Chapter 15

It was true that Qiao Huan wanted to keep Shi Xingzhou around so he could pump him for information.

But there was another reason—

The timing of Shi Xingzhou's appearance was perfect, and he somehow knew that "all" four of them were in excellent physical shape. How had he seen Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang's performances?

Unless he had clairvoyance, he could only have been in contact with someone "outside" and gotten the information from them.

Qiao Huan guessed that the person Shi Xingzhou was in contact with was most likely a member of the Production Team, and even more likely a member of his interest group.

Wasn't this intelligence delivered right to his door?

Naturally, Shi Xingzhou had no idea that Qiao Huan's thoughts had already soared into the stratosphere.

After the helicopter left, Shi Xingzhou looked at the three men, whose moods were decidedly stormy, and started a conversation. "We're in the northwest of the island right now, and the terrain is terrible. How about we head north? There's a mountain over there, the highest point on the island."

The other three didn't answer. Only Qiao Huan glanced at his watch.

"All right. Let's rest first and set out early tomorrow morning."

Shi Xingzhou was puzzled. "Why don't we cover more ground now? It's cooler at night."

Qiao Huan was just about to explain when Zhuo Yang sneered, "Are you sure you're an expert at wilderness survival?"

Shi Xingzhou was at a loss for words and looked to Qiao Huan for help, but Ye Yiwei spoke coldly. "We don't know what kind of place we'll end up in or whether it'll be suitable for setting up camp, not to mention that nighttime is when all kinds of wild beasts and venomous insects are most active. Isn't that common sense? Don't you know that?"

"I'm dying. Does Shi Xingzhou seriously not know any of that?"

"Oh, our Starship-gege was so busy working out before that he forgot to learn common sense!"

Shi Xingzhou: "Uh..."

He had only claimed to be an expert at wilderness survival to establish a "brains of the team" persona for himself.

But luckily... he had outside help.

Shi Xingzhou: "Thank you for the lesson, Teacher Ye. Let's spend the night here, then. I'll go find some firewood!"

Qiao Huan: "Should I come with you?"

Seeing the half-smile on Qiao Huan's face, Shi Xingzhou felt an ache in his back teeth.

Hah, he'd thought Qiao Huan was being kind just now. But it looked like he'd only kept him around to make a fool of him!

How scheming!

So he tossed out a "No need!" and hurried away.

Qiao Huan: ...

He'd been so afraid Shi Xingzhou would die out there that this was the one time he'd asked sincerely, without any provocation.

Forget it.

Qiao Huan opened the backpack the Production Team had given him and found only some basic supplies inside: a knife, some salt, a bottle of fresh water, a coil of rope, and a few compressed biscuits.

"Hey, A-Huan," Zhuo Yang said hesitantly, sounding him out as he used rope to tie his trouser legs and cuffs tight. "You know what Shi Xingzhou's... up to, right?"

"Mm." Qiao Huan was doing the same thing and answered casually.

Zhuo Yang, Ye Yiwei, and Bai Jike silently breathed sighs of relief in unison.

Once again, the three men's trains of thought had successfully connected, and they all felt they hadn't misunderstood.

Little did they know that their thinking and Qiao Huan's weren't even on the same progress bar.

The bullet comments, meanwhile, were thrilled by the undercurrents:

"Oh my! The big wolfdog is jealous!"

"Ye Yiwei secretly smiled!!! A sneaky smile from the eternal iceberg, aaaaaah!"

"Actually, I think Qiao Huan might look like a salted fish, but he knows what's going on!"

"I'm dying. You make it sound like Qiao Huan's the victim. If Zhou hadn't brought him onto the livestream, who'd even know who he was?"

"Uh, am I the only one wondering why those four are all doing the same thing? What's with tying up their trouser legs?"

"I don't really get it either. The four of them started doing it without even discussing it, like it's some kind of unspoken rule. So weird."

The four had just finished tying up their clothes when Shi Xingzhou came back. They all froze at the sight of him.

Shi Xingzhou's face was covered in what could have been sweat or tears, and both his arms were streaked with blood, but he stubbornly carried a huge bundle of firewood.

Zhuo Yang frowned. "What happened?"

He regretted asking as soon as the words left his mouth, because Shi Xingzhou had clearly memorized his script.

Shi Xingzhou's eyes reddened in an instant. "I had to find dry firewood to start a fire, and I thought, with so many of us, we'd need a lot. But it was really hard to find, and the wood was all so hard. I walked a really long way before I found some..."

"Stop crying." Ye Yiwei interrupted his spellcasting, his icy gaze carrying an oppressive force.

Shi Xingzhou fell silent at once.

Ye Yiwei stepped forward and examined Shi Xingzhou's injuries. "It's nothing serious," he said calmly. "Save your strength."

Then...

The four of them didn't give him another glance, each going back to tending to themselves.

Zhou's mom fans in the bullet comments flew into a rage. "Those four are way too cold!" "Aren't they ganging up to exclude our Zhou?" "Exactly, what a double standard! Ye Yiwei was so frantic when Bai Jike fell into the water, but now Zhou's hurt and he just says it's nothing!"

Seeing no reaction from the four, Shi Xingzhou simply threw down the firewood and began sobbing softly.

As if he had suffered a terrible grievance.

The four: ...

It wasn't that they were cold. Deep down, they simply didn't think a grown man getting a few scratches was a big deal.

In their daily training, getting a little hurt was perfectly normal. Forget bawling—if they so much as shed a tear, the others in their cohort would absolutely mock them for the rest of their lives!

Finally, Qiao Huan couldn't watch anymore. He walked over to Shi Xingzhou. "Stop crying."

Shi Xingzhou's eyes brimmed with tears as he thought, Fuck, you finally came.

"Boo-hoo, thank you, A-Huan. You're so kind."

"No, seriously, stop crying," Qiao Huan said earnestly. "Your whimpering sounds a lot like mosquitoes. It could easily attract them."

Shi Xingzhou: Fuck.

Were those icy words really something that could come out of a human mouth at 37 degrees?

The bullet comments grew even angrier, one after another condemning Qiao Huan.

Qiao Huan sighed. Seeing the bloody marks all over Shi Xingzhou's pale arms, he frowned.

"Forget it. I'll help you take care of them. It might hurt."

Shi Xingzhou nodded.

What was a little pain from some minor wounds? The more it hurt, the more the bullet comments would feel sorry for him!

"Zhuo-ge, come give me a hand," Qiao Huan said, turning around. "You too, Yiwei-ge, and Xiao Bai... Never mind, Xiao Bai, go back to sleep."

Zhuo Yang and Ye Yiwei were both unwilling a hundred and eighty times over, but they still obediently came over as Qiao Huan asked.

However, after seeing Shi Xingzhou's condition, they both broke into smiles of realization.

So that was what Qiao Huan meant!

Shi Xingzhou saw the faint excitement in the three men's eyes and panicked at once.

Qiao Huan: "Salt is magic damage, and a shoe sole is physical damage. Which do you choose?"

Shi Xingzhou froze. "What?"

He'd deliberately rubbed firewood against his arms to give himself some superficial wounds that looked frightening but weren't actually serious. How had magic and physical damage gotten involved?

"There are over a dozen land leeches on your arms by my estimate," Ye Yiwei said, continuing in his role as a science-fact machine. "The smell of your blood attracted them from the nearby woods. You don't feel any pain now because their saliva contains an anesthetic, but you'll feel a little something when we take them off."

Only then did Shi Xingzhou look at his exposed arms, and he was instantly horrified.

It had been too dark to see clearly just now, but on closer inspection, there were indeed dozens of black worms!

"Ah—!" Shi Xingzhou screamed in fright.

Qiao Huan was just about to say a few words to persuade him when Zhuo Yang flipped behind Shi Xingzhou and swiftly locked him in a Sode Guruma Jime.

Ye Yiwei didn't hesitate to grab Shi Xingzhou's left arm, either.

The two looked at Qiao Huan together. "Don't just stand there!"

Their eyes were full of the desire to claim credit.

Qiao Huan: ...

He had meant to provoke Shi Xingzhou, but were his roommates going to cooperate this readily?

In that case... he wouldn't hold back!

And so,

Qiao Huan grabbed a shoe sole and slapped it hard against the spots where the leeches had latched on, hurting them until they let go.

Yiwei picked up the salt bottle and sprinkled it over the leeches' plump bodies, making them dissolve instantly.

Of course,

The shoe sole didn't just strike the leeches; it struck Shi Xingzhou too.

The salt didn't just dissolve the leeches; it also got into Shi Xingzhou's wounds.

Shi Xingzhou: "Aah—!"

Slap, slap, slap, slap...

Ah, ah, ah, ah...

A magnificent, piercing forest symphony.

"You'll bring the wolves here." Annoyed by the noise, Zhuo Yang found a stick and shoved it into his mouth.

In an instant, only the accompaniment remained of the symphony.

Three minutes later.

Everything was silent.

Qiao Huan, Zhuo Yang, and Ye Yiwei dusted off their hands and returned to lean against the big tree and rest.

Although they had wanted "revenge," the three were public servants after all, so they had acted with the intent to treat and save him.

In their minds, they had naturally gone easy on him just now. Surely there wasn't a man who couldn't take that?

But Shi Xingzhou was already numb with pain, tears streaming silently down his face as he curled up like a cashew that had lost its dreams.

He had been pampered all his life. When had he ever suffered like this?

He had made such an ugly spectacle of himself screaming just now... and it had even gone out on the livestream!

"Oh, right," Qiao Huan suddenly remembered. "Come to think of it, this is common sense too. You can tie your clothes tight like we did, or the leeches might find some tender spots, like..."

As he spoke, he glanced at Shi Xingzhou's crotch.

Before he could finish, Shi Xingzhou sprang to his feet and dashed into the bushes, clutching his pants.

He couldn't care less whether it was embarrassing anymore.

After all, his little brother was more important!

"Hahahahaha, Shi Xingzhou said he'd studied wilderness survival? He doesn't even know this stuff?"

"The way the Three Brothers of the Shura Field looked at him just now was pure disdain!"

"Xiu San's inner thoughts: He's crying over that?"

"Now I get it. They tied their trouser legs to keep the leeches out! They didn't say a word about it. It really felt like they all took it for granted as common knowledge!"

"I learned something! I'm never rolling up my sleeves in the woods again!"

"Hahaha, everyone in the other livestreams is fighting and killing, trying to survive in the wilderness, but here they seem completely at ease and can even teach us stuff. Terrifying indeed!!!"

It was a long time before Shi Xingzhou returned from the bushes, looking utterly dazed. No one knew what he had been through.

Qiao Huan waited for him to return before quietly heading into the dense forest, using a trip to the bathroom as an excuse.

He avoided the cameras and took something resembling a pager from his pocket.

This was the communication device he had found on Shi Xingzhou while slapping him just now.

Qiao Huan checked the previous chat history. Sure enough, just as he had guessed, his, Zhuo Yang's, and Bai Jike's starting points had all been arranged by that person.

This confirmed Qiao Huan's earlier guess: the other party was one of the people in charge of the "Deserted Island" program, and held a fairly high position.

In the earliest messages, Shi Xingzhou had also mentioned a video... It seemed that was his main means of threatening the other party.

But what video was it?

Qiao Huan thought for a moment and sent the other party a message. Only after seeing the reply did he smile in satisfaction.

Then he sent a message to another number.

By the time he finished, it was late at night.

Qiao Huan tiptoed back to camp and quietly slipped the communication device back into Shi Xingzhou's trouser pocket.

But he hadn't expected someone to be watching him in the dark.

Qiao Huan looked up and unexpectedly met Zhuo Yang's curious gaze.

And Ye Yiwei's gaze.

And Bai Jike's.

Time stood still at that moment.

All three of them had been pretending to sleep!

Could it be... that they'd seen everything??

Qiao Huan didn't speak rashly.

The three of them said nothing for a long while either, seemingly wondering what to say.

The jungle at night was hot and noisy, filled with the loud chirping of insects.

Yet Qiao Huan felt the scene had sunk into a silence as cold as absolute zero.

But if he had another chance, he would never have let them break the silence this way.

Zhuo Yang was the first to get up, his face full of concern. "What's wrong, A-Huan? Why were you in the bathroom so long? Are you having trouble adjusting to the mountains and woods? But don't worry—"

Beside him, Ye Yiwei took the bottle issued by the Production Team out from inside his clothes. Even from several meters away, Qiao Huan could smell the strange odor coming from it.

With the expression a man with an iceberg face used to convey "thank you," Ye Yiwei said in a low voice:

"Xiao Bai and I picked these herbs nearby just now and quietly brewed them. Drink it."

Impatient, Zhuo Yang had already unscrewed the cap and handed the bottle to Qiao Huan, giving him a meaningful look.

"Thanks for keeping him here so the brothers could vent, okay~"

Qiao Huan: ...?

He couldn't even understand what this guy was talking about.

But as long as they hadn't discovered his identity, what did it matter if they mistakenly thought he had diarrhea? He could drink any medicine.

So Qiao Huan grabbed the bottle, held his breath, and drained it in one gulp, with all the tragic resolve of a warrior severing his own arm.

The three immediately broke into relieved smiles.

The bullet-comment viewers who had stayed up late to watch were instantly outraged by the sight.

"Look at Shi Xingzhou, still tossing and turning in pain! Could you three be any more obvious about treating them differently?!!!"

The author has something to say:

One second earlier—Qiao Huan: So what if our brains aren't on the same wavelength? I got my provocation across anyway.

The next second—Qiao Huan (painfully swallowing the medicine): Help, wasn't Ye Yiwei the one who got the poor-health script (specifically a hernia)?

Shi Xingzhou: Your brains aren't on the same wavelength, yet you get along so well. Your brains aren't on the same wavelength, but when it comes to beating me up, you're perfectly in sync? Fine, you're above it all, you're noble, and I'm the only one who gets hurt!

*Sode Guruma Jime: A technique for restraining an opponent from behind the neck. Source: Baidu.