23: Chapter 23 In a place like this, you're talking to me about sincerity?

The campfire in the Karst Cave no longer had any flames left, and Lin Fan opened his eyes.

He wasn't in a rush to get up, maintaining his posture leaning against the rock wall, his right hand instinctively reaching to his side.

The knife was still there.

His fingers touched the cold hilt, the pads of his fingers rubbing over the rough anti-slip texture, and his heartbeat steadied by half a beat.

But his arms were empty.

Last night, that national sweetheart who had pulled out all the stops under the firelight and wished she could knead herself into the gaps of his bones hadn't left behind even a single strand of hair at this moment.

Lin Fan twitched the corner of his mouth.

It wasn't an accident, nor could it even be considered a disappointment.

A snake was grabbed by its vital spot and fed a hot meal; the moment you let go, it would be a ghost story if she didn't slip away.

His gaze shifted.

On the other side of the Karst Cave, a small white shadow was curled up.

Song Ya.

Last night, after Liu Feifei tossed and turned until she was exhausted and collapsed on the ground to fall asleep, Lin Fan got up and added some firewood.

He glanced at the cave entrance by the way.

Song Ya was cowering behind a rock outside, her lips already frozen to the color of pig liver, her teeth clattering like someone playing clappers, her entire body shaking like a sieve, just a breath away from going into shock.

He let her in.

At this moment, Song Ya was gripping her knees with both hands, her chin resting on her kneecaps, a pair of rabbit eyes bloodshot from staying awake all night staring fixedly at Lin Fan.

The whites of her eyes were full of bloodshot veins, looking as if red ink had been dripped into them.

"Awake?"

Lin Fan straightened his body, casually picked up a half-burned stick from the ground, and poked around in the embers.

With a crackle, a few sparks burst out, curling up a wisp of blue smoke that drifted away.

The fire had not yet completely cooled.

Song Ya bit her lower lip, her gaze churning like a pot of porridge—three parts fear of him, three parts grievance, and the remaining four parts an irrepressible suppressed anger.

"She ran away."

Song Ya spoke, every word carrying barbs.

"I have eyes."

Lin Fan didn't even raise his head, continuing to poke the ashes with the stick in his hand.

"She sneaked away while it was still dark, without even a sound."

Song Ya's speaking speed quickened. "Lin Fan, you've been played by her! She wasn't following you sincerely at all; she came entirely for that bite to eat! She came for this fire! After eating her fill and getting warm, she pats her butt and leaves."

Lin Fan's movements stopped.

He raised his head.

"Sincerity?"

He savored those two words and couldn't help laughing out loud.

It wasn't a polite smile.

It was that kind of snort from the nasal cavity, a genuine laugh born from finding it absurd.

"Song Ya, is your head filled with saltwater from the Pacific Ocean? In a place like this, you're talking to me about sincerity?"

Song Ya's face burned directly from his laughter, her hands clutching the hem of her shirt so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

"What are you laughing at! Am I wrong? Last night... last night she shamelessly sucked up to you, got what she wanted, and then turned her face the moment she looked away! She's not even human!"

The more Song Ya spoke, the more anxious she became, her voice even cracking.

"She even swiped the bottle of mineral water you left on the stone!"

Lin Fan lazily glanced at the flat rock beside him.

It was empty.

"So what?"

Lin Fan twisted his neck, his cervical vertebrae making two crisp cracking sounds.

"Don't you understand yet!"

Song Ya grew anxious and suddenly sprang up from the ground.

"She went back to find President Su! She will definitely act like nothing happened and continue playing her innocent, squeaky-clean big star!"

"When the rescue comes and we return to Jiangcheng... Lin Fan, she will definitely not let you off!"

The more Song Ya spoke, the colder her back felt.

It wasn't from the wind.

During those few months of internship at Shengtang, she had personally witnessed too many methods those people at the top used to deal with people.

Silently, a living person would just disappear from their workstation.

Even the resignation procedures were handled on their behalf by the Personnel Department.

"She is Liu Feifei! A top-tier traffic star built by capital! Last night... you did that kind of thing to her. If a single word leaks out, her persona, her endorsements, the dramas she takes—they'll all collapse!"

Song Ya glared with bloodshot eyes, her voice shaking.

"To shut you up, she has ten thousand ways to make it impossible for you to survive in Jiangcheng. She will sue you for rape! Do you understand!"

Lin Fan listened quietly.

He didn't interject a single word.

After Song Ya finished speaking, he unhurriedly stood up.

One meter seventy-eight.

The roof of the Karst Cave wasn't very high. After he stood straight, there was only a fist's distance between his head and the rock above.

This day and night on the Deserted Island had carved something indescribable into him.

It wasn't as simple as getting a few shades darker.

His entire aura had changed.

He took a step forward.

Song Ya's body was much more honest than her brain. Before her brain could issue a command, her legs automatically stepped backward.

Her back hit the cold rock wall.

There was nowhere left to retreat.

"I traded a fingernail-sized scrap of luncheon meat for a full night of intimate service from domestic entertainment's top traffic star."

Lin Fan tilted his head.

"Help me calculate this deal: where did I lose out?"

Song Ya's mouth opened, then closed again.

Her brain went boom. He actually... he actually viewed the matter this way?

There was no guilty conscience from taking advantage, no being dazzled by beauty, not even a shred of complacency about sleeping with a big star.

"Sue me for rape? Which of your eyes saw me holding down her head? She took off her clothes herself, she crawled over herself, and she knelt by my feet begging me to touch her."

"Even taking ten thousand steps back, suppose this woman really flew back to Jiangcheng and called the police, where is the evidence?"

He reached out and pointed outside the cave.

Outside was a slope of jagged rocks, further away was the beach, and at the end of the beach was that crazy ocean.

"On this lousy island where even time doesn't run right, who's going to gather evidence? Send a forensic pathologist over in a rubber dinghy? Or have the police ride dolphins to investigate the scene?"

Song Ya's throat bobbed.

"But..."

"No buts."

Lin Fan directly choked her words back down her throat.

"She ran back not because she has backing, but because she chickened out."

His voice dropped half a tone.

"She's afraid that if she keeps staying here with me, she can only be a lifelong exclusive female slave with no room for counteroffers. She has to go back. Back into the crowd, put on her shell of a celestial maiden, and continue acting out her pure persona."

"She thinks that as long as she mingles among Su Qingxue's group, waits for rescue, and returns to civilized society, she'll be that aloof Liu Feifei again."

Lin Fan paused.

"Last night's events? Non-existent, never happened, purely a nightmare on the Deserted Island."

As he spoke, he reached out his hand.

Five fingers unceremoniously pinched Song Ya's chin.

The force wasn't heavy.

Song Ya was forced to tilt her head up, her neck stretched into a taut line.

"She ran away, which is just as well—will you step up to fill the vacancy tonight?"

Song Ya reached out to push Lin Fan away, but didn't push him much at all. Right now she was so hungry she couldn't even pinch a chicken to death. Her hands quickly crossed to protect her chest, and her cheeks all the way to the root of her neck flushed completely red.

"In your dreams!"

"I won't... I won't!"

Song Ya gritted her teeth, her gaze darting everywhere, simply not daring to make eye contact with Lin Fan.

She held it in for a long time, her neck as stiff as if it were in a plaster cast, and finally squeezed a sentence out through her teeth:

"You... you're not clean anymore!"

The moment those words came out, the Karst Cave fell silent for a second.

Lin Fan froze. This was a genuine freeze, not faked.

During this day and night on the Deserted Island, he had been cursed as a beast, called a pervert, and had Su Qingxue point at his nose and say he wasn't worthy of being human.

But the words not clean anymore were a first.

The next second, he burst out laughing.

"Not clean?"

Lin Fan laughed until his waist bent, reaching out to point at Song Ya's face, which was covered in patches of black and gray.

He then pointed at her bare feet.

All ten toes were exposed, scratches piled upon scratches on the soles of her feet, a few cuts still oozing blood, and the gaps between her nails completely stuffed with mud and sand, looking just like she had just been dug out of a coal pile.

"Miss Song, do you perhaps have some major misunderstanding about your current situation?"

Lin Fan straightened his waist, a lingering trace of laughter still hanging on his face.

"Right now, you can't even drink a sip of unsalted water, you can't scrape together a piece of paper to wipe your butt, and you're about to lose even a complete pair of pants to cover your rear!"

"You're talking to me about being clean?"

Song Ya's eye sockets instantly turned completely red.

Tears swirled inside, but they refused to fall no matter what.

It wasn't that she wasn't aggrieved.

It was that she was too aggrieved, so aggrieved that she felt it was humiliating to even cry.

She stiffened her neck and held her chin high.

This was her final stubbornness.

"Anyway, I don't want it."

"I'd rather freeze to death outside than be like her."

Lin Fan stared at Song Ya for three seconds.

That way of staring couldn't be called appreciation or appraisal, but it definitely wasn't looking at a dead person.

"You have backbone."

There was no mockery in Lin Fan's tone. "Since you don't want to trade with that, then use this."

Lin Fan raised the knife in his hand and patted his arm.

"Labor. Use your two hands and two legs to do the work and buy back your life."

He strode toward the cave entrance.

Walking five or six steps, he didn't even turn his head.

"Keep up."

Song Ya froze in place.

The sun hadn't come out yet, and the wind poured in from the cave entrance, sweeping across her body clad only in a thin shirt. The chill drilled into the gaps of her bones like needles.

Song Ya clenched her back teeth and limped after him.

The moment she stepped out of the Karst Cave, the sea breeze blew even harder.

But it was much softer than last night's blade-like wind that could cut bloodstains into people's skin, barely qualifying as a downgrade from taking your life to taking half your life.

Lin Fan stood at the edge of the jagged rock slope halfway up the mountain, looking down condescendingly toward the beach.

It was too far apart.

People couldn't be seen clearly; only a few black dots could be seen shuffling along the beach.

They shuffled extremely slowly, like a few half-dead ants.

[Current Time: 08:15]

[Environmental Temperature: 12°C]

[Beach Target Group Status: Five dead. Remaining survivors have completed preliminary power restructuring. Su Qingxue controls decision-making power, Wang Qiang acts as the violent enforcement tool, and Chen Jian is forced to accept the role of technical support. Currently splitting into two groups to search for fresh water and fuel. It is expected that they will still return empty-handed by noon.]

The golden prompt box floated before his eyes, the handwriting as clear as if it had been engraved.

Lin Fan narrowed his eyes.

Five dead.

His prediction last night was the first case of hypothermia and shock; he didn't expect five to go at once.

That woman Su Qingxue really has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Even after five people died, she was still able to gather the remaining people back together and keep the situation from falling apart completely.

Put in a company meeting, this is called crisis leadership.

On this Deserted Island, this is called giving the ox another breath so it can keep pulling the millstone.

But that was about it.

No water, no food, no decent fire.

Her ten-billion-worth mouth couldn't buy a single thing on this island that could make someone live an hour longer.

They won't last long.

"Where are we going?"