Chapter 242: Wow! A Zhang Suannai!

Early morning.

The bedding is warmer than usual today.

Ning Qing lies flat, one hand resting on her chest, the other placed naturally along her side. Her eyes are open, and she looks at the ceiling with a calm expression. Last night's gale blew away some of the banana leaves on the roof, and rainwater has seeped in.

The breathing of the person beside her becomes increasingly uneven.

"Mmm..."

Hearing the sound, Ning Qing silently turns her head.

She sees this person lying on his side facing her. When he opens his eyes in a daze, he is suddenly startled, his entire body jerking; he seems not to have expected someone to be beside him.

Ning Qing stares at him expressionlessly.

"Ha..."

Chen Shu smiles sheepishly:

"Morning."

Ning Qing turns her head to look elsewhere, not wanting to see him, and says in a low voice:

"Time to get up."

"Let's laze a while longer."

Chen Shu lifts his hand and wraps it around her slender waist again.

Ning Qing's body cannot help but tremble slightly. She turns her head to look at him again, blinking every second or two as if asking a question. But Chen Shu only lowers his eyelids, focusing intently on her shoulder; he cannot see her gaze, cannot receive her stare, and the message remains unread.

Ning Qing has no choice but to say again:

"Time to get up."

"Laze a while longer. Lazing in bed is the first wonderful thing of the day; one must enjoy it properly..."

"I never laze in bed."

"It's my fault for not teaching you this skill when you were young. I will teach you in the future."

"..."

Ning Qing does not want to talk to him anymore; nothing comes of it anyway. She reaches out to grab Chen Shu's arm, wanting to remove his hands, but cannot move them. So she tries shaking her body and twisting her waist, as if struggling, but after it yields no results, she gives up and lies there indifferently, acting as if nothing has happened.

After a few minutes, she says again:

"Time to get up."

"Fine, fine, fine..."

Only then do the two get up and go outside.

The storm from last night has stopped. The sea is completely different from its usual clarity, having turned murky. The beach at the doorway is filthy, washed up with many broken branches, dead wood, leaves, and marine life. The sky looks like a gray-white scroll brushed carelessly with a few strokes of light ink by the gale. Every living thing on the island has been cowed by last night's celestial might; the small island is silent, with only the sound of waves and sea breeze remaining.

"Hiss..."

Chen Shu takes a deep breath; the air this morning is colder than usual.

This is a New Year's Eve that belongs only to the two of them.

Unfortunately, Secretary Ning does not appreciate the mood; she gives him a shove from behind, pushing him to stumble a few steps, and even says he is blocking the way.

Chen Shu cannot be bothered to argue with her.

Two hours later.

Ning Qing is still sitting on a reef, but she is not closing her eyes to cultivate; instead, she looks into the distance with a calm gaze.

That person is still strolling along the beach.

After the wind and rain, the harvest on the beach has become exceptionally rich; one can even find some deep-sea fish. Chen Shu discovers interesting things from time to time, and then he lifts them up, shouting to tell her. Being too far away, his voice is also mixed with the sea breeze.

Ning Qing's eyes flicker, and she purses her lips, saying nothing.

At this moment, she cannot help but think: what if she hadn't come?

In the original World Prediction Line, Chen Shu's experiences on the island were also shrouded in mist, difficult for her to reach.

But the World Prediction Line is completely different from fate. The World Prediction Line is essentially a form of calculation and conjecture, only the one performing the deduction is the World Will itself. Generally speaking, it is the trajectory of the operation and development of things deduced by the World Will based on all the information it possesses, whereas what people often call "fate" influences or manipulates the operation of all things in the world in a certain way; there is a fundamental difference here.

In fact, the World Prediction Line often makes mistakes.

Even for ordinary people, it often makes mistakes.

It is just that when it realizes a prediction is wrong, it will re-predict, correct the result, and generate a corrected version of a new prediction line.

Therefore, the prediction line is also constantly updating.

And Secret Sect Practitioners transcend the grasp of the World Will to a certain extent. The World Will is often unable to accurately predict the choices of Secret Sect Practitioners, so after the Secret Sect system was born, the frequency of the prediction line making mistakes and correcting them increased greatly.

For example, this time it was wrong.

The World Will believed that since Ning Qing already knew Chen Shu would be safe and sound, she would not come here with him; therefore, in the prediction line, Chen Shu came alone.

But she came anyway.

Chen Shu in the distance has already walked back. He carries a bucket, sharing his harvest with her with a face full of smiles.

Ning Qing watches calmly.

If she hadn't come, how bored he would have been.

"Are you mute again?"

Chen Shu jumps onto the reef and says to her: "I found the corpse of a land-dwelling exotic beast over there. It's been dead for at least several days; it must have been washed up by last night's wind and waves. I don't know where it started from... I plan to go look at the other side this afternoon or tomorrow."

"You suspect they are related to the Thunderstorm Cloud over there."

"Yes." Chen Shu puts down the bucket and sits beside her. "There were originally exotic beasts on this island, but they all left when we arrived. Now that corpses are inexplicably drifting over, there must be a problem."

"Reasonable deduction."

"If they came from the southeast and are related to that Thunderstorm Cloud, there might be more corpses on the beach in the southeast direction, perhaps."

"I'll accompany you this afternoon."

"I can go by myself. Tonight is New Year's Eve; I don't want to affect our New Year's celebration."

"I will go with you."

"Okay."

Chen Shu adjusted his direction and sat back-to-back with Secretary Ning; he then had a backrest, stretched his legs out straight, and felt very relaxed.

A look of contemplation appeared in his eyes.

December 30th, New Year's Eve, rainstorm.

I have finished repairing the house, reinforced both rooms, and optimized the waterproofing.

This afternoon, I discovered the corpses of six exotic beasts on the beach on the southeast side of the island, including two flying exotic beasts, two terrestrial exotic beasts, and two marine exotic beasts; this seems to be telling me that beneath that mist, which is like a Thunderstorm Cloud, is an island, or perhaps, a continent?

For now, it is just a guess.

Nanzhou Island has already been ruled out with high probability.

Could the path to leave the island be hidden over there?

I did not investigate too much, because today is New Year's Eve.

I cannot let it ruin my mood.

I prepared the New Year's Eve dinner especially sumptuously, just like at home.

Haha, it seems my culinary skills have improved again.

Qingqing even praised me.

She would not lie.

Happy.

Although I have been stranded on this isolated island for more than two months, I have not yet felt any negative emotions, and every day is spent as usual.

I will write up to here for today; I am going out to set off fireworks.

January 5th, rainstorm.

The weather at sea has not been very good these past few days, and another rainstorm started last night; the only flaw is that the house did not leak rain again.

During the day today, I discovered more exotic beast corpses drifting onto the island, still mainly concentrated on the southeast side; I do not know the reason, nor do I know what those exotic beasts are doing gathering in that direction; perhaps exotic beasts are constantly dying on ordinary days too, it is just that there were no wind and waves, so the corpses did not drift over.

Could the sounds and lights coming from the mist actually be battles?

Very likely.

Why?

Is someone over there attracting exotic beasts to go and slaughter them?

But since ancient times, except for a few ignorant and barbaric regions, hunting exotic beasts has been illegal.

January 13th, sunny.

My curiosity about the southeast direction is getting heavier and heavier.

It is not just curiosity, but I have also realized that this place is separated from the continent by an unknown distance; besides the possibility of leaving in the southeast direction, perhaps I can only leave once I have completely mastered the ability for long-distance flight.

I do not know how long that will take.

Or build a boat and drift slowly?

I also do not know how long that will take.

I thought about it seriously for a long time today—

If Qingqing were not here and I were staying here alone, would I try to head to the southeast direction to check, and in what way would I have eventually left?

Actually, I already have the answer in my heart.

January 18th, rainstorm.

In a few days, it will be Chen Banxia's 27th birthday, and the second semester of her sophomore year should be starting too; if both Qingqing and I cannot be there, I do not know what kind of messy things will be in that airheaded brain of Chen Banxia, and I do not know what excuse my cute Xiaoxiao will use to fool her.

My heart feels so itchy.

Chen Banxia is already 27.

This woman is already old.

After a few days of internal struggle, I have started building a boat.

Perhaps I do not necessarily have to go beneath that mist; at least I should take a look from afar, and if it is safe, then go over; if it is not safe, then I will seek another way.

Chen Shu leaned over the desk and put down his pen.

He picked up the ink to look at it; it was almost at the bottom.

This spiral notebook has ninety pages; he has been here for almost three months, and except for a few times when there was too much content to record, most of the time his daily diary was within one page; he only writes on the front, not the back, and this notebook is almost used up.

However, Qingqing prepared two bottles of ink and two notebooks for him.

This is very thought-provoking.

"Thump."

Chen Shu closed the notebook and lay down on the bed.

In the original World Prediction Line, this trip of his was without danger; although Qingqing's arrival disrupted the world line, based on his understanding of Qingqing, she must have calculated the impact her choice would cause before coming, and it would likely not cause a malignant effect on the result.

But one cannot think like that either.

If he relaxed his vigilance because of this, or was careless and ignored something, that would be terrible.

Chen Shu closed his eyes and began to think about the matter of building a boat.

There is no shortage of shipbuilding materials on the island; even if he knows nothing, he could still carve out a small boat using just the branches of those towering trees. There are far too many ancient trees on this island with diameters of three to five, or even seven to eight meters. However, he has rarely studied Runic Magic related to propulsion.

He needs to design a propulsion Rune Group.

There are also Rune Groups for wave resistance and maintaining stability.

Chen Shu is not lacking in the foundational knowledge of such Runes, but he has had little exposure to the design principles of these Spells; if he had watched popular science programs on this subject before and knew the structures and principles of the Runic Formations commonly used by various modern nations, it could have saved him a lot of trouble.

Now, however, it is much more troublesome.

Perhaps he can only use the ancient methods.

January 19th, high winds, no rain.

A wooden boat about two meters wide and ten meters long sits on the beach, while Chen Shu sits on the sand behind a reef, constantly testing the operation and performance of the Rune Groups—he has designed a simple and ancient propulsion Rune Group, which belongs to the category of Water Element Technique.

At this moment, a splashing sound comes from the sea surface.

Chen Shu thinks it is some fish chasing prey into the shallows, so he stands up, pokes his head out from behind the reef, focuses his gaze, and looks into the distance.

He sees Zhang Suannai breaking through the waves and approaching, her speed extremely fast, and the seriousness and excitement on her face are faintly visible.

"???"

Chen Shu is stunned.