At first, Wang Fumin was reluctant to part with it. The bottle he had found might be incredibly rare and worth a fortune.
But then he reconsidered. The so-called "mysterious drift bottle" had already recognized its owner. To anyone else, it was just an ordinary bottle.
What was the point of keeping it treasured away forever?
"If it really can reach that young guy in the Mirage..."
On a whim, Wang Fumin decided to stir up some fun. He said eagerly, "What should I write in the letter? This Drifting Bottle only guarantees delivery. Who knows how long it'll take? It could be months or years..."
"Information has a shelf life. What should I write?"
Lu Tuyu rubbed his chin, giving him a knowing smile. "Anything you like. Ask how he's eating and sleeping. Personally, I think we should send a few photos along with the letter... help him take care of his physical needs."
"As the saying goes, once you've eaten and drunk your fill, you start thinking about **. I'm worried he'll suddenly go crazy and jump into the sea, dragging us down with him!"
Wang Fumin put on a look of sudden understanding. "Got it. Is Teacher Cang still the most popular porn actress?"
"Why are you still talking about Teacher Cang? She's retired and has kids now. Show a little respect!" Lu Tuyu was somewhat speechless. "Teacher Shui and Teacher Sakura are the popular ones now!"
"Who knows what's happened to those girls? Ah..."
"Only occasionally, occasionally... I have a wife and daughter. I can't compare with you bachelors." Wang Fumin cleared his throat and pretended to be perfectly serious. "But wouldn't this have a bad influence? What if he does it in front of the whole world...? My daughter watches the sky every day. She's only in kindergarten. I can't let her see that."
Lu Tuyu chuckled. "Obviously, you spell it out in the letter! Tell him to hide in his tent instead of jerking off on the beach."
That night, the two men threw their arms around each other's shoulders and had a few drinks, their spirits soaring.
Amid the disaster, there were no more mortgage payments or pressure to push their children ahead. They spent their money as soon as they earned it and furiously traded verbal blows with foreigners.
Somehow, life felt wonderfully comfortable.
They tossed the tightly packed Drifting Bottle into a nearby river.
"Youth is wonderful. So many years have gone by, and the teacher who first enlightened me has already retired... Her replacements are pretty good too, fair-skinned and tender. Too bad there won't be another generation."
"How can printing a photo cost so much? Six hundred for one poster. Fucking ridiculous!"
"Of course porn costs more! Didn't you see the owner's face? He said he was risking criminal charges to print them for us!"
"There's still some room. Stuff in some medicine. Add some amoxicillin, and some cephalosporin too."
"Nothing else will fit... Any more and the bottle will sink!"
A wave swept over it. The Drifting Bottle flashed with light and vanished, heading toward an unknown, distant destination...
Mysterious Zone 16.
Strength Burst!
A brand-new superpower, available for only ten attribute points, with fair pricing for all! A strength increase of 50%-5,000%, depending on the individual's aptitude!
As for why this icon had appeared...
Zhang Ming trembled all over with excitement, his face flushed. "So that's how it works... Eating their meat doesn't just give me attribute points. It can give me their superpowers too!"
"I'm just too damn powerful."
Zhang Ming reflected on life's unpredictability.
Yesterday, starving and freezing, he had wanted to become an insignificant dung beetle. Today, brimming with confidence, he had evolved back into the Victorious Fighting Buddha.
The crab leg had changed everything.
In truth, he was neither. He was Schrödinger's cat.
A badass when things went well, a dumbass when they didn't.
Fate was unpredictable. Something might happen tomorrow that reduced him to a dung beetle again. Or perhaps some major future turning point would make him evolve into a Teddy Spirit.
Still, now that his stomach was full, he really did miss the bevy of beauties on that pink app.
Once you'd eaten and drunk your fill, you started thinking about **. Human nature, perfectly natural. Ahem.
So while he was the "Victorious Fighting Buddha" today, he really ought to curse that damned heaven.
"Fuck this world, and fuck this universe!"
[Mental Value +1]
Without deliberating for long, Zhang Ming chose to activate "Strength Burst."
At a cost of ten attribute points, even the minimum 50% strength increase wouldn't be a bad deal.
After a few adjustments, his total attributes stood at 141 points.
Zhang Ming drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
A mysterious revelation arose in his mind. For that instant, he seemed to become an enormous crab, arrogantly challenging heaven and earth.
Those mighty pincers were his divine weapons against his enemies.
To defeat its natural predators, the crab tirelessly trained its powerful arms, seeking to snip through everything in the world.
Snip! Release!
Snip again!
Through those openings and closings, those contractions and relaxations, those breaths in and out, Zhang Ming sensed an intricate, profound circuit of heat slowly forming inside his body.
From the process to the result, every detail and every change seemed so simple, filled with a beauty born of nature.
The only flaw was that the answer was far too bare-bones to describe with humanity's inadequate language.
At least for now, Zhang Ming had no way to explain the underlying principles of "Strength Burst."
When he came back to himself, he discovered that he possessed the ability.
It was as though he had gained another instinct.
Just as ordinary people could jump, run, grasp things with their fingers, blink, and breathe, it required little learning.
When he activated "Strength Burst," a mysterious current of heat arose inside him and enhanced his muscles in a series of ways.
Zhang Ming spent a long time trying to understand what that heat actually was before finally giving up.
He threw several hard punches. With "Strength Burst" activated, he could indeed feel his strength increase.
A master could show you the way, but the rest depended on your own efforts.
Grasping things was a human instinct, yet people had used their nimble fingers to develop all manner of crafts: writing, carving, carpentry, smithing, and more.
By the same principle, "Strength Burst" could be applied to any voluntarily controlled muscle in his body: arms, wrists, fingers, calves, thighs, and even his eye-
lids. It had considerable potential for further development.
He jumped high several times. The increase was around 50%, and it consumed considerable stamina. After five consecutive bursts, his muscles began to ache.
"Sure enough, I only got the guaranteed minimum. Fifty percent."
"But used properly, it can easily make up for losing ten attribute points..."
Besides, couldn't he recover those attributes simply by eating more crab meat?
Worth it!
Finishing his last mouthful of cola, Zhang Ming contentedly extinguished the campfire and covered the glowing charcoal with a thick layer of plant ash.
He added a sheet of metal to keep the nighttime damp from extinguishing the embers.
He crawled back into his tent, raised his [Perception] to sixty points, and went straight to sleep.
He fell asleep almost instantly.
It was the most peaceful, comfortable night he had enjoyed since arriving.
In his sleep, Zhang Ming dreamed that the crabs on the tidal flats had become his own permanent crop to harvest.
Every day, he went into the yard and harvested a crab leg.
Over time, he grew stronger and stronger. His knotted muscles and bones rose and fell with his breathing, concealing terrifying power. He grew ten meters tall, the height of four Yao Mings.
With a casual downward grab, he could easily seize a crab.
Faced with such a powerful enemy, the crabs' habits underwent subtle changes.
Severe infighting broke out among them. Whenever Zhang Ming entered their territory, "crab traitors" would leap out and tear a leg off another crab. By sacrificing their companions' legs, they could keep their own.
Of course, some crab warriors banded together to launch surprise attacks, only for the "crab traitors" to expose them, costing them their legs.
And so a deeply moving worldly tragedy unfolded.
The bubbling of boiling water, the infighting between "traitors" and "warriors," and Zhang Ming's utterly evil laughter felt incredibly real in the dream... Until finally, a crab warrior stepped forward and viciously snipped off his precious member.
"Aaaah!"
Zhang Ming woke in terror and felt between his legs. Only after confirming that his instrument for continuing the family line remained intact did he let out a heavy sigh of relief.
He touched the crab leg on his suitcase and couldn't resist taking a bite.
Delicious!
Just then, his expression shifted. He heard a strange rustling sound several dozen meters away.
He snatched up the metal pipe beside him with lightning speed.
Something was near his tent!
A crunching, cracking sound came from nearby.
"Don't tell me the crabs have come looking for me?"
Zhang Ming swallowed.
He opened a tiny gap in the zipper and quietly peeked outside.
His heart lurched!
So big... Such a huge...
Turtle!
A giant sea turtle!
The world's attention once again focused on Mirage No. 16.
The eruption of Mount Fuji the previous night had inflicted massive casualties on Fusang and inspired endless speculation among imaginative internet users.
"The survival of the people in the Mysterious Zones is actually linked to their homelands' fate!"
"This is national destiny! Even if Japan hasn't been wiped out, it's been severely weakened. They still need to relocate their population as quickly as possible."
"Is God choosing which peoples will survive the apocalypse?"
The speculation was terrifying, because the outside world had no way to influence the people inside the Mysterious Zones!
Even if those people encountered danger, everyone could only watch them die.
More infuriating still, some teams continued to fight among themselves, bickering over petty personal interests until their faces turned red!
A mob of furious internet users began frantically doxxing them, planning to find their families and kill them outright!
The angry guys beyond the firewall had guns. They really could fly into a rage and kill people!
The resulting wave of heated debate completely overshadowed the global disasters.
"Latest news: the government has placed the families of all trapped individuals under emergency protection."
"The Senate Legal Committee has enacted emergency legislation making doxxing a criminal offense. Certain keywords have been urgently blocked."
"Give me back my freedom of speech!"
"This is an alt. The government has already banned my account. I'm announcing my permanent departure from Bluebird!"
The frenzied flame wars soon escalated into street demonstrations. But the wave left Great Xia untouched. After all, there was only one person in Zone 16. He couldn't fight among himself even if he wanted to.
"Of the sixteen Mirages, only fifteen remain. The original Mirage No. 7 never reappeared after everyone inside died."
"But it could still be a coincidence. Mount Fuji was already about to erupt. A day earlier or later was entirely possible."
"Maybe it really was just a coincidence."
"Look! The guy in Mysterious Zone 16 is in big trouble!"
Internet users around the world instinctively tensed at the sight of these strange creatures.
"Excellent. That turtle's about to eat him. Good thing I already got out. Even if disaster strikes the East, it won't affect me."
"The next disaster will strike Great Xia. An earthquake or a volcano? If it really happens, I'll hand out cash gifts to everyone."
Certain groups began celebrating together, gloating in a chorus of croaks.
"Impressive, bro. Transfer me fifty and prove you've got the money."
"Impressive, bro. Transfer me fifty and prove you've got the money."
The armies of online combatants promptly arrived and fiercely engaged the sneering trolls.
"What does Professor Peter Greer think?"
After quite some time, Parapsychology expert Peter Greer finally appeared and posted a new tweet. "Apologies. We've spent a long time studying the recent incidents, but we have no satisfactory conclusions yet."
"From a scientific perspective, the eruption of Mount Fuji is a single example and therefore offers no reliable evidence. It can be considered a coincidence."
"But if another team in a Mysterious Zone is wiped out, and its homeland simultaneously suffers a disaster, it will no longer be a coincidence. That would substantiate the national destiny theory."
"Everyone, you must understand that these Mirages are revelations from God."
"We may boldly hypothesize that when all the humans within the sixteen Mirages die, that will be the moment the global apocalyptic dis-
aster arrives."
"The death of any team is bad news. The end of the world is not something to look forward to."
Yet no matter how earnestly Peter Greer tried to persuade them, the atmosphere of apocalyptic revelry continued to spread, with outrageous claims emerging nonstop.
It had to be admitted that human crowds were simply like this.
Human crowds were not rational. Their collective mental state was impulsive, volatile, and irritable, while their actions were narrow-minded, authoritarian, and conservative. To describe them with a precise term, they were-a mob.
Unlike the snide mockery abroad, people across the nation stared at the sky under immense pressure.
Those who could get around the firewall were passionately arguing online, yet they kept a constant eye on developments in Mysterious Zone 16.
What if the survivors in the Mysterious Zones really were connected to some unseen national destiny?
The Special Affairs Processing Department.
Li Xianfeng stared at the scene in the sky, his face flushed red, barely holding back a shout: "Even if you have superpowers, even if you defeated the crab, don't you dare provoke that Giant Sea Turtle!"
"Don't you dare!"
(P.S. This is a two-in-one chapter. Aren't long chapters adorable?)
Before you continue