Zhang Heng was not too surprised. Mainly because he knew this was only a game; theoretically, even if he found Winnie the Pooh deep in the forest, he would not find it all that strange.
But for now, Zhang Heng had to admit that everything around him felt incredibly real. If not for the extra twenty-four hours he had gained, which had caused a serious problem with the game's duration, he probably would not have found any bugs at all.
Besides those houses and stone tools, the two also discovered a small lake nearby, roughly one hectare in size. Bear scooped up some water and tasted it, then said, "It's drinkable. It's a freshwater lake. No wonder they built their village nearby."
But Zhang Heng's attention was drawn to something sticking halfway out of the mud by the lakeshore.
"This tribe... did they already possess metal-smelting techniques?"
Zhang Heng pulled the object out and found that it was a heavily rusted piece of iron artifact. It seemed to have originally been mounted on a piece of wood, but the wood had rotted beyond recognition.
Zhang Heng studied it for a while, only to find that he had no idea what it was used for.
Bear was not omniscient either. He likewise did not know what it was for, but he analyzed, "Judging by their level of technology, they should still have been in the Stone Age, so this piece of iron artifact most likely did not belong to them."
It was already getting late, so the two did not continue onward. They simply found a spot nearby to make a fire and cook.
As the end of their journey drew closer, Zhang Heng's feelings became somewhat complicated.
For more than a year, he had relied on the thought of taking a look at the center of the island to keep himself practicing archery and exercising hard every day. It had practically become a bodily instinct. But if asked whether he truly cared all that much about what was there, the answer was not really.
In that regard, Zhang Heng sometimes envied Ed and Bear instead. They could comfort themselves by saying that perhaps a ship would dock tomorrow, or that there might be something at the island's center that could help them return home. But as a player, Zhang Heng knew perfectly well that unless the time ran out, he could not go anywhere.
Thinking that the mystery would be revealed tomorrow, he felt excitement and anticipation. After all, it was something he had been thinking about for a year. But more than anything, he felt lost.
After this was over, what would he have to live for?
Fortunately, more than four-fifths of the time had already passed. There were only a little over a hundred days left. Even if he could not find a new goal, he should be able to grit his teeth and endure them.
Zhang Heng woke up very early on the morning of the third day, but when he opened his eyes, he found that Bear had risen even earlier.
"Morning, Zhang." The explorer greeted him enthusiastically. "I just took another walk around the lake. Guess what I found?"
"Uh... breakfast?"
"That too. I did catch a catfish to change up our menu, but besides that, I found something else." Bear placed two rust-covered little spheres in Zhang Heng's palm.
"What are these? Marbles?"
"Bullets," Bear said.
"Solid bullets? How do you fire them?" Zhang Heng froze. He was not a weapons enthusiast, but he knew the basics. Modern weapons relied on the gunpowder inside bullets igniting to propel them. Without gunpowder, nothing could be fired.
"Remember what you found by the lake? I know what it is now." The explorer said excitedly, "A Flintlock Gun. Europe used this kind of weapon extensively in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The gunpowder and bullets were loaded separately, and it was ignited with a fuse... That was when the slave trade was flourishing. The natives living here were most likely attacked by slave catchers and all captured and sold to plantation owners."
The speculation was reasonable and fit what they had seen so far. Zhang Heng had already intended to accept it, but half a day later, when the two reached the center of the island and saw the altar-like structure and the mountain of bones piled atop it, Zhang Heng asked the explorer beside him, "Were European slave-catching crews in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries really this brutal?"
"...This was not done by slave catchers. That was a bloody, dark era. As far as I know, slave traders did kill those who resisted while capturing Black slaves, to intimidate the others. Some also killed everyone who was too old or too young to transport."
Bear walked up to the altar and picked up a skull. "But this... does not seem like their style."
"If slave catchers did not kill the island's natives, then who did? Don't tell me they killed themselves?" Zhang Heng's offhand remark made both men freeze.
On closer inspection, the architectural style of this altar did resemble the ruins they had encountered by the lake.
"All right, the slave catchers landed on the island, and the natives saw they could not win. Then they ran to this altar and ended their own lives... That does not make much sense, does it?"
Bear walked into the pile of bones at the center of the altar and crouched down, brushing the dust from the stone slab with his hand. "There's something else here. It's a totem depicting a creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a snake. It seems to have been a god worshipped by those natives."
Zhang Heng was somewhat disappointed. Though he did not care too much about what was at the center of the island, discovering that it was a native ruin of no use to him at all still left him discouraged.
After all, he had spent an entire year preparing for this. The journey here had been dangerous, and he had nearly been swallowed whole by that python, only to find a pile of bones and an altar.
But seeing how interested Bear seemed in the pile of things, he did not urge him on.
They had ample food and water. They had eaten less than half of what they had brought, and Bear had hunted plenty of "game" along the way. Although most of it looked rather difficult to figure out how to eat, it had tasted surprisingly good.
Zhang Heng was considering whether they should simply cross through the forest to the other side of the island, then follow the coastline back to where they lived.
But just then, a dark shadow suddenly sprang out from behind the altar and pounced on the explorer above it.
Zhang Heng jumped in fright. This time, he recognized what it was without needing Bear to explain.
—A jaguar, king of the tropical rainforest. It resembled a tiger in both size and appearance, possessed sharp teeth and claws, could easily hunt caimans, and was a large predator at the top of the food chain.
But Bear reacted quickly as well. The explorer rolled on the ground, dodging the beast's thunderous strike, then pulled out the Small Knife at his waist.
Zhang Heng also swiftly took the bow and arrows from his back, but then another jaguar sprang out.
This time, even Bear's expression changed.
You've got to be kidding me?! Zhang Heng was shocked. Logically speaking, there were still four days until the explorer's scripted death. Why had these jaguars appeared so early? Had they grabbed the wrong script?
But there was no time to think further. Bear was in a dangerous situation now. No matter how capable he was, he could not deal with two jaguars alone. Zhang Heng drew his bow, nocked an arrow, and shot at the second jaguar.
The latter nimbly leaped aside to evade it. Zhang Heng was not too surprised. They were roughly twenty-seven or twenty-eight meters apart. At that distance, his usual hit rate on Mickey Mouse was only fifty or sixty percent. A jaguar was far more agile than a Dodo Bird.
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