Lin Fan flicked his wrist and threw it hard.
Whoosh —
The diamond-encrusted luxury watch traced a beautiful arc through the air, flew a dozen meters out, and dropped into the murky seawater with a dull plop. It didn’t even raise a proper splash.
The air went dead silent in an instant.
The smile on Song Ya’s face froze. Her small, rosy mouth fell open, and she stood there rigid, her brain completely short-circuiting.
Not far away, Wang Qiang and the others, who had been watching this whole time, stared with their eyes bulging, jaws nearly hitting the ground. One of them even spat out his red wine.
“Holy shit! That’s a Patek Philippe!”
“Has this kid lost his mind?! He just threw away three hundred thousand?!”
“He’s insane! He must have snapped from the shock! That’s money! That’s money!”
The curses poured in.
To them, what Lin Fan had just thrown away wasn’t a watch. It was the dream they’d spent their whole lives chasing.
Song Ya came back to herself and stared at Lin Fan in disbelief, tears spilling from her eyes at once. “Lin Fan… you… what are you doing?! I worked so hard to get that for you…”
“It’s trash.”
Lin Fan cut off her crying, his voice cold and hard. “Here, it’s not worth a single bottle of water. Holding onto it will only keep you dreaming about going home, and that dream will get you killed.”
Looking at Song Ya’s pretty face streaked with tears, Lin Fan couldn’t bring himself to be completely heartless, and he added:
“If you want to live, stop picking up trash like that. Pick up things you can eat, and things you can drink. And stay away from Wang Qiang and his crowd.”
With that, Lin Fan stopped looking at her, turned around, shouldered the case of water, and strode up the mountain.
He left Song Ya standing alone in the wind, the sea breeze tangling her skirt — and tangling her heart.
She watched his retreating back, her hands suddenly empty, and felt a strange feeling she’d never felt before rising inside her.
Why had this man suddenly become so unfamiliar?
The others, seeing three hundred thousand ruthlessly thrown away, sprinted desperately toward where the watch had landed.
…
Halfway up the mountain.
Lin Fan pushed aside the dense vines, and a wave of damp, cool air washed over him.
It was a naturally formed cave. The entrance was narrow, but that made it perfect for keeping beasts out — a natural bunker. Inside, the space opened up, and the ground was fairly flat.
Lin Fan carefully set the water and the luncheon meat deep inside the cave.
“Not enough.”
He looked at the empty cave, and that feeling of danger, like a thorn in his back, still hadn’t gone away.
He had water. He had food. He had shelter.
But he was missing one thing.
The one thing that would let him stand his ground on this island, the one thing that would make Wang Qiang and his crowd speak to him on their knees.
A weapon.
Whether it was bloodthirsty beasts or human hearts even more terrifying than beasts, going in bare-handed was suicide.
Lin Fan stepped out of the cave. Instead of continuing to haul supplies, he opened his omniscient vision and swept his gaze across the wreckage below.
[Damaged life vest: Buoyancy lost. Trash.]
[Broken golf club: Carbon fiber. Might work for beating a dog. Not quite enough for killing a man.]
[Half a champagne bottle: Glass. Fragile. Single-use consumable.]
[A box of condoms: Barely usable.]
His gaze kept moving, filtering out countless pieces of useless information.
Suddenly.
A glint of deep blue light flared in a crack in a distant rock, sharp enough to make Lin Fan’s pupils contract.
[Diver’s tactical leg pack: Washed by the waves and wedged in a rock crevice. If you don’t grab it soon, the next wave will sweep it away.]
[Contents: One SOG SEAL Team tactical straight knife (hardness HRC58, cuts iron like mud, built to bleed), one magnesium rod, one tactical flashlight (battery at 50%).]
Lin Fan’s heart pounded wildly. In a place like this, the feeling was better than winning the lottery.
If food and water were the baseline of survival, then this knife was the dignity of survival. With it, on this island, he was the man at the top of the food chain.
He took a deep breath and looked around.
Wang Qiang and the others were still at the other end of the beach, searching for the watch he’d thrown away.
Lin Fan rushed down at once.
He threw himself against the rocks and reached into the deep crevice.
His fingertips brushed rough nylon fabric.
He yanked hard!
A heavy black tactical leg pack came free in his hands.
Lin Fan didn’t open it right away. Instead, he quickly tucked it against his chest, wrapped it tightly in his torn vest, then casually picked up a few rotten planks, pretending to gather fuel, and slowly retreated to the edge of the woods.
Only when he was sure no one had seen him did he duck behind a large tree and, hands trembling, open the leg pack.
A dagger, black from end to end, lay quietly inside.
The blade was long and slim, with a blood groove running down it and serrations along the spine.
Lin Fan gripped the handle.
A heavy, solid feeling spread through his whole body — an extension of power.
Shing —
He drew the blade from its sheath, cold light flashing.
With a casual swing, a wrist-thick branch beside him snapped clean off, the cut smooth as a mirror.
What a knife!
With this thing, never mind Wang Qiang — even if a wild boar showed up, Lin Fan was confident he could bleed it out.
Besides the knife, the magnesium rod was an unexpected bonus. In the wild, fire was civilization. It meant hot food. It meant a barrier to drive beasts away.
Lin Fan slid the dagger back into its sheath and hid it close against the small of his back, covered by his clothes.
For the rest of the morning, Lin Fan shuttled back and forth between the beach and the cave.
While others fought, he hauled.
While others snatched, he hauled.
While others showed off the gold necklaces they’d grabbed, he was still hauling.
The sun showed no sign of setting. The vicious sunlight roasted the beach like a furnace, the air itself rippling with heat.
By the afternoon, the temperature was approaching forty degrees.
On the beach, in the seawater, the crowd that had been so excited finally fell quiet.
Not because they were tired.
But because they were thirsty.
“Damn it… why is it so hot…”
Wang Qiang irritably yanked at his tie and licked his peeling lips. The thirst burned like fire from his throat all the way down to his stomach.
He instinctively raised his bottled water — only to find that he’d already drunk it all without noticing.
The red wine he’d had earlier hadn’t quenched his thirst at all. Thanks to alcohol’s dehydrating effect, his throat now felt like it was on fire, as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of sand.
His gaze drifted, almost against his will, toward the figure with a pack on his back, still walking energetically toward the woods.