Xia Huai'an was a twenty-three-year-old male, a graduate of a Project 211 chemical engineering program who had spent a stint as a delivery driver after graduation.
As an amateur enthusiast, he had taken a helicopter to a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to participate in the "Solo Island Survival" challenge. The ten pieces of equipment he chose were: a backpack, a lighter, antibiotics (100 capsules of amoxicillin), a trenching tool, a tarp, dried chili peppers, a headlamp, rope, a dagger, and a stainless steel pot.
He was the only contestant who did not choose fishing or hunting gear such as fishing tackle and bows and arrows. This was likely the very reason he was lucky enough to be selected. The production team needed a clown to generate buzz.
Playing the pig to eat the tiger—who could have imagined that Xia Huai'an, this amateur weakling, actually had a completely realistic chance of winning the championship!
Xia Huai'an was extremely confident about this!
Because he had a secret weapon! Thinking of this, Xia Huai'an rubbed his belly, the corners of his mouth curling upward uncontrollably.
As long as nothing went wrong, the five-million-dollar prize was securely within his grasp!
However, things went wrong in a completely unsurprising way. Just as he was climbing onto the island using a rope ladder, a gust of wicked wind materialized out of thin air. The helicopter shook so violently it nearly fell apart, and the rope ladder whipped back and forth like a kite.
Xia Huai'an was nearly scared out of his wits, clinging desperately to the rope ladder and refusing to let go.
"Damn it, let go of the rope ladder! Do you want to get us all killed?!" The contestants from other countries on the helicopter began to panic and complain.
Pressured by the situation, the foreign co-pilot pressed a button, and the rope ladder detached entirely from the helicopter.
Xia Huai'an let out a cry, too late to let go, and was sucked straight into a pitch-black rift that had suddenly split open in midair.
Seconds later, the rift shrank again, turning into a thin, nearly imperceptible, twisted black line, and the helicopter finally regained control.
...
"Ah!" With a scream, Xia Huai'an plunged from a height of over ten meters, still clinging tightly to the rope ladder.
Then he landed squarely in a tree canopy. Fortunately, the rope ladder snagged on several branches, providing a very decent cushion.
Moments later, Xia Huai'an landed safely. Aside from a slightly sore backside and a somewhat dizzy head, he was completely uninjured.
"Where is this?" Xia Huai'an stood up, packed away the soaked rope ladder, and looked around at his surroundings.
This was a moderately dense mountain forest—definitely not the isolated island from the survival challenge.
Because the survival island had been under a clear, sunny sky, whereas right now the sky overhead was clearly overcast and drizzling.
Judging by the droplets of water on the ground and leaves, the light rain had clearly been falling for some time. Even if the weather on the island had changed suddenly, it wouldn't look like this.
"Not a survival island. Could I have run into a spacetime turbulence and ended up on some nearby island instead?"
"Will this get my competition slot cancelled?! Still, not dying from the fall and not dropping into the sea counts as pretty lucky!"
"Right, the production team bought massive insurance for every contestant! I might even be able to collect a hefty payout."
Xia Huai'an thought to himself with optimistic detachment.
He opened his backpack and checked all his equipment.
In addition to the ten items he had chosen himself, there was also a folding solar charging panel, two power banks, and a domestic-brand smartphone (ad space for rent) equipped with a satellite communication module.
The latter was equipment issued by the production team, meant for contestants to interact with viewers via live stream, with a requirement that the average daily live streaming interaction time must not be less than two hours.
Xia Huai'an turned on the phone and tapped open a live streaming app.
A system prompt appeared: "Weak signal. Unable to connect to live stream channel."
Xia Huai'an frowned, noticing that the satellite signal was at one bar, and even that single bar was unstable—flickering on and off, with no signal the majority of the time.
He tried opening WeChat and, after waiting a few minutes, saw a few messages.
"Bro, why haven't you started streaming yet? All the other contestants have!"
"Son, are you alright?!"
"Mr. Xia, where are you?"
The text messages were only a few dozen bytes in size, fast to transmit and able to come through, but emojis were very difficult to load, and image messages couldn't be received at all.
"The signal really is terrible, but at least it's not completely nonexistent." Xia Huai'an let out a sigh of relief.
As long as there was even a sliver of signal, the production team would be able to find him soon.
No longer worried about his safety, Xia Huai'an intended to continue with the challenge. He walked up the slope and quickly climbed to a relatively high rock. Through the gaps between the trees, he saw flat farmland and rows of houses at the foot of the mountain not far away.
"Great! There's a village!" Xia Huai'an was overjoyed. Where there was a village, there was a high probability of people. People meant he could ask about the basic situation, which was far more reliable than guessing blindly on his own.
Over an hour later, Xia Huai'an reached the foot of the mountain and happened to see a young woman chopping firewood.
The woman had an extremely skinny physique, wore loose, ill-fitting white coarse cloth garments, and wore her hair in a young married woman's bun, adorned with a piece of white cloth. Her skin was fair, and her delicate facial features carried a hint of childishness; she probably wasn't even twenty years old.
Judging by her bare face, she was absolute material to be a beauty, except she was simply too thin, completely devoid of color in her face, and somewhat malnourished. Still, if she dressed up, she could pull off a somewhat sickly, delicate charm. She also didn't seem to have much strength, able only to chop somewhat thin branches.
"What country is she from? She looks so impoverished!" Xia Huai'an stepped forward to greet her. Standing at one meter eighty, and having deliberately gained fifty pounds to prepare for the survival challenge, Xia Huai'an now weighed over two hundred and thirty pounds. To the young woman, he looked practically like a giant, which startled her.
Fortunately, the two of them shared a common language. The young woman actually spoke the Dragon Kingdom language as well, though her accent was rather heavy, sounding a bit like local speech from the Miao border regions. Her phrasing was quite peculiar—half-classical, half-vernacular—but fortunately, the general meaning was mostly understandable.
After chatting for a few minutes, Xia Huai'an's expression grew increasingly grim.
"This isn't the Dragon Kingdom, but some Great Qian. I've time-traveled!"
"This is probably some parallel world with extremely low technological standards in ancient times! And on top of that, it's a disaster-ridden era of war and chaos!"
An ancient famine era compared to ordinary wilderness survival was straight-up hell difficulty!
Furthermore, the challenge couldn't be quit; people genuinely died here!
"Could this young woman be a deliberate special effect arranged by the production team?! Can you even bring a phone across time travel? Can you even have a mobile signal?!" Xia Huai'an thought about it from another angle, finding it completely unimaginable.
Just then, a WeChat message popped up from a production crew member.
"Mr. Xia, the production team has lost contact with you. According to your weak mobile signal source positioning data, you are right on the island—specifically at the exact location where you landed. However, we are unable to locate you!"
"If you receive this message, please reply promptly."
Xia Huai'an hurriedly replied: "My signal here is extremely weak, I can only receive text messages. I ran into a woman who speaks the Dragon Kingdom language. Honestly, is this a prank pulled by you guys on the show? If so, I can play along—but you've got to pay me more!"