r18novel Chapter 136 Benign Small Groups
Chapter 136 Benign Small Groups
Chapter 136 Benign Small Groups
"It's finally here!"
Su Jin's spirits lifted, and he immediately gestured to Shen Ruying, telling her to lower the sail and slow down.
To avoid being attacked if he approached rashly as before, this time he decided to observe first.
Before setting sail today, they actually made a lot of preparations.
For example, last night, Shen Ruying and Shen Qiaoqiao didn't get up until late, and then they couldn't fall back asleep in the middle of the night.
So they took it upon themselves to smelt the iron ore that Su Jin had brought back.
By morning, a small portion of the iron ore had been consumed.
The finished pig iron was immediately distributed by Su Jin.
The first step is to allocate a portion of the resources and have Shen Qiaoqiao and Lin Xuan work together to launch a series of attacks.
Secondly, we need to make a set of gathering tools and a simple suit of armor for Sun Daqing.
This was to prevent him from being killed instantly by a sea monster attack while he was alone on the island, thus giving him time to escape.
Su Jin's ship is now fully loaded with ammunition. Anyone who dares to attack his ship again will be reduced to dust!
Su Jin raised his binoculars and looked in the direction of three o'clock that Li Yuanyuan had indicated.
This island is different from the pile of rocks that was the bandit's den before. Its terrain is undulating like a woman's curves, with large, continuous hills extending all the way to the sea.
At the end of the beach, a steep cliff rises abruptly, at least fifty or sixty meters high.
"That's interesting."
Su Jin adjusted the focus.
This group of people really knows how to pick a location; they actually dug out a row of caves halfway up the cliff.
A dozen or so rope ladders hang down from the cave entrance. Normally, people climb up and down, but when they encounter sea monsters or enemy attacks, they can retract the ladders, turning the cave into a natural bunker.
This terrain is typically easy to defend and difficult to attack; it's a high ground position, and even a sea monster with wings would have a hard time getting a bite out of it.
The platform at the cave entrance is bustling with activity right now.
There were about fifteen or sixteen people working, and the male-to-female ratio was surprisingly balanced, unlike the previous group of bandits who were all bachelors.
Some of them were tidying up fishing nets, while others were polishing stone spears. They looked very organized and showed no signs of the panic that comes with a doomsday survival scenario.
Moreover, it appears to be a peaceful small social structure with no distinction between upper and lower classes.
With a shift in his gaze, Su Jin's eyes locked onto the center of this group.
It was a woman standing on the highest rocky platform.
She was wearing a red coat that she had somehow gotten her hands on. Although the hem was filthy and the sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, she somehow managed to make it look like a high-class runway piece.
The woman had her arms crossed over her chest. She was tall and had long, shiny black hair that was casually tied into a ponytail at the back of her head, with a few stray strands hanging down in front of her forehead, dancing wildly in the sea breeze.
At this moment, she was pointing at several men carrying supplies, frowning but not showing any impatience.
"Be careful, handle that box gently—keep these wild vegetables out of direct sunlight, and take the ones that need to be dried outside, don't put them upside down—"
Although he couldn't hear the sound from so far away, Su Jin automatically matched the audio to the lip movements and the expression that resembled his when he was giving a command.
"She's a capable leader, and a woman at that. She seems quite capable, at least—better than you."
He turned to look at Lin Xuan, who had just come out of the rear cabin, and couldn't help but tease her a little in the second half of his sentence.
Lin Xuan never expected that she would get caught in the crossfire just for coming out to join in the fun.
She snatched the binoculars from Su Jin's hand and looked at the new continent.
"Hmm, a fairly cohesive little group, a leader has emerged, and then everyone works together—it has a bit of a utopian feel to it —"
"Judging from this, there shouldn't be any bad seeds in this team, otherwise they would have started slacking off and causing trouble long ago — of course, it's also possible that they're slacking off in places we can't see."
"Maybe." Su Jin took the binoculars back, observed for a while, and commented, "It does seem to be a healthy little team, and its development is booming, but its shortcomings are also obvious. It's still in a primitive state and doesn't even have iron tools."
"As for weapons, there aren't even any spears, just crude stone tools. It seems that no one inside has any experience in wilderness survival."
"If they're all people who come from offices, they're just a bunch of mediocre cobblers at best."
At this moment, Li Yuanyuan and Shen Ruying also came over, and Shen Qiaoqiao also came out of her workroom.
The little girl took her own monocular telescope and glanced in that direction, muttering, "If they had a craftsman like me, they wouldn't be living such a miserable life."
"It's not that bad." Su Jin didn't deny it, but said calmly, "But your forging hammer is terrifying and you'll never be able to leave this world, because if this small team on the island continues like this, it will fall apart sooner or later."
Shen Ruying stroked her daughter's head and said, "To survive the cold wave, food, water, and heating are all essential, but given their limited resources in this small area and their agrarian lifestyle, it's clearly not enough."
"Didn't you notice that there are no hunting teams here? That means their strategy for dealing with sea monsters is to avoid battle, and they rarely retaliate against them."
"According to Brother Su, sea monsters are both a crisis and a high-level resource. If we give up this resource, we will not go far in this world."
She paused, then her tone became more serious: "In a group, if there isn't enough food and someone goes hungry, complaints will arise, affecting team morale and creating a vicious cycle."
Upon hearing this, Shen Qiaoqiao pursed her lips and said, "I know, it's a principle from books. The more people there are, the harder it is to manage. If you don't have the ability, the team simply can't be maintained."
Su Jin began to look at the mother and daughter with newfound respect. After all, she was a former CEO, and when she wasn't panicking, she still had some sense.
This is starting to shatter the "dumb beauty" persona.
He nodded and said, "That's right, the same applies to our team. I have to support the whole team by myself. It's not that I go hunting alone, but that I go hunting."
"These obvious logistical tasks still require the leader to repeatedly arrange them, and the people below all seem clumsy. It seems to be a team that looks good on the surface, but is actually terrible internally."
"Once this leader leaves, things could fall into chaos internally. It's not that they won't know what to do, it's just that—"
contradiction."
Upon hearing these two words, Li Yuanyuan tilted her head and asked, puzzled, "Why would there be a conflict? Wasn't it supposed to be a fairly united team?"
Su Jin sneered: "It only seems that way. When someone is keeping them in check, that's true, but when no one is keeping them in check, they'll have their own ideas, like slacking off."
"Once the leader leaves, look over there, that man in blue, sneaking down the suspension ladder—what's he up to?"
Everyone turned around and saw that someone was slowly climbing down the ladder, moving very carefully.
After landing, he threw down the simple basket on his back and ran to a nearby grove of trees to find a place to lie down.
He thought he was foolproof, but Su Jin and the others could see it clearly from this angle.
Clearly, the man didn't notice that someone was working in the woods, and his slacking off was discovered in no time.
Su Jin smiled and said, "The show is about to begin. I can read lips, so I'll translate for you."