322: Chapter 322 Zhou Kai's body is gone

When Lin Fan shoveled the final layer of dirt on top, the sun was already setting. He let Su Qingxue and the others go down first, while he stood in place for a long time; no one knew what he was thinking.

The wind blew in from the sea, slapping against the rock wall like weeping.

Read good books from Taiwan, super worry-free

After a long while, he finally turned around and walked mechanically toward the Karst Cave.

Entering the cave.

The fire was already burning. Song Ya added two pieces of dry firewood to it, and the tongues of flame licked upwards, crackling twice.

Lin Fan walked over to the stone he usually sat on and sat down against the rock wall.

Su Qingxue glanced at him and her lips moved, wanting to comfort him, but in the end she still did not know how to speak.

The Karst Cave was frighteningly quiet.

The light of the campfire cast the shadows of several people onto the rock wall, swaying back and forth. The extra empty spot was exceptionally glaring.

In the past, Zhou Kai used to sit right there.

Planting a stick on the ground, crossing his legs, and bragging with Yang Ningcong—talking about anything from the big yellow dog in his hometown courtyard to the grapevine rack of Widow Wang next door, chatting about all sorts of nonsense for a whole night.

As for Yang Ningcong, he would brag to him about celebrity starlets and young models.

Now he was squatting in the corner of the wall, hugging his knees with his head buried in the crook of his arm.

No one spoke with him anymore; if Zhou Kai were alive, at least he would not be as lonely as he was now.

He raised his head to glance at that empty spot, then buried his head back down.

He muttered something under his breath; his voice was very small, but Lin Fan heard it.

He said, "Zhou Kai, why the fuck did you die so early?"

Lin Fan paid no attention. Song Ya sat next to Xu Zhixia with her hands intertwined. Ever since the afternoon, her eye rims had not stopped being red.

Xu Zhixia knew that this kind of silence was not good news. If no one spoke up, everyone would think of the worst, then develop a negative mindset, feeling that since they couldn't beat them anyway, what was the point of resisting?

"With everyone looking like this, how are we supposed to work tomorrow?" Xu Zhixia's voice popped out.

No one answered.

"If Zhou Kai saw you all looking like this, he would scold you."

"Zhou Kai's death has given us a wake-up call."

Xu Zhixia did not soften her tone; her way of speaking was as calm as ever, "That man today—"

"He killed Zhou Kai not because he hated him, but to get something."

"He got the thing and left."

"Yet he didn't kill the rest of us."

Everyone in the Karst Cave was listening; no one chimed in, nor did anyone interrupt.

"If he wanted to kill people, Lin Fan could escape, but the rest of us would definitely die."

"Yet he didn't make a move."

Su Qingxue sat on the other side of the campfire, and upon hearing this, she raised her chin slightly.

"You mean he intentionally wants to keep us alive?"

"Right," Xu Zhixia nodded, "or to be more precise, he wants to see something in us."

"See what?" Yang Ningcong's muffled voice came from the corner.

"I don't know." Xu Zhixia did not give a definitive answer, "But it proves at least one thing: to them, we still have value in staying alive for now."

The four words "value of staying alive" coming from a doctor's mouth felt deeply grating no matter how one heard it.

But because of these words, Yang Ningcong instead slowly moved his entire body out from the corner.

Having value meant he wouldn't die—as long as he didn't die for the time being, that was fine.

Lin Fan still didn't speak, but what Xu Zhixia said made sense. The Suit Man's speed crushed everything; if he wanted to slaughter this Karst Cave, no one could stop him.

But he didn't.

He took the thing and left, and even the stone thrown at Su Qingxue felt more like a containment tactic rather than genuinely trying to take a life.

Therefore, Xu Zhixia's judgment was most likely correct.

They were still useful, at least for now.

"Since they won't make a move against us for now," Xu Zhixia put the medicinal herbs back into the bamboo tube, "then don't let your imaginations run wild."

She glanced around at everyone.

"In just a few days, the third batch of people will arrive."

"Once newcomers arrive on the island, those monsters will have new experimental subjects."

Xu Zhixia's voice paused for a moment.

"By then, will the utility value of us mice drop to zero?"

"No one will let the pet mice they keep in captivity threaten them."

The breath Yang Ningcong had just relaxed was pulled back up again, "Then you mean after the newcomers arrive, those beasts will come to kill us?"

"There's that possibility."

"Fuck..."

"So these few days are a window period." Xu Zhixia's words were not spoken to Yang Ningcong; they were spoken to Lin Fan.

She was reminding Lin Fan that after that batch of people arrived, they might be able to use them to figure out the secrets of this island, so he shouldn't be negative.

Lin Fan raised his eyelids slightly.

The two of them locked eyes across the campfire for less than a second.

"Go to sleep, all of you." Lin Fan finally spoke; this was his first sentence since returning to the Karst Cave.

The light of the campfire dimmed bit by bit. Everyone looked like they were asleep, but no one actually fell asleep.

Lin Fan kept his eyes closed, but his mind couldn't stop racing.

Zhou Kai's smiling face with three missing teeth flickered back and forth in the darkness.

That phrase, "I managed to hold on."

Idiot.

Hold on for what.

Not holding on—if that tube fell out, the man would have just taken it and left, at most suffering a beating, but his life would still be there.

He just had to play the hero.

He just had to swallow the thing down.

Lin Fan turned over. In the darkness, he could hear the breathing of others and the muffled sound of distant waves crashing against the shore.

He didn't know how much time had passed.

Maybe an hour, maybe two hours.

Sleepiness never came, but his body had already reached a certain critical point of exhaustion, his mind bouncing back and forth on the boundary between wakefulness and chaos.

Just at the moment when his consciousness was about to blur.

Awoo...

A howl came in from the direction of the rock crevices overhead.

Lin Fan sat straight up; it was a beast's howl.

To be precise, it was a howl that was neither human nor beast, extremely similar to the distorted vocal cord vibrations that Chen Jian had emitted last time, yet not entirely the same.

Lin Fan's heart tightened.

Up above, Zhou Kai was buried up above.

Had those beasts smelled the scent of blood and come to dig up Zhou Kai's grave, or was the Suit Man sending those beasts to snatch Zhou Kai's body back for research?

He picked up the firewood chopper resting beside the rock wall, tucked the dagger at his waist, and crossed in three strides to the slope on the side of the Karst Cave.

Triple Enhancement allowed him to scramble up to the top platform in just over ten seconds.

The moonlight was ghastly pale, spilling across the rock surface.

The moment Lin Fan's feet landed on the top, his entire body froze in place.

That pit—the pit he had dug with his own hands, filled with his own hands, and flattened with a shovel with his own hands—had been dug open once again.

Soft dirt rolled outward from the edge of the pit, and clumps of mud were scattered all over the ground.

The pit was empty.

Zhou Kai was gone.

Lin Fan squatted down and reached his fingers into the bottom of the pit to feel around. The mud was damp, and a layer of dark seepage traces still remained underneath—marks left behind after blood mixed with bodily fluids had been absorbed by the soil.

A person had indeed lain here, but now he was gone.

Could it be that those beasts really wanted to take Zhou Kai's body back for research?

If they wanted to take it back, why didn't that Suit Man take it back during the day?