69: Chapter 69 Wanting plain water doesn't necessarily mean you have to steal from Lin Fan.

The campfire in the rock crevice burned very brightly.

The firelight illuminated the faces with flickering light and shadow, deep in the corner.

Zhao Na curled up between two rocks.

Completely naked, just a few hours ago, she was still puffing out her chest and proclaiming herself the principal wife in front of Lin Fan.

Now? She was worse than the mud in the sewer.

No one glanced at her twice, let alone took off a piece of clothing to block the wind for her.

Occasionally, a few male employees passed by, their gazes sweeping over her unmasked body with not a shred of sympathy in their eyes, only the most primitive greed and bestiality.

If not for the legal bottom line lingering in their hearts—'Maybe we can take a plane home tomorrow'—she would have long been torn apart and devoured by this group of starved men.

But everyone knew in their hearts that as long as the rescue came a few days later, Zhao Na would definitely be reduced to the lowest-tier venting tool in this rock crevice.

On the other side of the campfire.

Su Qingxue leaned against the rock wall, her legs curled up, her chin resting on her knees.

The filter of the multi-billion female president shattered here to the point not even scum was left.

Having struggled in the business world for so many years, what kind of old fox hadn't she seen?

Yet at this moment, this group of workplace beasts of burden who used to grovel before her gave her looks that were simply terrifying.

It was neither anger nor hatred.

It was hunger.

When they looked at her, it was like looking at a piece of fresh meat on a cutting board that hadn't been cooked yet.

Su Qingxue shuddered.

She knew in her heart better than anyone that taking a knife to Zhao Na tonight was just an appetizer for this group's despairing emotions.

Zhao Na led the team to their deaths and deserved to be the punching bag.

But if ten days or half a month later rescue still hadn't come, who would be the next one stripped bare and thrown into the corner to be beaten?

She closed her eyes tightly, not daring to think any further down.

Right in this suffocating silence, Chen Jian suddenly spoke up.

"Everyone, listen to me for a moment."

Chen Jian's voice wasn't loud, but in the rock crevice full of heavy panting and groaning, it could be heard clearly.

More than twenty pairs of bloodshot eyes stared at him in unison.

"Wanting to drink fresh water doesn't necessarily mean we have to rob Lin Fan's."

Chen Jian pushed the glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"I have a way."

Silence.

Following closely was a sound of breathing that was extremely heavy.

Ma Liang was the first who couldn't hold back.

With red eyes, he let out a cracked sneer.

"Yo, Engineer Chen."

In the past, he always called Chen Jian a kept man, but because Chen Jian made a fire and found a cave, he had looked up to him a bit.

"Do you think that just because you made a fire the day before yesterday, you've become Bear Grylls?"

Ma Liang pointed at the pitch-black night outside and rolled his eyes hard.

"What? Planning to take us deep into the Mangrove Forest to find mountain springs? Did you fucking forget about that giant python? It swallows a living person in one bite! Are you upset that everyone isn't dying fast enough, so you're organizing a group tour to deliver takeout to that long snake?"

A few people nearby also let out a burst of dry mockery.

Chen Jian said expressionlessly, "We're not going to the woods."

"As long as you cooperate with me, I can conjure up fresh water out of thin air on this beach."

The moment the two words "out of thin air" fell, everyone's eyes instantly turned green.

"What did you say?"

Ma Liang even suspected he was experiencing auditory hallucinations.

"I said, right here on the beach, produce fresh water on the spot. No need to risk our lives, and even less need to go be targets for Lin Fan."

"Spit it out! How the hell do we do it?!"

Seven or eight male employees roared simultaneously.

But Chen Jian deliberately paused for a full three seconds.

These three seconds, which whetted everyone's appetite to the limit, hung everyone's hearts in their throats.

"I can get water out," Chen Jian finally spoke, "but there is one condition."

"From now on, until rescue arrives, everyone's action arrangements here will unconditionally obey my command."

As soon as his voice fell, a small commotion exploded in the rock crevice.

Several male employees instinctively turned their heads to look at Su Qingxue, who was cowering in the corner.

Su Qingxue's face was as pale as paper.

She clearly felt that something even more terrifying than having no water to drink was slipping away—her absolute power.

"Obey your command?"

An extremely harsh, cracked bronze-gong voice shattered the atmosphere.

Wang Qiang jumped out.

Half of his face was dyed crimson by the firelight, and the scalp on top of his head scraped by a stone was still oozing blood, making him look pathetic to the extreme.

But he shoved the person in front of him aside, pointed right at Chen Jian's nose, and started spouting off.

Wang Qiang glanced back at Su Qingxue, as if finding his backbone, and turned back to continue spraying spit everywhere.

"President Su is still holding down the fort here! She is the president of the Shengtang Group! She is your wife's and our shared boss! Who the hell do you think you are? Your wife eats the company's food, and you want to smash the company's pot? This is taking advantage of a crisis! This is rebellion!"

"You..."

"I'll just ask you this: listening to that woman, can we survive?"

Chen Jian directly interrupted him, without any hysteria, only ultimate calmness.

Staring at Wang Qiang, he launched a direct face-to-face attack.

"Supervisor Wang, then tell me, can President Su make a fire in the wild? Can she conjure a single drop of fresh water from seawater?"

These two questions struck right at Su Qingxue's soft spot.

Wang Qiang opened his mouth, like a duck whose neck was being choked, unable to squeeze out a single word for a long time.

Chen Jian didn't give him a chance to breathe at all, continuing his output:

"President Su is a multi-billion-dollar president in the office building, but here on the Deserted Island, she doesn't have an ounce of judgment."

In the corner, Su Qingxue's body swayed slightly.

Chen Jian turned his head, his gaze piercing straight at Wang Qiang.

"Or are you saying everyone should continue listening to Supervisor Wang's command?"

"You..."

"Half an hour ago."

Chen Jian's voice grew completely cold.

"It was you, Wang Qiang, who led more than twenty people to charge up. It was you who walked at the very front holding a torch, and it was you who shouted about carrying out justice on behalf of heaven."

Chen Jian closed in a step forward, "And the result?"

"A rock smashed down, and you were the first to scurry away with your head in your hands! Once you ran, everything in the back fell into chaos! How did Old Chen die? He was trampled to death alive by you guys! How was Liu Hui's leg broken? It was snapped when you guys were running for your lives!"

"Leading people up to send them to their deaths was your incompetence; taking the lead in fleeing to trigger a stampede was your cowardice. Two human lives and a broken leg, Supervisor Wang, how do you plan to settle this blood debt?"

Every single word struck at the heart!

Wang Qiang's face faded all the way from flushed red, finally turning into ashen gray.

That mouth of his that was usually the most talkative in the company trembled for a long time, utterly unable to let out a single fart.

There was simply no way to refute it.

Because every single word Chen Jian just said was an iron-clad fact.

Every single one of these twenty-odd people in the rock crevice was a living witness who saw it with their own eyes!

"Who gives a damn whose to listen to!"

Ma Liang, who had been cowering in the crowd without making a sound, suddenly erupted.

He shoved Wang Qiang aside, who was blocking the front, and yelled, "Chen Jian, do you dare guarantee what you just said? You said you can conjure fresh water, then do it right now!"

Ma Liang's voice was already cracked due to severe dehydration.

"Right now in this ghost place, whoever can give me a gulp of clean water to drink, whoever the fuck that is, will be my reborn biological father! I'll listen to whoever that is!"

"Count me in!"

A bald male employee nearby roared along.

"Right! Stop talking about all that useless stuff! Our throats are smoking from thirst, and if we don't drink water soon, we'll all die here!"

In the blink of an eye, seven or eight male employees who were usually treated as core lackeys by Wang Qiang all raised their voices to declare their stance.

Their gazes directly skipped over Su Qingxue cowering in the corner, and they even treated Wang Qiang right in front of them as a lump of air, locking the entire audience's line of sight dead onto Chen Jian.

In this bird-forsaken desperate situation, whoever has milk is mother, and whoever has water is king.

Whatever multi-million annual salary female president, whatever senior supervisor controlling performance metrics—in the face of a shriveled stomach and a burning throat, they were all fucking bullshit!

In the corner, Su Qingxue closed her eyes.

She didn't voice her opposition, not because she didn't want to maintain her dignity as the helmswoman of Shengtang Group, but because she simply had no bargaining chips whatsoever to pull out right now.

She clearly felt that she, a multi-billion-dollar female president, had been completely sidelined just like that by a "kept man" whom she usually couldn't even be bothered to look at straight.