I am having such terrible luck. Really, I have never seen anyone as unlucky as myself. All I did was have a momentary impulse to become a social media lifestyle blogger—did I really deserve to be punished like this?
At this moment, Chu Qingmeng sat huddled at the bottom of a pit, staring around in absolute despair. Everything was pitch black.
She thought back to three days ago.
It was two-thirty in the morning, and Chu Qingmeng was still wide awake, scrolling through videos on her phone. She watched wilderness survival and bushcraft bloggers living the high life—look at those view counts! Look at those follower numbers! Anyone could tell they were making an absolute fortune! So, in the dead of night, she bolted upright in her rented apartment bed and let out a roar: "I've decided! I'm going to be a blogger and make a fortune!"
Fueled by that burning passion, the very next day she bought a mountain of outdoor survival and bushcraft gear, picked out a remote, rugged deep mountain range, and began her wilderness life...
However, the poor naive soul had no idea that other people's wilderness building wasn't actually done out in the middle of nowhere, and their outdoor survival came with professional teams guaranteeing basic safety. This blockhead had simply relied on her own fiery enthusiasm to kick off her pipe dream, which led directly to her current situation: staring up at the sky from the bottom of a pit.
Chu Qingmeng had already been stuck in the pit for two days. She never expected that on her very first day here, before she even managed to drag all this gear to her destination, she would miss a step and fall right into a hole.
Only two paths lay before her: go left or go right. Having tormented herself with indecision for two full days, she finally gritted her teeth and decided to leave the choice to the heavens. Rather than waiting here to eat through her rations and starve to death, she might as well take a gamble! And so she resorted to the classic childhood counting-out rhyme to make her pick.
Struggling under the weight of a portion of her gear, she switched on her flashlight, strapped a dagger to her thigh to pump herself up, and crawled off toward the right.
Chu Qingmeng had no idea how long she had been crawling, only that her mouth and throat felt bone-dry. Just as she wanted to stop for a sip of water, her hand suddenly met empty air and she tumbled straight down. Luckily the drop wasn't high—only about thirty centimeters—leaving her with just a few scrapes.
Chu Qingmeng swept her flashlight beam around and realized this was a massive cavern. Just as she wanted to stand up and take a closer look, she felt a violent tremor shake the ground.
*Oh no! An earthquake?!*
While Chu Qingmeng was still panicking, dirt began to rain down all around her, and the cave entrance she had just come through collapsed in an instant. She threw herself sideways, barely managing to dodge a falling boulder. Just as she thought she was going to die right here, the tremors stopped.
Chu Qingmeng looked at the sealed entrance and forced a bitter smile. If she had hesitated in that tunnel a moment longer, she probably would have been buried alive. But at this point, starving to death and suffocating under a pile of dirt didn't make much difference—it just meant buying herself a few extra days.
As she was mentally calculating how many days she had left to live, she suddenly heard a loud *bang*.
Chu Qingmeng jerked her head up toward the source of the noise. Was that... a gunshot?
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
Three more gunshots rang out. Chu Qingmeng stared wide-eyed in the direction of the sound. There was no mistake—those were gunshots! They sounded just like the live-fire shooting range experience she had paid to join in Russia a few months ago!
So there were people here?! Living people?!
Chu Qingmeng felt a surge of hope and sprinted toward the source of the noise.
When she reached the origin of the sounds, she was shocked to see torches blazing along the walls. With the illumination, Chu Qingmeng realized this wasn't any ordinary natural cave! The walls were carved with numerous intricate patterns. Unfortunately, she couldn't make out what they depicted, but that didn't stop her from recognizing that this was an ancient tomb! It looked just like the ancient tombs in television dramas!!
That meant the hole she had fallen through earlier must have been a legendary robber's shaft?! And the gunshots just now were grave robbers fighting a gun battle?
Lost in thought, she stumbled and almost tripped. She looked down and was so startled she nearly screamed out loud. The moment her mouth flew open, pure reason took over, and she clamped both hands tightly over her lips.
A dead person was lying on the ground! Blood pooled everywhere!
There were grave robbers with guns in this tomb. She couldn't let them find her—what if they killed her?
Chu Qingmeng forced herself to calm down. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed three bodies lying on the ground. One of them had his face and hand sprawled into what looked like a drainage trench. As she glanced past him, she caught sight of a star tattoo on the back of his neck.
Emboldened by desperation, she started rifling through their backpacks and belongings. Drawing on her years of experience playing battle royale games, "looting boxes" was mandatory! Her food supply would only last two more days; if she wanted to survive this unpredictable situation, she had to loot the crates—especially the survival supplies! That was the key to making it to the final circle!
Even though she was terrified of corpses and her hands were shaking, it couldn't stop her determination to loot!
In the end, she managed to acquire a pistol, thirty rounds of ammunition, twenty packs of compressed biscuits, and five bottles of water. She left the other gear and the two remaining firearms behind, taking only the ammunition because she wouldn't know how to use the guns anyway, and the rest consisted of professional grave-robbing tools.
Having finished looting, Chu Qingmeng decided to keep tracking the grave robbers. Her best bet was to find them and tail them quietly; maybe that way she could follow them out.
And so Chu Qingmeng chose to press deeper inside. In truth, she had no choice—staying put meant starving to death, while finding them offered a slim thread of survival!
However, just after Chu Qingmeng walked away, the dead body lying in the drainage trench twitched a finger...