164: Chapter 164 Lin Fan... Maybe we should think about it again.

"We can't chop it off." Su Qingxue's words were a bit abrupt.

Everyone in the cave looked at her.

Su Qingxue stood behind Lin Fan, her coat draped loosely and her hair disheveled, but those three words were spoken very resolutely.

Su Qingxue looked at the knife in Lin Fan's hand.

The tip of the blade had just been taken out of the fire, and she quickly spoke up, "There are no hemostatic forceps, no suture lines, no disinfectants, and no blood transfusion conditions here."

She wasn't a doctor.

But she had seen too many accident contingency plans.

Shengtang Group held safety drills every year. Severed limbs, open bleeding, and septic shock on construction sites were terms she wasn't unfamiliar with.

In the past, those things were all written in PowerPoints.

Red titles, yellow warning boxes.

Followed by an expert in a white lab coat talking for twenty minutes.

At that time, she sat in the front row, signed after listening, and forgot about it the moment she turned around.

Now, those useless words crawled out of her mind one by one, making her throat feel dry with pressure.

"If you really chop off his leg, he will bleed," Su Qingxue said. "There is nothing here, what will you use to stop the bleeding?"

"Cutting off a foot might not completely clear the poison," Su Qingxue stared at the bruised area. "In case the poison has already entered the blood, cutting it off will be useless. Afterward, with infection, necrosis, and fever, he will die all the same."

She paused for a moment.

"And the pain won't be any less than it is now."

The cave fell silent for a beat.

Zhang Tao kept his head lowered, and a streak of nosebleed still hung on his upper lip.

He wished Su Qingxue would just shut up.

Chop it off.

Why aren't you chopping?

Even if Zhou Kai lived with one leg missing, he would only be half a log in the cave.

Losing a leg on a Deserted Island was even more miserable than losing a company in civilized society.

Yet Su Qingxue just had to speak up.

Zhang Tao felt a blockage in his chest, yet he still had to fake worry.

"President Su makes sense," he chimed in in a low voice. "Brother Kai, we can't act rashly. Brother Fan definitely has a way."

Zhou Kai was in so much pain that his eyes were bloodshot. Hearing Zhang Tao call him Brother Kai made him feel more nauseous than being poisoned.

"Shut your mouth."

Zhang Tao shrank his neck back.

Wang Lan sat on the other side of the campfire, her fingers pressing against her knees.

She didn't speak.

Su Qingxue's few words had no effect on her.

Chopping off Zhou Kai's leg meant certain death, but not chopping it meant he wouldn't survive either.

What was interesting was that Su Qingxue used to be best at suppressing people with orders, but arriving on the Deserted Island, her way of persuading people had actually become grounded.

No status, no office, no assistant handing over documents.

Only whether one could survive or not remained.

This matter was tougher than any board resolution.

Song Ya held up the torch, the flames licking the vine skin, and the burning grease emitting a mutton-like odor.

She looked at the two small holes on Zhou Kai's ankle and swallowed hard.

She hadn't dared to interrupt originally.

Zhou Kai was in such agony, Lin Fan was holding the knife, and Su Qingxue had also spoken up.

Everyone here was better at judging than she was.

Yet she still spoke out.

"Lin Fan… How about we think about this again?"

Lin Fan raised his head to look at her.

Under his gaze, the torch in Song Ya's hand almost tilted.

She hurriedly straightened the torch.

"I'm not saying your method is wrong."

She spoke very hurriedly, afraid that she would stumble over her words.

"I just… Zhou Kai helped us bring the wild boar back just today. If his leg is really chopped off, what will happen in the future? How will he walk? How will he fight? What will happen if the wound rots on a rainy day?"

Zhou Kai bit down on the cloth strip, his eyelids twitching when he heard this.

Song Ya continued, "And there is no medicine. If it's really chopped off, the blood won't stop, and we won't be able to keep him alive. Can we get the poison out first? Like the kind in TV shows… Uh, even though TV shows aren't reliable either."

Reaching the end, she herself got stuck.

A Deserted Island was not a TV show.

Even she felt faint-hearted saying those words.

Liu Feifei muttered softly beside them, "In TV shows, they always suck it out with their mouths."

The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.

Several pairs of eyes in the cave all landed on her.

Liu Feifei shrank her neck and quickly added, "I didn't say I would suck it! My lips are chapped today, what if I suck some in and collapse too? Wouldn't that be a buy-one-get-one-free deal?"

Zhang Tao almost laughed out loud at her words.

He forced himself to hold it back.

Wang Lan glanced at Liu Feifei.

This woman was truly stupid, but sometimes her stupidity was great for livening up the atmosphere.

At such a critical juncture, a single "buy-one-get-one-free" actually relaxed the tightly stretched tension in the cave by half an inch.

Listening to them chatter back and forth, Lin Fan furrowed his brow.

He held the scorched dagger in his hand, the tip less than half a palm away from Zhou Kai's calf.

"Are you all done talking?"

Su Qingxue stopped.

Song Ya also shut her mouth.

Lin Fan looked at them, then looked at the knife in his hand.

Chop off the leg?

When did he ever say he was going to chop off the leg?

In a place like this where even clean gauze couldn't be gathered, was chopping off a leg any different from murder?

If it really had to be chopped off, it wouldn't be now.

The poison had only crawled to the calf, and above the knee was already bound tightly; there was still a chance to save him within forty minutes.

Severing a limb right off the bat wasn't being decisive; it meant having seawater in one's brain.

"Step aside."

Lin Fan spoke.

Su Qingxue didn't move.

"Lin Fan."

"Step aside." Lin Fan didn't raise his voice. "You're blocking the light."

Su Qingxue was taken aback.

Song Ya was also stunned.

Lin Fan reached out and pointed at the swelling on Zhou Kai's calf.

"I didn't say I was going to chop."

As these words fell, the expressions of the few people in the cave all changed.

Zhou Kai bit down on the cloth strip, his eyes widening a bit.

Liu Feifei raised her head. "Ah? Then why did you burn the knife?"

Lin Fan glanced at her.

"To peel an apple?"

Liu Feifei choked.

At this time, she actually really wanted to retort: Where on the island are there apples?

But she held it in.

She was afraid that if she talked too much more, Lin Fan would use the knife to peel something else off her.

Su Qingxue stepped back half a step.

Only then did she realize that after saying all that, Lin Fan didn't mean that at all.

A wave of awkwardness choked up in her chest.

But she didn't explain.

The CEO's old bad habit remained; even when she was wrong, she didn't like to bow her head on the spot.

She simply made space.

Song Ya also hurriedly moved aside, holding the torch high.

The firelight fell back onto Zhou Kai's calf.

The bruises had been blocked by the cloth strip, slowing the upward spread significantly, but the area around the ankle was swollen even more terrifyingly.

The skin was stretched shiny, and the mucus oozing around the two tooth punctures mixed with dark blood, making one's stomach tighten just to look at it.

Lin Fan pressed his hand against Zhou Kai's knee.

"Zhou Kai."

Zhou Kai spat out the cloth strip in his mouth, panting heavily.

"Mm!"

"Don't kick around," Lin Fan said. "I'll let the poisonous blood out for you first."

"Song Ya, please give me a piece of wood…"

Song Ya picked up a piece of firewood and gave it to Zhou Kai, and Zhou Kai bit down on it again.

The tip of the knife cut into the edge of the swelling.

"Hiss…"

Jet-black and purple blood mixed with transparent mucus gushed out from the wound.

Zhou Kai's entire body violently arched, his back slamming hard against the ground, and the stick in his mouth was almost bitten through by him.

Song Ya's face was as pale as paper, and she almost turned her head away, but in the end, she still held the torch aloft with all her might.

Lin Fan's face was expressionless.

He cut a small cross-shaped incision along the tooth punctures, using his fingers to squeeze outward from the surrounding area.

Dark blood bubbled out in spurts, dripping onto the muddy ground, its color ominously dark.

Zhang Tao felt his stomach churning as he watched, yet he didn't dare look away.

Lin Fan suddenly spoke up.

"Zhang Tao, Wang Lan…"