The water inside the bamboo section was cool and refreshing, with no unpleasant odor — just a faint, natural fragrance of grass and wood.

The only problem was that there wasn’t enough. Far too little.

Fu Miaoxue had barely taken two sips before it was gone.

“That’s nowhere near enough!” The young mistress pouted in dissatisfaction. “I couldn’t even taste it before it was gone!”

Du Lai was sawing through a second bamboo section, not bothering to look up as he replied, “It’s water, not soup. Of course it has no taste.”

There was a hint of mockery in his words. Fu Miaoxue caught it, narrowing her eyes slightly as she fixed her gaze on the back of Du Lai’s head. “That hundred million — are you thinking of giving it up?”

“…I want it,” Du Lai said. He sawed off another bamboo section and handed it to Fu Miaoxue. “What I mean is, this method of getting water is only good for emergencies. If the rescue team doesn’t come soon, we’ll need to think of something else.”

Fu Miaoxue tilted her head back and drained it in one go, then wiped her mouth and asked, “What kind of something else?”

“Find a water source, or figure out how to make a container to collect rainwater.” Du Lai thought for a moment. “How to purify it is a problem. If we can’t boil the water, drinking it directly will definitely make us sick. And food is an issue too…”

Fu Miaoxue said, “Can’t we just make fire by rubbing sticks together?”

Du Lai: “……”

The young mistress saw that he had gone quiet again and said impatiently, “Can you at least say something? What’s the point of just staring at me — it’s not like I know how to make fire by rubbing sticks!”

Fine then……

So she wasn’t joking. She was being serious.

Du Lai continued sawing at the bamboo and spoke slowly, “The success rate of making fire by rubbing sticks together is extremely low. And we’re in a tropical jungle with very high humidity……”

You’d rub the skin off your hands before getting so much as a single spark.

“Then how do we make fire?” Fu Miaoxue chewed her lip in frustration, her mood sinking. “My clothes are soaked, my shoes are waterlogged — I just want to sit by a fire and dry off.”

Du Lai didn’t respond. He could only hope that rescue would come quickly, because he wasn’t sure how long he could hold out himself……

Water, food, temperature, poisonous insects, disease…… In a place like this, any misstep could be fatal.

……

Du Lai sawed through a dozen or so bamboo sections in a row, making sure Fu Miaoxue had enough to drink, taking a few sips himself to barely quench his thirst, then giving the last little bit to the monkey.

By now the sky had visibly darkened, and they still hadn’t found a place to shelter for the night.

He gritted his teeth, picked up the pace, and sawed through another seven or eight sections. Then he tore his shirt into strips of cloth, used the strips to bind the bamboo sections together, and hung them across his body like a string of gourds — heavy and cumbersome.

His palms burned with a raw, stinging pain, red and swollen. But at least this time Fu Miaoxue had a bit of sense about her. Seeing him covered in bamboo tubes, she didn’t push him to carry her again and instead held her cage, following along quietly behind him.

Though she walked at a truly agonizing pace.

As if she’d never walked a step in her life — stumbling every few steps, falling every few more, either shrieking at some insect or wincing from a branch scraping her skin.

Du Lai took one look at her miserable state and couldn’t bring himself to rush her.

He walked ahead and waited.

Fu Miaoxue fell again. She peeled herself off the ground, bit her lip, and looked up at him.

The two of them said nothing for a long moment.

At last she spoke. “How about… you carry me after all. I’ll add another ten million.”

Du Lai: “……”

He thought about it, then told her with genuine sincerity, “Young Mistress, even if you added another hundred million, I still couldn’t carry you.”

Having tried to discuss the matter politely and being flatly refused — the young mistress immediately flared up with anger. She jabbed a finger at the bamboo tubes on his back and complained, “Why are you carrying so much bamboo?! Are you doing this on purpose so you don’t have to carry me?!”

Du Lai was entirely unsurprised by her reaction. He answered calmly, “We have nothing right now. If it rains, these tubes can at least store water. You don’t want to go through all that effort to find water every time, do you?”

Fu Miaoxue: “……”

Her eyes reddened. Her lips quivered. She sniffled and trudged on in tears……

Hopeless.

—