Chapter 15 Escape from L Island (2 in 1)
[16]
After the three of them transported the oil barrels to the boat, Lin Wu signaled Yuan Qing to start the speedboat and prepare to leave, while he and Ximan planned to return to rescue Youxi. Although she was holding a flaming weapon, once she turned around and left, the advantage of the weapon would be gone.
However, as soon as they jumped off the speedboat, they saw Youxi walking towards them quickly, dragging a barrel of oil with both hands.
"I threatened them to lose their spear guns. They are now circling around. Let's go!"
"Okay!" Lin Wu took the portable bucket from her hand and pushed her onto the speedboat. Although there were still three barrels of oil left on the roof, the most important thing now was to keep most of the fuel and leave safely.
Several people boarded the boat one after another, and Yuan Xing turned around and rushed out of the gas station area at the fastest speed.
Behind them, another spear was thrown, brushed the tail of the speedboat, and fell into the water. It turned out that there was also a spear on the wooden boat behind, because it retreated early, and now it is catching up faster after circling.
Lin Wu was glad that he did not hesitate and entangled with the remaining diesel.
The two wooden boats came out one after another, but after all, they were hand-rowed boats, and the speed was too slow. However, in a moment, the speedboat left them behind.
On the way back, Youxi's heart was still pounding, and Ximan also sat in the upper cockpit without speaking for a long time. On the one hand, it was because he was nervous, and on the other hand, it was because he had just been in the water and it was too cold and he had not recovered yet.
"Have some hot water." You Xi handed him the thermos bottle prepared by Yuan Qi. She had no shortage of these supplies, so it would be better to give them to those who needed them most.
Ximan drank a few sips of hot water and warmed up a little: "Were those the survivors of Wanghai Mountain just now?"
"Probably not. They came here by boat. Wanghai Mountain is too far away and they would not risk going so far."
Yuan Qing stared at the water ahead and walked carefully through the buildings. "L Island is so big, there must be survivors in other places. Now everyone knows that there will be no rescue in the short term, and they will act more and more recklessly for supplies."
Youxi nodded: "We found so much fuel this time, it is not safe to store it on the speedboat."
Lin Wu heard this and said, "Then we won't wait, we'll leave today."
Lin Wu and Ximan each brought a backpack when they came out. Because the room was not safe for them to leave together, they took important food, water and medical supplies with them. Therefore, they could avoid going back to the hotel area and directly go around to the mountainside near the B&B area, pick up Yuan Qi and leave.
Youxi said that she didn't leave anything in her room, and she carried all the important things in her backpack. So in the end, it was decided that Youxi and Yuan Qi would stay on the speedboat, and Lin Wu and Ximan would be responsible for picking up Yuan Qi and her son.
"There are a lot of branches in the room, take them all you can, at this temperature, only a fire can keep the cold away. And remember to take the plastic film you exchanged before." Yuan Qi reminded them.
The return journey was smooth. Under Ximan's instructions, the speedboat docked on the side of the mountain closer to the B&B area. There was a slope here and the water was very shallow.
Lin Wu put down the rubber boat that had been fully inflated, took two oars, and went up the mountain shore with Ximan.
No one had walked on this road before, and no one had cleaned the snow. They made a simple non-slip sole with branches and fixed it on their shoes. They used the boat paddle to shovel the snow on the slope and walked slowly up.
Yuan Qing used the walkie-talkie to contact Yuan Qi, telling her to pack up and keep Yuan Yuan warm, and wait for Lin Wu and Ximan to pick her up.
Afterwards, she and You Xi went to the cabin to count the fuel. There were 11 barrels of 30-liter diesel and 22 barrels of 50-liter diesel, but one barrel of 50-liter diesel had just been added to the speedboat tank, so there were 21 barrels left.
The two of them carried a barrel of 30 liters and a barrel of 50 to the side of the tank, filled the entire tank, and tied all the empty barrels with ropes and hung them on both sides of the speedboat.
At present, the fuel is barely enough. Even if it is really insufficient, the distance to the mainland should not be too far. We can row a rubber boat to get there, and we will not be stranded at sea.
The only worry is the weather. We just hope that we will not encounter the strong snowstorm in the sea a few days ago.
Two hours later, Lin Wu and Ximan successfully brought back Yuan Qi and her son. Yuan Qi adjusted the direction and headed north.
The semi-open upper driving platform has been made into a simple windproof film with transparent plastic film and ropes. The driving platform originally has a roof and metal rods around it. We only need to use ropes to fix the plastic film on the left, front and right, so we don’t have to drive in the cold wind and low temperature.
A simple curtain made of thick film was also made at the rear gangway. Although it needs to be untied and fixed to enter and exit, it is much warmer.
In addition, Lin Wu and Ximan packed all the branches that Yuan Qi picked up and brought them with them. At this moment, they have been tied up and neatly stacked on the left side of the cockpit.
They also brought the fire pot with them. When they left, they exchanged food with the hostess of the B&B for two more large pots.
One of the three pots is used as a spare, and the other two are placed on the cockpit and in the cabin below. When it is particularly cold, branches can be burned to keep warm.
Because the cabin needed to be heated by fire, most of the 30 barrels of diesel were moved to the open air at the rear of the speedboat, and a small part was moved to the fence at the front of the speedboat. They were first fixed with ropes, then covered with thick film, and finally the thick film was tied together.
The cabin was not big, with two rows of seats on the left and right, a row of cabinets and portholes in front, and a large aisle in the middle. So when Lin Wu went to pick up Yuan Qi, he packed up the quilts and blankets in the room and took them away. At night, he made a bed on the floor and could barely sleep.
Yuan Qi's wound had not healed yet, and it was definitely not possible for him to drive for a long time every day, so he taught You Xi and Xi Man how to drive a speedboat and how to read the instrument panel.
Of course, she was still the one who checked and identified the direction.
Yuan Qi stayed in the lower cabin with Yuan Yuan. She laid plastic film and blankets on the side of the aisle and let him lie on them to draw. She cooked noodles or hot porridge for everyone on the solid alcohol stove in the cabinet.
The noodles were instant noodles, and the porridge was added with chopped carrots and ham, accompanied by biscuits and vacuum-packed bread. It was enough to fill their stomachs and warm their stomachs. After all, they were at sea and could bear with the food for the time being.
Youxi was worried about the water problem at first, but then Lin Wu opened the door of the cabin, and there were seven or eight 5L barrels of mineral water, a box of instant noodles, a 50-jin bag of rice, a box of canned luncheon meat, a box of canned fruit, a box of chocolate, and a small box of solid fuel neatly placed inside.
Not to mention the water, the food inside was enough for everyone to eat for more than a week.
Only then did Youxi understand why Lin Wu did not go back with Yuan Qi and Ximan when he went to the supermarket that day. He had planned to store a batch of drinking water in the speedboat from the beginning.
It is impossible for such a large shopping mall to have only one staircase. He should have learned from Ximan another faster route to the upper floors, so the whole box of unopened food was probably taken from the warehouse.
That's why he asked everyone on the boat to limit the amount of luggage they could take to one bag at most, because they had to leave room for the weight of these supplies.
"I'm sorry, I didn't tell you that time." Lin Wu told her that storing water on the speedboat was a fallback plan after discussing with Yuan Qing and Ximan, and he didn't expect that he would really use it in the end.
It was too risky to go out to sea alone. If the situation hadn't deteriorated rapidly, he wouldn't have done such a risky move.
You Xi didn't care about it. It was normal for her and them to have a secret when they met by chance. In comparison, she had more secrets.
In this kind of natural disaster, as long as the other party did not have the intention to harm others, and did not have the attitude of a saint who felt good enough to save everyone, he could be regarded as a companion.
If everything went well, based on driving 10 hours a day and 400 nautical miles, they would see land in three days.
They set out at noon, and after five hours of sailing northward in the afternoon, some floating ships and building debris slowly appeared on the boundless sea. After stopping the boat for a rest and having dinner, Youxi took over the driving.
It was already past six in the evening, the sky was gray and dim, and visibility became low. Ximan and Yuan Xi were by their side, helping to check together.
After sailing for more than an hour again, the floating building debris in the sea gradually increased. Yuan Xi asked her to adjust the direction slightly and sail around the sea area in the one o'clock direction.
Not long after, some dark shadows appeared at the ten o'clock direction of the speedboat. The shadows were high and low, staggered, and some shadows had flickering flames in the middle.
"What's ahead?"
"Capital Island, or rather the buildings on Capital Island that haven't been submerged in water."
Ximan stood at the fence, looking at the once prosperous island through the plastic film with a sad face. "Capital Island is much smaller than L Island. There are no mountains as high as Wanghai Mountain on the island, and the buildings are mostly high-rise buildings."
So when the tsunami comes, the impact on Capital Island will be even greater.
Ximan was in a sad mood. The entire Sea Kingdom was almost destroyed.
Not long after the speedboat passed the waters near Capital Island, the Star House system, which had been silent for a long time, reported in Youxi's mind.
[World Mission 1: Escape from L Island has been completed, and the host has obtained 10 star coins. Number of star coins: 10]
****
At eight o'clock in the evening, the speedboat stopped in a relatively calm sea area for the night.
This was Youxi's first time to spend the night at sea. She was nervous and worried, so she couldn't sleep for a while, so she took the first shift, mainly staying on the upper driving platform to pay attention to weather changes.
The duty time was boring, so she took out her sketchbook and pen and drew the remnants of the capital island she had just seen, as well as their tiny speedboat on the vast ocean.
It was even colder at night. She lit a brazier, opened the plastic film curtain a little to let in air, put two heat pads inside her clothes, and then wrapped a blanket around her clothes to feel better.
There was a thermometer next to the driving platform. She went over to take a look. It was minus 20 degrees Celsius, strictly speaking, just a normal low temperature, but this was in tropical waters. It was hard to imagine how low the temperature would be when the speedboat went all the way north and entered the subtropical zone and the northern temperate zone.
After Youxi, Ximan and Lin Wu took night shifts respectively.
At five in the morning, when Youxi was still taking a nap in the cabin, Yuanling, who had rested all night, had continued to sail north in the light of dawn.
Since the departure, the weather conditions have been very stable, but she didn't know how long such calm weather could last, so naturally the sooner they reached the land, the better.
In the next two days, the speedboat started and stopped, and in addition to ensuring 10 hours of sailing every day, it also ensured that the engine was properly rested. Lin Wu understood machinery and checked the speedboat every day, not daring to slack off.
There were other scattered islands in the sea area they sailed along the way, but without exception, they all looked like they had been ravaged by tsunamis. Occasionally, when the speedboat was close to the island, other ships or small boats would be seen.
But they were always very cautious, and immediately avoided it when they saw it from a distance. They had few people and many supplies, so there was no guarantee that they would not encounter someone like the speargun man again.
However, on the third night, they still had to face an important problem - the fuel was running out.
"There is less than a tank of gas left, and we can drive for two more hours at most. However, we are still far from the land. It will take at least four to five hours, or even more."
During dinner, Yuan Qing informed everyone of the current situation one by one. "In addition, this speedboat is not equipped with a satellite phone, and there is currently no signal on mobile phones."
"Understood." Lin Wu nodded: "Drive as far as possible. There is really no way to go for the remaining distance, so we will use the rubber boat. The closer to the coastline, the greater the chance of encountering other ships. As long as the direction is not a problem, we will definitely get there."
"Yes, we have to be optimistic. We have successfully survived two and a half days. There is only the last half day left. We will definitely get there smoothly!" Ximan encouraged everyone at the right time.
Yuan Qi took out some canned fruit and chocolate and asked everyone to help open the cans: "It's dark now, let's have a good rest today, and check the oil barrels tomorrow morning to see if any barrels are not emptied."
You Xi didn't say anything. It was very risky to abandon the boat and use the rubber boat.
The radar of the speedboat was small, with a maximum range of 20 nautical miles. If the position of the mainland coastline was not displayed on the radar before the fuel ran out, even if they had the physical strength to manually move the rubber boat more than 20 nautical miles, it would be very easy to lose the correct direction in the vast ocean.
That night, when it was her turn to be on duty, she quietly went to the front of the speedboat and stayed for a while.
The portable oil drums placed at the front and rear ends were not thrown away after refueling, but were still neatly stacked together. One reason was that the boat was too light when the sea was rough, and these oil drums themselves had a certain weight, which could weigh down the boat. The other reason was that the people on the speedboat did not have the habit of throwing garbage into the sea.
She untied the fixed rope, stayed for two seconds, and then tied the rope back.
The next day, Ximan, who was on the first night shift, got up early and planned to check all the oil drums, hoping to scrape out some more fuel by piecing them together.
However, when he finished checking the rear of the speedboat and came to the front to check, he soon had an unexpected harvest and shouted with joy: "There is oil! The barrel in the corner is full, my God! A whole barrel! Wait - this barrel is also full... three barrels! We still have three barrels of diesel! We must not have checked it properly before!"
On the last night of duty, You Xi, who was legitimately taking a nap in the cabin, closed her eyes and listened to the joyful exclamations outside, and gently curled the corners of her lips.
Knowing how important fuel is, how could she forget it.
The spear gun man and his gang naturally saw it, but it didn't matter whether they saw it or not. Anyway, they would never meet again in the future. She just had to make sure that Lin Wu and the others didn't see it.
As for the three barrels of diesel, Ximan and Yuan Qi were so deceptive that it was impossible for Lin Wu and Yuan Qi not to be suspicious at all.
But it still goes like this. If you haven't seen it with your own eyes, you won't make a hasty judgment even if you find it difficult to explain and have doubts.
Besides, she had already prepared to use the [disguised lipstick] after arriving in the mainland. For the rest of the mission, it would be better for her to play in single-player mode.
She was almost depressed from eating instant noodles, white porridge and canned fruits every day these days.
She had only eaten a small part of the dazzling array of delicious takeouts at the Xingwu Warehouse, including pizza, crispy roast duck, Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, Northeastern cuisine, duck wings and duck feet, various salty flavors, fried chicken... She had never eaten any of these even once.
She was willing to share, but she couldn't take it out. In the end, she could only take out some snacks suitable for being in a backpack, such as coconut cakes, vacuum-packed meat, pork jerky, instant coffee in bags, small cans of potato chips, and spicy strips, to share and relieve her depression.
At around 8 a.m., Youxi, who was eating breakfast in the boat, felt that the speed of the speedboat was gradually slowing down. After a while, Ximan came down from the upper deck and said, "Come and have a look."
Youxi and Yuanqi wrapped themselves in down clothes, put on their hoods, and came out of the boat fully armed with Yuanyuan in their arms.
The temperature dropped again. The temperature in the early morning had dropped below minus 30 degrees Celsius. It was warming up a little at this moment, but it was only three or four degrees. Yuanyuan now had to be wrapped in a blanket when going in and out.
But fortunately, apart from the low temperature, they did not encounter any other extreme weather conditions, and the sea surface was as calm as a huge mirror.
Youxi thought Ximan was so anxious because he saw the land, but when she stood by the railing and looked through the thin plastic, she found that there were densely packed broken ice floating on the sea in front of her.
These ice are relatively thin, irregular in shape, light white and transparent, some large and some small, but the overall diameter does not exceed ten centimeters. Some smaller broken ice stick to each other.
The front end of the speedboat hit these sticky broken ice and easily separated them.
"It's sea ice." Youxi had looked up information about sea ice when she was looking up information before. Sea ice is salt water ice formed by seawater, and it is also a kind of natural disaster.
Looking around, the state of the sea ice should be primary ice, which is formed on the calm and low-temperature sea surface and can be easily crushed by speedboats.
But as it approaches the continental shelf, the state of the sea ice will become more and more solid, and the thickness will slowly change from the current thin flakes to thick ice of 10 cm to 30 cm, sometimes even up to 1 meter to 3 meters, and the diameter will also grow from the current ten centimeters to one meter or even three or four meters.
Such sea ice, unless it is an icebreaker, otherwise any ship will be unable to move.
Sea ice was originally a phenomenon unique to polar and high-latitude waters, and it is unexpected that it will now appear in the subtropics.
"What should we do now? Can we still move forward?" Yuan Qi was a little worried.
"We can only drive forward." Yuan Qing pushed the forward lever again, "I just hope the situation ahead is not too bad."
More than half an hour later, the sea ice in the surrounding waters became larger and thicker, and the color changed from light white to gray. When the front of the speedboat collided with it, they could clearly hear the sound of the ice breaking.
When the ice surface appeared grayish white, the speedboat stopped again, this time it was forced to stop.
"We can't drive anymore. The ice is too thick, the speedboat can't break it, and there is ice all around, there is no space to squeeze through." Yuan Qing punched the steering platform. They have already arrived here, and they will soon reach the land. Are they going to be trapped here?
"How much diesel do we have left?" Lin Wu asked Ximan.
"I put a barrel of gas in the tank this morning, and now there are two barrels left." Ximan understood, "You want to use fire to melt the ice? But with so many ice cubes, if diesel is used to melt the ice, we may not have enough fuel to reach the mainland."
Fire?
Ximan's words reminded Youxi, and she looked at the silent people: "If you just need fire to melt the ice, I may have a way."
A few minutes later, the people stood at the front of the speedboat, looking at what Youxi was holding, and fell silent again.
The crystal glass bottle in her hand was very beautiful, about ten centimeters long, with a curved bottle body, and a crystal clear pink color. There was also a crystal bow on the top of the bottle. Holding it between her slender fingers, it looked like... a bottle of perfume!
Everyone: ...? ?
[High Temperature Perfume] has five levels of size, which can be adjusted by rotating the crystal bow. She used levels 1 and 2 last time, and the length of the flame sprayed was about 5 cm and 20 cm.
She thought about it, and this time she adjusted the size to level 3, then opened the safety lock and pressed it towards the ice surface.
This time was different from the last two times. When Youxi pressed the spray head, the thermal insulation protective film automatically opened. She only felt that there was an invisible and colorless isolation film tightly wrapped around her hands, arms and the entire front of her body.
In an instant, accompanied by a faint scent of perfume, a blue flame nearly one meter long appeared in the air. The flame was as straight as a pillar. The moment it touched the ice surface, it cut the thick ice layer in half like a laser cutting.
Youxi: ...?
Everyone: ...!!
****
When all the diesel on the speedboat was used up, the land of Jingguo was already vaguely visible.
At this moment, what stood between the speedboat and the land was a piece of almost frozen fixed ice. This type of sea ice was thicker, extending from the coast and completely white.
In the distance, in the middle of this piece of white fixed ice, the wreckage of various ships could be seen.
Those were the traces left after the tsunami, and it seemed that the coastal land was not spared.
"Does your phone have a signal?" Lin Wu asked Yuan Qing.
"Yes, but it's unstable and intermittent." Yuan Qing tried to call his parents, but the signal was intermittent, so he had to give up in the end.
Youxi stood at the bow and used a telescope to check the situation on the coast: "There is no movement on the coastline for the time being."
"Let's get off the boat, put the food and water supplies on the rubber boat, and we will tow the rubber boat over." Lin Wu said, and began to inflate the rubber boat with Ximan. The
diesel was used up, and their only supplies were food and water, which was not heavy. They removed the plastic film on the speedboat, used ropes to make a simple waterproof bag, and put the remaining food, water and blankets into it.
Blankets and other cold-proof items were wrapped outside the clothes of several people. Yuan Qi was afraid that the blanket wrapped around Yuanyuan would fall off when he sat in the rubber boat, so he simply tied the blanket to his body with a rope.
These days, whether it was on the sea or seeing sea ice, Yuanyuan felt extremely curious. He sat still and obediently under Yuanqi's instructions, wrapped in a blanket with only a pair of round eyes showing, curiously looking at the frozen world outside the rubber boat, which looked very much like the Antarctic continent he had seen on TV before.
The group got off the speedboat, Ximan and Lin Wu tied the rubber boat with a rope and towed it in front, while Youxi and the other three helped to adjust the direction of the rubber boat in the back to prevent it from accidentally falling into the cracks in the ice.
But this worry was totally unnecessary. The frozen ice was as hard as the ground. Apart from the slightly uneven surface, there was no need to worry about it cracking.
The temperature was low, and the ice was difficult to walk on. They had walked for more than two hours and had not even covered half the distance. The land within sight was still out of reach.
"Take a break." Lin Wu pulled down his collar and let Yuan Qing try to make another call.
"What's that sound?" Ximan was about to step into the rubber boat and sit down when he heard a faint and familiar sound.
Soon, several people in Youxi also heard the sound. After carefully distinguishing it for a few seconds, they suddenly looked up at the sky at the same time.
The sun could not be seen in the gloomy sky. When they looked up, they could only see a white haze. However, the familiar sound became clearer and clearer.
Then, they saw something approaching in the distance.
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