Chapter 346: The Fountain of Youth (3)
Having witnessed his companion being carried away by the giant bird, the other mercenary on the cliff panicked and fell hard onto the ground. He kicked his legs, pulled out his pistol, and fired at the flying giant bird with a series of sharp “bangs.”
Every one of his movements was completed at a ridiculously slow speed, far beyond anything an ordinary person could comprehend. Even the amount of time the mercenary’s body remained suspended in the air as he fell backward, as well as the speed at which the bullets spun through the air after leaving the barrel, was much slower than normal.
The entire scene looked as though someone had forcibly set the playback speed to 0.5x, making it both absurd and comical.
By comparison, the mercenaries below the cliff reacted with lightning speed. While the mercenary at the top was still falling backward, they had already drawn pistols, submachine guns, AKs, and other weapons, aiming at the monster bird’s wings and opening fire.
Unfortunately, their efforts could not save their companion, because their bullets were completely unable to enter the island.
Below the cliff, the bullets traveled at perfectly normal speeds. However, when they flew diagonally toward the edge of the cliff and were about to enter the airspace directly above the island, it was as though they had slammed into a thick wall of gelatin—their speed suddenly dropped. An invisible barrier tightly wrapped itself around the bullets. Under the tremendous resistance, the mass of bullets spun wildly for a while before finally remaining suspended in midair and slowly coming to a stop.
Of all the bullets, only those fired by the mercenary on the cliff could fly straight upward without obstruction. But the bullets traveled very slowly. When, carrying the hopes of everyone below, they finally struck the similarly slow-moving giant bird at an upward angle, they were like a few drops of drizzle landing on the bird’s wings—light and feeble, without stirring up the slightest disturbance.
The bird’s flight path was completely unaffected. Its talons tightened around the slowly struggling mercenary, and with a few beats of its wings, it unhurriedly disappeared into the jungle behind the cliff.
Seeing this, Everly was basically certain that time flowed more slowly on the Island of the Fountain of Youth than it did in the real world.
This was not good news for Everly.
For example, suppose the ratio between the flow of time on the island and that of the outside world was 1:2. By the time two minutes had passed in the outside world and Venus had moved for two minutes, the people on the island would have only moved forward for one minute. Clearly, this would severely limit the amount of time they had to explore the island.
The island was vast, and it was home to dangerous creatures like giant birds as well as all manner of bizarre plants. Even without setting foot on the island, simply looking at it from the outskirts was enough for Everly to imagine how many difficulties and dangers they would encounter along the way. If time flowed even more slowly there than in the outside world, then in an extreme case, wouldn’t they end up having barely walked a short distance across the island while the transit of Venus outside was already almost over?
Clearly, Grant and the others outside the island had thought of this as well, because before long, Everly saw him order the mercenaries to climb onto the island using the ropes.
The team had just lost a man, so the mercenary leader seemed rather reluctant. He exchanged a few heated words with Grant, and no one knew what Grant said to him, but before long, the entire team began to move.
The mercenaries deemed the most expendable went first.
One after another, they climbed up the ropes at remarkable speed. As soon as they reached the top, they immediately raised their weapons and kept watch in every direction, providing cover for their comrades climbing up behind them.
Fortunately, no more giant birds appeared during the climb. All the mercenaries successfully made it to the top of the cliff, followed by the shaman, Grant, and the witch Savannie.
Everly carefully counted them. There were twenty-seven people in Grant’s group, and not a single one had been left behind. Every one of them had made it onto the island.
She waited patiently until the very last half-visible head disappeared into the trees at the edge of the cliff. Only then did she begin swimming toward the island.
When she reached the ropes, Everly climbed into the inflatable boat. As she changed clothes, she turned her head toward Kesuye and said, “I’m going up now. Will you wait here for me? If…”
Everly wanted to say that if she didn’t come back in time, he shouldn’t wait for her. He could just find some stretch of ocean and go enjoy his life as a fish. But then she thought better of it. Saying something like that would practically be asking for trouble. In horror movies, the people most likely to meet a tragic end were the ones who carelessly tempted fate by making ominous declarations!
So she warily swallowed the words before they could leave her mouth and instead reached out to pat Kesuye on the head.
“Just wait here for me. I’ll come back,” she said.
Kesuye believed her without a doubt.
He nudged his forehead against Everly’s palm, then held her hand and rubbed his cheek against it. His every movement was filled with reluctance and attachment, while his big, watery eyes were so damp they looked ready to rain.
“I’ll wait for you… Come back quickly. I’ll be lonely.”
Everly couldn’t help laughing.
This carefree big whale spent his days with nothing to do but chase spotted dolphins around and b*lly them. Who would have thought someone like him could get lonely too…? In that case, she’d better put in some extra effort, or those spotted dolphins were going to have a rough time.
…
After changing clothes, Everly slung her backpack over her shoulders and grabbed the rope tightly with both hands. She kicked against the wet, slippery cliff face with both feet, and before long, she successfully climbed to the top and set foot on the island.
By then, there was no one left near the edge of the cliff. The only things remaining were two ropes, tied forlornly around the thick stem of a sturdy fern-like plant. Looking closely, she could still see traces of footprints in the muddy ground, disappearing into the dense forest far inside the plain.
Everly didn’t immediately follow them.
For one thing, the flow of time inside and outside the island was different. She had spent another five minutes outside the island, which meant that, converted to island time, Grant’s group might have been walking for less than two minutes. Following them recklessly could result in her being discovered.
For another, there was something else she needed to confirm.
Worried that a giant bird might ambush her, Everly walked over to a strange plant with twisted, curling leaves. She used her knife to cut off one of its enormous leaves and strapped it to her back as camouflage. Keeping a vigilant eye on her surroundings, she leaned out over the edge of the cliff.
Below, Kesuye was holding Everly’s phone and obediently waiting in the water.
Everly tried speaking to him, only to discover that she couldn’t hear what Kesuye was saying, and Kesuye couldn’t hear her instructions either. She guessed that the force preventing bullets from outside the island from entering also affected the transmission of sound.
So she raised a hand and, as they had agreed beforehand, gave Kesuye the signal to begin.
Kesuye received the signal and immediately tapped the timer button on the phone. When one minute had passed, he raised his head and waved his arm vigorously at Everly.
Everly nodded and mouthed a “thank you” to Kesuye before ducking her head back down and hiding beneath a nearby plant.
Just now, when Kesuye had started the countdown outside the island, Everly had simultaneously activated the timer function on her watch at the top of the cliff, using it to measure the passage of time on the island.
The results showed that while one minute passed in the outside world, only twenty-one seconds passed on the island. The ratio between time inside and outside was approximately 1:3.
In other words, Everly had only about two hours to explore.
Once that time was up, the transit of Venus would end, and the island might sink straight back beneath the sea. It might not—but no one was willing to bet their life on it.
If she didn’t want to get trapped here, Everly had better pick up the pace.
She had originally intended to let Grant and the others get farther ahead, but she hadn’t expected time to be this tight. At this point, being discovered by Grant didn’t seem quite so frightening anymore. At least it was better than failing to find the Fountain of Youth and returning empty-handed.
With that thought, Everly stopped waiting. She pulled out the chameleon skull and gripped it in one hand, kept her weapon firmly in the other, slung her backpack over her shoulders, and slipped into the dense forest.
According to Orff’s poem, to find the Fountain of Youth, she first needed to locate a cave and then “follow a flat and pitch-black straight road.”
At first, Everly guessed that the cave might be somewhere along the cliffs. But Grant’s boat had circled the entire island. If they had encountered a cave along the way, there was no reason they wouldn’t have gone inside. Since they had ultimately chosen to climb onto the island, that meant there were no caves along the cliffs.
In that case, the cave might be located on Pudding Mountain in the center of the island, meaning she would have to cross the forest to reach it. This possibility actually lined up with Alexander the Great’s experience of searching for the Fountain of Youth.
Of course, all of this was just Everly’s speculation. She had no way of knowing whether she was right.
This was where the benefits of watching plenty of horror movies came into play. Judging by his character, there was a good chance Grant was the villain of a horror movie series. And major villains rarely took unnecessary detours when acting alone. It was only when they encountered the protagonists that they would suddenly develop strange ailments, such as excessive talking, brain damage, or getting carried away with their own cleverness. So Everly decided to simply follow him.
As it turned out, this was an exceedingly wise decision.
The forest was strange.
The temperature on the island was extremely high, close to 30°C, and the air was saturated with heavy moisture. Every step Everly took sank deep into the ground, squeezing out dark black humus with an unpleasant “squelch.”
Everly considered herself fairly well-traveled and knowledgeable, yet she didn’t recognize a single one of the plants growing on this island.
Most of them were ferns. They grew extraordinarily tall, blocking out the sky and sun. Their long leaves resembled green feathers, while the tender shoots at their tips curled inward into fist-sized spirals. Some plants even had small brown bumps growing on the undersides of their leaves. If touched accidentally, these bumps would erupt like miniature volcanoes, spraying out enormous clouds of choking spores.
After witnessing one of those eruptions herself, Everly became especially cautious whenever she passed one of those plants.
The forest was also home to all sorts of strange animals and insects.
Near the edge of the island, they weren’t particularly common, and most of them were relatively small. As Everly walked, she would occasionally see nearby plants rustling violently, or catch a fleeting shadow darting between the leaves.
As she ventured deeper into the forest, however, the creatures stirring within it gradually became more numerous.
She saw brown cockroaches as large as slippers take flight between the plants; enormous insects resembling millipedes coiled around the roots of ferns—their plump bodies were as thick as thighs, with countless pairs of slender legs protruding from beneath their thick carapaces, making a constant rustling sound as they crawled over the leaves; a group of small dinosaurs no larger than turkeys running beneath the cover of fern fronds; and several completely flat trilobites slowly writhing in a puddle.
Dinosaurs and trilobites were simply too famous. Even though Everly knew little about other organisms, the moment she saw the familiar forms of these two creatures, she recognized them at a glance.
The Creator who had made this island seemed to have a strange collecting habit. They had gathered all sorts of creatures that had appeared on Earth since its birth and thrown them together onto this hot, humid island.
Moss, ferns, seed plants, giant insects, prehistoric amphibians, dinosaurs…
Though they had been born in entirely different geological eras and evolved in vastly different natural environments, these creatures somehow lived together on the island in a bizarre yet thriving ecosystem, even forming a unique food chain.
The lush moss and ferns served as food for all the herbivores. The small trilobites in the puddles were preyed upon by slipper-sized cockroaches. Then, when a gigantic dragonfly with a wingspan approaching one meter appeared, the arrogant giant cockroach was captured in an instant. Amid the “click-clack” of its pincer-like mouthparts chewing, the cockroach was reduced to shredded scraps of food…
“Bang! Bang-bang!”
As Everly walked, a burst of rapid gunfire suddenly came from the jungle ahead. Sensing that something was wrong, she tightened her grip on the skull in her hand and proceeded forward even more cautiously.
A few minutes later, following the footprints to the source of the gunfire, Everly saw the first human corpse of her journey—a mercenary lying in the mud, his neck bent backward, his body twisted into a grotesque position.
Beside the mercenary’s corpse lay a dead giant lizard. It was still frozen in the position it had been in while biting the mercenary, its jaws open and its white teeth deeply embedded in the man’s neck. Bullet holes covered its thick, scaly hide, and blood was still seeping from the wounds.
Clearly, the lizard had attacked the mercenary moments ago and bitten him to death.