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“Find food.”
Lin Fan did not waste words. Standing at the edge of the rocky slope, he slowly swept his gaze along the coastline.
[The cruise ship’s sinking coordinates are about 1.2 nautical miles from the current coast. Affected by last night’s tide and nearshore currents, some supplies from sealed cabins have washed ashore with wreckage fragments onto the eastern reef zone.]
[Estimated recoverable items include: sealed food, first-aid kits, plastic containers, and some clothing. Suggested search range: from the eastern reef zone to the edge of the mangrove forest, a total length of about 600 meters.]
The instant the golden prompt box disappeared, Lin Fan had already turned.
“Go east.”
Song Ya followed behind him. She wanted to ask why east, but after one look at the back of Lin Fan’s head — a man too lazy even to turn around — she swallowed the question.
Asking would be pointless. From yesterday until now, how many of her questions had he actually answered?
The two of them cut east along the rocky slope halfway up the mountain for about ten minutes.
Lin Fan stopped, crouched on a protruding rock, and looked down.
The eastern coastline was completely different from the west.
There was no beach at all, only a cluster of black reefs carved by waves over thousands of years.
Between the reefs, large and small tide pools had formed. After the tide receded, seawater remained trapped in the hollows.
Around the outer edge of the reef cluster, a large amount of debris washed up by the waves was scattered about.
Plastic buckets, broken planks, torn life jackets, bent aluminum frames…
And several white sealed plastic boxes, wedged into cracks in the reefs.
“See those white boxes down there?”
Song Ya rose onto her tiptoes and looked in the direction his finger was pointing.
The white boxes stood out sharply against the black reef cluster.
“Those are… from the cruise ship?”
“Sealed boxes from the galley storage cabin. If the waterproof rating is high enough, what’s inside might still be usable.”
Lin Fan stood up and scanned the terrain.
The reef cluster covered a considerable area, and useful things were scattered here and there in bits and pieces.
“Split up and search. You take the left, I’ll take the right. Put anything useful over there.”
He pointed at a flat rock in the middle of the reef cluster, rising about half a meter above its surroundings.
“Understood?”
Song Ya nodded.
Lin Fan’s figure had already disappeared behind a stretch of jagged black rock.
Song Ya stood where she was, the sea wind whipping her shirt — already so dirty its original color was unrecognizable — until it snapped in the air.
She took a deep breath and began climbing toward the reef cluster on the left. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
The wounds on the soles of her feet scraped against the rough rock surface, pain shooting upward in waves.
She gritted her teeth and moved between the reefs on her hands and feet.
The first white box was wedged into a crack between two large reefs.
Song Ya spent a long time and a great deal of effort dragging it out.
The seal was still intact. No water had gotten in.
She opened it and found only some useless decorations.
The second box was not so lucky.
Its shell had been cracked open by the reefs, leaving a large split, and seawater had poured right through.
Song Ya lifted the lid. Inside was a pile of soaked paper towels and a few plastic forks.
The paper towels fell apart at a touch, clinging to her fingers like cotton fluff.
Useless.
She picked out the plastic forks and pocketed them, then threw the paper towels away.
The third box was even worse. Its entire bottom had been smashed through, and it was completely empty. Whatever it had originally held had long been washed clean away by the seawater.
The fourth box contained two T-shirts soaked in seawater. Even wrung out, they still carried a smell of diesel.
Song Ya hesitated for a second, then carried them over anyway. No matter how bad they smelled, they were still clothes.
After turning over four boxes in a row, she had not found a single bite of food.
Song Ya’s strength was draining fast.
The reefs in front of her eyes occasionally swayed. It was not the reefs swaying. It was her swaying.
She braced her hands on her knees and panted for a while, preparing to keep searching forward.
And then she saw it.
Behind a large reef that had been flipped over by the waves, silver aluminum foil sealed bags were scattered across the ground.
Black lettering was printed on the bags, catching the sunlight.
[Military compressed biscuits, Type 900. 500 grams per pack. Production date: March 2024. Shelf life: 5 years.]
Song Ya froze completely.
During her internship in the company’s administration department, she had helped the logistics team purchase a batch of emergency supplies.
She recognized this packaging. Type 900 military compressed biscuits, 500 grams per pack, extremely calorie-dense. One pack was enough for an adult to last an entire day.
The cruise ship was actually equipped with things like this?
She had no time to think it over. She quickly crouched down and counted.
The aluminum foil bags were scattered in reef cracks and along the edges of tide pools, one here and one there, as if they had been flung out of some smashed storage box.
One pack, two packs, three packs, four packs…
Three of the foil bags had been worn open by the reefs, seawater had seeped in, and they felt soft and collapsed when squeezed, their surfaces swollen. Those were clearly no good anymore.
The remaining five packs were perfectly intact, their seals tight, hard to the squeeze, with no water inside at all.
Five packs, 2,500 grams.
Song Ya crouched on the reef, holding the five packs of compressed biscuits, her heart pounding so hard it felt ready to leap out of her throat.
Enough for five people to eat.
On this broken island that had nothing at all, the value of these five packs of compressed biscuits might have been ten thousand times more practical than the fifty million in empty promises from Su Qingxue’s mouth.
She stood up and carried the five packs to the meeting point in two trips.
First she carried three packs over and placed them on the flat-topped reef, then she went back for the remaining two packs.
On the second trip, she had just picked the biscuits up and had not yet turned around when a voice floated over from behind her.
“Well, well.”
“Looks like you found yourself a treasure.”
Every hair on the back of Song Ya’s neck stood up.
She turned her head and saw a man standing on a reef three meters away, looking down at her.
He was in his early forties, of medium build, his face blotched black and red from sun and toxic smoke.
On his left brow bone was a scabbed wound, the edge of the blood scab curling up, painful just to look at.
His white shirt was torn on one side, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the veins on his forearms bulging one by one.
Song Ya recognized this face.
Zhou Dahai, from the legal department of Sheng Tang Group.
He had been with the company for over a year and usually had an extremely low presence. The only time Song Ya had ever noticed him was when she heard him bragging in the pantry, saying his hometown was in some county where his family had been relocated, and that he owned five houses.
But the Zhou Dahai standing on the reef right now was not the same person as the smiling legal specialist from the company at all.
His eyes were fixed on the two silver foil bags in Song Ya’s arms.
His tongue licked his dry, peeling lips.
Song Ya had seen that kind of look in a zoo.
Through the glass, watching a wolf in a cage stare at the feeding hatch — that was exactly this look.
“Song Ya, right? The intern from sales?” Zhou Dahai jumped down from the reef and took two steps toward her.
“Brother… Brother Zhou.” Song Ya instinctively stepped back, hugging the compressed biscuits even tighter.
“This is what I found first.”
“You found it first?” Zhou Dahai laughed.
Scan note: I checked the English text above for source-script characters. No Chinese-script characters appear in it. Names are rendered in pinyin only, and no source-script terms were preserved.