122: Chapter 122 I will be self-reliant

"Saving you is one thing." Lin Fan put the water bottle aside. "You staying alive is useful to me, so I pulled you out from that bunch of people, but don't get the cause and effect backward."

Su Qingxue didn't speak.

"Those things you mentioned just now, even if we can go back in the future, can only exchange for me saving your life once."

"If you want to eat my food, drink my water, live in my place, and use my supplies in the future, you must pay a price."

"What do you want?" Su Qingxue asked.

"Make me happy."

Four words.

Su Qingxue's expression didn't change, but her back stiffened for a split second.

Of course she understood. She wasn't a crystal-clear innocent girl like Song Ya, nor was she a vase like Liu Feifei who only knew how to use her body as a bargaining chip.

She was Su Qingxue, a twenty-six-year-old woman managing a ten-billion-yuan group; she knew clearly which direction any words should be understood.

Make him happy.

On this island, when a man said "make me happy" to a woman, what it referred to didn't need translation.

Su Qingxue's jawline tightened.

She instinctively wanted to retort.

The operating system inside her body that had been running for twenty-six years was sounding frantic alarms: You are Su Qingxue, you are the helmsman of the Shengtang Group, how could you be spoken to like this by an intern?

But reason reined her back in.

Thirty seconds ago, she had almost been slaughtered like a pig by people.

The person who pulled her out of that group was the one right in front of her.

On the island, there was no Shengtang Group, no Su Zhenbang, no legal team.

It was the first time Su Qingxue experienced this kind of feeling.

Ever since she was little, no matter the occasion, she was always the one holding the initiative.

At the conference table, the negotiating table, dinner banquets, anywhere.

The rules were set by her, the pace was controlled by her, and others revolved around her.

Now it was reversed.

She was sitting on someone else's territory, eating someone else's food, and even the air she breathed carried someone else's scent.

The rules weren't set by her, and the pace wasn't controlled by her.

She, Su Qingxue, was sitting in the seat of "waiting to be chosen" for the first time.

Su Qingxue's fingers clenched and loosened, repeating this twice.

She raised her head and looked straight at Lin Fan.

"I will be self-reliant."

Song Ya thought Lin Fan was going to get angry, but unexpectedly, Lin Fan didn't say anything more, stood up, and walked deeper into the Karst Cave.

...

About an hour later.

The first miserable scream came from beneath the cliff.

When that sound first emerged, it was sharp but brief.

Several people on the platform raised their heads simultaneously.

Then the second sound came.

Longer than the first, higher than the first, with an upward-flipping vibrato at the tail—not of pain, but a sound of something surging up from deep within the stomach, as if one's internal organs were clutched and twisted by someone.

Followed closely by the sound of vomiting.

The kind that turns rivers and seas upside down.

One person took the lead, two people followed, and then howling spread piece by piece.

Zhou Kai was the first to walk to the edge of the platform and look down.

Zhang Tao closely crowded forward.

On the beach, in the open space outside the rock crevice, seven or eight people were retching with their bodies arched.

Someone knelt directly on the ground, supporting themselves on the sand with both hands, knocking their head down rhythmically. The vomited matter contained blood threads and unchewed chunks of meat.

Others could no longer stand, lying sideways on the ground with limb spasms, fingers digging into the sand, completely unaware that their fingernails were torn back.

Further away, two people lay flat and motionless.

Their chests rose and fell extremely fast, their hearts seemingly beating wildly with a thumping sound. As they beat, the rhythm became chaotic, and then the rise and fall of their chests grew smaller and slower.

Xiao Liang supported himself against the rock at the entrance of the rock crevice, half-kneeling.

That pebble dropped to the ground; it was the first time he let go.

Both hands clutching his stomach, his entire body curled into a ball, whimpering as he vomited out.

Zhang Tao took a step back.

His legs were turning weak.

It wasn't fear, but a physiological rejection reaction.

Those pieces of meat were poisoned by his own hands; the astringent taste of the oleander sap stuck to his fingers still lingered in the gaps between his fingers until now.

Zhou Kai stood on the side, his mouth tightly shut without a single word.

Liu Feifei stood behind Zhou Kai and peered down with a glance.

Just a glance.

She immediately turned and walked back to the campfire, sitting down with her back facing the edge of the platform.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she didn't make a sound, but her back was slightly trembling.

Fortunately she came up early, otherwise that group of people down there would definitely include her.

Su Qingxue sat by the campfire, holding her knees with both hands.

The sounds from below drifted up, one after another—screams, vomiting, groans, and the muffled thuds of convulsing bodies hitting the ground.

Her fingers tightened, but she didn't stand up, nor did she walk toward the edge of the platform.

She didn't need to look.

Just listening was enough.

Song Ya sat next to Su Qingxue with her head lowered, covering her ears with both hands.

...

Early the next morning, when the sun rose from the sea level, beneath the cliff had become completely quiet.

The screams, vomiting, and muffled thuds of convulsing bodies hitting the ground that had tossed and turned for most of the night gradually thinned out in the late night and finally faded into silence.

When Lin Fan opened his eyes, the sky was just turning bright.

He sat up from the stone slab, picked up the shovel leaning against the wall, and walked to the edge of the platform to glance down.

People were lying crisscross on the beach.

Motionless.

"Zhang Tao."

"Coming, Brother Fan!"

Zhang Tao crawled up from the corner of the Karst Cave, with two dark bruises hanging under his eyes.

He had hardly slept last night; those sounds from below traveled up across dozens of meters of cliff face, drilling into his ears one by one, extremely creepy.

"Come down with me."

Zhang Tao was stunned for a moment, his mouth opened and closed, and finally he obediently followed behind.

The two people walked down along the gravel path; the further down they went, the more wrong the smell in the air became.

A sour and rotten smell, mixed with a strong scent of vomit and the smell of blood, mixed together and stirred by the sea breeze into a sticky stench.

Zhang Tao covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve.

Reaching the entrance of the rock crevice, Lin Fan stopped his footsteps.

The scene before his eyes was somewhat more tragic than he had anticipated.

In the open space outside the rock crevice, seven or eight people lay on the ground with twisted postures.

Some curled up like shrimp, their hands desperately clutching their stomachs, their fingernails full of sand and blood.

Some sprawled out in all directions, dried vomit hanging at the corners of their mouths, eyes half open and half closed, pupils already dilated.

Xiao Liang lay prone at the entrance of the rock crevice, face down, his final expression frozen in an indescribable pain.

Everything in his stomach had been vomited out, forming a foul-smelling paste in front of him, mixed with undigested chunks of meat.

Zhang Tao poked his head out from behind and immediately shrank it back.

"Brother Fan..."

His voice was floating.

"These people... their appearances in death are too ugly."

Lin Fan didn't answer him, stepped over Xiao Liang's corpse, and walked deeper into the rock crevice.

Inside it was even more tragic.

The space was small, and the smell couldn't disperse; that breath mixed with stomach acid, blood, and corruption almost condensed into a solid entity, pasting right into their faces.

On the ground, one here and one there, lying horizontally, vertically, and stacked on top of each other.

Two people collapsed together, their hands still grasping each other, not knowing whether they were seeking help or snatching something before death.

The man surnamed Han collapsed in the innermost position, his mouth wide open, his lips covered in dried blood scabs, fragments of meat fibers embedded between his teeth, and the expression on his face even more distorted than Xiao Liang's.

Zhang Tao followed behind, daring only to look at his feet and not daring to raise his head.

He walked two steps and stepped on something soft. Looking down, it was a hand.

"Fuck!" He bounced back three steps, his back hitting the rock wall.

Lin Fan turned his head and glanced at him.

Zhang Tao swallowed his saliva, lowering his voice to the minimum.

"Brother Fan, what you said before... those women... I don't want them anymore."