12: Chapter 12 A generous reward will surely bring forth brave men.

An 800,000-yuan bounty, in ordinary times at Shengtang Group, was enough to make a low-level sales representative work their fingers to the bone for six or seven years.

Heavy rewards bring forth brave men—this saying was an ironclad rule in civilized society.

But at this moment, on this Deserted Island beach where even compasses spun like electric fans, it had become a colossal joke.

The sea breeze roared.

The temperature dropped below ten degrees.

That group of urban elites, dressed in thin shirts, hip-hugging skirts, and even one-piece swimsuits, was currently experiencing a slow, agonizing torture.

[Writing this, I hope readers remember our domain name, Taiwan Novel Network, super smooth and free to read]

Extreme hunger and dehydration, coupled with rapidly dropping body temperatures, made everyone shake violently on the verge of a breakdown.

"Clack."

A beam of cold white light lit up in the darkness.

Zhang Tao shivered as he pressed the switch of the tactical flashlight in his hand.

This was something he had dug out from a pile of shattered debris earlier while rummaging for dead coconuts by the edge of the woods.

The beam of light swung randomly across the beach, its ghastly brightness sweeping past to reveal faces frozen blue with purple, bruised lips like ghosts.

"Brother Qiang... President Su..." Zhang Tao chattered his teeth, holding the flashlight forward as he closed in, "I found a flashlight! This light is wicked bright. I'll light the way for you guys, and we can go get some dry firewood to drill—"

Before he could finish his sentence, a strong gust of wind struck.

Wang Qiang snatched the flashlight away in one swift motion.

"What the hell is the use of a flashlight!" Wang Qiang jumped up and down from the cold, his eyes bloodshot. "Can a flashlight be roasted like fire? Can it keep you warm?"

He turned his head and cursed fiercely at the male colleagues collapsed on the ground.

"Eight hundred thousand! President Su has spoken. Whoever lights the fire gets the money! Get moving, all of you!"

Wang Qiang backhanded the flashlight over to Li Bin nearby.

"You, hold the light! I refuse to believe this shit today. Even primitive monkeys can make fire with a drill, and a bunch of us with higher education can't handle a few pieces of rotten wood?!"

Zhang Tao froze in place.

He had originally hoped to use this flashlight to show his face in front of President Su, and by the way, take charge of the fire-making task to grab the 800,000-yuan grand prize.

Now the flashlight was gone, and his limelight had been forcefully cut off by Wang Qiang.

Lowering his head, he retreated back into the darkness.

His fingers, turned white from soaking in seawater, dug desperately into the sand, and blood seeped from under his fingernails.

The hatred from earlier when Wang Qiang snatched his life-saving coconut, combined with the humiliation of the present moment, churned wildly inside his withered chest cavity.

Wang Qiang had no time to care about a subordinate's emotions.

The temptation of 800,000 yuan, coupled with the fear of freezing to death, forced out his final potential.

He felt around the edge of the beach for a relatively dry piece of rotten wood to cushion his feet, and found a dead branch that was still somewhat straight.

"Aim properly!"

Imitating the posture of wilderness survival in short videos, Wang Qiang clamped the dead branch between both hands, pressed it desperately against the board, and rubbed it like a madman.

"Scree... scree... scree..."

The rough tree bark rubbed frantically.

One minute.

Three minutes.

Wang Qiang panted more and more heavily. The barbs on the branch pierced his palms, grinding out several blood blisters, and bloody water mixed with wood chips smeared his hands in a sticky mess.

"Is it smoking?! Li Bin, did you look carefully, is it smoking or not?!"

Li Bin held the flashlight and jammed it dead against the friction point. Within the ghastly white aperture, there was only a small pinch of bloody wood chips.

Let alone sparks, there wasn't even a trace of heat.

"Brother Qiang... there's really no smoke..." Li Bin's voice was weak. "This wood looks dry, but the core is completely soaked with salt from the seawater. You can't rub a fire out of this..."

"Get lost! Useless trash!"

Another director turned red-eyed with anxiety and shoved Wang Qiang aside.

Clutched in his hands were two black stones he had knocked off from a pile of scattered rocks, and he smashed them frantically against a pile of rotten grass leaves he had just plucked.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Sparks were indeed struck out, but the grass leaves had long since absorbed the moisture in the sea breeze. The sparks jumped onto them without leaving even a charred mark, dying out completely in an instant.

They tossed and turned for a good half an hour.

Five or six men were so exhausted they collapsed flat in the sandy ground, gulping down the cold wind.

A sense of despair, like a rising tide, completely overwhelmed the rationality of this group of people.

Drilling wood for fire? Striking stones for fire?

Without professional tinder and with environmental humidity off the charts, for a group of modern people with zero wilderness experience, this was even more absurd than building a photolithography machine with bare hands.

"It's over... It's all over... We can't start a fire..."

Liu Feifei curled up in a sandy pit at Su Qingxue's feet, her exquisite makeup long since smeared into a lump of mud.

She couldn't even make a sound when crying, only letting out heavy gasps.

Su Qingxue leaned against the back of a female subordinate and raised her head.

Her gaze crossed the slope of scattered rocks and stared fixedly at the mid-mountain side.

There, the orange-yellow firelight was steady and dazzling.

The greasy aroma of roasted luncheon meat drifted along with the wind, ruthlessly drilling into her nasal cavity and tugging at her twitching stomach.

She could even clearly see Lin Fan poking a golden, crispy piece of meat with a wooden stick and leisurely feeding it into his mouth.

That stark contrast was like a resounding slap, landing solidly across the face of this multi-billion female CEO.

High and mighty? A capital queen? While someone up there was eating roasted meat and warming themselves by the fire, she couldn't even light a fire down here!

"One million five hundred thousand."

Su Qingxue squeezed out a few hoarse words from her throat.

She struggled to straighten her body and issued her final command to the group of dead-fish-like men on the ground.

"I'll offer one million five hundred thousand. Whoever can start a fire, this money will be cashed out the moment we board the plane."

Dead silence.

Apart from the sound of the wind, no one else on the beach responded.

Wang Qiang buried his head in the sand and played dead.

This wasn't a matter of how much money there was. In front of the laws of physics, one million five hundred thousand couldn't violate the laws of thermodynamics either.

Just as the atmosphere froze to the freezing point,

At the edge of the large group, within an inconspicuous shadow, a slightly lean figure slowly stood up.

Chen Jian.

The husband of Wang Lan, female supervisor of the Finance Department.

Shengtang's luxury team-building event this time allowed executives to bring their families. As an ordinary structural engineer, Chen Jian was usually seen as a transparent, matrilocal son-in-law in the eyes of this group of glamorous sales elites at the company.

Earlier during the water grabbing and coconut opening, he hid all the way in the back and remained silent.

At this moment, he pushed his half-frame glasses—stained with salt residue—up the bridge of his nose, stepped through the sand, and walked up to Su Qingxue.

"President Su, I have a way to start a fire."

Huh?

Everyone's gaze instantly locked firmly onto him.

Wang Qiang sprang up from the ground, pointed at Chen Jian's nose, and cursed foully.

"Wang Lan, your husband's brain must be frozen! My hands are worn raw and I couldn't even get a single spark, what kind of big shot is a drawing-board loser like him trying to act as here? Hurry up and get him back, stop being an eyesore here!"

Chen Jian completely ignored the barking Wang Qiang.

He looked straight at Su Qingxue.

"Conventional friction fire-making requires extremely dry tinder and extremely high rotational speed. The physical strength you wasted earlier is completely useless in terms of physics."

Chen Jian's tone was extremely calm, and his analysis was well-founded. "Striking stones for fire also requires high-carbon steel and flint. With two pieces of broken limestone, even if you smash your hands off, you won't be able to ignite seaweed saturated with moisture."

Su Qingxue stared at him: "Can you light it?"

"Yes," Chen Jian nodded.

"Good, one million five hundred thousand is yours. Do it right now," Su Qingxue commanded.

Chen Jian didn't move.

He stretched out two fingers and waved them in mid-air. "President Su, one million five hundred thousand is not enough. I want twenty million."

The beach fell silent for an instant.

Immediately afterwards, Wang Qiang completely flipped out.

He rushed forward fiercely, grabbed Chen Jian by the collar, and spat a flurry of saliva all over Chen Jian's face.

"Twenty million?! Why don't you go rob a money printing machine! Trying to loot a burning house right on President Su's head? Even your wife wouldn't dare talk to President Su like that! Believe it or not, I'll throw you into the sea to feed the fish right now!"

Wang Qiang swung his arm, his knuckle-protruding fist heading straight for Chen Jian's face.

"Stop," Su Qingxue interrupted Wang Qiang in time.

Twenty million.

Placed a day ago, this would just be pocket change casually skimmed over on Shengtang Group's financial statements.

But tonight, this money was buying Su Qingxue's life to survive the extreme cold.

Extreme dehydration and hypothermia had brought her once-prideful rationality to the verge of collapse. If there wasn't even fire, she wouldn't live until the helicopter landed.

"Alright, I promise you," Su Qingxue lifted her chin, maintaining the posture of a superior. "As long as the fire can be started, once we board the plane, twenty million, not a single penny less, will be transferred to Wang Lan's account."

Chen Jian brushed the sand off his collar and relaxed his tightly clenched fists.

He turned around and unceremoniously reached out toward Li Bin.

"Hand over the flashlight."

Li Bin hesitated slightly and turned to look at Wang Qiang.

Wang Qiang spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the ground, turned his head away, and said nothing.

Only then did Li Bin hurriedly hand over the tactical flashlight.

Chen Jian took the flashlight, didn't touch the pile of rotten wood on the ground at all, and instead unscrewed the metal tail cap at the bottom of the flashlight with a reverse twist.

"What are you doing?! That's our only light source!" Zhang Tao limped forward, scrambling up with a sharp voice.

Chen Jian didn't even give him a proper look. He inverted the flashlight, and with a click, dumped a thick 18650 industrial lithium battery from inside into the palm of his hand.

He raised his head and swept his gaze over this group of shivering social elites.