In the final few hundred meters, Cheng Feng came to truly understand what people meant by the distance between life and death.
Even as she reached the lakeside, she still doubted whether what she was seeing was just a hallucination. It wasn’t until her fingers touched the icy water that her weightless legs finally felt grounded again, as though her soul had been yanked back from purgatory.
The lake was crystal clear and bright – an impossible shade of blue amid the vast stretch of withered yellow desert, starkly out of place.
Cheng Feng cupped her hands to drink, hastily taking a sip. After confirming it was fresh water and likely safe, she immediately pulled Yan Shen over, removing his mask and hat before splashing water onto his face to cool him down.
After prolonged dehydration and exposure to the scorching sun, both their skin had turned red, swollen, and burned. Now, as the water hit them, every cell in their bodies seemed to shiver with relief.
The man who had been unconscious for so long finally stirred. His lips moved faintly as he murmured a couple of incoherent words, his eyelashes trembling as he tried to open his eyes – though he had yet to fully wake.
With the last of her patience, Cheng Feng filled a bottle with water and fed it to him. Once he had finished, she rolled up her sleeves with force and, without restraint, plunged her face straight into the lake.
The gentle coolness instantly drove away the pain coursing through her body. It felt as though her exhaustion had finally reached its end here. Surrounded by that profoundly soothing current, her body began to sink, her strength to struggle slipping away.
Strings of bubbles rose rapidly to the surface. Just as her center of gravity tipped and she was about to slide into the lake, a pair of hands grabbed the back of her collar in time and yanked her up.
The splashing water scattered into the air, refracting into shards of iridescent light. The last image that lingered in Cheng Feng’s vision was the continuous mountain range, shattered into fragments by the shimmering water.
She squeezed her sore, stinging eyes shut. Before she could even take a breath, the system forcibly logged her out.
A flashing red warning box popped up, indicating that her stamina had been completely depleted.
Seeing the time required to log back in, Cheng Feng simply tore off the connected device and sat in the pod, steadying her emotions.
The moment her connection to San Yao was severed, an unprecedented sense of lightness spread through her limbs, leaving her momentarily at a loss.
Two minutes later, Cheng Feng opened her character panel again to check.
Her character’s current status was unconscious, requiring two and a half hours to recover stamina.
She thought that worked out just fine – she could hitch a ride with Yan Shen in the meantime. At last, the tide of fortune had turned in her favor.
Cheng Feng skipped out of the pod in high spirits, rummaged through the rest area, and came back with a “deluxe” instant noodle bowl. She cracked open a can of beef and dumped it in, then added two specially marinated eggs – stuffing it so full the lid could barely close – before, still not quite satisfied, taking it over to the examiner to heat.
The young examiner looked at her bowl, his expression hard to describe – part speechless, part long-accustomed disdain. Curling his lip, he said, “Why do you look like such a nouveau riche?”
Following his gaze, Cheng Feng glanced over and saw Jiang Linxia sitting by the window at a small dining table, one leg bouncing. He held a fried chicken drumstick in each hand, while gnawing on a piece of spiced pig’s trotter, his mouth glistening with oil – about as unrefined as it got.
Cheng Feng thought, I knew it! Where else could that huge piece of trotter have gone? Someone had beaten her to it!
Sensing a strong killing intent, Jiang Linxia looked up and gave her a friendly smile.
“No talking,” the examiner said, raising a small pointer and coolly gesturing toward another table. “Sit over there. And clean up after you’re done – there are no cleaning robots in the exam hall.”
“Okay,” Cheng Feng replied.
While waiting, Cheng Feng ate, washed her hair, and even played a bit of an offline mini-game.
By the time she logged back in, she had already left the desert oasis.
Night had fallen over the instance. Without the towering canopy of leaves, the bright river of light in the sky stretched across her entire view.
Cheng Feng lifted her head and rubbed her aching neck, only to realize she was draped over Yan Shen’s back.
The feeling of exhaustion came rushing back – along with the pain of her wounds and her overstrained muscles. All those bodily sensations instantly brought back the hardship and suffering from earlier.
She raised a hand, trembling slightly, and held up three fingers in front of Yan Shen.
Yan Shen nodded and replied perfunctorily, “Okay, okay.”
“I mean, you slept for three hours… no, wait.” Cheng Feng raised another finger, her expression unchanged. “Four hours!”
A low, muffled chuckle came from Yan Shen’s chest. Restraining the urge to throw her off, he said, “Don’t just jack up the price on the spot, you profiteer!”
“I’m serious. Three and a half hours. You’re so heavy, rounding it up to four is totally reasonable. Besides, you ate my food and enjoyed my services.”
“I’m heavy?!” Yan Shen, wrongly accused, tilted his head in disbelief. “You won’t find a single ounce of excess fat on me! This is what you call heavy?”
“Shh…” Cheng Feng swung her legs. “Anyway, you’re heavy.”
Yan Shen hitched her up as she kept sliding down and reminded her, “Stop moving. You’re not exactly light either.”
How annoying.
Cheng Feng pulled a long face.
This guy didn’t show the slightest bit of gratitude toward his benefactor – and was even shamelessly talking nonsense.
Yan Shen walked far more steadily than she did. His tensed muscles were as hard as iron, making her whole body ache from the jostling.
To acknowledge Cheng Feng’s earlier efforts, he carried her on his back for another half hour before finally saying, “Get down and walk on your own.”
“I’m out of stamina,” Cheng Feng said, changing the subject. “Did you restock supplies?”
“I caught a few fish,” Yan Shen replied.
In the Gobi, it was unlikely they’d find a second oasis.
Yan Shen had filled every bottle with water and even packed some extra in a waterproof sheet, dragging it behind him.
The fish in that lake were quick and agile, and the water was too deep – he didn’t dare go into the center to catch them. On top of that, they’d wasted too much time in the morning and needed to make up for it. So he grabbed a few fish in a hurry and set off immediately.
“Mm,” Cheng Feng responded.
Lowering his gaze, his ears reddened by the cold night wind, Yan Shen suddenly asked into the silence, “Why didn’t you leave me behind?”
Cheng Feng shot back, “Then why didn’t you just forfeit?”
Then something occurred to her, and she quickly pressed, “And why did you come looking for me specifically?”
That last question carried an obvious note of grievance.
Yan Shen fell silent. Two seconds later, he replied, “I just picked a path at random.”
“…Then I’m really unlucky,” Cheng Feng said.
Yan Shen stopped, and Cheng Feng jumped down on her own.
Without his body heat, she immediately shivered in the open air. She quickly pulled out a thick piece of fur from her bag and draped it over her shoulders.
The two of them continued on side by side, their uneven footsteps overlapping in the dead of night. Their long, mismatched shadows – one tall, one short – swayed unsteadily along the narrow path lit by the faint light.
“Actually, it’s not that unlucky,” Cheng Feng said after thinking for a moment. “It was just a bit tough at the beginning. Don’t feel bad.”
Yan Shen turned his head and let out a soft chuckle.
“To be honest, I wasn’t particularly determined to finish this exam,” he said.
Quitting was fine. Failing didn’t matter either. It wasn’t like he lacked money or academic credits.
“But if I’d just dropped out after getting caught in the rain, Xiang Yunjian would’ve definitely chewed me out.”
“What would he say?” Cheng Feng asked curiously. “Are you afraid of him?”
She thought back to her impression of Xiang Yunjian and frowned. “He’s got a bit of a twisted sense of humor, but he doesn’t seem that scary.”
“He’d go on and on – annoying as hell. It’s not about being afraid of him,” Yan Shen said in an easy tone. “Originally, I was planning to wait until you left, let the system automatically disqualify me, and then log out. But the countdown had already finished – and you still kept me hanging on by a thread.”
Cheng Feng replied, “Oh…”
She turned it over in her mind a few times, then belatedly asked, “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” Yan Shen shook his head. “No. It’s fine – you did well.”
