Chapter 7
Wen Xichao's expression remained unchanged, but a hint of surprise arose in her heart. It turned out that the smoke from cooking over a fire during the day had given away her location.
"Did you also see the smoke and row here by boat?" Wen Xichao asked with a surprised expression.
The male player's smile froze on his face. A piece of the cloud overhead was blown away by the wind, and the light became brighter, allowing the male player to see the other player's raft clearly.
It was all trash, no different from his raft.
This is another poor player!! I thought everything would be fine once I found the person who released the smoke, but I didn't expect to encounter another player instead.
The male player struggled to his feet, trying to find the player who released the smoke, but the visibility was poor and he couldn't see anything.
"Do you have any food?" Finally, he turned his gaze to another living person.
Wen Xichao shook his head. "No."
At this critical moment of life and death, the male player stared intently at Wen Xichao, trying to find any trace of lying on Wen Xichao's hazy face. "Really nothing? Just give me a bite, I haven't eaten for two days."
The male player lowered his voice and pleaded, "I might die soon. Give me some food, and I'll be your slave from now on. Tomorrow! Tomorrow, when I get a new fishing rod, I promise I can catch the treasure chest. I've figured out a method that guarantees you'll catch the treasure chest."
Wen Xichao sensed the guilty conscience in the other person's words. If he really had such a method, he wouldn't have come in a raft to find the person who released the smoke.
"I really don't have any." Even if he did, Wen Xichao wouldn't give it to the other person. If the other person got clingy, he wouldn't be able to get rid of them, and just thinking about it made him feel disgusted.
The male player was still searching on Wen Xichao's raft when his gaze suddenly fell on a corner of the raft where there was something with a peculiar shape.
By the dim moonlight, the male player finally saw clearly that it was an octopus, and a huge one at that.
My stomach, which hadn't eaten in a long time, rumbled. Food! This is food.
The way she looked at Wen Xichao instantly changed. This woman clearly had food, but she was pretending not to! What's wrong with sharing some of this huge octopus with him?
Wen Xichao's repeated rejections aroused a bit of resentment in him. If he pointed out that there was food on the raft, this stingy woman wouldn't share it with him anyway. A scheme flashed through the male player's mind.
"Okay... I won't ask anymore. I'm going to sleep now. I need to get enough sleep to have energy tomorrow." The male player then lay down.
A hint of suspicion flashed in Wen Xichao's eyes, but he didn't say anything and lay down on the raft. Because of this unexpected 'guest,' Wen Xichao put away his sleeping bag and now lay directly on the raft. He folded the tattered sweater and turned it into a pillow. Whether he could sleep or not, Wen Xichao closed his eyes.
The sea became quiet again, and after an unknown amount of time, the male player on the raft suddenly opened his eyes.
As the rafts rose and fell with the waves, the distance between the two rafts gradually decreased.
With a splash, a figure glided lightly into the water, creating a ripple. The male player froze, glancing guiltily at the woman on the raft. She was asleep on her side, her back to him, making no movement and seemingly oblivious to the noise.
This made the male player secretly breathe a sigh of relief.
He began to swim slowly in the water. The seawater was cold and biting at night, and coupled with his weak body, the feeling of being in the seawater was terrible.
It wasn't that he didn't want to swim over quickly, he just didn't have much strength.
The longer the man soaked in the seawater, the more venomous his gaze became towards Wen Xichao. "It's all this stingy woman's fault. Once I'm on your raft, I'll make you pay. I'll kick you into the sea." The man remembered his plan and kept his voice extremely low.
Wen Xichao, who remained motionless with his body turned to the side, heard all these words clearly.
The male player struggled to swim in the seawater. Taking advantage of the other's inattention, Wen Xichao quietly turned over and got a clear look at the situation in the sea.
He was only three meters away from Wen Xichao's raft. Wen Xichao gripped the knife in his hand, preparing to launch a surprise attack.
Just then, Wen Xichao's pupils contracted; there was more than one living creature on the sea!
A figure followed behind the male player, occasionally a tentacle surfacing. Under the cover of night, it bore a resemblance to a water monster. In an instant, Wen Xichao knew its identity—an octopus! It was definitely an octopus!
Wen Xichao held her breath, her gaze more serious than ever before, her mind racing as she pondered how to kill the octopus without harming it when it climbed onto her raft.
She had completely forgotten about the player swimming towards her; he was no threat at all.
The male player's hand touched the raft, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes. The next second, a thick tentacle wrapped around his neck with such force that it seemed capable of crushing his throat.
A strong feeling of suffocation came over him. "Wh-what is that?" the man managed to squeeze out a sentence from his throat, gripping the raft with one hand while trying to tear off the thing wrapped around his neck with the other.
However, having already exhausted some energy from swimming, he was now completely helpless against the octopus wrapped around his neck.
"Help, help me," he could only manage to squeeze out two words from his throat.
He looked up and saw Wen Xichao holding a reflective knife, staring at him coldly.
Without hesitation, Wen Xichao stabbed the octopus. His movements were swift, and the man who was very close to the octopus was terrified. It was as if he was about to be stabbed to death. Wen Xichao's knife grazed the man's cheek and plunged into the octopus's head at the back of the man's neck.
One slash wasn't enough, so Wen Xichao drew his sword and stabbed again, then a third time.
Wen Xichao only stopped moving when the octopus's head was completely smashed.
The male player was already terrified by Wen Xichao's constant stabbing of the octopus with his knife. He could only grip the raft stiffly, not daring to move, for fear that Wen Xichao's knife would go astray and stab into his eye.
After finishing off the blue-ringed octopus, Wen Xichao turned his gaze to the stiff-bodied male player. It was time to cook you.
At this point, the male player was still unaware of the seriousness of the problem.
He was trying to climb onto Wen Xichao's raft, but perhaps because he had been in the water for too long, he couldn't muster any strength.
"Give me a hand, I'm out of strength," he said matter-of-factly.
Wen Xichao, "..."
"What are you doing swimming here?" Wen Xichao had no intention of letting the other party off the hook, and spoke coldly.
The man initially intended to brush it off, but the image of Wen Xichao coldly stabbing the octopus to death flashed before his eyes, sending chills down his spine. His gaze swept over the tentacles still clinging to him.
His mind raced. "I...I saw a giant octopus swimming in the water, so I swam over to warn you," the man said, a hint of guilt in his voice.
Wen Xichao rolled his eyes and didn't say anything.
Wen Xichao's silence made the man confident again. "Quick, give me a hand. I was the first to remind you."
Wen Xichao was speechless at the guy's shamelessness. Her gaze fell on the back of the man's neck, where there was a wound that wasn't too big or too small, but it didn't look like it was caused by a suction cup. Instead, it looked like it was caused by a bite.
Wen Xichao's pupils contracted, and a hint of pity appeared in her gaze as she looked at the man. This guy was doomed; he'd been bitten by the blue-ringed octopus.
The man hadn't realized anything was wrong and kept asking Wen Xichao to pull him up. Wen Xichao took out a stick, poked the blue-ringed octopus off the man's body, and put it on the raft, next to the previous octopus.
When Wen Xichao poked the octopus with a stick, the man thought Wen Xichao was there to pull him away.
He instinctively reached out to grab the stick, but his arm remained motionless, as if it wouldn't obey his commands.
The man thought it was because he had been in the water for too long and his arm had gone numb from the cold seawater.
He continued to beg Wen Xichao to pull him up, saying, "My hands are too weak to move, please help me up."
He tried to speak, but found his face wouldn't cooperate; he couldn't make any expression, or even utter a word. Even the most oblivious person would have realized something was wrong at that moment.
He looked at Wen Xichao with a pleading look in his eyes, wondering what was wrong with his body, hoping that the player could see that something was wrong with him.
Wen Xichao simply stood on the raft, silently watching him. The Blue Ring Octopus's venom was extremely potent, capable of killing within minutes; this man was beyond saving.
Immediately afterwards, the man felt difficulty breathing, and then stopped breathing altogether. With a gentle push, Wen Xichao sent the male player into the sea, disappearing from Wen Xichao's sight.
The sea returned to calm, and there was no trace of a person buried there. Wen Xichao did not sleep, but took out the simple candles he had made during the day. He lit the candles with a flick of his lighter, and the faint candlelight made the surroundings a little brighter.
Wen Xichao looked at the raft not far away, about 25 meters away from her. She wanted this raft!
Twenty-five meters isn't a long distance, but Wen Xichao didn't want to get her clothes wet, as she didn't have any spare clothes.
Finally, Wen Xichao decided to take inspiration from the male players' approach and use the raft as a boat. Wen Xichao happened to have one oar, so he used rotten wood as a substitute for the other oar.
With both hands exerting force simultaneously, the raft glided forward a short distance, but its direction veered slightly off course. This was likely because one of the oars wasn't a proper oar; although both hands were using the same amount of force, the effect was not the same.
Wen Xichao reduced the force of the paddle in his hand, and the raft was finally able to move in a straight line. Wen Xichao slowly approached another unclaimed raft. The two rafts gently bumped together. Wen Xichao breathed a sigh of relief and stopped paddling. Standing on the edge of the raft, he lightly jumped onto the unclaimed raft.
Immediately, the familiar system announcement sounded.
[Congratulations to the player who has obtained a raft*1!]
[Congratulations to the player who became the first to obtain an extra raft! Reward: 1 random treasure chest!]
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