Desert Island Survival Arc (8)

Desert Island Survival Arc (8)

This giant wild chicken of unknown species was so ugly one could hardly bear to eat it, yet it turned out to taste pretty good.

Zhang Heng had eaten seafood for so long on the island that he had nearly forgotten what chicken tasted like, but the chicken soup he stewed that night stirred up old memories.

Strictly speaking, the meat was still a little tougher than chicken, and its texture was probably closer to pigeon.

But to Zhang Heng, who had been craving meat so badly he was practically losing his mind, it was the best chicken he had ever eaten in his life.

He could not finish a chicken weighing over ten pounds in one meal. After removing the innards, he soaked the leftover meat in seawater, smoked it into jerky, and hung it beneath the eaves.

He found a sunny patch of land behind the house, cut up the potatoes he had kept as seeds and planted them, then burned some grass and wood ash to scatter as fertilizer. Finally, he put up a fence around it, hoping the place would bring him a pleasant surprise a month and a half later.

Zhang Heng had originally recorded time by carving tally marks into a wall, but after moving, he could hardly bring that stone wall with him. Fortunately, he still had the Starfish on his right hand.

Its hardness was so unbelievable that it defied all scientific explanation. Back in the early days, Zhang Heng had even used it to polish stones.

Based on the positions of the hour and minute hands on it, he could work out the current date through a simple conversion. It had been two hundred and one days since he landed on this deserted island.

His clothes had been the first things to fall apart, followed by his shoes, which had developed a huge hole. Fortunately, he was in the tropics, so even in winter he did not have to worry much about the temperature. Zhang Heng simply went bare-chested during the day now.

His skin had been tanned bronze, his face was covered in stubble, and his hair had clumped into strands. He looked rather unkempt.

That afternoon, Zhang Heng set aside all his work, chose a rocky cliff by the shore, climbed up it, sat cross-legged on top, and quietly gazed into the distance.

About half an hour later, the old friend Zhang Heng had been waiting for appeared right on schedule.

Explorer Man struggled amid the waves, looking as though he might drown at any moment.

Zhang Heng watched the figure bobbing up and down, his expression deeply conflicted.

The great philosopher, mathematician, and historian Russell once said that his life had been governed by three simple yet powerful passions—the longing for love, the pursuit of knowledge, and pity for human suffering.

But for Zhang Heng now, things were a little simpler.

Only two things had kept him alive through these five hundred days—seeing what lay at the center of the island, and Explorer Man, who drifted here once every forty days.

The former kept him busy and gave him less time for wild thoughts, while the latter reminded him that he was not alone.

Zhang Heng had lost count of how many times he had considered hauling Explorer Man out of the sea.

All he had to do was drag the other man ashore, and he would have someone to keep him company for nineteen days, giving him the conversation and warmth of another human being he needed most.

Yet Zhang Heng had never acted.

He remembered a movie he had watched before called Cast Away. The protagonist's plane crashed, and he landed on a small island with a pile of packages. To survive, he opened every package except the last one, because that package represented hope to him.

Explorer Man, who returned once every forty days, held the same meaning for Zhang Heng now.

He had already spent more than two hundred days on this island, equivalent to five rounds of playtime for an ordinary player, yet his return to reality was still nowhere in sight.

If he saved Explorer Man now, then after the other man died nineteen days later, Zhang Heng would be completely alone for the rest of his days.

After his Wilderness Survival Skills rose to Level 1, he still lacked everything as before—he desperately wanted a game console, even one with only Tetris and Snake—but improving his skills further was no longer as urgent as it had been when he first arrived on the island.

By comparison, exploring the center of the island was what really needed an extra hand. He could certainly do it alone, but two people were safer in the end.

Therefore, Zhang Heng planned to save Explorer Man and have the latter accompany him deep into the primeval forest.

From Ed and Shorts Kid, Zhang Heng had also confirmed something: although both men were experts in Wilderness Survival, their specialties were not the same.

Ed taught mainly basic survival skills, while Shorts Kid leaned more toward crafting. Judging from Explorer Man's clothing and appearance, barring any surprises, he was probably an exploration expert. If Zhang Heng fished him out now, things would be a little awkward.

So Zhang Heng still restrained the desire in his heart and watched Explorer Man get swallowed by the waves for the fourth time.

Reluctantly glancing once more toward the direction in which the man had vanished, Zhang Heng jumped down from the cliff and continued his Archery Skill training as usual.

He spent a month raising his accuracy at thirty meters to over ninety percent.

Yet he received no notification that his skill had leveled up.

Zhang Heng was not discouraged. This was within his expectations. The game's standards for recognizing skills were extremely strict. He had studied English for fourteen years and had Chinese as his native language, yet he had only managed to reach Level 1 in languages. Still, considering how many languages existed in the world, the ranking was fairly reasonable.

The same applied to Wilderness Survival. Zhang Heng felt that if everyone in the world were thrown onto a deserted island, even if he was not the last person alive, he would surely make the top ten. But he also had glaring weaknesses. In another harsh environment, he might not fare so well. In the polar regions or a desert, for instance, he would have a hard time surviving. That was also the biggest difference between him and a true expert.

Therefore, Zhang Heng did not rush when it came to his Archery Skill either.

After improving his accuracy at thirty meters, he began trying to shoot moving targets.

At first, Zhang Heng used fish swimming near the coral as targets, but after firing two arrows, he remembered that vision was refracted underwater. If he kept practicing like that, he might end up training his Archery Skill all wrong.

So he switched to crabs, but crabs were the sort to stay still when their enemies stayed still, so the training effect was not great. As for birds, Zhang Heng had never considered them from the start. Most of them perched at the tops of trees, making the arrows difficult to retrieve.

After trying a few times, Zhang Heng ultimately made his own targets from broken pottery shards. He strung them together with rope and hung them from branches, where they swayed with the wind.

That made hitting them much more difficult.

This time, Zhang Heng practiced for a full two months before finally getting the hang of it. During that time, he unexpectedly acquired another ugly giant "wild chicken," and this one was completely intact. Somehow, it had wandered over to Zhang Heng's vegetable garden, probably intending to sneak in for a free breakfast, only to get its head stuck in the fence.

After some thought, Zhang Heng did not rush to eat it. Instead, he found a rope, tied one end around one of its legs and the other to a wooden stake. This gave him an upgraded 2.0 moving target.

Zhang Heng wrapped up the charred arrowheads and began mercilessly tormenting the wild chicken.