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Su Qingxue’s eyes widened, staring at Lin Fan in disbelief, as if she were looking at an unreasonable madman.
“You… what did you just say?!” Her eyes, originally cold and proud, were instantly bloodshot.
In civilized society, she was the helmsman of Sheng Tang Group, worth tens of billions!
Countless business tycoons queued up to invite her to dinner, and even then it depended on her mood.
And this bottom-rung workhorse before her eyes, earning three thousand yuan a month, who in the company wasn’t even worthy of carrying her shoes, actually dared to defile her like this.
Just as Su Qingxue trembled with anger, about to explode.
Liu Feifei walked over. Seeing Liu Feifei’s movement, Lin Fan didn’t stop her.
“Ms. Su, at a time like this, are you still holding up that billionaire CEO’s bearing?”
Liu Feifei lowered her voice. “Can’t you broaden your perspective a little? Do you have any idea how cold it is outside? With your body, can you even live to see the rescue team?”
Su Qingxue looked at Liu Feifei. She no longer recognized the pure, flawless nation’s first love from the screen.
Liu Feifei paid no attention to Su Qingxue’s murderous gaze and continued whispering close to her: “You’re always talking about return on investment when you do business, aren’t you? Can’t you work out this account? As long as you lower your head now, close your eyes and go along with him, eat something, drink some water, and then sleep soundly beside this fire, waiting for the rescue team to arrive.”
“At worst… when rescue arrives and we’re on the helicopter, we’ll just kick him straight off! Let him fend for himself alone on this desert island!”
“Then, what happened tonight will be known only to heaven and earth. You’ll still be the queen high above everyone.”
After hearing this, Su Qingxue went completely numb, her entire worldview shattering on the spot.
She looked at Liu Feifei’s exquisite yet twisted face and felt a wave of nausea churning in her stomach.
“Shut up!” Su Qingxue turned and roared at Liu Feifei. “You lowly bitch! Do you think everyone has no bottom line like you? For the sake of survival, you don’t even want human dignity anymore!”
After scolding Liu Feifei, Su Qingxue’s gaze returned to Lin Fan, and she cursed through gritted teeth: “Lin Fan! You’re simply a shameless beast! You have no shame!”
“Make me serve you like this lowly bitch? Dream on! Go take a piss and look at yourself! You’re mud that will spend its whole life eating shit at the bottom, and you think you’re worthy of touching me? A toad dreaming of eating swan meat!”
Su Qingxue had completely lost it, hurling every vicious word she could think of at Lin Fan.
Her self-esteem, the pride cultivated over more than twenty years of pampered living, absolutely would not allow her to wag her tail and beg before a bottom-rung employee she hadn’t even bothered to look at properly before!
Facing Su Qingxue’s torrent of abuse, Lin Fan showed no anger at all on his face.
“Done scolding?” Lin Fan chewed his meat, yawned, and casually tossed a dry stick into the fire, sending up a burst of bright sparks. “If you’re done, get lost. I don’t shelter useless trash here, and I certainly don’t shelter hypocrites who want it both ways.”
“You—” Su Qingxue trembled with anger.
“Fine! Lin Fan, remember this! However you treat me today, when rescue arrives tomorrow, I’ll make you pay back a thousand times over! I’ll make your life in Jiangcheng worse than death!”
Su Qingxue threw down a harsh threat, turned around, and walked resolutely out of the cave.
She would rather freeze to death outside, rather be blown into a dried corpse by the sea wind, than bow her head to this lowly man!
However, when she truly stepped out of the cave and ran head-on into the sea wind, sharp as blades, Su Qingxue’s body shivered subconsciously.
That defiant courage, ready to face death, was instantly drained away by more than half.
That cold wasn’t the coolness of an air-conditioned room. It penetrated straight through the skin and froze the marrow.
Su Qingxue gritted her teeth and returned to the beach below, which was like a living hell.
Inside the cave, it was warm as spring.
Outside the cave, the wind cut to the bone. Hell had descended.
…
The long, cruel, cold night was, for the survivors on the beach below, an extremely painful slow torture with every second.
That poison-gas bonfire made from wet wood and seaweed had, fortunately, not gone out.
Under the furious blowing of a force-four-to-five sea wind, the fire core at the bottom instead burned red-hot.
But the cost was that the wet, rotten wood covering it frantically released pungent sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The fire was still alive, and there was heat, but to get warm, you had to endure that poisonous smoke, comparable to a biochemical weapon.
Cough, cough, cough… cold… so cold…
“Supervisor Wang… save me… I don’t want to die…”
Dozens of men and women crowded tightly together on the sheltered side of the fire, tears and snot streaming down their faces.
They tried to use each other’s body heat and that tiny bit of weak radiant warmth to resist the severe cold.
But as if that weren’t enough.
From the dilapidated forest behind them, strange rustling sounds came from time to time, as if some huge arthropod were crawling over dead branches and leaves.
Occasionally mixed in were a few miserable, low beastly roars that made people’s scalps tingle.
Under the multiple pressures of extreme cold, hunger, poisonous smoke, and unknown fear, this group of elites who had once called themselves high society completely tore off their civilized disguise, revealing their most primitive animal nature.
To snatch a spot that was both close enough to the fire and exposed to less smoke, a brutal infighting broke out in the crowd.
To make himself a little warmer, Wang Qiang grabbed Old Liu from the finance department and forcibly pressed Old Liu behind himself, using him as a human shield against the wind.
Old Liu was already weak, and had been soaked in seawater during the day. Now, with his back directly facing the bone-piercing sea wind, his body temperature was draining away at a terrifying speed.
“Brother Qiang… I can’t take it anymore… I feel… so hot…”
Old Liu’s eyes began to lose focus, his pupils losing their direction, and a strangely eerie smile actually appeared at the corner of his mouth.
While smiling foolishly, Old Liu actually began frantically tearing off his own clothes.
“Hot… too hot… I want to take my clothes off… I want to take a bath…”
“Are you fucking crazy!” Wang Qiang jumped in fright and slapped Old Liu hard across the face.
But Old Liu felt no pain at all and kept frantically stripping until he was left in only his underwear.
The cold wind hit him, and he fell straight down onto the beach, his body beginning to convulse violently, foam coming from his mouth.
Despair, fear, and the shadow of death held the group in a death grip.
In the darkness, they begged bitterly, praying that the helicopter Su Qingxue had promised would descend from the sky and rescue them from this hell.
But all that answered them was the endless roar of the waves, and that bone-piercing cold wind that seemed like it would never stop.
…
No one knew how long passed. Time seemed to be stretched infinitely here.
When the first dazzling ray of sunlight pierced through the thick, lead-gray clouds and fell onto the Devil’s Island beach.
The long, terrifying black night finally ended.
Su Qingxue opened her eyes with difficulty. A thin layer of frost had even formed on her long eyelashes.
“It’s daylight…”
She used up all her remaining strength, holding onto a rough reef, and stood up little by little.
Then she raised her head and stared at the azure sky above.
“The helicopter… where’s my helicopter?”
Su Qingxue turned her stiff neck, her gaze frantically searching the sea level and the sky.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The sky was blue enough to make one despair. On the sea, apart from the broken wreckage of the cruise ship bobbing with the waves, there wasn’t even the shadow of a single seabird.
No roar of propellers, no shouts from a rescue team. The whole world was terrifyingly dead silent.
“Impossible… this is absolutely impossible!”
Su Qingxue’s voice completely broke down, tears bursting from her eyes, washing two muddy tracks down her black-ash-stained face.
“Her satellite is the most advanced! Sheng Tang’s rescue team is on standby twenty-four hours a day! Why haven’t they come yet! Why!!!”
Just as Su Qingxue was questioning herself, an extremely shrill scream erupted beside her.
“Someone’s dead! Old Liu is dead!”
“Little Wang is dead too! His head is cracked open!”
“Lily… Lily has no breath left!”
The sunlight dispelled the darkness, and also laid bare, without reservation, the cruel scene on the beach.
That poison-gas bonfire had burned down to a pile of black ash, with wisps of lingering smoke rising from it.
Old Liu from finance lay naked on the beach, that eerie smile still on his face, his body long since frozen stiff as a board.
Little Wang from sales had died beside a reef, blood dyeing the surrounding sand dark red.
Lily from public relations curled up in a corner, her eyes still open in death.
And two more people had also stopped breathing…