From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 1 Challenge Robinson Crusoe: Survive on a deserted island for days!

Dust filled the air, the roar of the crusher never stopped, and the world was filled with noisy sounds, making it seem unusually quiet.

Chen Zhou sat in an old leather chair, staring blankly at the instrument display screen in front of him that was glowing blue. The numbers on it were as stable as ever, as stable as his life that he could see the end of at a glance.

After a long time, Chen Zhou raised his hand and drew a smiley face on the wall covered with thick dust.

The grayish-white dust fell down, and the crooked smiling face drooped at the corners of its mouth, as if it was crying.

Staring at this ugly smiling face, Chen Zhou couldn't help but review his 25 years.

He was born in a rural clinic in a remote northern town at the end of the millennium.

Like countless ordinary people, he had no distinguished family background, no parents who could seize the opportunity to rise to prominence, and even no house that could be demolished.

He spent his childhood at his grandmother's home in the countryside. At that time, his parents were working away from home, supporting the small family by selling their physical labor, and exchanging the injuries of the second half of their lives for the money of the first half.

After junior high school, Chen Zhou went to study in town. He was not a particularly smart kid, but he was always the most hardworking, so his academic performance was always at the top.

During the college entrance examination days, Chen Zhou caught a bad cold and had a high fever.

The illness affected his performance. He could have been admitted to a key university, but in the end he only got into an ordinary university.

At the suggestion of his relatives, Chen Zhou enrolled in the then popular major of mechanical engineering.

After graduation, I moved to several cities but couldn't find an ideal job.

Thinking it would be safer to stay at home, he finally returned to the small town where he grew up.

After much inquiry, his parents arranged for him to work in a local cement factory, where he would go to the factory, the canteen and the dormitory every day. With a monthly salary of 4200 yuan, he worked diligently but lived in a daze.

The harsh environment eroded his body and the pale life buried his soul.

Those workers with smiling faces often say one thing in front of you and another behind your back. You always have to be careful when dealing with them, or you will be blamed if you are not careful.

The greasy-faced leaders like subordinates who flatter and take advantage of the situation. Sometimes Chen Zhou even feels sick when he has to respond to them with a few words against his will.

Female colleagues who drive small cars, carry purses, and walk around like catwalks at work are even more unacceptable. No one knows which big boss is standing behind them...

Days like this passed one after another, and the 365 days and nights seemed to be carved out of the same mold. Every time I opened my eyes, I knew what would happen that day.

Chen Zhou felt like he had been torn to pieces by the roaring machine.

His life was like the limestone in the factory. From the moment he was born, he was powerlessly submitting to the arrangements of fate.

Mined, crushed, homogenized, decomposed, burned, ground into powder, and then stayed somewhere forever until the day the world ends...

More than once, Chen Zhou wanted to leave a letter of resignation in a cool manner - the world is so big and I want to go see it.

Then just walked away.

But he is just an ordinary man after all, and as an only child he shoulders the burden of the family.

Whenever he thought of his parents who were getting older and healthier, and the relatives and friends who had taken care of his family over the years, Chen Zhou would give up this unrealistic and willful idea.

He could only choose to be patient and wait, wait for retirement, wait for death.

…………

The noisy sound of the crusher gradually faded, and another work day ended. The dusty workers shook off their work clothes stained white by dust, and left the factory in twos and threes, some going home or clamoring to go to small restaurants to eat and drink.

Chen Zhou returned to the dormitory alone, took off his work clothes, collapsed on the bed tiredly, and picked up his mobile phone.

Visiting forums is one of his few hobbies. In this online community where people don’t know each other, he can speak freely, relieve his boredom and be an “interesting soul”.

Moving his fingers up and down, Chen Zhou casually browsed through various posts.

See what "high-sounding ideas" the people in the retardation forum have, whether the brothers in the fishing forum are "lost in cyberspace", and what new jokes have been released in the hell joke forum...

Soon, a popular post titled [Challenge Robinson Crusoe: Survive on a Deserted Island for 10,000 Days] attracted Chen Zhou's attention.

The poster solemnly claimed that he was the new director of the Time Travel Administration, mainly responsible for producing various "large-scale cross-time and space reality challenge shows". This post was the registration entrance for the first primary survival challenge show.

In the post, he listed the general rules:

【1.挑战者的境遇与鲁滨逊·克鲁索完全相同，将于1659年9月30日下午商船失事流落孤岛时开始计时，生活10300天即为挑战成功。】

【2. The reward for a successful challenge is all the property that the challenger has the opportunity to obtain during the survival process.

These include but are not limited to 75 James I gold coins, each weighing 15.4 grams, 203 James I crown silver coins, each weighing 31 grams, 6 1 shilling silver coins, each weighing 6 grams, 1185 Spanish silver-plated copper coins, as well as 452 doubloons and 6 small gold bars weighing a total of 7 grams.

Note: If the challenger is able to obtain precious metals or luxury goods that are not mentioned in the original book during the challenge, they also belong to the challenger. 】

[3. The 10300 days that the challenger spends on the isolated island will not consume his time and life in the real world in the same proportion. When the challenger completes the challenge and leaves, 0.025 seconds of real time will pass.]

[4. The challenger will go to the isolated island alone and is not allowed to bring any other items except clothes, including but not limited to electronic products, medicines, books, food, tools...]

【5. In order to reduce the mortality rate of challengers and increase the fun of the challenge. When the challenge officially begins, challengers will receive an original copy of Robinson Crusoe that can be read endlessly, as well as a "mysterious reward" once every 15 days.】

[6. After the challenge begins, you are not allowed to quit or pause. If you die during the challenge, you will also die in the real world. The organizer is not responsible for the life and safety of the challenger, nor will it make any compensation for the death of the challenger. ]

[7. Reply to the post to participate in the challenge to successfully register. After passing the review, you will be automatically transferred to the "Cross-time and space large-scale reality challenge show venue" to officially start the challenge. ]

[8. The organizer reserves all rights of interpretation for this challenge. If you have any objections, please contact the Time Travel Administration.]

"It seems quite realistic, but it's all fake. It's better to believe that I am Qin Shi Huang than to believe that you are the director of the Time Travel Administration."

Silently complaining about this weird poster in his heart, Chen Zhou flipped through the replies below the post.

【I choose the blue pill! 】

[Choose, choose, can you give it to me after you choose? .jpg]

[+3...]

[Let's have a rational discussion. The risks and benefits of this challenge are totally disproportionate. Without taking into account the purity, collection value and casting loss, the total value of the gold and silver coins is no more than 72.

It takes 28 years and if things go wrong you might even lose your life, and the prize money is not even as much as those outdoor survival reality shows abroad.

Even if we go to support the construction of black brothers in Africa, the cost-effectiveness is higher than participating in this challenge.

Be honest, did the poster take a kickback from the challenger's reward? 】

[Taking kickbacks +1, I remember that the winner of the foreign variety show "Living Alone in the Wild" received a reward of $50, and he didn't have to risk his life and could quit at any time. Your conditions are too outrageous! ]

[To be honest, the difficulty of Robinson Crusoe's survival on a deserted island is much lower than that of "Alone in the Wild".

Robinson Crusoe had a dream start. He had an entire merchant ship's worth of supplies at his disposal, and he could survive for several months just by doing nothing but eating biscuits and bread.

Moreover, the island is rich in resources and has a warm climate suitable for farming. Two crops can be harvested a year. There are no large beasts, and there are large areas of wild fruits. There are flocks of goats, turtles, seabirds and pigeons. You can even kill seals to refine oil, and go out to sea to fish. As long as you are a little diligent, you will never starve to death.

The only cannibals who could be considered dangerous were those who fled in fear at the sound of gunfire and posed no threat to the challengers.

I think as long as your mental state is not affected and you are careful not to drink raw water and don’t get seriously ill, this is not really a survival challenge at all, it’s just like a vacation. 】

[The above poster is so humorous. One day, two days, or even half a month can be called a vacation, but can you spend 28 years on vacation? Modern people are averagely sub-healthy, lazy, and unable to distinguish between grains. They can't stand a little wind or rain. How can they be compared with Robinson Crusoe?

Apart from anything else, that shipload of supplies is in the sea and you can’t move it without being prepared to drown.

This is still the simplest one. Building a house and farming, catching goats and fishing, digging clay and firing pottery, which one do you know?

I'll throw you onto the beach and you'll just wait to die! 】

[I think the biggest difficulty of this challenge lies in the mental pressure.

On a deserted island in the 17th century, there was no Internet, no mobile phones, no snacks, no express delivery, no takeout, no technological products, and no modern facilities to improve the quality of life. It would be difficult for a normal person to adapt.

You have to know that this challenge lasts for more than 10,000 days. Not to mention ordinary people, even retired soldiers like Bear Grylls and Johnny English who often shoot survival challenges would have a mental breakdown.

Not to mention that they cannot be idle during these more than 365 days. They have to work intensively for days without a break, building houses, farming, raising sheep, picking fruits, being a carpenter and a farmer. There is endless work to do every day, and if they slack off a little, they may starve to death.

Even if it wasn't that serious, how many natural disasters and unexpected accidents would one have to face during twenty years of life on an isolated island.

In this situation, any sudden little thing may become the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

In this kind of environment, people will be extremely eager for companionship, and may even become depressed or schizophrenic due to the lonely situation.

Even if they manage to hold on for a long time, when the challenge is over, the challenger will have lost the ability to communicate with others due to being out of touch with society for a long time, and will find it difficult to integrate into modern society.

To be honest, with this level of difficulty and this high probability of irreversible mental damage, there is only this little reward. Even if it were true, no one would sign up. I suggest the thread owner modify the reward part to be more reasonable. 】

[Hey~ I have a bold idea!

I just checked, there were many big turtles on the isolated island where Robinson was stranded. The domestic translation translated it as hawksbill turtles. In the original book, Robinson caught a lot of hawksbill turtles to eat.

You know, the price of hawksbill turtle shells is not low. That isolated island is obviously the breeding habitat of hawksbill turtles.

If we can get a hundred or eighty hawksbill turtles, and keep the shells properly and bring them back to sell, we can at least make several million, which is much higher than the reward for successfully completing the challenge! 】

[Police: Keep talking. I’m listening.]

[Punishment! I want to see the punishment! ]

[In response to your bold ideas, our country has a complete set of criminal laws. ]

……

Friends have always been keen on talking about theory on paper. In just a few hours, they have built thousands of floors on the post. Among them are the +3 party with frivolous experience, the dedicated cereal brother, the crazy online fun-loving people, the foul-mouthed trolls, the nitpicking nitpickers, and also the big guys who have read the original work and analyzed it seriously.

Some people believe that Robinson's initial method of transporting supplies was unscientific. Repeatedly making rafts was both time-consuming and physically demanding, and there was also the risk of capsizing and sinking supplies, and the transportation capacity was seriously insufficient.

From a long-term perspective, if we spend more time at the beginning to build a raft that is strong enough and durable enough to repeatedly travel back and forth to the shipwreck on land, we can at least make a dozen more trips, or even dismantle part of the entire ship and take it away.

To support his point of view, he also sent out several hand-drawn design drawings of simple rafts with mortise and tenon structures in his reply, which indeed looked much more reliable than the raft that Robinson tied up with ropes.

A bar friend who called himself "Cloud Doomsday Survival Enthusiast" criticized Robinson, saying that although Robinson was hardworking, he undoubtedly caused a lot of shameful waste in the use of resources.

For example, goat skin and wild cat skin on the island. Since Robinson did not know how to tan fur, these raw materials that could be used to make clothes, shoes and belts had to be thrown away or dried in the sun so hard that they could not be used normally.

The island was short of resources, but it was enough to tan fur. Even without mineral leather materials such as hydrochloric acid, lime, alum, and chromium salt, animal brains and bird droppings could still be used to make leather using the ancient method. Apart from anything else, just this alone, Robinson Crusoe had wasted a lot of good things.

Some skilled workers in the ceramic industry pointed out that Robinson's method of firing pottery was primitive and backward, and gave detailed steps on how to find suitable clay, how to throw the pottery, how to glaze, and how to fire the pottery in the kiln.

The technician admitted that if the challenger could really master this process, it would greatly improve his quality of life on the island. At least he would not be like Robinson Crusoe, guarding an island full of high-quality ingredients but unable to drink a sip of broth.

In this online community with a huge number of users, there are talents from all walks of life, and the serious or informal suggestions they put forward are also varied.

There are carpenters who instruct challengers on how to use a plane, how to use a hand saw and a shovel, and how to use a chisel and a claw hammer to make comfortable and sturdy tables and chairs without nails.

There are handmade blacksmith enthusiasts who will instruct challengers on how to burn charcoal, make earthen forges, smelt metal and forge iron tools...

There are also radical "war maniacs" who instigate the challengers to conquer the cannibalistic primitive people on the island as soon as possible, build a large number of canoes to go out to sea, conquer the cannibals, arm and train a large army to sweep across South America, attack North America, and then unify the world and become the king.

There was even a guy who had his eyes on the cannibalistic natives of South America, claiming that he wanted to capture hundreds of them as wives, have three harems, six courtyards, and seventy-two concubines, have a thousand children, and have fun every night on an isolated island to establish a "hidden family."

Friends curiously searched for pictures of South American natives and couldn't help but sigh - Brother, you are really hungry!

Chen Zhou slowly browsed to the last reply. He wanted to make a sarcastic comment like everyone else, but a sentence suddenly popped up in his mind:

"When you have the opportunity to make a choice, don't let yourself regret it."

For some unknown reason, he silently deleted the words he had typed and replaced them with four words.

【Join the Challenge】

In fact, Chen Zhou was willing to believe from the bottom of his heart that this absurd post was true. He really hoped that God would give him a chance to risk his life for this money.

728000 may not be a big deal for those rich people.

But for him, this is a heavy number.

It would take him 14 years of saving without eating or drinking to earn this amount, and his parents' income after working hard for most of their lives was only close to this number.

This number means an opportunity to change your destiny.

It represents his hope for the rest of his life—the hope of escaping this bleak reality and the fate of mediocrity.

Staring at the screen, time passes by every second.

Sleepiness gradually came over him, and the words "participate in the challenge" became increasingly blurred. Chen Zhou did not receive any information or so-called review.

With a wry smile, Chen Zhou secretly lamented that he was as childish as a child who had not grown up, and closed his eyes.

In a trance, he had a strange dream.

In his dream, he was in a spacious, bright and white room, facing a series of sci-fi machines. He spoke his true feelings as if he was facing an old friend.

The desire to talk has never been so strong, Chen Zhou excitedly expressed his true thoughts.

How unwilling he was, and how much he hated his mediocrity and his powerlessness.

He hated the cement factory and the dullness of life. He wanted to change everything but was helpless.

He hated his own hypocrisy and hated himself for trying so hard to pretend that he didn't care about what others thought.

He also wanted to be recognized by others, and he also wanted his parents to speak of him with pride instead of regret when talking about him in front of relatives.

He wants himself, his parents, his relatives and friends to live a better life.

He longed for a rich life, fantasized about love, and looked forward to having a happy family...

He complained about things he dared not to complain about on normal days, cursed people he dared not to curse on normal days, complained about things he could not complain about on normal days, and poured out the bitterness in his stomach almost madly.

Just like that, after talking for an unknown amount of time, Chen Zhou heard a cold voice.

【examination passed】

(End of this chapter)