Chapter 174: Shipwreck
Jiang Cheng followed her gaze and saw the steep cliff she mentioned. The cut surface looked like it had been sliced by an axe.
“Do you mean to leave this place?” Jiang Cheng pulled back his gaze to ask. Be it the woman’s action to scale the cliff or the previous mention of the jungle-trekking, they revealed the group’s intention to leave this place… not the nightmare realm but this area where they spawned.
“Yes.” Someone answered.
Jiang Cheng turned to him, “Why?” He didn’t get it. They had just gotten there and hadn’t even started exploring. However, they were already in a hurry to leave. Did they discover a source of danger or something?
Everyone turned to a woman on the right. Clearly, she was the one who expressed the wish to leave. The woman looked like she was over 50. She wore a string of pearls, and her hair hung about in lazy curls. She looked normal. However, different from her everyday way of dressing, her eyes radiated extreme pressure. She was not someone that was easy to get along with. However, Jiang Cheng, who answered her gaze, was unfazed.
The next second, the woman opened his lips and gave Jiang Cheng an answer that he never would have guessed.
“I’ve been here before.” The woman didn’t mind the strange look she got from Jiang Cheng. She continued. The young master behind Jiang Cheng looked interested as well.
“Back then, the ship we were on met a horrible storm. The ship tipped over. We spent a whole night on the rescue boat. On the next morning, we discovered this land.”
“Is this that land?”
“Yes.” The woman nodded. “We approached its shore using the boat.” At this point, the woman stopped talking as if she was reminded of something.“What happened after that?” Fatty couldn’t help but ask.
“We fired a triangulation signal using our equipment. Then, we were rescued by a passing ship.” She concluded, “In any case, we need to find a way to leave this place immediately.”
Was it that simple? None of the travellers was dumb. If it were that simple, the woman wouldn’t urge them to leave so urgently.
“When did this happen?”
“20 years ago,” The woman answered clearly.
“20 years,” the young master smiled gently, “Your group had a triangulation signal device back then?! And it was found after a shipwreck?!”
The woman raised her head. She looked at the young master and then at Jiang Cheng. She felt like they shared the same gaze.
“It was probably not a simple shipwreck.” The young monster shrugged.
“Young man,” The woman began. Her presence at that moment confirmed Jiang Cheng’s suspicion. “I advise you to channel your focus on how to escape this place and not try to figure out something you shouldn’t know. Otherwise, even if you leave this place alive, people will track you down when you’re outside.”
That clarified things in most people’s hearts. If the woman were not lying, she definitely had an interesting background. She was probably on a secret mission back then. There was no shipwreck. Her team arrived at this place and encountered something inexplicable. That would explain why she was so desperate to leave when she returned to this place. In fact, the woman might be the sole survivor of the incident back then.
“That is something we’ll worry about later.” The young master looked into her eyes. “Now, I just want to know what happened and how to leave this place.”
The woman looked at the young master, Jiang Cheng and the rest. The situation was clear. If she didn’t explain the entirety of the situation, it would be hard for her to escape. This was not their normal world where the law guided everything. Only rules mattered. The consequences of angering one’s teammates were severe.
“You will regret this.” The woman made one last struggle.
“No. You will regret this,” Another woman with a leather coat shrugged, “If you don’t spill the beans.” The coat she wore was covered in nails. She wore black boots that reached her knees. Her legs were long and fair. She looked like a punk biker.
“Don’t threaten me.” The woman replied, “At my age, I’ve seen everything. There are two bullets lodged in my shoulders that haven’t been removed. What can you do if I don’t want to tell you? Kill me?”
The woman was not bluffing. The travellers could sense the woman’s burning murder intent. She didn’t mind death. In her eyes, the other travellers were probably nothing more than little kids.
“No one wants to do anything to you.” Jiang Cheng said, “Everyone just wants to live. Think about this. If someone else among us has the amount of information you have but refuses to share it, what will you do?
“We have no interest in the confidential stuff,” Jiang Cheng continued, “We just want to survive. After all…” His eyes suddenly watered, and his voice caught. The woman, Fatty and everyone else looked at him strangely.
He didn’t look like a newbie, so why was he…
Jiang Cheng grabbed the woman by her hands, and tears swirled in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter if I die, but I have a bedridden mother at home. My father died early. She raised me on her own. I…”
Fatty, “...”
Jiang Cheng’s sudden plea was shocking. Even though he had the acting chops, the rest of the travellers didn’t buy it. They all thought he was lying.
Just as Fatty thought Jiang Cheng would fail, the latter succeeded.
It was unclear if the woman was really touched or if she found pity within her heart… She revealed to them the details of the mission, excluding the sensitive parts.
“Back then, we received an emergency mission,” The woman slowly went down memory lane, “We were told one of our country’s guest ships had encountered a shipwreck.
“We instantly had an emergency meeting. After assigning the rescue groups and supplies, we departed for the location of the shipwreck.
“At the time, I was responsible for confirming the ship logistics. Normally, we would depart after we checked all the supplies. However, that mission was so rushed. Everyone was in a hurry. The supplies were not even packed individually in a waterproof layer. Instead, they were shipped out collectively in dark green containers.”