"Xiaowei, should we go help them?" Su Jie couldn't help but ask me.

I fell into a moment of silence. Should we go help them? We knew nothing about these natives—their numbers, their combat capabilities. Should I go alone? Even if I had a gun, it didn't mean I was invincible; my bullets were running out. But then, should we just ignore them? That didn't seem right either. Liang Jiewen and Liu Ning were our friends. Would it be too selfish to leave them to their fate?

"Don't overthink it. Maybe they've already been tortured to death by the natives. What's the point of risking our lives to save a few dead people?" Black Girl grabbed me, fearing I might act impulsively. "Besides, Wei Ge, it's not easy for you to support us. We didn't cause them to be captured. We just want to survive."

"We just want to survive." Although Black Girl had her own motives, what she said made some sense. First, their capture wasn't our fault. Second, our abilities were limited. Most importantly, we wanted to survive ourselves. We weren't obligated to rescue them; doing so might get us captured or even killed by the natives!

In the following days, Su Jie and I made an effort not to dwell on this issue. Our life returned to a rare period of tranquility. During the day, I hunted in the forest and cut bamboo when I had the time. We even planned to build another bamboo raft. Food was not in short supply for the time being; Su Jie and Xu Xiaorong even gained a bit of weight. Sometimes, I even felt that life on this deserted island was quite good, with several beautiful women by my side, working during the day, resting at sunset—away from the disturbances and noises of the outside world. Wasn't this an ideal utopia?

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However, every nightfall, I found it difficult to sleep in my animal skin nest. I thought of Peggy, of Wang Qin, of Butterfly, of the blood-stained message hidden under the bed. Indeed, we weren't obliged to save Liu Ning and Liang Jiewen, but whenever I thought of them possibly suffering torment and ultimately dying miserably in the savage tribe, my conscience deeply questioned me. Perhaps I was too soft-hearted, as Xu Xiaorong put it—too kind.

In reality, not only did we refrain from helping them, but upon learning about the savage natives in the northwest forest, we had been consciously avoiding that direction. We had been active in this area for so long without encountering the natives, leading us to believe that, as long as we didn't wander aimlessly, the natives wouldn't come to us.

However, it turned out that we were wrong. Disaster approached unnoticed, once again closing in on us.

On this day, as usual, I went out to hunt. I was tracking a wild chicken in the jungle, hiding carefully in the bushes to avoid being detected. After waiting for a long time, just as I was about to shoot the arrow, a whooshing sound echoed, and an arrow with a red feathered tail, shot from an unknown direction, came whizzing by, pinning the wild chicken to a tree trunk. I immediately broke into a cold sweat, hiding in the bushes without daring to make a sound.

Soon, strange and eerie sounds like chirping and shouting reached my ears. It seemed like several native men were conversing. Then, I saw three or four dark-skinned savages, dressed in animal skins with feathers tied to their heads, approaching. Although these natives looked dark, they seemed to be of Asian descent, with paint on their faces, though not excessively. Judging solely by their faces, they didn't seem very ignorant.

However, I quickly realized how wrong I was. These people were holding a rope, and at first, I thought the other end of the rope had a dog or some other animal. But to my astonishment, the other end of the rope, being led like a dog, was a person! Crawling on all fours, not to mention, it was their slave. There were two slaves being led by them.