“Magnetic disorder? How is that possible…”
Song Ya’s face went white. She backed away repeatedly, clutching her torn collar tightly. “Ms. Su’s phone is a top-of-the-line satellite phone, advertised as having global coverage with no dead zones. Even if it fell in an uninhabited area, it should still connect…”
“Global coverage with no dead zones? A brain is a useful thing. Too bad you don’t have one.” Lin Fan sneered.
“Do you know why a ten-thousand-ton cruise ship would veer off course without any warning?”
“Do you know why a hundred-meter tsunami would come with no weather warning at all?”
Song Ya froze, racking her brain, but couldn’t come up with a single word to refute him.
“Because this place isn’t on any satellite map humans know.” Lin Fan walked to the cave entrance and pointed at the thick aurora on the horizon.
“Look up and see for yourself. How is the sun setting? Is that direction even west? In this godforsaken place, even the geomagnetic field has completely collapsed. A compass spins so fast you could use it as a fan, and you expect to connect to a satellite signal?”
Song Ya followed his finger and felt as if she’d fallen into an ice cave.
That was absolutely not a beautiful dusk. The sky looked like a rotting, purple-red organ, and the oppressive feeling was something she had never experienced before.
There was no route. Only waves, tirelessly pounding against the cruise ship’s wreckage.
The workplace rules and civilized bottom lines she had always clung to collapsed in that moment.
Tears fell in drops as she slid down the rock wall and sat on a stone, her voice shaking uncontrollably. “Th-then… we can’t go back… we’re really going to die here…”
“Shut up. If crying worked, go to the seaside right now and cry yourself a freshwater lake.”
Lin Fan didn’t spare her an extra expression.
He reached back and drew the tactical straight knife from his waist, then picked up an arm-thick piece of hardwood at the cave entrance.
The blade flipped.
Swish! Swish!
Wood chips peeled off with a harsh scraping sound. In less than three minutes, the originally blunt branch had been sharpened to an extremely sharp point.
“Take it.” Lin Fan tossed the sharpened wooden spear at Song Ya’s feet.
Song Ya trembled all over in fright, staring at the sharp wooden point, her hands shaking, not daring to touch it.
“It’s about five in the afternoon now.” Lin Fan glanced at Song Ya’s waterproof electronic watch. “Even though the strong magnetic field is interfering with it and making the display jump, in at most three more hours, it will be completely dark.”
“The idiots below are still dreaming that a helicopter is coming to pick them up. After midnight, extreme hunger and thirst, plus despair, will turn them into real beasts.”
Song Ya’s small face went white, and she bit her lip hard.
“I’m going out to find something. You guard the house.” Lin Fan slid the straight knife back into its sheath. “If anyone comes up here, grip this stick with both hands, aim for their neck or stomach, stab it in hard, and twist.”
“St-stab someone?” Song Ya shook her head desperately, her eyes full of fear. “I don’t dare… killing someone is illegal…”
“Then wait to be stripped and passed around, and finally traded for a sip of water.”
Lin Fan showed not a shred of extra sympathy. “Drop the savior complex. Let people face their own fate. This is a desert island. No one cares about the law, only life and death. If you want to play the saint, be prepared to be devoured. Your choice.”
With that, Lin Fan didn’t bother with the completely rigid Song Ya anymore and turned into the heat outside the cave.
Lin Fan moved quickly toward the other side of the coastline.
He deliberately avoided the beach where the main group had gathered. That place had long since been turned upside down by that swarm of flies.
In his vision, the omniscient prompt’s pale gold light began flashing frequently among the wreckage.
[Damaged genuine leather sofa: Besides a belly full of seawater, completely worthless.]
[Broken cruise railing: Surface covered in sharp sheet metal. Touch it and you’ll get tetanus.]
Lin Fan’s brain automatically filtered out all the useless information.
Suddenly, two hundred meters ahead, in the shallow reef area, a deep golden light pierced through the seawater and flashed wildly.
[Waterproof sealed box, tightly entangled in seaweed: The cruise ship’s galley’s high-grade storage box. The latch is deformed, but the seal is perfect.]
[Contents: Ten bags of air-dried beef strips (an extremely high-calorie source), three bars of high-purity dark chocolate, one medical first-aid kit (containing antibiotics, iodine, and bandages), and one tactical folding engineer’s shovel.]
Jackpot! This haul was pure profit!
These high-calorie foods, in a godforsaken place where there wasn’t even a grass root to chew, were life-extending gold.
Not to mention that first-aid kit. On an island where even a scraped patch of skin could kill you, antibiotics were ten thousand times more valuable than gold!
And that shovel, which could dig and chop, was an absolute wilderness artifact.
Lin Fan lowered his body and moved quickly along the rock wall.
As he rounded a huge reef, he glanced down at the main group’s camp.
These former social elites were now staging a tragicomedy absurd to the extreme.
Su Qingxue sat alone in the deepest shade. Her white one-piece swimsuit had dried, but it was stained with sand and dirt, making her look utterly disheveled.
Her hands clutched the black-screened satellite phone tightly, her cracked, bleeding lips trembling slightly, clearly enduring the burning pain in her throat.
Several times, her gaze drifted uncontrollably toward the mountainside.
If she just went to gather some kelp and dry firewood, she could trade for water…
No! Absolutely impossible!
Su Qingxue clenched her fist hard, her sharp nails digging deep into her palm. She was the queen of Sheng Tang, worth tens of billions. How could she bow her head to a bottom-rung workhorse?
Midnight! As long as she held on until midnight and rescue arrived, she would make Lin Fan kneel and beg her!
On the other side, Liu Feifei, the first-line star, had long since lost her glamorous goddess burden. She lay sprawled on the sand, eyes vacant.
And Wang Qiang and several male colleagues were circling a pile of designer bags and Rolexes.
“Wang… Supervisor Wang… I feel like I’m about to die,” Zhang Tao said, his eye sockets sunken.
“If you’re going to die, roll far away.” Wang Qiang irritably yanked at his tie and backhanded Li Bin hard across the face. “Damn it! Did you just secretly drink my water?”
Li Bin was beaten until he saw stars, but he didn’t even have the strength to talk back. He only licked his dry, peeling lips instinctively.
Lin Fan watched this scene, the mockery in his eyes undisguised.
Once the midnight cold wind blew, these self-important fools would understand that the social class they took such pride in couldn’t even buy a single raw crab on this island.
He didn’t linger. He kept moving forward until he reached the spot, drew his tactical straight knife, and neatly cut through the tough seaweed entangling the sealed box, then pulled hard with both hands.
Splash!
The heavy box was dragged out of the water and slammed onto the rock.
Lin Fan aimed the knife handle at the deformed latch and struck it hard. With a click, the lid popped open.
The waterproof seal had perfectly withstood the seawater’s assault. The supplies inside hadn’t gotten a drop of water on them.
He tore open a bar of dark chocolate on the spot, broke off half a piece, and stuffed it into his mouth.
The bitter, rich taste exploded in his mouth.
As he chewed, the high-calorie sugar was quickly absorbed by his stomach, turning into a warm current that flowed through his limbs.
Muscles that had gone a little soft were filled with strength again.
This was the confidence that hard currency brought!
Lin Fan hid the beef and chocolate close to his body and hung the first-aid kit from his tactical belt.
Finally, he gripped the heavy manganese-steel engineer’s shovel in his hand.
[Tactical folding engineer’s shovel: Moderate weight, extremely powerful when swung. Not only can it dig pits and build a camp, it can split a human skull as smoothly as slicing a watermelon.]