Chapter 46

That evening, Su Han focused on slicing venison into palm-sized pieces, methodically rubbing each one with salt until she’d used up every last grain of the stuff.
No wooden basin for meat storage? Improvise with a bamboo basket. Dozens of venison chunks tumbled together in organized chaos, and seeing her handiwork oddly filled Su Han with satisfaction.
Next, she tanned her three newly acquired rabbit skins again and hung them on wooden racks to dry in the wind.
When exhaustion finally caught up, she leaned against the wall to rest, her mind turning over tomorrow’s to-do list, likely twists in the game, which supplies she ought to stash away next.
Drowsiness crept in; her eyes slid shut against her will.
She slept like a baby all night long.
The next morning, the system voice chimed in with a new twist: “Day Four. Light rain is falling across the island.”
No sooner had it spoken than she heard the steady patter of rain outside the cave.
Zhong Rui munched on venison, glanced at the rack draped with rabbit skins, then at the bamboo basket of marinating meat, and finally made up his mind to build a few more drying racks.
Su Han stirred and opened her eyes to find a chunk of black bread and a bottle of milk sitting in front of her. She shoved the bread into her mouth and tucked the milk into her wicker basket.
Zhong Rui gave her a sideways look. “Your talent skill is pretty busted, huh? Eating and drinking well every day.”
Su Han just shrugged. “Yours isn’t exactly bad either.”
But barely ten seconds of small talk and she was back to business: “So… what are we doing with the rest of the venison?”
Tortured, literally, by the problem, her whole face read: Why is abundance such a curse?
Zhong Rui’s expression was stone-cold deadpan.
#EveryDayStrugglingWithTooMuchFood #PreservationNightmare
#OPAtHuntingButNowINeedTherapyForIt
#HuntingIsOPButWastingIsAGraveSin What do you even do when you keep scoring more food than you can store?
After a long pause, Zhong Rui finally said, “If we really can’t finish it, trade it to others for firewood.”
The rain made animals harder to find, most just holed up in caves. Food was about to get seriously scarce for everyone.
But chopping wood? Just took time, not skill. For a slab of roast venison, anyone would jump at the trade, pretty great deal, honestly.
And for them, swapping meat they’d never finish for a mountain of firewood to hoard? A textbook win-win.
“Alright, firewood it is,” Su Han agreed. “I mean… innate skills don’t even trigger that often. It’s just Day Four, a hundred players in the game; some super-unlucky ones haven’t even popped their skill once.”
“Most players are basically broke, they can’t pay for anything. Only thing worth taking is firewood.”
“You do the trading, I’ll stay here and build racks. Deal?” Zhong Rui floated his plan.
“Deal,” Su Han shot back.
She packed ten pieces of roast venison, wrapped in leaves and stashed in her bag. Slinging her backpack on, she set out in style.
By now, the camp was half-abandoned and eerily quiet, a lot of junk cleared out, the whole place oddly desolate.
Su Han wandered around and quickly figured it out, a bunch of people had left to find shelter from the rain, scavenging for tent materials, or maybe… just moving on to safer ground.
At the start, everyone was scrambling for food and water, crashing out at night wherever they dropped. But as days went on, the gap widened, players with better skills or luck pulled way ahead, and the divide between haves and have-nots grew and grew.
Some barely scraped by on scraps, while others ate so well they had leftovers, so tensions festered. You’d go hunting and come back to find your stash raided; tent supplies vanished the second you turned your back; when you saw others feasting, the jealousy was almost poisonous…
Tensions finally boiled over on Day Four, no one wanted to get soaked, no one wanted a tent just to have someone else steal it. So more and more players packed up and left together, abandoning camp.
Leaving behind exactly the scene Su Han now saw.
As she strolled, yet another player, fed up with the endless drizzle, packed up everything in a flash and hustled out with his friends.
After a beat, Su Han turned toward the woods.
It was still raining, a gentle, steady drizzle. Sure, the rain made it harder to see and move, but if you grit your teeth, you could push through.
For players short on supplies, there really was no choice. No matter if it rained or hailed or stormed, you’d have to go out hunting anyway. Or risk starving.
Su Han trudged on for a while. Amid all the rain, she finally caught the sharp rhythmic sound of someone chopping wood. Her face lit up, and she hurried toward the noise without hesitation.
Before long, she spotted a two-person team. One was chopping wood, the other gathering thatch, working together so smoothly it was clear they planned to build a thatched hut.
Su Han kept her distance, careful not to startle them, then called out clearly, “Venison for firewood, interested in a trade?”
With her excellent cooking skills and an abundance of food, Su Han was well-known for bartering with other players. By now, every survivor on the D16 server recognized her face.
So her offer wasn’t met with suspicion. After a brief pause, the man wielding the axe shook his head, “We’re rushing to finish our hut before the rain soaks us, we can’t spare any time to chop firewood for you right now.”
Who knows what kind of nasty debuffs you’d pick up after being drenched for too long?
Disappointed, Su Han could only walk away in frustration.
And as if luck was determined to taunt her, the next three groups she met each turned her down: some said they could hunt for themselves; some were too busy; others just scoffed, claiming her price was too low and only hiked it up would they consider.
Su Han: “…”
Was everyone really that well-fed, or was she the only one desperate to trade away her venison?
Fine, forget it! Su Han pouted. Besides, she still had firewood stockpiled at home, more than enough to last three days.
From experience, even when the system announced weather anomalies, the situation would keep changing; it never settled into a single pattern. Since it began raining on day four, the shift clearly ran on a three-day cycle.
So Su Han decided to wait until day seven, when the rain stopped, and make her own charcoal from trees.
With that sorted, she headed back through the rain. Nearing her cave, she noticed one of the traps she’d set had been disturbed. Moving closer, she found a dopey-looking rabbit digging around, desperately trying to tunnel its way out.
Su Han sighed, full of regret, there was still so much venison left at home! Casting the silly rabbit a pitying glance, she muttered, “Drink plenty of rainwater and hold on a few more days. I’ll come back to collect you then.”
And with that, she turned and left.
Inside the cave, Zhong Rui was piecing together a wooden rack. Seeing his partner return empty-handed, he looked up in surprise, “What, no one wanted your venison?”
“Everyone’s too busy pitching tents and worried about the rain causing debuffs. No one had time for me,” Su Han explained simply, then added coolly, “Doesn’t matter. Once the rain stops, I’ll just make my own charcoal.”
She shook the rain from her clothes, found a free spot, and sat down to let the wind dry her off.
The rhythmic sawing of wood echoed in her ears, lulling Su Han into a hazy half-sleep, slumped against the wall. By the time she woke again, darkness had fallen outside, the only light from the flickering flames of their campfire.
She tried to stand up, then froze. Her head swam with pain, her body felt weak and heavy, and her vision was swimming. She recognized the symptoms instantly: post-rain fever.
But… fever? She hadn’t had a fever in years! Su Han stared, utterly stunned, as if she’d just been struck by lightning.
Zhong Rui must have realized what she was thinking. Casually, he remarked, “It’s just game mechanics. The system decides when you get sick from the rain, you have to play along.”
Everything suddenly clicked for Su Han. Staring at the words “Fever” in her status bar, her feelings were… complicated, to say the least.
Experience: 14/30. There was no way she could win this round, and she couldn’t remove her debuff through quests either. With no medicine on hand, she’d have to tough it out. As for the energy serum Zhong Rui had, that was a last resort she refused to consider.
Her mind tried to focus, but the more she thought about it, the more exhausted she felt, her brain turning to mush.
“Relax. I’ve got you. Just rest,” Zhong Rui said, handing her a bamboo cup and a serving of roasted venison.
After dinner, Su Han drifted off again. Lapsing into unconsciousness, she grumbled silently, like hell she’d ever get a fever from some rain in the real world!
By morning, Su Han groggily blinked awake to find three more wooden racks set up inside the cave, with salted venison neatly hung to dry.
She moved experimentally, her body had recovered, more or less. The fever was gone, replaced with a debuff: “Weakened, minus 20 stamina per day, lasts three days.”
She let out a deep, relieved breath.
Outside, the rain hadn’t let up; it drizzled on relentlessly. Su Han couldn’t help wondering: were other players also laid up with fevers from the rain? With no safe shelter and no reliable teammates, falling into a fevered sleep would be a death sentence.
Not far away, her partner was studying something, his expression grim. Su Han’s lips quirked upward, somehow, that seriousness made her feel a little safer.
At last, Zhong Rui broke the silence. “We’re running low on clean drinking water. The camp’s deserted. No word on where An Rongyue’s gone. If we can’t find her before the water runs out, our only option might be hunting wild deer and drinking their blood just to survive.”
Clearly, he’d gone out to scout while she was sleeping.
Before Su Han could reply, he added, “In the wild, you’d normally catch morning dew on broad leaves, or dig a pit, wait for water to collect, then drink from the clear top layer after it settles.”
“But who knows if those methods are safe in this game. Since drinking deer blood doesn’t seem to cause any issues, it might actually be the safer bet.”
Seeing how serious he was, Su Han finally told him, “I found a whole grove of sugar maples. There’s plenty of safe water, and I’ve already tried it, no side effects at all.”
Zhong Rui stared, then abruptly realized she meant maple sap, sweet as sugar water.
His face: “……”
When had she found that? And why hadn’t she told him sooner? All that worry for nothing.
Sure, deer blood would keep them alive and restore stamina, but honestly? It tasted… well, let’s not talk about it. Too much and it made your blood run hot. If there was literally any other option, he’d take it.
“I just wanted to see how you’d tackle the water shortage. But if you really planned to survive on deer blood alone, well… just forget it,” Su Han murmured softly.
Then she looked out at the rain, almost wistful. “A bunch of players were still working in the rain yesterday. I wonder how they’re doing now.”
Right on cue, the system’s robotic voice chimed in: “Day 5. Survivors remaining: 56.”
Nearly half the players were already out. And the scariest thing? These weren’t rookies, they were veterans who’d survived multiple rounds already.