53: Chapter 53 Run, Run Fast

Before Zhang Tao could speak, Lin Fan reached out and grabbed Zhang Tao by the collar.

Before the latter could react, his entire body was yanked outward by an immense force, dragging him straight to the edge of the platform.

"Ah——!"

Scared out of his wits, his voice instantly cracked, and his hands and feet flailed wildly in the air.

Below was a steep slope over a hundred meters long, and the cold wind carrying frigid moisture whipped across his face like knives.

Looking further down, eight corpses, turned blue from the cold, were strewn haphazardly in the pile of rubble.

"Take a good look."

"Down there, there's no fire and no water. Eight people froze to death last night, and tonight, people will continue to die."

"You asked me just now, what am I after?"

With a flick of his wrist, Lin Fan directly flung Zhang Tao back onto the flat ground.

Zhang Tao slammed heavily onto the gravel, his knees aching fiercely, but he couldn't care less at all. He could only lie prone on the ground, gasping heavily for cold air, his heart almost leaping out of his throat.

"I'm after making sure you lot here won't turn into a stiff corpse tomorrow!"

"Talking to me about being colleagues? Talking about feelings?"

Lin Fan twitched the corner of his mouth and sneered.

"The day before yesterday when Wang Qiang pointed at my nose and cursed, which of you 'good colleagues' stood up to say even half a word for me?"

"Now you run up to talk about feelings with me? Do you even deserve to?"

Lin Fan pointed at the rock crevices below, "Think I'm harsh? Think the work is tiring? The door is wide open."

"Oh, that's right, there is no door here. You can roll down right now to find Su Qingxue and continue being your urban white-collar workers, I will never stop you."

The entire platform fell into a deathly silence.

No one moved; no one was a fool.

Zhang Tao sat paralyzed on the ground, secretly glancing at that rock crevice below. Yesterday's events were still vivid in his mind, and he had chickened out.

If the helicopter still didn't come today, if they still had to endure another night down there... perhaps by tomorrow morning, there would be an extra spot for him, Zhang Tao, in that pile of corpses.

No one wanted to die; compared to life, dignity meant shit.

Could pride fill your stomach?

But when the cold wind blew, Zhang Tao's mind cleared up a lot.

He looked at the line Lin Fan had drawn. Crossing this line was equivalent to signing a slave contract.

Working to death every day, being ordered around by Lin Fan like a slave, only to get half a compressed biscuit and half a bottle of water in the end?

That little stuff wasn't even enough to fill the gaps between his teeth! Within three days, he would definitely starve to skin and bones alive.

He was unwilling to accept this. Everyone was just a bottom-tier working stiff. Originally back in the company, he, Zhang Tao, was at least a formal employee, much more precious than Lin Fan, this intern.

Why was it that now upon arriving on this lousy island, Lin Fan could act high and mighty as a local emperor, eating tomahawk steaks, while he, Zhang Tao, had to be a slave at the mercy of others?

Zhang Tao swallowed a mouthful of saliva and slowly crawled up from the ground.

He turned his head to glance at the sky outside the Karst Cave.

The sunlight had completely dispersed last night's rain clouds, and the sky was so blue without a trace of impurity.

The distant mountain forests were lush and green, the sea breeze blew past, the tree crowns swayed, and it looked full of vitality.

"Brother Fan."

Zhang Tao instantly put on a smiling face, "Your rules, I understand them all. These supplies are what you risked your life to find; we certainly can't freeload, what kind of person would that make us."

Lin Fan sat on a rock, toying with a tactical straight knife in his hand, and didn't reply.

"But you see, Brother Fan, I have a big appetite, half a biscuit really doesn't hold up, and I don't have strength to work, right?"

Zhang Tao reached out to point at the distant Mangrove Forest and beach, "How about this? I won't use your supplies; I'll go into the mountain myself to find wild fruits and go into the sea to catch seafood."

"When I find something to eat, I'll share half with you as accommodation fees. I just need to have a wind-sheltered spot to sleep in your Karst Cave every night, how do you like this idea? It's a win-win!"

Zhang Tao wanted to break away from Lin Fan's labor control, master his own food source, and not be at the mercy of others.

At the same time, he also wanted to freeload off Lin Fan's absolute safe shelter so he wouldn't have to freeze outside at night.

Hearing this, Zhao Na, Xiao Zhou, and the others also had their eyes light up.

That's right! The island was so big, the vegetation was so lush, and the beach was so long. Finding some wild fruits, picking up some crabs and shells shouldn't be hard, right?

If they could find food themselves, who would be willing to be Lin Fan's dog here and take his attitude?

This was simply an epic proposal!

Lin Fan stopped the knife spinning in his hand.

He looked at Zhang Tao's smug-looking face and instinctively smiled.

Go into the mountain to find wild fruits? Go into the sea to catch seafood?

This bunch of urban trash who blew air conditioning in CBD office buildings, drank iced Americanos, and couldn't even tell leeks from wheat seedlings, really regarded this isolated and eerie Deserted Island as a farmhouse resort?

"You want to go into the mountain..."

Just as Lin Fan opened his mouth, preparing to shatter their ridiculously naive fantasy, a voice interrupted him.

"Ah——!!!"

An extremely shrill, completely pitch-changed scream came from the edge of the Mangrove Forest diagonally below, instantly shattering the island's newly recovered tranquility.

This sound was too miserable, mixed with extreme fear and despair, completely unlike the commotion a human could make in a normal state.

Everyone on the Karst Cave platform, including Zhang Tao and Zhao Na, all unconsciously shivered.

Immediately following, an extremely eerie wind blew from the depths of the forest.

It wasn't the salty, fishy smell of the sea breeze, but a sickening, extremely intense stench!

It was like piling hundreds of dead fish and rotting stinky meat together to ferment for a dozen days; taking a single sniff made one's stomach churn wildly.

"Ugh..." Zhao Na couldn't hold it in and dry-heaved directly.

"What sound is that?" Xiao Zhou widened his eyes in horror, staring dead at the forest below.

At the edge of the Mangrove Forest below, the originally calm bushes began to shake violently.

That kind of shaking was definitely not blown by the wind.

But rather some behemoth rampaging through the forest.

"Crack! Crack!"

The sound of thigh-thick tree trunks being violently snapped endlessly lingered in the ears, and the teeth-aching friction sound accompanied by a dull heavy pressure sound seemed as if an out-of-control heavy bulldozer was frantically crushing through the forest.

Large swaths of flying birds flew up in terror from the canopy, charging densely toward the sky, not even daring to let out a single cry.

The hand that Zhang Tao had just used to point at the forest and say he was going to find wild fruits was now stiffened mid-air, shaking like a sieve.

Just as everyone held their breath, staring fixedly at that shaking forest, a figure scrambled out of the bushes head over heels.

It was the male colleague who went to the edge of the beach with Old Li to pick up supplies, Liu Hui.

Liu Hui's appearance at this moment was simply like a bloody mess that had just crawled out of hell.

The designer shirt on his body had long been snagged into strips of cloth by branches, and his face and arms were covered in bloody gashes deep enough to see bone, with fresh blood caked all over his face.

But the most terrifying thing wasn't the injuries on his body, but his state.

Liu Hui's eyes bulged out, his eyeballs filled with burst red bloodshot veins, his gaze unfocused, completely looking like a maniac whose guts had been scared out of him.

"Run... run!"