Chapter 44: Happy Birthday

Or maybe, he got lost and couldn’t find his way back here?

In that case, Liu Hui felt that she would definitely die here, either scared to death, starved to death, or… killed by wild wolves.

Many thoughts flooded into Liu Hui’s mind, making her fear and terror pile up more and more. At one point, she felt she had already surpassed her limit for enduring fear.

Come back quickly! Please come back quickly!

Actually, Lü Yang hadn’t been gone for long, but Liu Hui’s own fear and terror made every moment feel like a year. When Lü Yang emerged from the darkness a quarter of an hour later, carrying a pheasant and two pheasant eggs, Liu Hui was so excited that tears welled up in her eyes.

At that moment, she felt a sense of displacement in her heart, a feeling of mistakenly thinking of Lü Yang as her father, because, in the past, she only felt this kind of safety when she was by her father’s side.

“Almost let it get away, haha.” Lü Yang looked quite proud. Catching this pheasant was somewhat unexpected for him. Pheasants weren’t like clumsy domesticated chickens; they were very alert. At the slightest sign of trouble, they would immediately run off and disappear, especially at night.

“Let’s roast it and eat it quickly!” Liu Hui looked at the pheasant in Lü Yang’s hands with immense joy, as if she was seeing a delicious, oily roast chicken.

“Do you have a lighter?” Lü Yang asked Liu Hui.

“No…”

“Matches?”

“No either…”

The air fell into silence again. The nice scenes from movies and novels became powerless once more. Turning a pheasant into a roast pheasant wasn’t an easy task without fire.

“Shall we try rubbing sticks to make fire?” Liu Hui suggested to Lü Yang.

“Let’s try.” Lü Yang nodded. He had no other ideas at the moment.

…

Lü Yang spent half an hour proving that rubbing sticks to make fire was a difficult dream to achieve for modern people.

“Damn it! Going crazy!” Lü Yang threw away the wooden stick in his hand angrily. Forget fire, after rubbing for a long time, he didn’t even see a single spark. Who said you could get fire by rubbing sticks? Lü Yang really wanted to try rubbing that stick into that person’s head.

After that, Lü Yang started trying the flint method to make fire…

The two stones did produce sparks when struck together, but these sparks simply couldn’t ignite anything. Finally, Lü Yang heavily dropped one stone on his own foot. After a howl of pain, he completely gave up on the flint method.

“I read online before that rubbing sticks to make fire requires skill… If we had a mobile phone, we could look it up online,” Liu Hui muttered a few words nearby.

Online… Lü Yang suddenly thought of his Eerie Computer… Although that thing couldn’t send messages out, there was no problem using it to look up information online.

Thinking of this, Lü Yang quickly closed his eyes, brought up the Eerie Computer screen, and connected to the internet simulated by the Eerie Network. He soon found many techniques for rubbing sticks to make fire. One very practical one was the bow drill method, and it even noted that if you didn’t have a string, you could use a sock instead.

For the bow drill method, you first needed to find a relatively flexible branch, tie it into the shape of a bow using a sock as the string, then repeatedly wrap the bowstring made from the sock around the fire-starting stick, and suddenly pull the two ends of the bow. Of course, you needed to put some tinder in the groove of the wood being drilled, and gently blow on that tinder at the same time…

Lü Yang was responsible for drilling the wood, and the task of blowing was, of course, given to Liu Hui.

The two of them worked for over ten minutes. When the first tiny flame leaped up, they cheered together. This kind of excitement was something only those who had experienced it themselves could understand, almost like the first successful fire-making by rubbing sticks in human history.

Seeing Liu Hui’s face and hair covered in black soot, Lü Yang unconsciously reached out and wiped it for her, just like he would for Yi Yi or Yi Ya. Liu Hui was startled, probably thinking Lü Yang’s action was a bit too intimate, and she instinctively moved away slightly.

“I almost mistook you for my girlfriend,” Lü Yang said to Liu Hui, waving his hand, clearly realizing his previous action was a bit over the line.

“You’re a good person, just like an older brother,” Liu Hui replied to Lü Yang. She could see that the look in Lü Yang’s eyes was very pure, with no ill will towards her.

“I originally thought about treating you like a little sister, but you’re too much trouble, so forget it,” Lü Yang laughed, using a joke to dissolve the earlier awkwardness.

“Am I really that much trouble?” Liu Hui pouted, seeming a little unhappy.

…

After the fire was lit, Lü Yang was still somewhat worried about whether it might attract those kidnappers. He found a corner between some mountain rocks to place the fire, and cut some branches to pile around it as cover. Only then did he start dealing with the pheasant.

Removing the feathers from the pheasant was a big problem. Lü Yang had never done it before, and Liu Hui knew even less about it. Plus, there was no salt or seasoning. In the end, the whole pheasant was roasted partly burnt, partly raw, nowhere near the imagined fragrant golden brown, and could only be described as a complete mess.

However, the two pheasant eggs buried by the fire were soon cooked through. Lü Yang gave both eggs to Liu Hui, and tore off the few better-roasted pieces of the pheasant for her. He himself stuffed the burnt, raw, bloody, and who-knows-what parts into his stomach, barely solving the hunger problem.

After Lü Yang finished eating, he used soil on the ground to build up a shape like a cake, wrote ‘Happy Birthday’ on it, then stuck a few twigs in it and lit them with the fire.

Lü Yang silently watched these small flames, thinking to himself that if he had agreed to buy Yi Yi the Apple computer back then, Yi Yi wouldn’t have picked up that Eerie Computer, and she wouldn’t have had an accident and disappeared. Right now, she should be in the rented room with Yi Ya, cutting a cake and fooling around, right?

“Is it your girlfriend’s birthday today?” Liu Hui asked Lü Yang.

“Yeah,” Lü Yang nodded, then wrote Yi Yi’s name on the ground: “Her name is Yi Yi. She’s a very gentle, very kind, good girl.”

“She… actually…” Liu Hui wanted to ask something, but Lü Yang reached out his hand to stop her.

“Please blow out the candles for Yi Yi. Before her next birthday, I will definitely find her and bring her back,” Lü Yang said to Liu Hui.

“Before blowing out the candles, we should sing the Happy Birthday song first,” Liu Hui suggested to Lü Yang.

“Okay.”

After the birthday song, Liu Hui closed her eyes and even made a wish before opening them and symbolically blowing on the few twigs that were already half-extinguished.

“I just made a wish for Yi Yi. She will definitely return to your side before your next birthday,” Liu Hui said to Lü Yang.

“Thank you,” Lü Yang smiled, feeling a bit more fondness for the girl named Liu Hui across from him. This rich second-generation girl didn’t have the spoiled and domineering personality he had imagined.

“I haven’t even asked your name yet…” After celebrating Yi Yi’s birthday, the two sat by the fire, and Liu Hui started talking to Lü Yang again. She was introverted and usually spoke very little in front of strangers. Clearly, she had developed quite a bit of goodwill towards Lü Yang now.

Especially earlier, Lü Yang had worked so hard to get the pheasant and eggs, yet gave all the good parts to her. Even her own older brother might not treat her that well. Moreover, his deep feelings for his girlfriend Yi Yi, who had left him, also moved Liu Hui deeply.

“Lü Yang, Lü as in Lü Bu, Yang as in the sun. There’s even a story behind this name,” Lü Yang chuckled.

“What’s the story?”