Chapter 4
The ambient light at night might affect judgment. Jiang Yunu returned to the base that night and fell asleep as soon as he got back. He woke up again after the thin electronic clock showed that six hours had passed.
At this time, the sky outside the base was just beginning to brighten.
Jiang Yunu went out as soon as the sky turned light, and climbed the barren mountain behind the base with her steel staff.
This time, she successfully reached the summit around noon. Standing on the top of the mountain again, she could see the entire deserted island more clearly.
Not only was the base she was in small, but the deserted island also looked small.
Huangshan is the highest mountain on the entire island and it is also an isolated mountain. Climbing to the top of the mountain will give you a panoramic view of the entire island.
At the edge of the yellow sand beach is the boundless sea, with layers of white waves rolling in from afar and hitting the sand on the shore.
But it's strange.
Jiang Yunu had previously thought that the hood of her cloak was too wide, blocking her face and covering the tip of her nose, hindering the normal functioning of her sensory system.
She pulled back the wide brim of her hat, revealing her nose, and sniffed the air carefully again.
She didn't smell the distinctive smell that sea water usually has.
The island is not big. You can see the coast from the mountain. The base is not far from the coastline. Logically, there should be some ocean flavor in the wind.
But Jiang Yunu smelled nothing.
The sea water here seems to be a little strange.
Just like the sand here is weird.
Jiang Yunu left the base for the first time yesterday. She was worried that there might be sand animals outside and imagined seeing human towns outside. However, she had been out twice. First of all, she could be absolutely sure that except for her, there should be no other living humans on the island for the time being.
The base at the foot of the mountain is the only place on the island with traces of human activities and is also the only building on the island.
Secondly, Jiang Yunu also discovered that she might not only be the only living person on the island, but also the only living thing on the island.
Living creatures, literally, living things.
The sand that Jiang Yunu stepped on was soft, and the solitary mountain that she climbed was hard. Between her two trips, she also explored the sand around the base and the mountain. She found that there was not even a bug in the sand, and not even a small tuft of moss on the rock wall on the shady side of the mountain.
Deserted islands, deserted mountains, deserted land and deserted bases.
It’s impossible that even the ocean is deserted.
Jiang Yunu originally thought of this idea as a joke, but when she spent about half a day hiking from the base to the beach, she explored the "sea water" that looked like the sea but did not smell like the ocean.
Her words came true.
The sea had appeared a deep blue, almost black, last night. In normal daylight, it was a perfectly standard, refreshing azure, with a texture as clear and azure as glass. In Jiang Yunu's previous life, she would have praised the sea's beauty, resembling the legendary "mirror of the sky." But now, it only added to the illusion of artificiality.
Looking down through the clear sea water, Jiang Yunu could see that everything below the water surface was empty, and the beach was so clean that it was eerie. No matter in the nearshore waters or on the sandy ground near the sea, there was no trace of any marine life.
Not a jellyfish or a strand of seaweed to be found.
The ocean is known as the source of life, but can a "sea" where there is not even a trace of life still be called a sea?
Jiang Yunu was unsure of the natural environment here. At a certain moment, she had a bolder guess in her mind -
She thought to herself: Is everything here really "natural"?
In the pit of the base, the white-haired children still lying on a piece of uncorrupted flesh looked very unnatural and had already exceeded the scope of "natural humans".
If this is a world where even life can be mass-produced, then wouldn't it be feasible to create a beach and an ocean, and then put them together like a large-scale game, combining the artificial beach, ocean, and this isolated island?
Jiang Yunu still has many questions, but she knows too little about this world.
Jiang Yunu couldn't judge how far the technology in this world had developed. She stared at this "lifeless sea" for a while and felt the sea breeze without any ocean flavor. She could only be sure of one thing, that is, her idea of trying to dig some fresh food resources by the sea and "living by the sea" had failed.
But Jiang Yunu, adhering to the principle of being here already, tentatively scooped up a handful of "sea water" and licked the water with her mouth.
"... Is making water that only looks like the sea salty the last stubbornness of the people who created this sea?" Jiang Yunu felt complicated when he saw the taste of salt water in his mouth.
But Jiang Yunu tasted it carefully again and felt that this "sea water" did not have any other strange taste. It tasted like salt water with some ordinary table salt added. This made her immediately take out the three small empty bottles she brought with her today, filled them all with this "sea water", and decided to take it back to the base for observation.
Jiang Yunu currently has a mentality similar to Shennong tasting hundreds of herbs, and this is all due to the limited daily necessities.
Everything she sees, as long as it's edible, she'll likely take a bite, then wait a few hours to see if her body experiences any abnormalities. If there's no abnormality after twelve hours, Jiang Yunu will put it on the "harmless list," counting it as her "edible resource."
The seawater tasted like salt water. If there were no adverse reactions, then the Water Ginger Jade Crossbow alone could last for at least three days after the two boxes of nutrient solution were used up.
Fortunately, the salty water I drank did not cause any side effects.
It was not until Jiang Yunu returned to the base from the beach and lay down on the small bed she had built temporarily that she felt no other discomfort except for a little fatigue caused by physical exhaustion.
Jiang Yunu's cot was made from two boxes turned upside down. There were no sheets or quilts on top, only foam pillars she'd found in a discarded box. These pillars had been used to wrap goods and cushion them during transport, but now Jiang Yunu had removed them and attached them to the box she slept on, a foam mattress to keep her from lying flat on the hard floor every day.
Jiang Yunu only slept in the hard box once on the first day, and the sleeping experience was amazing.
"I feel like I'm waking up from a coffin." Jiang Yunu commented as he got up.
Naturally, the only ones who could listen to Jiang Yunu's evaluation were the real corpses in the base - the white-haired children in the pits.
Jiang Yunu ate, lived and slept next to the pit. Although it was not easy for her to reach the child in the pit, she had already moved the child who was originally lying on the edge of the pit.
Jiang Yunu found another empty box, turned it upside down, and used it as a makeshift stool, placing it against the rock wall. Then she moved the white-haired child, the only one she could move, onto it, and made him sit against the rock wall of the base.
The child sitting by the stone wall provided Jiang Yunu with a little companionship.
Every day when Jiang Yunu returned to the base or woke up, she would see the other person sitting there quietly. She would talk to him as if he was still alive, and really treated him as her "desert island survival partner". At the same time, she could ensure that her language skills would not deteriorate due to lack of communication with living people.
"Good night." Jiang Yunu turned over on her "foam mattress", turned sideways to the corpse next to the rock wall, and waved to the child sitting next to the wall.
She thought for a moment, then turned to the other side and waved to the pit in a very even-handed manner: "Good night, everyone."
Jiang Yunu looked at the digital clock before going to bed. She usually sleeps about six hours.
"When I woke up six hours later, I still didn't feel anything unusual, and I actually found some water that was barely usable." Jiang Yunu shared the good news about supplies with the corpses, and closed her eyes peacefully on her box bed.
Since coming to this world, Jiang Yunu seems to be not easily affected by cold or heat. He does not need to cover himself with a blanket at night and will not catch a cold.
The next day, Jiang Yunu woke up safely and confirmed that he had indeed added new "salt water resources".
Salt water resources have many uses. Jiang Yunu took out all the empty nutrient solution bottles in the base and replenished them with salt water that looked like salt water. She drank some more water at the beach and took off her plastic boots and cloak. She used the clean sea water to clean her skin and scrubbed her equipment that was covered with a layer of sand and dust every day after running around for several days.
When I took off my cloak, it was almost evening on the island. The sun slowly turned into an orange ball in the sky, looking a bit like a duck egg yolk that was oozing oil.
Jiang Yunu felt a little hungry after seeing the duck egg yolk. She scooped up a handful of salt water and drank it, just as if she was tasting the saltiness of the "duck egg".
The egg-yolk-colored sun was no longer as scorching as it was during the day, the intensity of the ultraviolet rays having decreased somewhat. Jiang Yunu raised one hand to his forehead and looked at the sun from beneath his palm: "Are you the real sun?"
Of course the sun would not answer.
Jiang Yunu quickly put away his equipment, dressed himself again, and returned to the base safely as night fell on the island.
The only light in the base was still on, and the white-haired child was still sitting on the box against the wall, "waiting."
Jiang Yunu had seen a discussion topic before, which roughly said, if you were the last human being on Earth, and you woke up to find that you were the only one left in the world, what would you do?
Some people will feel happy because they can enjoy all the resources in the world alone, some people will feel very painful because they lose all their relatives and friends overnight, and some people will feel scared.
Jiang Yunu's current situation is somewhat similar to this topic. Her first thought after seeing the topic was: "I have to live alone first, and by the way, find out why I am the only one left in the world."
But living alone on a deserted island with scarce supplies, even though Jiang Yunu is a very resilient person, she finds that she still feels a little... lonely.
Loneliness made Jiang Yunu leave the base again at night. It was her first time climbing a barren mountain at night.
There were no living creatures in the sand, and no moss on the rock walls, so there was no need to worry about being stung by insects, snakes, or scorpions. Jiang Yunu had become familiar with the mountain climbing route in the past few days. She simply took off her boots, untied her cloak, and wore only a white dress that looked like the ones distributed in bulk to white-haired children, and climbed up the mountain using her hands and feet in the dark.
While climbing the mountain wall barefoot, Jiang Yunu felt like a wild animal.
She used to call herself a "savage surviving on a deserted island", but when she walked barefoot on the rocks, she felt that she could be even wilder. This kind of environment where she was the only one in the world, extremely lonely and yet infinitely free, seemed to inspire people's wildness.
The moon appeared behind the rock wall that blocked the view. Jiang Yunu climbed over a barren hill and was drenched in moonlight from the moon hanging on the top of the mountain.
She looked up at the moon. The moon on the isolated island was as bright as the sun during the day. The moon came to the top of the mountain to work every day, as if taking turns with the sun to look after this island where she was the only one.
Jiang Yunu looked at the moon quietly for a while. The wind blew her hair, and the ends of her hair looked like they had been gnawed by a dog. She had cut them herself with a knife.
Because long hair would compete with the body for nutrients, she simply cut her long hair off. Shorter hair would also make it more convenient for her to climb mountains, wade through sand and water.
The moonlight continued to shine on Jiang Yunu, bathing her limbs in the moonlight.
Jiang Yunu was dressed in white, her hair flying behind her head like a dog's bite. She was standing barefoot on the same dark rock as her, illuminated by the moonlight. She faced any direction and suddenly put her hands to her mouth and let out a childish, clear wolf howl with the unique voice of a child: "Awoo—"
Like a little wild animal that knows it can't summon any of its own kind.
After Jiang Yunu finished howling, she released the inexplicable impulses that grew due to loneliness and her inner wildness. She walked down the mountain barefoot again, knowing that many challenges were waiting for her.
Wild beasts without companions will try their best to survive in unfamiliar and difficult environments.
Jiang Yunu vowed to be the last person to give up on himself.
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