111: Chapter 111 Lin Fan said he was getting one, but which one exactly?

At that moment, his imagination reached its lifetime peak, with all sorts of vivid images lining up to flood into his mind.

From among that group of women down below?

Su Qingxue? Zhao Na? Or one of the ordinary female employees?

Could it be one of the employees' family members? Those were young married women after all...

Which one did Lin Fan actually mean when he said he wanted to take one?

Or did he mean to have him handle the entire group down below by himself?

He shook his head vigorously, casting away those chaotic images.

No matter who it was, since Lin Fan had spoken, it was an absolute certainty.

Zhang Tao obediently squatted by the campfire, added two pieces of firewood, and rubbed his hands together while staring blankly at the flames, unable to suppress the grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

...

The days passed one by one.

On the Deserted Island, there were no calendars, and their watches had long since broken down.

The passage of time was measured entirely by the rising and setting of the sun and the burning out of the campfire.

It had been a little over half a month.

It was neither long nor short.

For the four people on the cliff-top platform, although life was hard, they had fish to eat, water to drink, and meat to chew, making it barely stable.

For the group of people down on the beach beneath the cliff, this half-month had been pure purgatory.

Song Ya had survived.

On the day she was carried up to the platform, Lin Fan had given her a three-seven split in his mind: thirty percent depended on physical constitution, and seventy percent depended on luck.

As it turned out, the woman had good luck, or perhaps her physical foundation was tougher than it looked.

Her high fever had fluctuated for four days; on the third night, her temperature once soared above forty degrees Celsius. Her entire body was burning hot, and she began to babble deliriously, constantly calling out Lin Fan's name.

Lin Fan applied a damp cloth to her forehead for the entire night, feeding her water every half hour, and her temperature only slowly began to drop as dawn approached.

On the fifth day, her fever broke, and she started being able to turn herself over.

By the eighth day, she could prop herself against the wall to sit up and drink porridge, and the worn-through wounds on her knees began to scab over.

On the twelfth day, she supported herself against the rock wall and stood up, taking a few steps before sitting back down, but at least her legs weren't crippled.

The ligature marks on her wrists and neck had shifted from purplish-black to dark red, and then to pale pink, while the depression in her ribs was also slowly healing back into place.

By today, more than half a month later, compared to when she was first brought up, Song Ya was a completely different person.

Most of the swelling on her face had gone down. The split in the corner of her mouth had healed, leaving a few faint scars that weren't very noticeable unless looked at closely.

Although a few pale cyan bruises still lingered, her facial contours had returned to their original appearance.

She had lost weight; already a thin person, her cheekbones now stood out even more.

But the layer of lifeless gray in her eyes had dissipated, replaced once again by the light of a living person.

It was no longer that deathly gray look from when she had first been carried up.

It was just that she spoke much less than before. Back in the company, she was the kind of person who would proactively pour water for colleagues working overtime. She had a sweet mouth and a soft heart, and murmuring to herself was her norm.

Not anymore. Most of the time, she stayed quietly in the partition, only occasionally coming out to bask in the sun.

Seeing Lin Fan processing items or whittling wood, she would sit beside him without interrupting or getting in the way.

Whenever Lin Fan happened to need something, before he even finished speaking, she had already handed it over.

Once, Zhou Kai asked her if her injuries were feeling better. She smiled slightly, said she was much better, and didn't say anything more.

Compared to before, that smile lacked something, yet possessed a little something extra.

Zhou Kai couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he always felt it was a bit different.

Back when they were at the company, whenever she looked at Lin Fan, she did it stealthily, the kind of person who would take a long detour just to walk past the bottom of his building.

Now she no longer hid it. When she picked up a bowl of porridge to drink, her eyes would rest squarely on Lin Fan, without speaking, just watching him.

Lin Fan didn't care about being watched.

What he cared about was something else entirely.

That ferocious snake had come again.

Over the course of half a month, it had appeared a total of three times.

The first time was on the second day after Song Ya came up. Zhang Tao had gone to the edge of the platform in the middle of the night to pee, and glancing toward the woods in the moonlight, he saw a section of scales as thick as a rice bowl slithering past behind the bushes.

Zhang Tao was so scared his urine retreated back into him, and he scrambled in a panic back inside.

The second time was during the daytime on the eleventh day. Zhou Kai was drying meat jerky at the edge of the platform when he heard screams coming from the direction of the beach below.

He leaned over the edge to look down. A dozen meters away, the snake poked the upper half of its body out from the low bushes, shook its head left and right a couple of times, and then retracted it.

The third time was two days ago, when the snake came out, ate a corpse, and retreated back into the depths of the jungle.

Across these three instances, there was a pattern: the snake was only interested in dead things.

It avoided living people and ate the dead ones.

Wang Lan was the first one to figure this out.

Down on the beach, the past half-month hadn't been peaceful either.

Aside from Da Zhang and Lao Li, two more people had died subsequently. One was the female executive whose temple had been smashed open with a stone by Xiao Liang, killing her on the spot.

The other was an older male employee who suffered from continuous dehydration and heatstroke; he fell asleep on the night of the ninth day and never woke up again.

Two corpses in the tropical heat meant the rate of decomposition far exceeded imagination.

When the first corpse began to reek, nobody could stay anywhere near that rock crevice.

Flies flew over in swarms, their buzzing incessant from morning till night.

What was even more fatal was that the stench attracted unknown bugs, which swarmed thickly and writhed all over the corpses.

Someone suggested pushing the corpses into the sea, but Wang Lan spoke up.

"Don't throw them into the sea; carry them deep into the mountains."

"The snake eats the dead and not the living. If we leave the bodies on the other side of the mountain, the snake will have something to eat and won't come toward our side."

No one refuted her.

The two corpses were carried off into the depths of the jungle one after another.

Each time they were moved, within two days, they would hear the sound of snapping branches coming from the woods, accompanied by the scraping sound of something slowly dragging across the ground.

Then the corpses would be gone.

Wang Lan leaned back against the rock wall. If things kept going like this, without Lin Fan even lifting a finger, hunger, dehydration, and fear would completely disintegrate this group of people from within.

She glanced at Chen Jian, who was sitting silently in the corner.

Her husband had had a terrible past half-month.

Ever since that plan failed, although Xiao Liang's gang hadn't openly fallen out with him, they no longer listened to his commands.

Chen Jian didn't dare to make a sound.

He was well aware that Xiao Liang had beaten someone to death with his own hands, whereas he, Chen Jian, hadn't stained his hands with a single life yet.

In this rock crevice, only those who had killed someone carried weight when they spoke.

Over the past half-month, Lin Fan's side had been surprisingly quiet.

They hadn't thrown any more stones down, nor had they sent anyone to shout over.

The campfire on the cliff was lit as usual every day, and the aroma of roasted meat and boiled noodles drifted down just like before.

That platform was like another world—high above, completely isolated, yet separated by an insurmountable natural chasm.

Lin Fan sat at the edge of the platform, watching the rolling waves on the distant horizon.

Song Ya's injuries were mostly healed now, and it was time to collect the debts that needed to be collected.

That group of people down below had beaten Song Ya, tied her up, and dragged her across the sandy ground as a bargaining chip—Lin Fan remembered every single one of these things.

He wasn't a person who held grudges; to be precise, he didn't hold grudges—he kept accounts.

Once the ledger was clear, it was time to settle up...