Late Night, Embrace / Life...

Sakura then realized that Lin had been searching for these things during the time he was away. He was probably looking for usable firewood in dark environments, and he spent more time finding things that were hard to find, such as the bark of dead trees.

Lin used the remaining hemp rope and branches to make a pulling tool, then tied it to a sharpened branch, pointing the tip at a small hole dug out by a relatively wide branch. He then put some dry bark inside and began to start a fire by friction.

Although everyone knows how to start a fire by friction, it is actually not that easy and requires a high level of skill, patience, and endurance.

Sakura had seen Lin make fire by rubbing sticks together before, and she couldn't help but marvel at Lin's versatility. He could do almost anything. Would anyone think that they would be stranded in the wilderness and then try to make fire by rubbing sticks together?

I feel he's the kind of person who can survive in any environment and won't complain about his surroundings...

"What were you and Elysia planning to do while you were playing the King's Game?"

A sudden remark snapped Sakura out of her reverie, and she looked at Lin in surprise. "You know?"

... It would be strange if you didn't know.

Lin didn't know Sakura's cheating method. It was very likely that she relied on her raw skill, that is, absolute speed, to switch cards. However, he was more curious about why Sakura wanted to cooperate with Elysia.

"It's nothing. When Elysia and I were discussing something, she said we could use this game to accomplish it. She would then get everyone involved, and I would help her arrange the order of the kings."

Lin guessed it was pretty much the same. As for what Sakura wanted to do... Lin thought it was better not to ask.

"You'd better not play pranks on her too much. She's shameless, and you never know when she might betray you," Lin said somewhat irritably. "She spends a quarter of her life thinking up pranks, and the remaining three-quarters on playing pranks."

"Besides, she's not afraid of retaliation. In fact, the more I resist, the more energetic she becomes. I wanted to stay away from her from the beginning, but the things she does just keep getting more and more outrageous..."

"..."

Sakura sat on the ground, hugging her knees, gazing at the endless stream of forest in the dark cave, and remained silent.

"Lin... you seemed very happy when you talked about Elysia..."

"How could that be? Even Kevin gets talkative when he talks about her," he replied nonchalantly.

With Lin's tireless efforts, a small flame was finally lit. He carefully placed it into the small stone stove, then added bark and kept blowing on the embers.

Finally, a bright and warm flame ignited in the cave. Sakura's eyes lit up, and she felt her body warm up instantly, feeling cozy inside and out.

Only then did Sakura realize that Lin was covered in mud, turning him into a mud figure. He must have been splashed with mud when he went out to search earlier.

She also realized that Lin had no sense of anything outside his body, which meant that... he went out to find these things for Ying's sake.

"Take off your clothes," he said to Sakura.

"Ah?"

"What's wrong?" Lin was puzzled by her startled reaction. Ying was usually a calm person. "Roasting clothes over a fire will dry them faster, and wearing wet clothes will cause body heat to be lost."

"Oh..."

Ying nodded hesitantly, then began to take off her clothes, quickly stripping down to only her white underwear.

Lin, with his back to her, swung a few poles over without turning his head. "Hang them up."

Sakura mechanically listened to Lin's instructions. She leaned against the stone wall, staring blankly at the back of the figure sitting at the cave entrance, looking out of the cave. She hugged herself, lost in thought.

Chapter 147 Late at Night, an Embrace

Sakura said she was going to rest, but she couldn't sleep, not because there were Honkai Beast on the island, but for reasons she couldn't explain herself.

She felt terrible. From the moment she became an assassin, she had stepped into an abyss. She did need to support her sister, that's true, but there were so many people in the world whose experiences were even more tragic than hers and Rin's. Why didn't they become assassins?

Sakura herself had gotten used to it and accepted it over the years, but for some reason she just didn't want Rin to hate her.

Perhaps it's because Lin is like her complete opposite, an ideal version of herself.

If her parents didn't

Chapter 148 Life

Sakura couldn't sleep anymore.

Lin's hands were very proper, or rather, too proper; even though he was asleep, his hands were still resting on her back.

But his breath hit her face hard. It wasn't that she disliked it, it was just... indescribable...

Moreover, Sakura's enhanced sense of smell detected a very strange... fragrance?

She had never smelled this scent before. It wasn't floral; the moment she smelled it, she knew it was Lin's body fragrance, so alluring that it made her body restless and even caused her to have insomnia.

She carefully opened her closed eyes a little, and after seeing that Lin was indeed asleep, she quietly moved closer.

Let's get a little closer... it should be okay, right? This is to conserve body temperature... this is to conserve body temperature...

Sakura gave herself plenty of hints, but as she saw Lin's face getting closer and closer, and smelled the increasingly strong fragrance, she couldn't help herself...

"..."

Sakura instantly moved away from Lin's face, covering her mouth and nose as she gasped for breath.

Almost... it's so strange... why would she do that...?

And so, amidst Sakura's self-control and inexplicable inner turmoil, the next day arrived.

Didn't you get enough rest last night?

Lin took off the dried clothes and put them on, glancing at Sakura who looked somewhat listless. "I'm sorry... because of me..."

"It's not because of you." Sakura shook her head with a wry smile. "It's my problem."

She looked down at her right hand and sighed, "I... am terrible."

"..."

After leaving a fire for future use, Lin and Ying began to head towards the island. Following the approximate location that Lin had confirmed the night before, they walked along the stream.

"The creatures here are a bit strange." Lin squatted down next to a half-sized footprint and examined the droppings left behind. "These should be wild animals found in tropical rainforests near the equator."

"Can't it exist somewhere else?"

"Yes, but animals don't exist in isolation. They usually follow a complete food chain. If an animal appears elsewhere, it's either because the entire food chain exists there, or it was brought here by humans."

Lin shook his head. He wasn't actually sure where they were, but he was certain that what they were experiencing was definitely not normal.

"Moreover, since Honkai Beast have appeared here, the ecosystem here should be destroyed and altered by Honkai Energy. However, the wild animals we saw yesterday were all normal and showed no signs of being eroded."

In other words, the appearance of that Honkai Beast was also very abnormal.

What was originally just a simple shipwreck may now require Lin to reconsider the reasons for their accident.

"I arranged the SOS symbol with stones on the shore. If the Fire Moths start their rescue, they should arrive soon." Lin walked along, picking some small purple berries from a nearby bush. After examining their shape, he asked Sakura, "What color are these?"

"Purple."

"The purple ones are edible, so pick them if you see them."

It has to be said that Lin is really reliable. Yingguang followed him and watched him identify various plants and fungi and find edible food, which made her feel that his knowledge was no less than that of a professional wilderness survivalist.

"What about this kind? The red one."

Sakura picked a red fruit that looked a bit like some kind of fruit and handed it to Lin. He glanced at it and frowned. "This kind... is edible, but you can't eat too much of it, as it can cause internal heat."

"Heat accumulation?" This is a somewhat unfamiliar term, seemingly from the Shenzhou language.

However, since they were edible, all the cherry blossoms were picked and put into the rattan bag that Lin had temporarily woven.

Most of the day was spent traveling. As evening approached, Lin glanced at the sky and said, "Let's rest here. I'm going fishing."

The fishing rod he had made the night before came in handy. He found some small insects in the mud, then mixed them with the damp soil by the stream to make bait, and began fishing.

Sakura then tried to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, imitating Lin's method from the previous day. She thought she could easily make a fire by simply copying what Lin did, but after actually trying it...

She stared silently at the broken branch, which showed no signs of even smoking.

It's so strange. Why did Lin manage to start a fire so easily, even after she broke the branches?

After Lin set up his fishing rod, he noticed Ying holding the broken branch in her hand with a puzzled expression. He immediately knew what she was up to and walked over.

"Let me teach you."

"Um."

Sakura found two more dry branches, poked a hole in them, and put bark inside.

"Starting a fire is not simply about friction, nor is it that the greater the force, the easier it is to start a fire. There are certain requirements for posture and the direction of force."

Lin placed his hands on the backs of Ying's hands. She trembled slightly, but Lin didn't notice.

Then he slowly applied force, adjusting Sakura's posture and strength until it was the right, and then released his hand.

"Okay... I understand..."

Sakura kept her head down, trying not to let Lin notice the slight blush on her face. However, she was overthinking it; Lin couldn't see the color at all.

Then Lin began his great fishing career. He was extremely good at it, and within an hour he had caught six fish. However, four of them were still fry, so he released them back into the wild.

After rubbing the twig for over an hour, Sakura finally managed to produce a spark, and she happily shouted, "Lin!"

She held up the smoking branch with both hands and showed it to Lin, who, while holding the fishing rod, turned his head and saw her smiling face, then nodded.

Sakura eagerly added some flammable bark, then puffed out her cheeks and blew on it.

"Laugh..."

Through her tireless efforts, a bright flame finally ignited on the branch.

Sakura was very happy.

She rarely felt so accomplished, as if she had accomplished something great.

Then she built a stone stove, added firewood, and finally created a campfire that was almost identical to the one Lin had made.

Lin had already caught six big fish. He put away his fishing rod, used a sharpened stone knife to gut the fish, cleaned their bellies, rubbed some sea salt that he had made in his spare time the night before, and then used the juice from the collected fruits to marinate the fish meat and remove the fishy smell.

Sakura also skewered fish meat with sharpened branches and grilled it on the stone stove. The sizzling, oily aroma quickly filled the air.

As Sakura happily gazed at the hard-won delicious meal, she noticed Lin calmly turning the fish over and grilling it, and suddenly remembered something.

Are they... living together now?

Chapter 149 Spinning in Place

Lin and Ying are both skilled cooks, but they don't have any tools right now, only the most basic grilled fish and bitter sea salt, so the grilled fish they make isn't very tasty.

Coincidentally, both of them were people who could endure harsh environments. Moreover, Lin had no sense of taste, so for him, the only difference between eating and swallowing was the sound of chewing.

"Hmm... I have a problem." Lin Gang swallowed a mouthful of grilled fish, its juices splattering everywhere, and stared at the tender fish meat as he said, "I can't taste the bones right now."

He used to eat fish without picking out the bones before putting them in his mouth, but would use his lips and tongue to remove them. Now that he has no sense of touch, he may have already gotten a bone stuck in his throat from that bite.

"Sakura, can you take a look for me?"

Sakura, who was taking small bites of grilled fish, turned her head in confusion when she heard Lin say that, only to see Lin casually opening his mouth wide and showing her the inside of his mouth.

... It was filled with a sense of strangeness.

The distance between them seemed to shrink considerably all of a sudden, and Ying stood on tiptoe to look into his mouth.

"No."

Okay, thank you.

After that, Lin patiently picked the bones out of the meat before eating. He only finished picking the bones out of the second fish after Ying had finished eating the three fish.

However, it's not bad.

They used to rush out to do missions and rush back to the base to wait for missions, but now they can enjoy the sunset in their spare time.

"Howl--"

At that moment, the terrifying roar came again from the depths of the island. Birds flew out of the forest in fright, the branches and leaves of the trees trembled, and Lin and Ying immediately stood up with their hair standing on end, ready for battle.

Quiet--

After that strange cry, the island fell silent again, as if the sound had just been the grumpiness of some monster when it woke up.

They relaxed their guard after a while because the sound was very distant, at least a long distance away from them.

However, Lin had a question, "The location of the Honkai Beast hasn't changed."

The sound came from the exact same location as the one he heard last night, and Lin felt that the distance hadn't changed at all. But they had moved a distance today, and would the Honkai Beast stay in the same place without moving?

"Ahhh! I really want to go on a beach vacation too! Sunshine, beaches, and waves..." Danzhu sat next to Erwin's embarrassed hospital bed, eating Erwin's lunch with teary eyes, "I could even go on an adventure on the island!"

"But Danzhu, didn't you say before that you were happy that Doctor Mobius went on vacation?"