Chapter 249 - 111: The Most Generous Episode (Part 2)
Once the fire wall was completed, the crucible was hung above it, allowing it to dry out when making a fire for cooking each day, thus keeping the environment where the crucible was stored as dry as possible.
Holding the graphite crucible, because its diameter was too large, he didn't stuff the crucible into his hiking bag, but steadied it back in the gift box and turned to examine several other items.
…
The wicker book and the crucible were the two most noticeable heavyweights in the box, and arguably the two most useful rewards in the entire gift box.
As for the other rewards, although not as useful as these two, they were far better than purely gag items like phone cases, anal plugs, and shoehorns, which were industrial waste.
Included among them were ten bars of boxed soap - one of the life resources Chen Zhou needed greatly.
Soap can disinfect, inhibit bacteria, clean the body, and remove odors. With this item, whether washing his hair, face, or taking a bath, he could have a better experience.
However, ten bars of soap obviously wouldn't last too long, and if he used soap every time he washed his hands and face, they probably wouldn't even last a year.
To this, Chen Zhou could only interpret these soaps as compensation from the show for his hardship in solving puzzles.
Or as an anniversary gift for successfully surviving a year on the island.
Besides soap, the gift box also contained an outdoor fire starter.
This equipment was equipped with three solid magnesium rods approximately 1cm in diameter, one fire starter rod, and a scraper with a scale. These were packed neatly inside a small leather bag.
Before obtaining this outdoor fire starter, Chen Zhou already possessed two types of ignition equipment: a fire striker and a lighter.
He could also make a large fire bow himself to quickly start a fire in the cave, so in terms of fire-starting equipment, the magnesium rods were just a cherry on top.
If he had been given this item on the first day on the island, he might have been dancing with joy.
Now, as the anniversary approached, the importance of the magnesium rods had long diminished, unable to bring him any fresh excitement.
As for the other items besides the fire starter, they were not just a cherry on top, but a crucial necessity.
These included a very small hand saw, approximately 40cm in length, equipped with 15 spare saw blades.
There was also a bottle of soy sauce with a net volume of 1L, a strong flashlight, and two bags of refined salt.
Finally, at the bottom of the gift box, Chen Zhou saw a particularly familiar item - a small cube.
It was a wooden cube, slightly larger than the puzzle cube he had just solved last night, looking exactly the same.
However, the origins of this wooden cube were not as mysterious as the last one; it came with a simple instruction manual.
The instruction manual was a thin, colored printed sheet with a picture of the cube and two lines of text on it -
Holy Sword puzzle.
Difficulty: level ten.
This wooden cube was placed in the corner at the bottom of the gift box, like an Easter egg, waiting for Chen Zhou to discover.
In fact, the torment of the past half-month had already given Chen Zhou a slight PTSD towards this thing.
At the instant he saw the small cube, he couldn't help but recall the process of decrypting at his desk, and even had the urge to throw the cube into the sea.
But he ultimately couldn't turn this impulse into action, just took a deep breath, and packed rewards like soy sauce, flashlight, refined salt, and the fire starter into his hiking bag.
Then he put on a wide-brimmed hat, shouldered his hiking bag, picked up the gift box, called for Lai Fu, and returned to the cave.
If it weren't for the graphite crucible, he might have stayed on the beach, organizing and building a wall of wood and stones before returning home.
But with the graphite crucible, he couldn't risk letting it get moist by staying on the beach.
There weren't many sunny days during the rainy season, so while the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, with less moisture in the air, he needed to hurry back home to find a suitable container and dry place to properly store the crucible.
…
On the way home, looking at the festive box in front of him, thinking of that small cube inside, Chen Zhou had a terrible thought -
Did the contents of this reward have any use, or were they influenced by the previous puzzle?
If he gave up on the puzzle, or failed to solve it, what would he have lost besides the powerful boost of space-time cutting, were these useful rewards also lost?
If this wasn't the case, then how could the identical small cube at the bottom of the box be explained?
At this thought, Chen Zhou recalled a post soliciting challengers on a forum.
He thought, surely he wasn't the only one participating in the challenge, nor could it be limited to Asians alone.
Among the other participants, there must be industrious ones, lazy ones, and certainly no shortage of those using their wits to exploit bugs for benefits.
If they also encountered puzzles like safes and small cubes, what would they do?
If they exploited space-time cutting to avoid solving the small cube, what would their subsequent rewards be like...
Although there was no explicit explanation, Chen Zhou could feel the malice hidden in the numerous actions of the Space-Time Administration Bureau from his own experiences.
He could imagine the dire consequences awaiting those audacious enough to challenge the show's creators with their trivial "wisdom."
Perhaps their subsequent rewards would all become industrial waste.
Or worse, their mysterious reward segments could be directly canceled...
"Struggle."
Whether mentally or physically, "struggle" was the main theme of this reality show.
"Cutting corners" and "giving up" were behaviors not encouraged or even frowned upon by the show producers because such behavior lacked entertainment value.
As he thought about this, Chen Zhou's pace gradually slowed, and an indescribable chill arose in his heart.
He didn't know if his suspicions were accurate, but his intuition told him he was probably close.
He even had a more outrageous thought - if the safe were dismantled in another way, the items inside might change.
If he hadn't violently disassembled it overnight but had used space-time cutting to open it, perhaps what would have been inside wasn't a revolver, but a glowing toy gun.
Based on his understanding of the Space-Time Administration Bureau, this possibility not only existed but was quite high.
The reason he had been living so smoothly was partly due to his own diligence and effort.
The other part might be because his actions always aligned with the will of the show's producers, or those "audiences on high."
Looking at it from another perspective, perhaps in that unobservable future world, he had already become a major star like "Truman."
"But one day, I will leave here."
Putting aside his vague speculations, tightening his hold on the gift box, stepping on solid ground, Chen Zhou completed the remaining journey.
…
After returning to the cave, he ignored the three kittens that came to greet him.
He immediately started a fire, took out the graphite crucible and some tissue paper, lowering the humidity in the cave while wrapping the graphite crucible like a mummy to protect it from moisture.
He then pulled out a large tome from his backpack and placed it on his desk.
In modern times, such dull books might sit on a bedside table for three years without him glancing at them.
The fast-paced, attention-grabbing short videos had long drained his energy and raised his brain's threshold for stimulation, making traditional books and slow-paced films no longer appealing.
But on this deserted island, his attitude towards those "boob tube" and "amusement to death" contents had undergone a dramatic change.
Here, combined, ten thousand of those uninformative short videos, scripts, or abstract posts weren't as valuable as this book.
He'd even be willing to exchange some of his Gold Coins and Silver Coins for practical books.
Even if they weren't books imparting skills, thick world classics, or professional books would do.
He particularly needed a book on traditional wood architecture, another detailing the wildlife of South America, and one teaching how to draw sketches, oil paintings, or ink paintings, fine brushwork.
Unfortunately, the precious knowledge that could be obtained online for tens or hundreds of dollars would be unattainable on this deserted island, even at the cost of several thousand worth of Gold Coins.
Just like freshwater in the desert, it couldn't be sought even with a fortune.
For this, Chen Zhou could only look forward to the upcoming mysterious rewards.
He felt that the show producers held a favorable impression of him, and in the rewards to come, they surely wouldn't skimp on high-quality rewards.