Chapter 289 - 289 146

Words : 1488 Updated : Oct 1st, 2025

289: 146. Fin Prints 289: 146. Fin Prints He left markings on the beach and searched for sources of food. The former could be easily done while foraging, yet the latter... The barren island offered no food sources related to plants or animals; it wasn’t like wild canned goods nested here. The only possibility lay upon the sea’s surface. Leaving the warm shelter of Windbreak Point, the cool sea breeze carried away some of the warmth his body radiated. Lu Li placed the empty can by the water collection spot, took off his shoes and held them in his hands, and walked towards the beach near the sea. He moved along the shoreline, the cold frothy waves washing over his feet, engulfing his ankles and sweeping away his footprints left behind. The noise of the waves was deafening, yet Lu Li saw no sign of life. Aside from shells, he found no living creatures on the beach; it seemed a similar halt in growth that affected plants also reached the sea. There may be a problem, but it wasn’t severe. At least the fishing boats from Rhodest Port sailed out daily. After walking 200 meters, Lu Li found a palm-sized, unidentified silver fish on the light-colored beach. It had been dead for a while, rotting and inedible. Lu Li picked up the fish by the tail and continued on with it. It might prove useful, and if not, at least it could keep potential predators away from the vicinity of Windbreak Point. About 500 meters later, Lu Li reached the end of this beach. He continued along the curved coastline, making his way around to the side of the island. The terrain changed here, the brown beach interspersed with some protruding dark reef stones, which increased in density as he moved forward. These reef stones were just the tip of the iceberg, mostly hidden beneath the sand and gravel. After stepping on a hidden reef stone beneath the gravel, Lu Li put his large boots back on. Some sea snails clung to the bottoms of the stones close to the water. Lu Li broke one off, only to find it empty inside. He snapped off a few more nearby and finally saw some living snail flesh. Lu Li placed it back on the reef stone. If he found no other sources of food, these sea snails might just stave off hunger, although they shouldn’t be consumed in large quantities. Moving on, the reef stones became so dense that he had to navigate around them. Looking into the distance, the beach seemed to sprout a layer of dense, black spots, ugly and hair-raising. But it unexpectedly brought Lu Li a surprise: a pool of water surrounded by reef stones. The tide pool, close to the sea’s surface, was about ten meters in length and width, with a depth of only about twenty-some centimeters, and contained no fish. However, a watermark more than ten centimeters high was left on the surrounding stones. It was low tide now, but when high tide came, this pool would briefly connect with the sea. If Lu Li could manage to get fish from the sea into the pool during high tide, some of them would be trapped there as the tide receded. That would become his main source of food. Lu Li still had the stone flake with him. Using a nearby reef stone as a cutting board, he sliced the silver fish open, cutting it into fine pieces as much as possible, and threw it into the tide pool. Splash— A dense sprinkling of small splashes appeared, then settled down to calm. The fish chunks slowly drifted to the bottom. Lu Li took off his shoes, moved to the exit of the pool, and piled up an inward-gathering sand wall to ensure that more fish would remain after the tide went out. It didn’t take much time. A few minutes later, the exit of the tide pool leading to the sea was blocked by a sand wall, just a few centimeters higher than a hand and leaving less than a half-meter wide gap. The water’s surface in the pool turned somewhat murky, but it would clear up again before long. Having returned to the rocky shore to put on his shoes, Lu Li took one last look at the waterhole and continued to explore the coastline of the island. He made his way to the north side of the island, directly opposite Windbreak Point, where the sandy beach returned to its original state, devoid of ugly rocks. The width of the beach here was only about thirty meters, with the narrow, elongated sands making the sea and the forest seem almost adjacent. Lu Li walked along the edge of the waves, continuing his search for other food sources when suddenly a row of footprints caught his eye. The footprints were about a dozen meters ahead and would be difficult to spot without getting closer. They stretched from the sea towards the forest, lying across his path. Lu Li looked around cautiously and approached the footprints. As he got closer, he saw the shape of the footprints and noticed more scattered prints nearby. The prints resembled some sort of fin, and Lu Li compared them to his shoes, finding these fin prints to be larger than a human’s foot, with a fishy smell and some mud from the deep sea lingering inside some of the prints. Lu Li counted the fin prints on the stretch of sand—there were twelve sets of tracks back and forth, indicating there were no more than twelve creatures that left these prints. These footprints were recent, probably left within the past several hours. Lu Li looked back at his own footprints, which stretched from a distance to right beneath his feet. However, his tracks would be concealed after the tide came in. And a piece of good news was that Lu Li had not found similar footprints on the side of the island with the cliffs. The fin-footed beings that landed on the island had not yet ventured to the other side, but if they did come back, finding the wooden hut and Windbreak Point wouldn’t take long—it was, after all, an island only a few hundred meters across. Lu Li decided to follow the footprints; he wanted to determine the origins and destinations of these beings and, more importantly, whether they would return. But as Lu Li was about to take off his boots and step onto the fin prints to follow, an uneasy feeling arose within him. It seemed as if setting foot into the fin prints could lead to something quite unpleasant. Lu Li followed his intuition, which was becoming more acute and accurate due to a lowering Sanity Value, but he couldn’t just walk straight into the forest. If the owners of the fin prints were intelligent, leaving such tracks would be incredibly foolish. After pondering for a moment, Lu Li retraced his steps, leaving a trail that would be swallowed by the rising tide, and retreated to the rocky area on the east side of the island, making his way through the forest on the rocks, back to the area where he’d discovered the prints. The mud stains left on the brownish-yellow dead grass were fairly distinct, and Lu Li followed these marks, taking care not to get any on himself, but as he went deeper into the forest, the mud stains became increasingly sparse until they vanished completely. Lu Li continued in the direction they appeared to have gone for another hundred meters, until he reached the beach and the sea visible ahead, and then stopped. Having lost the trail, Lu Li returned to the vicinity of the fin prints. He continued along the edge of the forest and beach and, after about fifteen minutes, completed a circuit of the island, returning to the base of the cliffs. The fin prints were only present in the initial area he had found them, and he could not determine where they came from or their purpose for landing on the island. This cast a shadow over Lu Li’s heart, dispelling the joy he’d felt at having found the waterhole. Lu Li abandoned the plan of leaving conspicuous markers. If investigators were to come for a rescue, they wouldn’t miss this island. After checking the water collection point and seeing the drops still falling, he returned to Windbreak Point. To be on the safe side, he planned to deepen the sandpit and find something to block Windbreak Point, but only after waking up. Crawling into Windbreak Point, the sand and surrounding rocks beneath him no longer felt cold, beginning to emit a comforting warmth instead. Lu Li put several moist logs into the fire, which would burn for a long time, then curled up at the very back of Windbreak Point and fell asleep.

Chapter 289 - 289 146

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