Gold Sand

Chen Shouyi wiped the spittle from his face, feeling dazedly as though he were some heinous villain.

But he had no intention of letting her go.

Why should he release something he had captured through his own ability?

He set Shell Girl on the ground and tied the other end of the hemp rope to a blade of grass.

Then he picked up a wooden stick and prepared to practice swordsmanship.

He immediately felt the difference from practicing on Earth.

Under this world's gravity, every exertion he made felt sluggish and heavy. His muscles moved with the difficulty of a rust-covered machine, requiring tremendous effort. It was as though he had returned to the days when he had first learned swordsmanship, no longer possessing the smooth proficiency he had on Earth.

Moreover, after practicing for only a few minutes, his muscles began to throb, and his body started to spasm. He had to rest for a while.

Yet the harsher the environment, the more obvious the training's effects became.

He could feel that if he managed to practice until he could control his movements as easily as his thoughts in this other world, his swordsmanship would likely rise to yet another level.

During this time, while Chen Shouyi wasn't paying attention, Shell Girl kept trying to escape.

First, she tried to untie the rope around her feet, sweating profusely. Unfortunately, it had been tied with a dead knot, and with her weak and frail body, she couldn't undo it no matter how long she tried.

Then she turned her attention to the little blade of grass.

Calling it a little blade of grass was only accurate from Chen Shouyi's perspective. To Shell Girl, it was thicker than her thigh.

Whether she desperately pulled at it or finally resorted to biting it with her mouth, even after exhausting all her strength, she still couldn't break the grass.

At last, she gave up. A breeze lifted her fine strands of hair, making them flutter gently. She slumped helplessly onto the ground, her face filled with despair and numbness. Perhaps she had thought of her dark future; a line of clear tears slowly slid down her face, leaving her looking miserable and pitiful.

Gradually, she began to feel hungry. She flew to a nearby patch of flowers and drank her fill of nectar before returning to sit down in resignation.

Time slowly passed. The sun gradually slanted westward. Feeling hunger in his stomach, Chen Shouyi finally stopped. He realized he had made a mistake; if he had known, he should have brought some food inside.

Then he turned around and saw Shell Girl holding a grain of sand in her tiny hands and tossing it up and down, apparently amusing herself.

At first, Chen Shouyi didn't pay attention. It wasn't until a streak of golden light flashed before his eyes that he keenly realized something was wrong.

He walked over, startling Shell Girl into hastily throwing away the grain of sand and retreating again and again.

However, Chen Shouyi's target was not her, but the grain of sand she had thrown away.

He carefully picked it up. It was only slightly larger than a sesame seed, yet it shimmered with a golden luster.

The mesmerizing color made his heart thump violently.

"Gold!" Chen Shouyi almost cried out.

There was gold on the island!

He hurriedly inspected the sand on the ground, but found nothing else.

"Where did you find it?"

"@￥#%&@" Shell Girl shook her head frantically, her face full of misery. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she spoke in a voice as faint as a mosquito's, uttering strange words.

From her expression, she was clearly answering a different question.

Chen Shouyi patiently pointed at the gold sand, then at himself, and finally made a gesture indicating that something belonged to him.

He patiently repeated the communication several times, but Shell Girl still looked utterly bewildered.

Chen Shouyi thought about it and decided he needed a gesture understood in both worlds.

He pondered carefully for a moment, then suddenly had an idea.

The next moment, he opened his mouth, put the gold sand in his hand into it, chewed a few times, and swallowed. In reality, he had held the gold sand between his fingers.

Then he looked at Shell Girl with a ferocious expression.

To Shell Girl, that mouth was undoubtedly no different from a gaping maw. Sure enough, she was terrified and frantically backed away, her face as pale as paper.

Soon, she seemed to understand something. She looked left and right, then suddenly flew into the air.

After flying several meters, she landed on the ground. Without seeming to search much, she quickly grabbed a golden-yellow grain of sand in her palm, then flew back and ingratiatingly placed it in Chen Shouyi's hand.

His heart leaped with joy. There really was plenty here.

But not a trace of it showed on his face. He continued pretending to put it into his mouth, then glared at Shell Girl.

The poor Shell Girl had not even had time to catch her breath before she hurriedly flew about in a panic, searching everywhere.

Chen Shouyi watched for a while, somewhat surprised. He discovered that Shell Girl seemed to possess an extremely keen intuition; she could even accurately locate gold sand buried among the grains.

More than once, he saw Shell Girl brush away the surface sand and take gold sand from underneath.

Before long, the amount of gold sand in Chen Shouyi's hand had increased from two grains to eighteen. The smallest was only the size of a needlepoint, while the largest was as big as a mung bean.

But Shell Girl could no longer fly. She slumped onto the ground, drenched in sweat.

Seeing how exhausted she was, Chen Shouyi finally felt somewhat embarrassed and stopped forcing her.

His stomach was growing hungrier and hungrier, so he decided to go outside to eat.

He glanced at Shell Girl and hesitated, but ultimately decided to leave her there.

He placed the shell she had originally hidden in beside her. With the shell's protection, she should not encounter any danger. At the very least, if she met insects or something similar, she could hide inside.

Soon, he put on an expression as though nothing had happened and left the Unfinished Building.

He took out his phone and turned it on.

Before long, a string of messages appeared.

He glanced at them and found they were all from Zhang Xiaoyue.

"So bored!"

"What are you doing?"

"I ate the food Dad cooked today. It was awful!"

A trace of a smile appeared on Chen Shouyi's face, and he hurriedly replied, "Sorry, I was just practicing martial arts and only saw this now. What are you doing?"

Not long afterward, a message came back.

"You woke me up from my nap, you jerk!" Zhang Xiaoyue lay on her bed, holding her phone as her cheeks puffed up slightly. Her fingers flew across the screen as she typed.

Thinking about it, she had only truly gotten to know Chen Shouyi this month, after entering her third year of high school. Before that, she had barely noticed him.

He had been the kind of boy who was easy to overlook, with little presence in the class.

It was only when he suddenly performed the Sting Sword during martial arts class and astonished everyone that she gradually began paying attention to him.

Later, when the two of them encountered the thugs at the bookstore and he grabbed her wrist, calmly protecting her as he led her through the crowd, she suddenly felt that this boy had become as magnetic as a lodestone.

"That can only mean your sleeping position was wrong!" Chen Shouyi replied with a smile.

"Then tell me, what other positions are there for sleeping?"

Chen Shouyi couldn't help thinking of the dirty jokes he had seen online. He quickly typed, "There are lots of positions. More than the Thirty-Six Body Tempering Forms."

Then he sensed that something was wrong and hurriedly deleted it. He had only just deleted the message when the other side replied.

"You're so filthy! I didn't know you weren't an honest person either."

Chen Shouyi was stunned and hastily sent a sweating emoji.

He found a malatang restaurant, placed his order, and continued messaging: "What are you talking about? I don't understand at all!"

Chen Shouyi ate his malatang while smiling and replying to the messages. By the time he finished the meal, they had exchanged dozens of messages, and he felt they both had endless things to say.

Finally, with tremendous determination, he ended the conversation: "I'm going to practice swordsmanship. We'll talk later!"

"Okay, you have to work hard!"

After reading that, Chen Shouyi turned off his phone and immediately felt brimming with motivation.

Shell Girl sat on top of the shell, swinging her little legs leisurely. When she saw the terrifying giant return, she hurriedly crawled back inside the shell.

Chen Shouyi took a look and discovered that seven or eight more grains of gold sand had appeared beside the shell, gleaming brilliantly and drawing the eye. They had clearly been collected while he was gone.

He hadn't expected Shell Girl to have such awareness.

Chen Shouyi figured he should treat her a little better from now on. This was a hen that laid golden eggs!

In a good mood, he made a circuit around the island to aid his digestion.

Then he continued practicing swordsmanship.

Time passed quickly, and the darkness of the other world gradually descended.

There was no moon, not even starlight.

To this day, Earth still could not determine what kind of world this other world was. It seemed completely unlike a normal universe.

Apart from the "sun," which seemed relatively normal, there were no other celestial bodies to be seen at all.

Yet it was not entirely without light.

Chen Shouyi saw countless phosphorescent lights on the ocean, sometimes gathering and sometimes dispersing, like ribbons or the aurora—bewitching and magnificent, breathtaking and mysterious.

Even on the island, specks of light rose into the air, mingling among wisps of mist and giving the place a magical hue.

At that moment, he vaguely heard someone singing. The voice was ethereal and mournful, seemingly drifting over from the distant sea, making people involuntarily stop and listen.

Yet Chen Shouyi felt a chill as he listened. The night in the other world was terrifying. It was a world completely filled with ghosts and monsters; countless records about the other world had repeatedly emphasized this point.

He looked back at Shell Girl, only to find that she had already hidden inside the shell.