Ye Yi sat in the middle of the cabin, looking out the window at the deep-blue sea, and slowly relaxed. She told herself not to be anxious, there was still time for everything. The supplies she’d prepared beforehand would keep her alive for a while. Her brain hadn’t rested from the moment she entered the map, thinking nonstop, she hadn’t even taken a proper look at this world.
Lifting her eyes, she saw gray gulls soaring freely in the sky. One spread its wings and dove swiftly down, a splash flew up from the sea’s surface, and when it rose again, a long little fish was already clamped in its long beak.
Watching the gull fly off with the fish, a flash of inspiration struck her, she could use the system to gather fish. What would she gather?
At that thought, she couldn’t sit still. Heedless of whether the blazing sun outside might burn her, she strode out of the cabin. She lay down on the deck, carefully edged to the side, gripped the railing with both hands, and looked down at the churning seawater. Big fish swam back and forth in the shadow of the boat’s hull, every one plump and fine, the smallest as big as her two palms.
One hand gripping the railing, she reached the other into the warm seawater. “Seawater detected. Gather?”
The fish were too far from her hand, she didn’t touch a single one. Instead she’d discovered seawater could be gathered. How had she not thought of this before? Thrilled, she silently thought, “Gather.”
The seawater around her palm churned left and right, and a blue glowing mass appeared about a meter from her hand, then slowly sank into the water below. The startled fish leaped out of the sea one after another all around her boat, as if silently mocking her.
The seawater she’d gathered had just dropped down like that. She hadn’t even seen what it looked like before it was gone.
Furious, Ye Yi smacked the water’s surface, and it splashed right up into her face.
Blue seawater dripped from her hair onto her cheeks. Fuming, Ye Yi grabbed the railing and pulled herself up, roughly wiped the seawater off her face with her sleeve. She refused to believe it, could she really fail to retrieve something she’d gathered with her own skill?
She jogged into the cabin and rummaged around for something to scoop things out of the water.
After searching, she finally found, in a corner, the folding fishnet she’d brought into the map. Put this in the sea, and wouldn’t she be able to scoop up whatever she gathered?
Excited, she opened the folding net, pulled the topmost cord taut, and lifted it, a cylindrical net appeared before her.
She tugged the cord, a bit short, it needed to be at least a meter long to bring gathered items up.
She took the thin cord she’d worn around her wrist earlier, tied one to each end of the net, carried the net to the side of the boat, carefully lowered it into the water, then lay flat on the deck and slowly let the cord slide down.
In the water, the net swayed back and forth with the wind and waves. Curious fish even bumped it tentatively a few times, then, seeing it move, darted off in fright.
When it reached about where the blue light had appeared earlier, Ye Yi pulled the two cords taut, tied them in a tight knot, and wound the leftover cord around her wrist to keep the net from sinking to the seabed.
With all preparations done, she reached her other hand into the water. “Seawater detected. Gather?”
“Yes.”
Blue light appeared in the water again. The instant she saw it, Ye Yi swung the cord in her hand, moving the net toward it. The water’s resistance was too great, and the net swayed left and right with effort. Just as it was about to reach beneath the blue light, a red fish suddenly appeared and swallowed the light in one gulp.
Ah, you fish, what’s with the ambush? If there’d been anything within reach, Ye Yi might already have hurled it into the sea.
Failed again.
The sun had Ye Yi sweating a little. She stood, took off her down jacket, tossed it on the deck, pushed her sweater sleeves up to her forearms, and, unwilling to give up, lay back down on the deck to keep gathering seawater.
She gathered seawater over and over, no telling how many times, and finally caught the blue light in the net. Ye Yi immediately hauled it up excitedly and set it on the deck.
Heedless of the dry deck now soaked by the net pulled from the sea, she anxiously reached in, and the instant she touched the blue light, it vanished, revealing a transparent glass bottle filled with fine white sand.
Huh, wasn’t it water?
What was this? She held it up to the sunlight and studied it a while, watching the fine white sand shift with the angle.
Why did it look a bit like salt?
She brought the bottle to her eyes, pulled out the wooden stopper, gently poured a little into her palm, brought it to her mouth, and licked it with her tongue.
“Pah—” it really was salt, salty enough to kill her.
Feeling the salty taste on her tongue, she spat several times before feeling a little better.
Gathering seawater yielded sea salt, that operation checked out. But where was her water? Evaporated?
Ye Yi looked at the glass bottle in her hand, speechless. Well, nothing to be done, better than nothing, but she’d completely lost her drive. She bent to pick up the down jacket, put it on, and felt the weather had suddenly turned cold.
The sea breeze on her body no longer felt warm as before.
She looked into the distance, the sun was already not far from the horizon. Half a day’s toil, and all she’d gotten was one small bottle of sea salt, with her clothes soaked besides. Looking down at the fish swimming merrily in the water, she felt a bit indignant, how had she not gathered a single fish? Did they have radar on them?
Not one fish had been in the seawater she’d gathered.
Dejected, she went back into the cabin, casually set the bottle of sea salt in a corner with the other supplies, and shut all the doors and windows.
The sun’s last light shone through the transparent glass onto the stove on the boards. She glanced at it, it didn’t seem well suited for heating a large area, so she bent to put it into the system Backpack and took out the fire basin instead.
She set the fire basin in the very center of the cabin, took out three briquettes, lit two with the gun, then used the tongs to grip them and set them on the fire basin’s grate.
Only then did she notice the charcoal ash used in the last map was still inside, forgotten. She scooped the ash out slowly with both hands through the side opening, set it in a corner of the cabin, and after three round trips had mostly cleared it, leaving a thin layer of ash at the bottom.
Then she used the tongs to place the briquettes into the fire basin, and the red firelight slowly began to raise the temperature inside.
Ye Yi felt the sweater sleeve she’d accidentally wet, took off the down jacket, then took off the sweater underneath, and quickly put the down jacket back on.
She was afraid of catching a chill, a cold would be no good.
Once the jacket’s zipper was up, she turned the sweater inside out, found the wet spot, wrung out the water, and spread it on the grate to dry.
There was a bit of space beside it, so she put the small iron pot up too, took a bottle of mineral water, poured in a third, put the lid on, and slowly heated the water.
After the sweater had toasted a while, she picked it up and kneaded it, in case the heat set it alight.
Sitting cross-legged by the fire basin, warming herself, only when she stopped to rest did she feel a bit hungry. What could she make that would be filling?
Compressed biscuits? Too dry, but very filling, she’d eat those. This world had nothing, there was nothing to be picky about. She’d also make a little baby-greens soup. From the moment she’d entered the map, she hadn’t had a drop of water or a bite of food, and she felt she couldn’t hold out much longer.
She stood, went to the cabin door, pulled 3 baby greens from the planting box with the fewest left, and shook the soil off their roots.
She opened the cabin door, stepped onto the deck, and only then noticed the sky had begun to darken, the sea clearly colder than before.
She went to the side of the boat, crouched, put the greens in the water to wash, hiss, the water had turned cold too, and quickly sped up, washing the three greens clean in no time.
She stood, shook off the water. A gust of sea wind blew, chilly. Ye Yi hurried into the cabin and shut the door.
The moment she went in, she heard the water in the small iron pot bubbling. She stepped up, opened the lid, set it aside, snapped the greens in two, and tossed them into the boiling water.
She put the lid back on to steep.
While the greens cooked, she went to the corner, dug out a pack of compressed biscuits, the small blanket, three hot-water bottles, 2 hand warmers, and 1 down jacket, and brought them by the fire basin.
She spread the down jacket on the boards beside the fire basin, felt the sweater on the grate, about dry, took it down, and put it on the jacket. She arranged the small blanket and put it on the grate to warm, that way it’d be warmer to sleep under at night.
Before long the greens were done. She lifted the pot onto the charcoal ash in the corner, opened the lid, and let it cool slowly.
Back by the fire basin, she took off the down jacket, and as she reached to put the sweater on, she happened to glance at the wristband on her wrist and remembered, she’d been in the map a day and still hadn’t taken a proper look at it.
She quickly finished dressing, sat by the fire basin, and pressed the wristband:
Time: Day 1, 6:15 p.m. Season: Spring Location: Crescent Sea Weather: Clear Temperature: 15°C Humidity: 55%
Name: Ye Yi
Sex: Female
Age: 26
Survival Points: 4,982.71 (Base points: 150. First map: successfully survived 30 days: +1,000, successfully rescued teammate: +2,000, rescued natives: bonus +2,000. Points consumed: 166.95)
Current Map: Open-Sea Survival
Random Teammate: Unknown
Ability: Gathering-and-Crafting System (Lv2: 11.6/80)
Sure enough, it was Open-Sea Survival, which meant finding land was impossible, very likely this whole world was ocean. The Random-Teammate rescue reward was gone too, and there was a new entry, Season: Spring, though she didn’t know what it meant.
She thought a bit and made her plans:
One: Try to distill clean drinking water from the seawater.
Two: Find a way to gather fish, which would solve the food problem.
Three: Not decided yet, write it down once she thought of it.
Just as she got up to fetch the small iron pot, the wooden boat suddenly jolted as if it had hit something. Terrified, Ye Yi immediately pressed her hand onto the edge of the fire basin. Her hand was scalded painfully, but she didn’t dare let go, the boat was still rocking, and there was fire in the basin. If she didn’t steady it, the basin could tumble about and spill the fire, and then she’d be in real trouble.