The Creators: From Night City

After taking two more sips of fresh rainwater with a refreshing earthy scent, Jiang Bingshui, who hadn't eaten anything proper for more than a year, felt full and lay down on the ground with satisfaction.

After eating the fruitwood-roasted venison, Saburo Arasaka is no match for me!

If you were in Night City, you wouldn't be able to get any of these things no matter how rich you are.

Night City, don’t contact me anymore, I’m afraid she will misunderstand.

Jiang Bing waited until the rain outside subsided before he struggled to get up from his lying position.

While hunting previously, Jiang Bing had discovered a dilapidated village hidden among the mountains on the hillside of another mountain not far away through the dense tree canopy.

Although it was obvious to the naked eye that the village had been uninhabited and abandoned for a long time, the impoverished Jiang Bing did not despise it. He believed that such a large village must have some gains, even a whole usable pot would be good.

It doesn’t matter if it’s broken, Jiang Bing can fix it anyway.

Chapter 31 Female Savage

Jiang Bing, who changed his job to become a garbage man, seemed to have returned to the days when he was in charge of the Night City garbage dump.

In fact, there are many situations in which garbage is picked up.

Like the garbage dump in Night City, to put it bluntly, it is like gold hidden in shit. Apart from being a bit dirty, smelly and hard work, this job often brings people a sense of happiness that comes without any effort.

Of course, this is the feedback that comes from the large amount of dopamine secreted when you pick up valuable items.

If you work hard for half a day and only pick up some leftovers and worthless scraps, I believe this behavior will hardly make you feel a sense of accomplishment.

This kind of garbage picking is just garbage picking, a hard and low-reward low-level labor method.

Some people who choose it will not even consider it.

Fortunately, Jiang Bing, who was penniless and had nothing, was now very easy to satisfy, so he was in high spirits on the way to the village.

The originally heavy rain gradually subsided, and the forest was filled with the unique fresh scent after the rain, which made Jiang Bing, who had inhaled too much methanol exhaust, feel comfortable all over.

First, he climbed up a cliff of more than ten meters with a few jumps, and then jumped onto a pine branch four or five meters away from the rock. Jiang Bing imitated Tarzan, following the shortest way of traveling in a straight line between two points, swinging on the steep cliff and finally landing on the other side.

In this way, you can easily take a shortcut and cover a distance that usually takes half an hour on a winding mountain road.

The village is not big, but the overall layout is very simple and ancient.

The entire village is built on the mountain, with houses stretching to the mountainside. Most of the building materials are taken from nearby mountains and forests, mainly wood.

Although it is a bit simple, it can be seen from the overall architectural layout that the entire village has a strong Japanese Kamakura period style.

The village must have been abandoned for a long time, and many houses are on the verge of collapse due to disrepair.

Jiang Bing chose a house that looked the most sturdy and went in to check the situation first.

There was no need to consider whether to pry the lock or not. The wooden door and the door hinges were directly separated from the door frame by the visitor's push.

Judging from the furnishings in the rooms, the villagers did not evacuate due to some sudden disaster. Although their departure was somewhat hasty, it could still be considered a planned evacuation.

The layout of the house was not messy, but apart from some valuables and daily necessities, there were still a lot of things (mostly medium and large furniture that were difficult to carry) left behind.

Most of these things have already rotted away, and the coarse cloth bedding has become hardened over the long years and merged with the dust.

But something hanging in a prominent position in the living room caught Jiang Bing's attention.

It was a picture of the American Star-Spangled Banner.

Although it looks a bit dirty and there are many holes on the flag caused by insects and rats, the classic layout and red and white colors are very easy to recognize.

? !

Questions arose in Jiang Bing's mind.

Although it is normal for the American flag to appear on Japanese territory, it should at least be placed in different places.

It is acceptable for the American flag to appear in government agencies, military bases, and even at the gates of the Japanese Imperial Palace.

However, this is obviously an ancient Japanese village with a long history, and the appearance of this thing seems particularly inconsistent.

Putting this question aside for the time being, Jiang Bing began to rummage through the drawers and cabinets in each room, looking for something he could use.

In this process, many unreasonable things happened.

After breaking into several empty houses, Jiang Bing discovered that almost every household had many commonly used iron tools.

Almost every household has a set of agricultural tools such as shovels, hoes, sickles and axes, and the villagers had no intention of taking them with them when they evacuated, so they just left them in storage.

From this point of view, this village does not look like a traditional ancient Japanese rural area. You must know that in ancient Japan where resources were scarce and smelting technology was not well developed, ironware was a very valuable and important asset, and such a number of iron farm tools could only appear in such a wild corner in modern times with developed productivity.

The villagers' behavior of abandoning them at will when they evacuated pushed this time further back to the modern era, because the closer we are to the industrially developed modern era, the lower the value of these industrial products.

Backwardness and advancement, simplicity and modernity, closedness and openness are all intertwined in this small village, making Jiang Bing more and more curious about the situation on this island.

After walking around the entire village, Jiang Bing discovered another stone statue about one meter tall on the hillside next to the village.

The stone statue was carved directly from the hard cliff. Although it is not large in size, the craftsman's craftsmanship is quite good.

This is a seated female statue. Different from the Japanese Buddhist statues that are widely circulated in Japan and localized, the statue does not have any elements related to Buddhism. Instead, it has a strong local Shinto style.

The seated statue is dressed in the ancient "shin-chui", a wide-sleeved garment usually worn only by priests. However, it does not wear a matching tall hat. Instead, it has a shrine maiden hairstyle, with several very narrow and straight hairpins forming a circle behind the head and inserted into the bun, making it look like there is a sun disc on the back of the head.

Jiang Bing confirmed that he had no knowledge of this image in his memory, but he was not surprised. After all, Japan is known for its eight million gods, and there are so many images of gods and ghosts that even they themselves cannot figure them out.

Perhaps this is the native deity of this island.

From the village, Jiang Bing easily collected a full set of adzes, chisels, axes and saws needed to become a carpenter.

Although it was a bit crude, with the tools in hand, Jiang Bing planned to make some simple self-defense weapons on the spot.

White elm, with its tough and strong wood that is not easy to break or crack, is an ideal wood for making spears.

A white elm tree as thick as a bowl was cut down and dragged back to the flat rock that served as a workbench. With Jiang Bing's skillful hands, the tree trunk was quickly split and cut into shape.

The iron sheet removed from the furniture was quickly fitted onto the pre-cut spear tip by the powerful blow of the hammer in Jiang Bing's hand, and was then fixed with an iron hoop.

After attaching the metal spear tip, Jiang Bing took the semi-finished product in his hand and weighed it a few times. His "craftsman's" instinct made him instantly aware of the unreasonable parts of the spear.

The next step was to cut and level it again so that the center of gravity of the spear would be stable in the middle and front part, ensuring the stability of the flight trajectory when thrown. Finally, the spear body was polished. Since no usable rope could be found, Jiang Bing could only carve a few circles of anti-slip grooves at the handshake position.

A spear, handmade with simple carpenter's tools but of quality far exceeding that of industrial products, was completed.

Jiang Bing deliberately lengthened and thickened the spear to ensure that it could last longer in the subsequent violent confrontation.

After being polished, the spear feels very good to hold, but its lethality is too small. It only causes penetrating wounds and it is difficult to cause fatality on the spot if it does not hit the vital points.

This made Jiang Bing miss his chainsaw sword which was convenient for cutting open people's stomachs.

However, there is not even a primitive smelting furnace at the moment. It is not impossible to build one on the spot, but there is no plan to perform any island survival on this island. There is really no need for that. The important thing is to find the nearest human gathering point.

In human society, these are trivial matters.

After packing the simple tools he had repaired and throwing them into a random house, Jiang Bing prepared to go back to the simple shelter he had built before to bring back all the leftover food. The terrain there was relatively high, so he could observe the terrain of this area at the same time.

Return along the same route.

The bonfire had long since died out, but the smoldering smoke produced more smoke, making it easier to spot in the air.

Holding a spear, Jiang Binggang frowned as he returned to the door of the shelter.

Something is lost~

Before leaving, Jiang Bing hung three deer legs over the fire to smoke, but now only two are left.

The undisturbed raw meat on the ground and an inconspicuous black handprint on the other deer leg indicated that this was a human theft.

Jiang Bing was a little angry.

If you want to steal something, just steal it. If you don’t take anything, why don’t you touch anything and not wash your hands?

So he immediately prepared to have a good argument with the thief, which would also be a good opportunity to formally interact with the indigenous people on the island.

In order to prevent himself from leaving footprints on the soft ground after the rain, the thief walked on the grass and bushes all the way, occasionally jumping onto fallen dead trees and rocks, and climbing along the trees from time to time.

"A little clever, but not much." Jiang Bing gave his assessment in his mind.

Not to mention Jiang Bing's superhuman senses, even an experienced old hunter could determine the thief's path from the direction of fallen grass and bushes, accidentally broken branches, traces of friction between the soles of his shoes and rocks and tree trunks, and mud spots thrown along the way.

What's more, in the second half of the journey, the thief probably thought the distance was far enough, so he simply stopped hiding and ran along the forest path.

Jiang Bing followed the trail to the narrow cave entrance, and a familiar fragrance came from the crack, which was wide enough for a person to pass sideways.

That's Jiang Bing's roasted venison leg.

Hearing the cheerful chewing sounds coming from the cave, Jiang Bing stretched his face and squeezed into the cave, blocking the mastermind behind the scenes inside the cave.

This is a savage.

Her long hair was loose, matted into clumps and covered in dirt, but one could still roughly make out its original golden color.

He wore a baggy, ill-fitting modern men's jacket on his upper body, and a few strips of cloth wrapped around his lower body. He also wore jeans that he had picked up from somewhere, and they had been worn to pieces by branches and rocks.

Likewise, these clothes were also covered in stains.

This postmodern realist mix made Jiang Bing, who had just come out of an ancient Japanese village, feel a little confused about time and space.

The savage who was busy eating saw someone squeezing into the cave. He hurriedly and terrifiedly threw away the deer leg in his hand, crawled from behind him to grab a long stick as a weapon, and pointed at Jiang Bing tremblingly.

With the natural light coming in from the cave entrance, Jiang Bing finally saw the savage's true face and what was in his hand.

Beneath the withered and weed-like hair was a young, typical Germanic female face.

He has a vertically long and slender facial contour, a high nose bridge, thin lips, and a pair of green eyes in his slightly sunken eye sockets. His overall facial features appear very deep.

Even though she is covered in dust, she still looks very good. She should be a beauty after cleaning herself up.

What she was holding in her hand was an M1 Garand rifle, which was standard issue to American soldiers during World War II, but the rifle was in very poor condition.

For Jiang Bing, judging a gun is much more accurate than judging a person. He knew at a glance that this old antique, which was about to fall apart, had already been damaged and had no bullets.

The situation became more and more bizarre. On an isolated island full of Japanese-style buildings, a European and American female savage appeared, holding an antique from World War II that might be older than her.

But this did not prevent her from taking advantage of the power of others.

She pointed the gun at Jiang Bing viciously, her tone a little hysterical: "F**K, don't move, or I'll make a few holes in your body."

Judge Jiang, who had been threatened too many times and had accumulated sufficient experience in this regard, looked at the contestant's aggressive behavior and gave sharp comments in his mind.

"The dialogue is stiff and rigid, and the emotions are not very rich. The overall feeling is that it is strong on the outside but weak on the inside. I can only give it a score of 2. I hope it will settle down after watching it for a while."

Jiang Bing slammed the javelin in his hand to the ground and said coldly, "Alright, stop pretending. That spear has been broken for a long time. It's not even as good as a firewood stick now."

The female savage was suddenly panicked, but still tried hard to remain calm.

Jiang Bing pointed at the deer leg thrown on the ground and said, "Tell me, why did you steal my things? And where is this?"

What was strange was that as soon as Jiang Bing asked the question, the woman, who should have been even more panicked, suddenly calmed down.

She took two steps forward and carefully looked at Jiang Bing at the entrance of the cave.

After confirming that his clothes, although a little stiff after being soaked in sea water and drying, were still decent; his face was very neat, not as if it had not been carefully trimmed for a long time; and there were no disgusting tattoos on various parts of his body, he surprisingly relaxed.

And asked a question that Jiang Bing had never thought about.

"You~~just arrived on the island today?"

Chapter 32: Yematai

Although he was very curious about how the woman in front of him came to the conclusion that she could tell that he had just arrived on the island when they first met, after a brief thought, Jiang Bing nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

This action made the woman feel like she had put down a heavy burden, and she completely relaxed.

"Oh, thank God." She dropped her rifle and wanted to get closer to Jiang Bing, but she seemed a little at a loss because she had been alone for too long.

"How did you get on this island?" The woman talked to herself, and then asked and answered herself.

"Hey, of course it's because of that damn storm."

After venting for a while, the woman calmed down and answered Jiang Bing's questions somewhat weakly, which also solved all the questions he had accumulated since he landed on the island.

"I heard those damn religious lunatics mention that this is a place called Yamatai, a land cursed by the devil."

"Yamatai!"

The island cursed by the 'Sun Queen' Himiko in Tomb Raider?!

No wonder there are endless storms surrounding the entire island, and no wonder there are American flags and standard US military rifles from World War II.

In the history of this world, Japan, which retreated during World War II, set its sights on Yamatai, which was surrounded by storms all year round, in order to defend its homeland. After paying a heavy price, a small number of survivors from the fleet that suffered heavy losses finally landed on the island and built a fortress to prepare to study the secrets of the storm.

The United States, upon receiving the news, also sent troops into the island, but no one expected that it would be difficult to get in and extremely difficult to get out.