su Qingxue’s face changed, burning with anger, that dignity offended by a subordinate making her instantly lose control. “Lin Fan! Don’t refuse a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit! Do you think that just because you’ve gained a little advantage now, you can fly to the heavens?”
“Fifty million! I’ll give you fifty million! Even twenty percent of Sheng Tang Group’s shares! That’s money you couldn’t earn in ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes! As long as you nod, you can immediately leap across classes and become a true superior person!”
“Leap across classes?”
Lin Fan looked as if he’d heard the biggest joke in the world and suddenly burst into loud laughter.
After a while, he stood up and walked toward Su Qingxue step by step.
For the first time, Su Qingxue felt that this intern’s eyes were somewhat frightening.
She unconsciously stepped back, her long, fair legs scraping against the gravel ground, until her back was pressed tightly against the cold, damp rock wall, with nowhere left to retreat.
Lin Fan grabbed Su Qingxue’s exquisite chin and forced her to look out at the pitch-black, ink-dark abyss where waves rolled.
“This is an unknown sea area in the Devil’s Triangle! The magnetic field here can even twist light, and even time is scrambled! That broken satellite phone of yours is now worse than a brick for propping up a table leg!”
“Still insisting rescue will definitely arrive at midnight? Still fifty million? I’m telling you, even if you moved the entire Sheng Tang Group here right now, on this island, it still couldn’t buy a single sip of water from my hand!”
“No… impossible… you’re talking nonsense! You’re just taking revenge on me, you’re scaremongering!”
Su Qingxue shook her head desperately, undisguised fear surfacing in her eyes, but the pride carved into her bones still made her stubbornly refuse to admit it. “You’re just a bottom-rung intern. What do you know about satellite communications? Rescue will definitely come.
Even if the people at my company are useless freeloaders, my father will definitely send someone to save me.”
Looking at Su Qingxue’s ridiculous, self-deceiving appearance, Lin Fan sneered and let go of her hand.
“Fine, since you’re so convinced your rescue will come, then why did you run up to my doghouse? Get out and wait for your helicopter with Wang Qiang and the others. Oh, and by the way, the temperature outside is still dropping. I hope you live to see tomorrow’s sun.”
Lin Fan pointed outside, mercilessly issuing his eviction order, then turned back to sit by the fire and began adding firewood.
Su Qingxue stood frozen in place, her legs unable to move at all.
Outside, the cold wind howled. The temperature had already dropped below five degrees, and her swimsuit, stuck to her skin, was frantically draining the last of her body heat.
She could feel her body temperature slipping away, and her consciousness was even starting to blur.
If she walked out now, with no fire and no food, she was afraid she wouldn’t survive the night at all.
The instinct to survive finally, in the heart of this once-unassailable CEO, completely shattered her so-called dignity.
“Lin Fan…”
Su Qingxue’s voice softened completely, carrying a humiliated tremor, even a hint of a sob. “I… I’m really very cold, and I’m very hungry. What conditions do you want, exactly, before you’ll let me stay? As long as it’s something I can give, I can consider it.”
In Su Qingxue’s view, this was already the greatest compromise she had ever made in her life.
“What conditions do I want?”
Lin Fan sat back down by the fire, his extremely brazen gaze sweeping back and forth over Su Qingxue’s exaggerated hourglass figure.
It had to be said, Su Qingxue’s figure really was a rare treasure in the human world.
That slender waist you could wrap your hands around, her full, upright figure, and those long, straight legs that gleamed porcelain-white in the firelight — even now, stained with mud, they still radiated a maddening allure.
After a long while, he finally spoke. “My conditions are very simple.”
“Take off your clothes, every last piece. Then, like our Sister Fei, make me comfortable. As long as you can satisfy me, this half-box of luncheon meat, and this fire pile, are yours.”