123: Chapter 123 Chen Jian, are you even a man?

He looked at the twisted faces and postures on the ground, his throat bobbing twice.

"I really couldn't bring myself to do it."

Lin Fan ignored him and continued walking deeper into the crevice.

The further inside the crevice went, the narrower it became, and the dimmer the light grew.

Lin Fan turned sideways to squeeze through a narrowed passage, bypassing a protruding rock.

Then he stopped.

In the innermost corner, two people were sitting against the wall.

Wang Lan and Chen Jian.

Alive.

Wang Lan's complexion was terrible, her lips chapped with multiple layers of white peeling skin, and she had grown so thin that her cheekbones were about to pierce through her skin.

But she was breathing, and her eyes were open.

Chen Jian was cowering beside her, his knees curled up to his chest, his hands wrapped around his calves, shaking like a sieve.

His eye sockets were completely red, though it was unclear whether he had been crying or had stayed awake all night.

The moment the two people saw Lin Fan, their reactions were completely different.

Wang Lan's body stiffened for a moment before returning to normal.

Chen Jian's face instantly turned pale.

That kind of paleness wasn't from hunger; it was from fear.

The purest kind of terror, oozing out from the cracks of his bones.

He knew Lin Fan had come down to silence them.

Lin Fan stood in front of them, his shovel upright by his feet, looking down at the two people from above.

He didn't speak, nor was he in a hurry.

...

Wang Lan felt the weight of that gaze.

She didn't raise her head.

It wasn't that she didn't dare; it was that there was no need.

From the moment that pig was sent into the crevice yesterday, her mind had been spinning constantly.

Over forty catties of meat.

What this number meant on this island, she knew better than anyone.

People who hadn't eaten anything decent for over twenty days could tear apart raw meat and shove it straight into their mouths.

The value of over forty catties of pork was equal to the lives of everyone in the crevice combined.

Lin Fan was going to use this to trade for Su Qingxue?

The math didn't add up.

Su Qingxue was worth tens of billions in civilized society, but on this island, she was just a burden who didn't even know how to make a fire.

When had Lin Fan ever made a losing deal?

Such a person suddenly showing immense benevolence, giving away his most valuable supplies for free?

Impossible.

On this island, besides those mutated beasts, the only people left who could threaten him were them.

If it were her, she would also keep a few obedient ones and dispose of all the rest.

Last night, the moment Chen Jian smelled the scent of meat, he went crazy.

Acid churned up in his stomach, saliva couldn't stop flowing out, and his legs stepped forward uncontrollably.

There was no reason left in his eyes, only the instinct of a beast that had been starving for twenty days.

Wang Lan grabbed the back of his collar, pulled him back, and pinned him against the corner of the wall.

Chen Jian struggled twice, but she held him down firmly.

He mumbled curses incoherently, tears and snot streaming all over his face.

Wang Lan didn't let go and explained her concerns. After repeated inner struggles, Chen Jian ultimately chose to believe his wife.

Not long after.

When the first scream was transmitted in, Chen Jian looked at his wife and was completely dumbfounded.

His entire body collapsed, his back sliding down against the rock wall, his buttocks hitting the ground, and both hands covering his face.

From then until now, he hadn't said a single word.

To be precise, this wasn't the first time Wang Lan had saved him.

From coming to the island until now, every decision Chen Jian made, every weighty word he spoke, and every so-called "strategist" posture he struck in front of those people were entirely words fed to him, paths paved for him, and traps set by Wang Lan from behind the scenes.

Without Wang Lan, Chen Jian was just a piece of wood, and now he had no need to put up an act anymore.

With a thump, his knees crashed onto the gravel ground.

It hurt.

But he couldn't care about that; he braced his hands on the ground, his forehead almost touching Lin Fan's shoe uppers.

"Lin Fan! Lin Fan, listen to me!"

"I know what you came down here for. I saw those people outside, and I know everything..."

Chen Jian's teeth were chattering, his upper and lower rows unable to meet, clicking loudly. Tears had already poured out, mixing with snot all over his face.

A thirty-four-year-old man, kneeling in a pool of blood and vomit, weeping like an elementary school student whose parents had been called to school by the teacher.

"Lin Fan, please spare me. I'll listen to you in everything, I'll do whatever you want me to do—I can move stones, chop firewood, fetch water, and be your beasts of burden..."

"The previous matter... the matter of beating Song Ya earlier wasn't my idea!"

Wang Lan's body moved slightly.

Chen Jian didn't look at her, or rather, he couldn't care about looking at anyone right now; there was only the tip of Lin Fan's shoes left in his eyes.

"It was Wang Lan! It was all Wang Lan who made me do it!"

Wang Lan's expression fluctuated, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"Beating Song Ya, using Song Ya to trade for food—every step was directed by her from behind! She told me to hit her, and she told me to negotiate those terms."

Chen Jian's voice grew louder and faster, pouring out everything hidden in his stomach all at once.

"And those first few days on the island, when she thought we could still go back, she had me continuously extort benefits from Su Qingxue while she directed it from behind..."

"Shut up!"

Wang Lan's voice exploded from the corner.

Her throat was also hoarse, but that fierce spirit of hers was completely different from Chen Jian's.

Chen Jian was panicked, while she was furious.

"Chen Jian, are you even a man?!"

Chen Jian's kowtowing motion paused for a split second, but he didn't stop, continuing to bash his head down.

"So what if I'm not a man? I just want to live right now!"

He raised his head, his face covered in mud and blood, and glanced at Wang Lan.

There was hatred and fear in that look, but he knew one truth: husband and wife are like birds of the same forest, flying their separate ways when disaster strikes.

"You think you're smart? You think you calculated everything? Did you calculate that over twenty people would all die overnight? Did you calculate that only the two of us would be left now?"

Chen Jian's lips were trembling, but his words didn't stop.

"Ever since the day we got married, you've treated me like a chess piece. Back at the company, you made me stick my neck out while you hid behind. When we arrived on this island, you were still the same. You made me do the dirty work of beating people, you made me take the blame, you took the benefits, and I bore the infamy!"

"I've had enough!"

He turned back around and kowtowed to Lin Fan once more.

"Lin Fan, I've told you everything. Please spare me a way out. Do whatever you want with Wang Lan; it has nothing to do with me. I just want to stay alive."

The crevice fell silent for two seconds.

Wang Lan sat in the corner, her fingers intertwined and resting on her knees. The mask of anger on her face was fracturing piece by piece, revealing what lay beneath.

It wasn't sadness, nor was it disappointment.

It was coldness.

The kind of coldness that rapidly completes emotional detachment after being bitten back by a dog she had raised for ten years.

"Chen Jian."

Her voice dropped, flat without a single ripple.

"You think that by selling me out, you can live?"

Chen Jian didn't look at her.

"Without me, you wouldn't even know how to make a fire. Back on the beach, when others asked you how to make a fire, you stammered for ages, and in the end, it was me whispering in your ear, teaching you word by word."

"A person like you couldn't survive three days without me."

"Then I'd rather live for three days!"

"That's still better than dying together with you right now."