WS - Chapter 136
Chapter 136
Although they lacked proper tools and any sort of combat power, this thermal storage box the production team used for meals was still relatively smaller than the one that had held the cow before.
Wielding spatula-shovels, Yu Nianbing and Zhuang Jiachuan worked for nearly half an hour and finally dug the entire thermal storage box out of the ground.
They had originally thought they could just slowly carry it back. Unfortunately, they had no idea... just how heavy the thermal storage box really was.
In the end, they went back into the nearby woods, cut some vines, tied them around the box, and dragged it to finally get it moving.
Fortunately, the spot where the thermal storage box was buried wasn't far from camp, and a small path had been cleared for the production team to fetch food. After the Yaoxing Storm earthquake, this stretch of path had cracked in places, but by dragging, they could still barely make it through.
Zhuang Jiachuan wouldn't let Yu Nianbing pull alongside him; he just told her to break off a branch with plenty of twigs and leaves and use it to sweep the uneven stones out of the way ahead.
At this point, with so few people left, there was no point in being overly polite or shirking responsibility; everyone was just thinking about how to get things done as quickly as possible.
Since Zhuang Jiachuan put it that way, Yu Nianbing went along. But she kept a tally in her heart, never letting everything fall on one person's shoulders. If Zhuang Jiachuan did a bit more here, she would do a bit more somewhere else later.
Having clear boundaries with others, distinct rights and responsibilities, minimizing the chance of owing anyone anything—that was Yu Nianbing's customary approach to things.
Of course, this habit had already been broken countless times recently.
But never mind. The world is so vast; there will always be uncontrollable oddballs and accidents. Some principles and habits are only meant for normal people...
By the time Yu Nianbing and Zhuang Jiachuan, walking and resting intermittently, puffing and panting, finally hauled the thermal storage box back to camp, roughly another half hour had passed.
As soon as they reached the camp area, Yu Nianbing spotted a thin wisp of smoke slowly rising beside the tent where Feng Qianqian and Song Shiyue lay. For a moment she ignored Zhuang Jiachuan behind her, dropped her branch, and rushed over in a few quick strides.
The direction Yu Nianbing came from gave a poor angle, facing the side and back of that tent. Only when she circled around to the front did her heart, which had risen to her throat, settle back down.
"Why are you suddenly lighting a fire?" Yu Nianbing unconsciously patted her chest, casually tossing the question to Ning Chuyang by the small fire as she leaned to look inside the tent at Song Shiyue without waiting for an answer.
At a glance, Song Shiyue was still lying there undisturbed, but the other person was leaning against two stacked backpacks, half-sitting up.
"Feng Qianqian's awake?" Yu Nianbing saw Feng Qianqian propped half-sitting against the backpacks but still with closed eyes, momentarily unsure what was going on, and pulled her head back out of the tent to look again at Ning Chuyang.
Even though she knew the smoke was harmless, the earlier scare made Yu Nianbing's words a bit rushed, and only now did Ning Chuyang get a chance to answer.
"As soon as you left, she woke up. She drank some water just now, said she didn't want to eat. I didn't dare leave them to come find you." Ning Chuyang said, shoving a branch she had stripped and deemed reasonably thick into the small bowl-sized fire in front of her, then lowered her voice. "The two times she woke up the past couple of days, she seemed groggy. Today, I don't know why, she was quite clear-headed. She talked with me for quite a while without falling back asleep, and even urged me to get paper and pen... Where would I get paper and pen? Besides, if she's got the energy to write, she'd be better off drinking more water and waiting for you to come back to eat. As soon as I said I didn't have any, she immediately started pulling off her clothes and went to bite her finger, looking like she wanted to write a blood letter. Damn near scared the piss out of me... Ahem, I mean, damn near scared me half to death."
Groggy the past few days, but today clear-headed and fairly energetic yet asking for paper and pen...
That sounded...
Yu Nianbing's brow furrowed tighter and tighter as Ning Chuyang spoke.
While speaking, Ning Chuyang snapped another branch and stuck it into the little fire, then tapped the fire with her toe. "Good thing everyone used charcoal when drawing maps before, so I told her I'd get her some charcoal to steady her. Otherwise, I'm afraid you might've been scared... ahem... scared to death when you got here."
"This fire..." Yu Nianbing turned her head to glance at where the previous night's big bonfire had been.
"Fire safety. They used water and mud earlier to thoroughly put out the night's fire," Ning Chuyang followed Yu Nianbing's gaze. "I went to look; everything was mixed together in a mess, unusable... Lucky that Doctor Ni... Doctor Ni left us a lighter in her medical kit. Otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do. It's really only when you try it yourself that you realize, out in the wilderness with nothing to kindle a fire, starting one with just a lighter is truly tough."
Yu Nianbing: "..."
According to Ning Chuyang, she must have started trying to light the fire not long after Yu Nianbing left, yet by the time Yu Nianbing returned, the smoke column had only just risen; getting that bowl-sized fire going took several tens of minutes... truly difficult.
"You said Feng Qianqian started fussing for paper and pen the moment she woke up—what on earth does she want?" Ning Chuyang craned her head to peek into the tent, muttering to herself, "Hey, is she asleep again? So do I not need to keep burning charcoal?"
Ning Chuyang's mutter was actually even softer than her earlier words, but this time, before she finished speaking, the person half-sitting inside opened her eyes.
The two looked straight at each other; the sudden eye-opening even startled Ning Chuyang.
Feng Qianqian said nothing, just quietly watched Ning Chuyang.
Ning Chuyang nodded vigorously: "Burning, still burning!"
With that, Feng Qianqian closed her eyes again.
Never mind Ning Chuyang; even Yu Nianbing, watching this scene, felt a bit...
Seeing Ning Chuyang go back to grabbing scattered branches from the ground, Yu Nianbing took a couple of steps to the side, moving to a spot invisible from inside the tent, then reached out, yanked Ning Chuyang away from the tent entrance, and dragged her many steps away, only stopping where the tent was still visible in the distance.
"Did you tell her about the team splitting up? Does she know Mu Xingzhou also went ahead with the front group?" Yu Nianbing fired off questions, her brow still tight, half to herself, half in answer to Ning Chuyang's earlier question, and muttered, "I feel like something's off with her. From what you said, she even wanted to write a blood letter. Could it be she wants paper and pen to write a will?"
Ning Chuyang had been about to answer Yu Nianbing's question but was stunned by the latter half, then slapped her thigh. "I didn't say anything! Damn! Then her suddenly being so full of energy, awake so long without sleeping—could it be a final rally... Pah pah pah! What nonsense, it's definitely an improvement, an improvement!"
"Didn't you say she never had a fever? It shouldn't have gotten worse..." Yu Nianbing shook her head. "Your little fire won't do; how long before it burns through into charcoal? I still have a few charcoal sticks wrapped in a sealed bag in my pack. Get them out and give them to Feng Qianqian first. Never mind what she wants to write—just let her finish quickly, eat something, drink some water, take her medicine, and go back to sleep. Right, since we've got a fire going anyway, let's boil some water and fill all the camp's pots, pans, and jars with hot water and put them in the thermal storage box. That way they'll stay warm, and we won't have to boil water every time we need a drink or want to use it."
While the two were talking, Zhuang Jiachuan also managed to haul the thermal storage box into camp and set it right beside Feng Qianqian's tent, making things convenient.
Seeing this, Ning Chuyang waved Zhuang Jiachuan over, recounted the conversation word for word, and then went to get the charcoal sticks Yu Nianbing mentioned.
Charcoal sticks were passable for sketching maps on clothing, but for writing... they were rather difficult.
Fortunately, earlier some of the guests' personal lockers in the washroom, used for storing a change of clothes, had hard cardboard inserts meant to keep the clothes' shape; now, retrieved, they could just barely serve the purpose.
Inside the tent, Feng Qianqian's hand trembled slightly as she gripped the charcoal stick and painstakingly wrote and wrote on the hard cardboard.
Standing outside the tent watching, Yu Nianbing sighed inwardly.
A few nights ago, also with charcoal sticks, also with the same kind of hard cardboard used to support clothes, she and Song Shiyue had huddled in a tent, writing and drawing for quite a while.
Who could have imagined that in just a few short days, things would have turned out like this.
Yu Nianbing looked at Feng Qianqian laboring over her writing, then at Song Shiyue lying beside her, and in the end could only exhale softly.
The three on Wilderness Planet did not enter the tent to disturb Feng Qianqian, but Feng Qianqian's personal follow-up camera broadcast every single word she wrote onto the livestream page, for the entire StarNet to watch.
Yu Nianbing guessed correctly: what Feng Qianqian wanted to write was indeed a will.
In truth, as a child raised in an ordinary working-class family, with both parents already gone, if she had encountered this situation a year ago, Feng Qianqian's meager assets would have truly made writing a will unnecessary.
But this year, everything had changed.
Originally, the StarNet viewers only thought this was a young girl, in both physical and mental despair, fearing the final outcome and wanting to leave some words behind in advance.
Perhaps carrying some nostalgia for the past, fear of the future, or some final comforting words written for loved ones.
A girl this age always has too much sensitivity and deep sentiment.
Of course, many on StarNet were also guessing that the reason Feng Qianqian hadn't asked about anyone else, including Mu Xingzhou, after waking and focused only on getting paper and pen to write a will, was that while unconscious she had actually heard about the team's situation. By now, nearly eighty to ninety percent of viewers believed in the romantic relationship between Feng Qianqian and Mu Xingzhou, and further speculated whether Feng Qianqian's desire to write a will at this moment, beyond physical and objective conditions, also stemmed from being abandoned by her boyfriend.
Some even guessed, as Feng Qianqian took up the pen, whether there might be words left for Mu Xingzhou inside.
But no one could have imagined that what Feng Qianqian wrote was indeed a will, yet one so formal, almost devoid of sentiment or emotion—a will that... shocked the vast majority of viewers.
Among those shocked was Ye Liu, holed up beneath the farm estate.
Of course... and also Yao Yuxi inside the detention center on Mingtan Prime.
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