Desert Island Survival Arc (2)

Desert Island Survival Arc (2)

When Zhang Heng opened his eyes again, he found himself lying facedown on an unfamiliar beach.

Waves washed over his body as a hermit crab carrying a conch shell scuttled past his eyes.

Zhang Heng was in terrible shape. Ever since waking up, he had been thirsty, hungry, and utterly exhausted. It felt as though he had truly been drifting at sea for days.

He found a relatively dry spot and barely managed to sit down with his back against the rock wall.

Looking in the direction from which he had been washed ashore, he saw nothing but an endless expanse of seawater.

What was this, the set of some survival reality show?

Perhaps it was an aftereffect of that glass of lemonade, or perhaps it was because he had gone too long without food. Zhang Heng's mind was foggy, but he forced himself to calm down and began thinking through everything that had happened to him.

Following that strange old man in Tang suit's request, he had become the man's agent and gone to a bar called City of Desire to participate in a mysterious game. After finally finding the person in charge, he had been drugged and then dumped on a deserted island.

So the question was, why had they done this? What did they stand to gain?

And what about that mysterious voice that had appeared in his mind earlier, sounding suspiciously like a game login prompt? Had it been a hallucination? If not, what did it mean?

His body was still his own, but his tracksuit was gone, replaced by beach shorts and a floral T-shirt. The Swiss Army Knife he had stuffed into his pocket just in case had naturally vanished as well.

However, the watch on his right wrist was still there. It was the only thing he had not lost.

Yet when Zhang Heng's gaze fell on the watch face, he froze.

The date on Starfish had not changed. It was still Thursday night, the night he had entered the City of Desire bar, while the time showed that only one minute had passed since before he lost consciousness.

Zhang Heng stared at it for a while longer and discovered that the second hand had not moved at all.

Was it broken?

Zhang Heng was surprised. He had conducted quite a few experiments before. This watch could not be adjusted, and the time on it was always accurate. Only he could see the extra twelfth marking. Neither soaking it in water nor burning it with fire could damage it. It was so sturdy that it barely seemed like something from this world.

Zhang Heng had once thrown it from a building more than two hundred meters high onto the concrete below. The hard concrete had been smashed into a small crater, yet the watch itself had remained completely unharmed.

He had once thought that even if he died, the watch would keep running until the end of the world. He had never expected it to lose power one day...

But then something stirred in Zhang Heng's mind. He remembered that mysterious voice from earlier. At the end, it had mentioned a time flow rate of 480.

Zhang Heng's eyelids twitched. Could it really mean exactly what it said?

If someone else wanted to verify that, they might have had no choice but to wait forty days. But Zhang Heng had another way.

He reached out and pressed two fingers to his pulse. Twenty minutes later, he finally confirmed a terrifying fact.

—The Starfish on his wrist was not broken.

The watch was still running according to real-world time. It was just that, after conversion, one second had become eight minutes.

So... was this really just a game?

Zhang Heng was at a loss. The scene before him was so real: the golden beach, the coconut trees swaying in the wind, the soaked T-shirt clinging to his body, the uneven rocks digging painfully into his back. Hunger and weakness enveloped him, allowing him to clearly feel life draining away.

No matter what, his most urgent task was to find a way to regain some strength.

Even thinking was becoming difficult for Zhang Heng now.

He knew he had to eat and replenish his fluids. Yet while Zhang Heng had better mental resilience than most people, he was ultimately just an ordinary College Student. As a modern man, he had no idea how to live on a deserted island. He could not tell whether a plant was edible, did not know how to hunt, find water, or build shelter...

Fortunately, he at least recognized coconut trees.

Less than twenty meters to his left stood several coconut trees, with green coconuts growing on them. The coconut water inside could moisten his parched lips and throat, while the flesh could provide the energy and vitamins he desperately needed.

Zhang Heng picked up a palm-sized rock from beside his feet and found a coconut tree that seemed to have been bent by a typhoon.

Using the rock in his hand, he knocked the coconuts down.

There were seven in total, hanging roughly three to four meters above the ground.

Under normal circumstances, this would not have been difficult at all. But given Zhang Heng's current condition, he had to expend considerable effort to get those coconuts down from the tree.

By the time he had smashed the green coconuts open against the rocks one by one and drunk the water inside, half an hour had passed. Zhang Heng then scraped off some coconut flesh with a stone and swallowed it. After finishing all that, he had finally recovered a little strength and could continue considering his current situation.

Zhang Heng could no longer tell whether he was in a game or reality.

If all of this was fake, it could not explain why his senses and physical condition felt so real, nor could it explain the bizarre flow of time on his watch. But if he was still in reality, how had the other party transported him from the city where he studied and lived to this deserted island in the blink of an eye?

Zhang Heng shook his head and decided to use his old method: set aside any problem he could not solve for the time being.

After all, according to the old man in Tang suit, whether this was a game or reality, he had to find a way to survive.

But could an ordinary modern person who had lived in the city really conquer this mysterious and unpredictable wilderness?

A bitter smile appeared on Zhang Heng's lips. He had always been an optimistic person, but faced with the current situation, even he did not think he could survive forty days on the completely unfamiliar island behind him.

In fact, even four days seemed like a stretch.

He lacked Wilderness Survival knowledge and skills, was in terrible physical condition, and was completely alone. Zhang Heng actually hoped a little that this was a game, because logically, a good game should not contain an unavoidable dead end—especially not in a beginner stage that had only just begun.

As if responding to his hopes, three small black dots appeared amid the distant waves the next moment.

Zhang Heng threw down the coconut shell and rose to his feet. Braving the blazing sun overhead, he ran to the beach as fast as he could. At last, he saw the three black dots clearly. They were three people bobbing in the waves.

All three were foreign men.

One wore a full set of outdoor gear and hiking boots, with what appeared to be a dagger hanging from his waist. However, the wind and waves were too strong for Zhang Heng to be sure. He was the calmest of the three. There was also a young man wearing only shorts, his face expressionless, and a balding middle-aged man who was not wearing anything at all.

All three were in great danger. Though they were trying desperately to get closer to the island, for some unknown reason, they seemed able only to remain afloat, carried farther and farther back by the waves.

Zhang Heng knew he had to make a choice. Although the coconuts had restored some of his strength, saving all three at once was clearly unrealistic. With his current stamina, he could only choose one person to try to rescue.

In the end, he chose the balding middle-aged man who had nothing at all. The reason was simple: of the three, that man was closest to the beach.