The tactical knife was pressed against Wang Qiang’s carotid artery.
The blade sank into the skin, and a bead of blood seeped out along the serrated edge.
Wang Qiang’s Adam’s apple bobbed violently up and down, his eyeballs nearly bulging from their sockets.
The arrogant curses he’d been shouting died instantly in his throat.
He could clearly feel the bone-chilling cold of the blade, and the sting at his neck.
If Lin Fan’s wrist so much as trembled, his artery would spray blood.
The male colleagues who had charged up behind him stood frozen like statues. They held their lunging poses, faces ashen, stones and sticks clattering to the ground from their hands.
A knife!
A real knife!
This wasn’t a toy for peeling apples. It was a killing weapon with a blood groove, sharp enough to cut through bone with ease!
If someone actually got killed, they wouldn’t escape responsibility once they were back on land, either.
“Steal it?”
Lin Fan stared at Wang Qiang’s distorted face. “Wang Qiang, you just said that if anything happened, who would take responsibility?”
Wang Qiang trembled all over like a sieve. A sudden warm stream flooded his crotch and dripped down his trouser leg onto the rock.
He had, in the most literal sense, wet himself in terror.
“Lin… Lin Fan… murder is illegal…” Wang Qiang begged in a shaking voice, snot and tears smeared across his face, not a trace of his former swagger left. “Let’s talk this out… please don’t be impulsive…”
“The law?”
Lin Fan pressed his wrist down slightly, and the blade cut in another fraction. Wang Qiang let out a broken, shrieking howl.
“Ah… stop…”
“Open your dog eyes and look clearly.” Lin Fan leaned close to Wang Qiang’s ear, his voice completely changed. “Out here, this knife is the law.”
This scene didn’t just shatter Wang Qiang’s courage. It shattered the civilized filter of everyone at the foot of the mountain.
Su Qingxue shot to her feet, her beautiful eyes full of unprecedented shock.
That intern who always kept his head down in the company and worked without complaint was now holding a knife in one hand, with a supervisor at his feet — and it sent an indescribable shiver through her.
The coldness and killing intent in his eyes were absolutely not an act.
He really would kill someone!
“Get lost.”
Lin Fan suddenly let go and kicked Wang Qiang hard in the butt.
Wang Qiang scrambled and tumbled back toward his subordinates, clutching the bloody mark on his neck, gasping for breath.
Lin Fan sheathed the knife and looked down over the whole scene. His gaze swept past everyone and finally landed precisely on Su Qingxue.
Their eyes met.
The iceberg CEO, who was always so far above everyone else, felt an unprecedented flutter in her chest for the first time, and subconsciously looked away.
… Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
The sun was still slanting westward, but the temperature hadn’t dropped at all.
Su Qingxue sat in the shade of a rock, licking her cracked, peeling lips. Her throat felt as if she’d swallowed a handful of broken glass.
She looked down at the satellite phone in her hand. The screen was still pitch black.
There were still a few hours until the midnight deadline she’d promised. But her body was already near its limit.
[Su Qingxue (CEO of Sheng Tang Group): Severe dehydration, accompanied by mild heatstroke. Stamina remaining: 20%. Inner thought: I can’t just sit here and wait to die. I have to get water, or I won’t last until the rescue team lands.]
Lin Fan sat in the cool shade at the cave entrance, idly playing with the tactical dagger. The omniscient prompt laid out the condition of everyone below in full view.
Su Qingxue pushed herself up from the rock and straightened her half-dry white one-piece swimsuit. She brushed the sand from her legs and started up the slope.
Seeing this, Wang Qiang scrambled over. “Ms. Su, where are you going? It’s dangerous up there! That kid’s gone mad. He really will use that knife!”
“Shut up.” Su Qingxue’s voice was hoarse. She didn’t even look at Wang Qiang.
She climbed the rocky slope. Her high heels had been lost in the tsunami, and her bare feet stepped on scorching, sharp rock. Every step was piercingly painful. But she gritted her teeth and didn’t make a single sound of pain.
When she reached the cave entrance, she stopped.
Lin Fan was sitting on an overturned plastic crate. Two bottles of mineral water sat by his feet, and he held a freshly cut piece of luncheon meat in his hand, chewing it slowly.
The smell of meat and the cool, clean scent of fresh water drifted over on the breeze.
Su Qingxue’s throat bobbed uncontrollably as she swallowed a mouthful of dry saliva.
Her eyes were fixed on that bottle of water.
“Lin Fan.” Su Qingxue spoke, doing her best to maintain her usual cold tone from the company. “Give me a bottle of water.”
Lin Fan swallowed his meat and lifted his eyes to look at her. “Why?”
Su Qingxue frowned. At Sheng Tang Group, her orders had never needed a reason.
“One hundred thousand.” Su Qingxue named her price directly. “One bottle of water. When the rescue team arrives tonight, I’ll have finance transfer it straight to your card when we’re back at the company. That’s a year of your intern salary.”
Lin Fan smiled.
He said nothing. He picked up a bottle of water from by his feet and unscrewed the cap.
The water caught the sunlight, refracting a tempting gleam, and Su Qingxue’s breathing quickened instantly.
Lin Fan tilted his head back and took a large gulp, the loud glug, glug of his swallowing sounding especially clear in the silent mountainside.
Down on the beach, Wang Qiang and the others watched Lin Fan’s movements, eyes red, frantically swallowing saliva that wasn’t there.
After drinking, Lin Fan leisurely screwed the cap back on tight, without spilling a single drop, then set it back down by his feet.
“Two hundred thousand!” Su Qingxue took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling sharply. “And I’ll arrange for you to go back with me in the first group.”
Lin Fan didn’t even lift his eyelids. Seeing him act like this, Su Qingxue lost her patience. “Lin Fan, don’t push your luck. This is an extraordinary time. Once the helicopter arrives tonight, the water in your hands will be worthless. Trading it for two hundred thousand and your life is the best deal you’ll ever make in your life!”
Lin Fan picked up another piece of luncheon meat, took a bite, and didn’t even look up.
“Five hundred thousand!” Su Qingxue raised the price again, her voice hoarse. “Five hundred thousand for your two bottles of water! That’s enough for a down payment on a place in Jiangcheng, paid in full! This is my bottom line!”
[Status update: Heart rate too fast, blood sugar low. A negotiation posture held together by sheer force of will.]
Lin Fan stopped chewing. He stood up and walked over to Su Qingxue.
They were less than half a meter apart. Lin Fan could clearly see her cracked, bleeding lips, and the hollows in her cheeks caused by dehydration.
“Ms. Su.” Lin Fan looked down at her. “Do you think money can buy everything?”
“That’s civilized society’s common sense.” Lin Fan pointed down at the sea, then back at the jungle behind him. “Here, your money isn’t even good for toilet paper. Five hundred thousand? Even if you transferred me all of Sheng Tang Group’s shares, you still couldn’t buy a single drop of my water today.”
Su Qingxue froze.
In Lin Fan’s eyes, she saw absolute coldness.
This wasn’t playing hard to get. It was complete and utter disregard.
“What exactly do you want?” Su Qingxue gritted her teeth.
“I want you to face reality.” Lin Fan walked back to the cave entrance and sat down again. “This is a desert island, not a CEO’s office. Want water? Fine. Bring survival supplies of equal value to trade. No supplies? Then trade labor. Go to the shore and gather kelp. Go into the woods and find dry firewood. Don’t try to sell me pie in the sky with empty promises.”
Su Qingxue’s face went white.
Gather kelp? Find firewood? She was the CEO of Sheng Tang Group, worth tens of billions. When had she ever done the work of a servant?
“Lin Fan, you’ll regret this.” Su Qingxue stared hard at him, then turned to head down the mountain.
“Mr. Lin.”
Su Qingxue hadn’t yet taken a step when a coquettish voice floated up from below. Liu Feifei climbed up, panting.
She was in even worse shape than Su Qingxue. Her sheer lace cover-up had been torn into several large holes by the bushes, her fair thighs were covered in scratches, and she walked with a limp — but she was still doing her best to maintain a movie star’s poise.
[Liu Feifei (First-line actress): Severe dehydration, stamina nearly exhausted. Combat power: 0.1 geese. Inner thought: As long as I can get water, giving him a little sweetener doesn’t matter. Once we’re back, I’ll deny it to the death anyway.]
Liu Feifei walked up to Lin Fan, brushed back her messy hair, and struck what she thought was her most perfect, pitiful pose.
“Lin Fan… Brother Lin…” Liu Feifei gazed at Lin Fan with watery, peach-blossom eyes, her voice dripping with sweetness. “Give me a drink of water, please. I’m really dying of thirst…”
Lin Fan looked at her coldly, unmoved.
Liu Feifei bit her lip and leaned slightly forward, deliberately showing off her figure.
“Just give me a bottle of water, and when we’re back on land, I can give you an exclusive private contact.” Liu Feifei’s voice was full of temptation. “Those big bosses out there would spend tens of millions and still couldn’t book a single meal with me. If you help me now, I can promise to have dinner with you alone… or even grant you one little wish. That’s a privilege you wouldn’t dare dream of normally.”
Su Qingxue, standing to one side, frowned. She hadn’t expected this first-line star, who had built her image as a pure, wholesome leading lady, to stoop to such suggestive bargaining for a mouthful of water.
Lin Fan looked down at Liu Feifei.
Her figure and face were indeed first-rate, and that haughty yet tempting posture would probably have made any normal man lose control long ago.
But Lin Fan’s mind was perfectly clear.
He let out a cold laugh, his gaze sweeping openly up and down over her.
“I’m not interested in a product packaged by capital like you.” Lin Fan’s tone was flat, but every word cut to the bone. “And you’re vastly overestimating your own value.”
He pointed with the knife sheath at Liu Feifei’s fair hands, covered in cuts.
“You can’t even crack open a coconut. You can’t even catch a fish. On this island, aside from wasting air and food, you have no value at all. A bottle of water in exchange for dinner with you? Sorry, I’d be getting ripped off.”
Liu Feifei’s face turned green, then white, burning with shame and fury.
The national-level capital she took such pride in was, in this bottom-rung worker’s eyes, worth absolutely nothing!
Su Qingxue stood to one side, looking at Lin Fan’s cold profile, and felt a frustration she had never felt before.
She had a vague feeling that Lin Fan was right. On this island, all the halos, status, and wealth they had once possessed seemed to have been reset to zero.
“If you want water, I already told you the rules.” Lin Fan didn’t look at the two beauties again. He turned and walked deep into the cave. “Bring dry firewood to trade.”