Chapter 5

I didn’t sleep a wink all night.

At first light the next morning, I got up.

I planned to follow the route we’d taken yesterday and head back. If the production crew was also looking for us, we might run into them on the way.

I didn’t ask Lu Mingshen if he wanted to come. He just tacitly fell into step beside me.

We walked all the way to the spot where we’d first gotten off the helicopter, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

All we saw was a sheet of paper lying under the banyan tree at the edge.

It had been soaked by the rain, but the handwriting was still barely legible.

The gist of it was that yesterday’s torrential downpour had wrecked the production crew’s equipment, and a lot of people were starting to run fevers.

The situation was serious-suspected infectious disease.

The patients needed treatment urgently, so everyone had no choice but to evacuate in a rush.

No matter what, someone would definitely be sent to search for survivors.

Bottom line: we’d been abandoned.

Absurd.

But true.

I could practically feel a herd of alpacas stampeding across the top of my head.

Maybe I’d tilted my head back to stare at the sky for too long, because Lu Mingshen followed my gaze upward.

“What are you looking at?”

“The sky cleared up.”

Lu Mingshen said, “Yeah.”

“Even the heavens are speechless.”

“…”

Once I accepted the situation, I decided that since I was already here, I might as well make the best of it.

It was just wilderness survival.

Perfectly in my wheelhouse.

My longest record was surviving alone in a primeval forest for seventy-eight days. I only quit because I ran out of salt.

This was basically like going home.

Day one in the wild: first priority was to find shelter from the wind and rain.

I led Lu Mingshen deeper into the jungle.

On the way, I dug up a few clumps of cogon grass roots from under the banyan tree and handed them to him. “Carbs.”

He froze for a moment, then took them without even frowning and popped them into his mouth.

Only after eating did he ask, “You’re so calm. It’s like you’re really used to this.”

I lied without blinking. “Oh, I learned it from TV. I wasn’t even sure those things you just ate weren’t poisonous.”

The corner of his mouth curved up. “If I get poisoned to death by you, you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life. No matter what you do, you’ll think of me. When you put it that way, I don’t really lose out.”

All I could say was: worthy of a Film Emperor.

He could still put on a performance at a time like this.