Substitute Alpha Gets Confessed to by Her Ex’s Aunt on a Survival Variety Show – Chapter 31

Golden, Sweet Wild Honey

Liu Yinxi’s aim with the slingshot was excellent.

She launched several stones in succession, and every one of them struck the beehive.

            

Sensing their home was under threat, the small hanging bees swarmed out of the hive to defend it. But they couldn’t find the enemy outside and were instead sent reeling by the billowing smoke.

Insects fear fire and smoke. Some fell to the ground, motionless, while others fled in a hurry.

Liu Yinxi hid behind a thicket of grass, observing the hive. Once she estimated that most of the bees had left, she emerged cautiously. Fully armed, she raised a long wooden pole and struck the hive with it, driving out any remaining bees.

            

To be on the safe side, Liu Yinxi stood a little farther from the tree, letting the smoke fumigate the hive for a while longer. Only when she saw no more active bees in the vicinity did she climb the tree, cut down the honeycomb with her knife, and stuff it into a plastic bag she had prepared earlier.

Despite the heavy protection of the plastic bucket and raincoat, a few bees inevitably slipped through the net. Several new little red welts appeared on the back of Liu Yinxi’s hand and her neck.

Fortunately, the bees’ ability to attack was greatly diminished after being smoked out, so the stings didn’t hurt as much as the one on her lip had.

            

Liu Yinxi walked to the stream, rinsed the wounds with salt water she had mixed beforehand, picked out the stingers, and applied a poultice of medicinal herbs. After sitting quietly for a while, she felt much better.

She extinguished the fire under the tree and doused the area with a bottle of stream water to prevent any lingering embers from starting a forest fire.

The robot dog, which had been lying nearby, scrambled to follow her as she got up.

            

Liu Yinxi turned to look at it, then bent over and beckoned with a grin. “Tsu tsu tsu, come here, Little Dog Number 6.”

Dog 6, having been forced to play with its screen-face during the rainy day, was a little reluctant to approach her. An emoji of polite refusal appeared on its electronic screen.

Liu Yinxi tied the plastic bag containing her raincoat to the robot dog’s body with a vine and patted its head. “As a member of Team 46, you have to do your part. Let the other robot dogs see that you’re useful for more than just filming. Show them you’re the most capable dog in this competition.”

            

Dog 6: ?

It was just a little filming puppy!

【The first guest in the history of 《Survivor》 to exploit a camera dog has been born.】
【Bullying our camera dog because it doesn’t have a voice function to curse back! Sob, the poor little puppy ToT】
【Liu Yinxi, you deserve the lamppost.​¹】
【Those big white grubs inside the honeycomb are so gross!】
【Waaah, let me try some fresh wild honey! (drooling)】
【Watching Liu get the wild honey was so tense! She got stung a few more times, is she okay this time?】
【Seems like the bees were a lot weaker after the smoke. Judging by Liu’s reaction, she’s fine. Besides, shouldn’t her body build up a tolerance after being stung once?】
【This is great! Our Manman can have some sweet honey!】

            

Liu Yinxi continued her trek, hoping to follow the stream to the large river she had seen from the helicopter—the Toa River, the largest river in the Migna Tropical Forest Park competition area.

When she had checked the original text for the fourth airdrop in her reading system, she had also skimmed the content that followed.

Just as she remembered from the plot, starting from the fifth airdrop, the drops would gradually move along the Toa River deeper into the mountain forests, away from the coast.

            

This meant their survival environment and the types of resources available to them would change. Accordingly, they would have to move their shelter.

Liu Yinxi opened the airdrop calendar on her wristband. The fourth airdrop was on April 24th, and the fifth was on April 30th.

Counting from today, there were about nine days until the 30th. In that time, they needed to produce as much sea salt as possible and find a safe route to migrate to the vicinity of the Toa River.

            

At noon, Liu Yinxi took a short break on a tree stump, eating a roasted cassava root and a wild mango she had found along the way. The fruit was mostly sour and very astringent, making her already injured lips even more uncomfortable. They tingled and felt numb for a good while before recovering.

She looked up at the sun, then at the compass on her wristband. Factoring in the changes in the stream’s current and the surrounding vegetation, she determined her bearings and headed northeast.

Around three in the afternoon, Liu Yinxi arrived at a transitional zone between a terrestrial jungle and a mangrove forest. The sound of rushing water grew louder up ahead.

            

Liu Yinxi pushed aside the vines hanging overhead, stepped through a puddle, and climbed a crooked mangrove tree, craning her neck in the direction of the thunderous noise.

A spray of mist hit her face. A magnificent, turbulent river unfolded before her eyes like a living scroll.

The Toa River!

            

To wear out iron shoes in a fruitless search, only to find it by chance without any effort.​²

Liu Yinxi decided she would definitely treasure the honey when she got back to the shelter. The little bees were so good to her—they gave her honey and even helped guide her to the Toa River.

It was getting late.

            

She was a long way from the shelter; even at full speed, she would only make it back around sunset.

She took the plastic bag off the robot dog and put it in her backpack. There wasn’t much daylight left, and she couldn’t let it use up too much of its battery.

Dog 6 was instantly liberated. It flexed its front limbs a few times, a happy emoji appearing on its screen-face.

            

Liu Yinxi jogged back toward the shelter, leaving markers along the way.

She rubbed her rumbling stomach, wondering if Nan Huaixu’s rhinitis had improved and what delicious food she might have made…

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The water she had brought with her was long gone.

            

Liu Yinxi was drenched in sweat, tilting her head back and gulping down water. Gulp, gulp.

The sky had already darkened, and the warm glow of the campfire added a touch of coziness to the small shelter.

Nan Huaixu stood behind Liu Yinxi, gently patting her back through the hood of her technical jacket. “Slow down, don’t choke.”

            

“Gulp, gulp.” Liu Yinxi panted as she drank, the skin of her throat rising and falling with each swallow. A single, transparent bead of sweat trickled slowly into the hollow of her neck.

“Ugh, I’m dead tired.”

Liu Yinxi emptied a bottle of water and sat down on a rock, taking deep breaths.

            

A sea shrimp soup was simmering on the stone stove.

Nan Huaixu added fresh water to a meal box. Next to her, a small bucket was filled with the fish, shrimp, shellfish, and crabs she had gathered from the sea.

“Is your nose any better?” Liu Yinxi asked, her breathing still heavy.

            

“Much better. Achoo—”

Nan Huaixu looked at Liu Yinxi, her expression a little embarrassed.

Liu Yinxi brought the small bucket over and pulled.out her knife to clean the live fish.

            

“Shrimp and shellfish will make your allergic reaction worse. If the traps don’t catch any new prey, will you be okay eating only fish for the next few days?”

“Mhm,” Nan Huaixu said, covering her nose and nodding. Her voice was thick and nasal.

Liu Yinxi tried to console her, hoping to lift her spirits. “The airdrop is in two days. Maybe there’ll be antihistamines. You’ll be better soon.”

            

After spending over half a month together, Nan Huaixu understood that this was Liu Yinxi’s way of encouraging her. She no longer dismissed Liu Yinxi’s words as impractical fantasies, but instead went along with the conversation.

It was a chat, an interaction, and a way of comforting herself.

“Okay, then I’ll pray for a dose of antihistamines on the 24th, and that my rhinitis will be cured as soon as I take them.”

            

“Of course! Teacher Nan’s mouth has opened the light;​³ whatever you say is bound to come true.”

Nan Huaixu hadn’t boiled salt today. Without Yuan Fang chattering in her ear, she had spent a boring day in the jungle. Now that Liu Yinxi was back and she had someone to talk to, her mood brightened unconsciously.

Nan Huaixu even tried to joke with Liu Yinxi, curious to see how the other woman would react.

            

“What if I say something bad?”

Will bad things come true, too?

Liu Yinxi declared with utter certainty, “Teacher Nan’s consecrated mouth is blessed by the gods and buddhas. Good things will come true, and bad things will—”

            

“Meet calamity and transform it to auspiciousness!”​⁴

As she said the last four words, her eyes curved into crescents, as if this wasn’t just a wish, but an unshakable belief.

Such profound conviction.

            

Liu Yinxi pressed a hand to her chest. Beneath her thermal shirt, against the skin near her heart, lay a clear water jade ‘wushi’ pendant.​⁵

A piece of jade that had saved her from a car crash.

Nan Huaixu didn’t notice Liu Yinxi’s subtle gesture. She held her hands near the campfire to warm them. “Alright. Let’s wish for all our good things to come true, and all the bad things to turn into good fortune.”

            

“Liu Yinxi, where did you go today?” Nan Huaixu’s tone suddenly shifted.

“How did you know I didn’t go to the beach to boil salt today?” Although she asked, Liu Yinxi had never intended to hide it from Nan Huaixu. She hadn’t even taken her meal box with her, leaving it for Nan Huaixu to use. It was obvious.

Even for something so self-evident, Liu Yinxi had to ask deliberately. Now Nan Huaixu suspected that she might have been playing dumb about certain things all along.

            

Nan Huaixu calmly called her bluff. “You left your meal box for me today. When I went to the shore this afternoon, Yuan Fang even tried to cover for you, saying you’d already returned to the shelter.”

Liu Yinxi’s fish-scaling movements paused for a moment. She inwardly sighed that Yuan Fang was enough of a sister.

But Nan Huaixu, who had been jointly deceived, didn’t think it was right. “You should hang out with her less in the future. She barely speaks a word of truth, and she’s full of yellow—”

            

A vexed look crossed Nan Huaixu’s face. She stopped mid-sentence, her cheeks growing rosier in the firelight.

Liu Yinxi raised a hand and rubbed her itchy forehead with the back of it. “Yellow what? Did you run into Huang Heshan?”

Nan Huaixu lowered her lashes and said sternly, “No. I mean, Yuan Fang’s head is full of yellow. waste material,​⁶ and her mouth has no score.”​⁷

            

Something about how an alpha who sleeps too well must have no sex life; asking if they’d smelled each other’s pheromones after being together every day; wondering which of the four alpha guests could go a round with her, the top-tier omega Yuan so-and-so…

It was utter filth.

Liu Yinxi laughed out loud. “That’s just how she is. I’ll teach you a trick. Next time Yuan Fang dares to spout nonsense in front of you, just tell her you know she’s been gossiping about Huang Heshan behind her back. That woman is terrified of pain and death. The mere sight of Huang Heshan’s scowl from a distance is enough to scare the soul out of her.”

            

Nan Huaixu’s expression was serious. “What gossip?”

Liu Yinxi recalled for a moment, then repeated what Yuan Fang had said on their first day of boiling salt. “She said, ‘Lao Huang, Lao Huang, must be super huang.’​⁸ Out in the open wilderness, it could stimulate one’s primitive instincts. What if the fire goes​⁹ during her susceptible period?​¹⁰ Yu-meizi is so petite, how could she handle it?”

At this moment, the viewers who frequently hopped between doors of Nan-Liu’s and Huang-Yu’s live streams had something to say.

            

【Uh… (stunned)】
【Boss Yuan’s mouth… (facepalm)】
【Some things, well, you can’t just look at one side of the story.】
【What are you all talking about? Why can’t I understand?】
【What does that mean? Can any sisters who are regulars in Huang-jie’s stream fill us in?】
【Seriously, why is everyone being so vague? I’ll say it: Yu Yan said before that she likes Huang Heshan’s pheromones, and that she gets really cold and asked if she could sleep next to Huang Heshan.】
【??? (crashing)】
【Right, I have to go, uh, check out Huang-jie’s stream.】
【No wonder Huang-Yu’s stream has been gaining fans so fast these past few days (realization)】

“Yuan Fang is disgusting,” Nan Huaixu said, her face full of disdain. “It’s just a partnership for a competition. Everyone has sedatives. It’s only two or three days a month, an accident is impossible.”

Liu Yinxi wholeheartedly agreed. “Teacher Nan is right. So as long as Huang Heshan finds out Yuan Fang is slandering her like this behind her back, she’ll definitely beat Yuan Fang up. You just have to use that to warn her, and she’ll straighten up immediately and never dare to talk nonsense in front of you again.”

            

“I understand… So where did you go today?”

Nan Huaixu looked directly at her, her gaze scrutinizing.

Liu Yinxi put down her knife and the fish, poured some water to wash her hands, and then picked up her small backpack with an air of mystery. “Reporting to Captain, I explored the jungle today and, under the guidance of the Rainforest Goddess, I once again met with that fragrant, sweet honey sprite.”

            

Nan Huaixu’s face was impassive. “And in return, your hands received a few more kisses of the venomous stinger?”

Liu Yinxi silently tucked her red, swollen hands into the sleeves of her jacket and unzipped her bag with a sheepish grin. “The honey sprite said she admires Teacher Nan’s valiant and heroic bearing and asked me to present a gift to you~”

“How old are you? Still talking such childish non—”

            

Before she could finish, Nan Huaixu’s vision was filled by the sight of flowing gold in amber, glittering brilliantly in the firelight.

Liu Yinxi held up the honeycomb, which was overflowing with honey, a radiant smile on her face.

That shimmering, golden hue, carrying an incredibly sweet fragrance, pierced through her sight and captured her entire heart that craves sweets.

            

“A gift for my dearest captain, Nan Huaixu!”

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The author has something to say:

This novel is a work of fiction. The dangerous behaviors depicted, such as disturbing a beehive and eating wild honey, are purely for the story and are not related to reality. Please, do not take them as real!

            

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