Chapter 18: Raft Survival 5
The entire afternoon passed without incident. Xu Dongdong caught a lot more sea fish, and Chu Yun, following her routine, made a show of storing a portion of them inside her storage ring.
Chu Yun took inventory of their supplies. Currently, besides the twenty-odd sea fish she had recently put away, the space contained ten 3L jugs of drinking water, a box of instant noodles, and a box of small buns. Their backpacks held a temporary supply of water and dry bread. Xu Dongdong didn’t have any extra food on him, as everything was stored with Chu Yun. The variety of food was somewhat limited, but the quantity was quite abundant.
For dinner, Chu Yun and Xu Dongdong had roasted fish as usual. They gave two fish to the newcomers as payment for today’s labor.
After dinner, everyone prepared to rest. Accustomed to this garbage game’s routine of deploying challenges at night, everyone remained on high alert. The night patrol was divided into three groups.
Once the watch duties were assigned, the players began to rest.
There was no lighting equipment here, leaving no illumination save for the faint moonlight. There were no electronic communication devices either; once night fell, there was no entertainment besides sleeping. Consequently, apart from an occasional whisper, the wooden boat was completely silent.
Even Xu Dongdong’s mood was uncharacteristically somber. He usually acted cheerful and lively in front of others, like a shining little sun. But when stuck in adversity, even the most optimistic person could lose their mind under day after day of relentless psychological torment.
Xu Dongdong asked, “Do you ever feel this way? Like an inexplicable wave of loneliness washes over you, making you feel like you’re the only person left in the entire world.”
Chu Yun replied, “I do. Everyone has moments when they’re down, and everyone faces setbacks. But that’s just life. It’s impossible for everything to be smooth sailing. All we can do is live well in the present—not dwelling on the past, not fearing the future, and making the most of the time we have left.”
“Yeah. No matter what happens tomorrow, I’ll live well in the present.”
Xu Dongdong exhaled a breath of pent-up gloom, feeling his mind clear instantly.
The surrounding players who overheard Chu Yun’s words were also encouraged. They had been depressed for days, working themselves to the bone every single day just for a meager bite of food. It made them feel like life wasn’t worth it, and many had repeatedly contemplated just ending it all.
But no one knew where they would go after ending their lives—whether they would truly die or be teleported by the system to an even more horrifying game. No one dared to test it out, so they all suffered through a dual torment of mental agony and physical exhaustion.
Everyone had assumed the game would spawn monsters to attack them at night, but it didn’t. The patrol team spent the night in anxious suspense, their minds highly strung as they anticipated imminent, unknown risks. It wasn’t until the sun rose the next day with everything still peaceful that they realized they had truly passed the night safely. The heavy dread hanging in everyone’s hearts finally eased.
Day 4 of the game.
Aside from the few newcomers who had arrived yesterday and still seemed a bit reserved, the players on the wooden boat adapted very well, going about their business.
The newcomers who arrived yesterday had their own ways of surviving. Lacking fresh water, they gathered the plastic wrappers Chu Yun didn’t need and hung them along the boat’s railing. After a night of waiting, the plastic bags collected a substantial amount of morning dew.
Xie Jia was even more astonishing. She used two mineral water bottles to construct a rudimentary distillation apparatus. She filled one bottle with seawater and connected the empty bottle mouth-to-mouth with it. By heating the bottle filled with seawater to generate water vapor, the vapor flowed through the connection into the empty bottle, cooling into liquid water upon hitting the bottle’s walls. Although this process was slow and took quite a bit of effort, she managed to collect several bottles of fresh water over the course of the day.
Unlike Chu Yun, they didn’t have storage rings. To keep themselves agile, they couldn’t pack much dry food or drinking water in their personal backpacks. Now that their raft had capsized and they had lost more than half of their supplies, they were forced to resort to this method to gather fresh water.
Xie Dongliang and his partner were also running out of fresh water, so they traded a fish they had caught to Xie Jia’s group for a bottle of fresh water. Each side got what they needed, and the cooperation was pleasant. Seizing the opportunity from this transaction, they no longer harbored such intense hostility toward Xie Jia’s group.
“Xie Jia, you’re truly incredible to think of a method like this.”
Xie Jia operated quite openly, entirely unafraid of others copying her, and even patiently answered their questions when they asked for guidance.
To be able to quickly manage a team and master multiple survival skills made Chu Yun involuntarily take a few extra glances at her.
Xie Jia smiled. “It’s nothing. I was a chemistry teacher before entering the game. These are just simple experiments.”
The crowd: “…”
Many people wouldn’t even think of these “simple experiments,” yet she displayed them so generously. She truly was a respectable teacher of the people.
At 2:00 PM, everyone had just finished lunch and went about their business—some patrolled, while others napped.
Chu Yun stood at the very front of the wooden boat, conducting her routine scan.
Suddenly, her expression shifted. She noticed the direction of the current ahead was a bit strange. Their intended path was straight ahead, but no matter how the rowers adjusted their angle, the boat invariably drifted sideways.
Previously, the sea surface had been completely empty. Now, Chu Yun noticed an increasing amount of floating marine vegetation in this area, all being drawn toward a single point ahead and to the side.
There were currently two competing currents—one pulling straight forward, and one pulling toward the front-right. The wooden boat felt like it was at the tangent point of a circle; they wanted to break free and sail along the tangent line, but a powerful drag force was reeling them into the circle.
Chu Yun observed that the pull from the side was exceeding their forward momentum. This was a sign of a vortex forming; they were about to be sucked into a whirlpool.
Whirlpools most commonly appeared where a channel suddenly changed direction, or where a channel narrowed or widened abruptly. When the seabed was uneven or contained numerous large rocks, the sudden changes in current speed and direction, combined with the impact force of the water, would trigger them.
The presence of a whirlpool meant there were rocks on the seabed ahead, and the appearance of rocks meant land wasn’t far off. If they could pass through the vortex, they would see land and be able to escape.
“Attention everyone! A marine whirlpool has appeared ahead. Use all available tools to correct the boat’s heading and row with all your might to veer left!”
Chu Yun’s shout sent a jolt through the players who had been napping on the wooden deck, making them scramble to their feet.
At a loss, waves of anxiety began to surface among them.
Xie Jia and Xu Dongdong said nothing. Following Chu Yun’s prompt, they grabbed every tool they could use and began rowing furiously along the edge of the boat.
Chu Yun took over the position of the helmsman, rowing without a single pause in an attempt to distance them from the whirlpool.
The remaining people also began to react. They followed suit—those without paddles used spare wood, and those without wood used their bare hands, scooping against the sea surface stroke after stroke. Cold sweat beaded on their foreheads, and they didn’t dare look directly at the ocean to their left, feeling as though some deep-sea leviathan was staring at them from the depths, waiting to swallow them whole.
The pull from the front-left grew stronger and stronger. Everyone could feel it. They exerted every ounce of their strength, yet the boat still careened uncontrollably toward the vortex. This unmanageable situation filled their hearts with cowardice.
No, we need more power, even more! They didn’t dare pause for a single instant. Sweat drenched the stray hairs on their foreheads and dripped into their eyes, but they couldn’t even spare a moment to wipe it away.
Yet the game seemed to be actively working against them; no matter how hard they fought, they couldn’t alter the forces of nature.
“Everyone with a life jacket, put it on! Those without, hold onto anything that floats! Prepare to jump ship!”
Chu Yun made a decisive call. The exact moment she realized the wooden boat couldn’t escape the whirlpool’s gravity, she firmly issued the order. The larger and heavier an object was, the easier it would sink to the bottom of a vortex. Conversely, lighter objects would spin continuously with the current; as long as they didn’t sink, they would find an opportunity to escape the whirlpool.
Therefore, right now, they needed to abandon the wooden boat to survive.
She and Xu Dongdong had obtained two life jackets from the supply pack earlier. The jackets featured air bladders that could effectively help them float on the water. She finally realized the purpose behind the supply pack; not a single item was wasted. They quickly put them on. Chu Yun gestured for Xu Dongdong to help her dump the fish from the foam box into the sea. She used the opportunity to store most of them in her storage ring, only pouring out a few as a cover.
The crowd felt pure heartache watching Chu Yun dump a whole basket of fish into the sea. That was days’ worth of food, completely wasted just like that!
Then, Chu Yun rapidly dismantled the foam box, breaking the large container into six smaller chunks.
“Everyone take a piece of foam and jump immediately!” Although foam wasn’t as effective as a life jacket, it possessed excellent buoyancy. She had provided them with resources; the rest was up to them.
Then, disregarding whatever else the others wanted to say, she handed a piece of foam to Xu Dongdong, grabbed him, and vaulted straight into the ocean.
Watching Chu Yun leap into the sea so nimbly, the crowd instantly lost their anchor. Dragged by the whirlpool, the wooden boat traveled much faster than Chu Yun’s group. Within just five seconds of hesitation, Chu Yun and Xu Dongdong were already left twenty meters behind them.
The second to move was Xie Jia. She decisively shrugged off her teammates’ restraining hands and followed Chu Yun’s lead, diving straight into the ocean.
The remaining few people still hesitated, looking at one another, unsure if they should trust Chu Yun this time. Abandoning the boat meant they would have to fight alone, a prospect that understandably left them with zero sense of security.
But Chu Yun’s reasoning was absolutely correct. By now, Chu Yun was already over seventy meters away from them. With the first two squads serving as an example, they hesitantly picked up the foam pieces and jumped into the sea.
Ultimately, however, they were a step too late. They were now exceptionally close to the center of the marine whirlpool. The exact instant they plunged into the ocean, the heavy wooden boat was reeled in by the centripetal force, spinning at a blistering speed in a circular trajectory.
One rotation, two rotations… drawing closer and closer to the center, its speed accelerating. Finally, the group could only watch blankly as the wooden boat was sucked directly into the bottom of the vortex ahead.
