Jurassic Park

Hearing a sudden growl from his stomach, Alex turned to Emma and asked in surprise, "Did I sleep for a long time?"

Emma nodded, then pointed at the giant mushroom by Alex’s feet. "You’ve been asleep for seven days. I knew you’d be hungry, so I specially prepared this for you."

"You’ve been eating this all these days?" Suppressing the turmoil in his stomach, Alex shifted his gaze away from the giant mushroom. The patchy dirt covering it did nothing to inspire an appetite.

Emma said nothing, but the look on her face confirmed it.

"Aren’t there any animals or wild beasts?" Alex turned to look at the dense jungle around them. "At the very least, there should be some birds, right?"

"Sorry, I searched everywhere within a thousand meters. There was nothing." Emma shrugged helplessly. "Not even an ant, let alone any wild beasts!"

Alex looked at Emma skeptically, unwilling to believe her. This was a forest, not the Dead Sea. How could there not even be an ant?

"Go look for yourself if you don’t believe me!" Unable to stand Alex’s suspicious gaze, Emma sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and shouted, "If you find even one living thing, I…" After hesitating for a moment, Emma suddenly roared hysterically, "I’ll be your woman!"

Seeing Emma’s crazed appearance, Alex began to believe her. Lowering his head, he silently picked up the giant mushroom, gently brushed it off, split it in half, and handed one half to Emma. "You haven’t eaten either, have you? Half each."

"You think I’m trying to hurt you?" Emma resumed her aloof demeanor, folding her arms across her chest and coldly eyeing the mushroom Alex offered her. "If I wanted to hurt you, you’d have been dead already!"

Alex froze slightly at her words, then gave a bitter smile and hurriedly explained, "That’s really not what I meant. I just wanted to share some food with you, that’s all."

After that small misunderstanding, the two fell silent and each dealt with the giant mushroom in their hands.

The dry, rough taste filling his mouth made it genuinely hard for Alex to swallow. Just as he was about to spit it out, he turned and saw Emma expressionlessly swallow the "food" in her mouth. She then tore off another huge piece and stuffed it into her mouth, chewed a few times, and immediately swallowed. Tear, swallow, tear, swallow—within a few bites, she had finished an entire giant mushroom.

Alex was completely stunned. He looked at Emma as though he were looking at Bear Grylls—a woman standing at the top of the food chain!

After barely finishing the mushroom in his hands, Alex felt his stomach gradually fill and finally breathed a sigh of relief. At least he would not starve to death—or be poisoned to death.

Alex stood and stretched a little before turning to Emma. "Come on. Let’s get moving and find a way out."

Emma nodded without a word, rose to her feet, and walked to Alex’s side.

After walking for about an hour, Alex finally believed Emma. Along the way, he had not heard a single birdcall or encountered even one flying insect. Just as Emma had said, there was "not even an ant!"

"Emma, where do you think this forest is? Why is it so strange?" Seeing the atmosphere grow rather stifling, Alex took the initiative to start a conversation.

Emma’s steps faltered slightly before returning to normal. In a calm voice, she said, "This forest is indeed very strange. So strange that it doesn’t seem real."

Seeing that Emma had responded, Alex chuckled. "Don’t tell me everything we see is fake?"

"Not fake, exactly. It’s more like an experimental base." Emma lightly furrowed her brows and said seriously, "Only an experimental base could have a forest this strange."

"An experimental base?" Alex shook his head, unconvinced by Emma’s explanation. "We’ve been walking for an hour already. Does an experimental base really need to be this big?"

Emma’s tone abruptly changed, becoming somewhat excited. "The experimental base at the school I’ll build in the future will be even bigger than this forest!"

"You want to build a school?" Alex stopped walking and turned to Emma in confusion. "Why would anyone want to build a school?" It was not like she was doing charity. Why would someone want to build a school for no reason?

Emma stopped as well. Looking at Captain Wang, she took a deep breath and said in a low voice, "Actually, my dream is to become a teacher."

"A teacher?" Alex found it even stranger. When he had first met her, she had been stripping in a bar. It did not seem like the same path at all.

"I like the sense of fulfillment that comes from teaching others knowledge." As if she had found someone she could confide in, Emma poured out all her dreams at once. "I’ve liked being a teacher since I was little. Do you know who my first students were?"

"Your dolls, perhaps?" Listening to Emma’s cheerful voice, Alex also remembered his own childhood, when he had liked playing teacher too. The difference was that he liked the authority of being a teacher, along with the smug satisfaction of being able to hit students whenever he wanted.

The more Emma spoke, the happier she became. She could not help waving her arms and gesturing, looking just like a teacher giving a lesson from the podium.

Alex set off again, with Emma’s unceasing chatter and occasional cheerful laughter ringing in his ears.

They walked for another hour or so, and it was almost exactly the same as the first hour: the same strange, silent forest.

Just as Alex was beginning to feel bitter, an earth-shaking roar suddenly rang out beside him. The massive sonic boom made the leaves all around them rustle violently, and Alex felt as if his ears were about to go deaf.

"What was that?" It took Alex quite a while to recover. He turned to Emma with a shocked expression.

Emma was stunned as well. Hearing Alex’s voice, she snapped back to her senses and hesitated before saying, "It sounded like the cry of some kind of wild beast." After pondering for a moment, she added, "It should be a large beast. A small one couldn’t make such an enormous sound."

The moment Emma finished speaking, Alex shot forward, dagger already clenched in his hand. He had had enough of the giant mushrooms’ strange taste. For the sake of his tongue in the days ahead, Alex decided to kill this beast.

But when Alex pushed through the layers of trees and arrived at the source of the roar, the sight of the creature before him made his entire body freeze on the spot. Emma, who had followed close behind, was dumbfounded too. After staring blankly for a long while, she finally uttered, "How is this possible?"

The large beast Emma had mentioned was not merely large. Its enormous body was over ten meters long and more than four meters tall, while the palm-sized teeth crisscrossing its gaping jaws were so savage that the sight alone made one tremble all over.

"Is that a Tyrannosaurus Rex?!" Alex had once watched a dinosaur movie, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex in it seemed to be the very creature before him.

Emma nodded and was just about to speak when a piercing shriek suddenly rang out. A black shadow grew larger and larger as it descended from the sky. When it landed nearby, it was actually even larger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex, almost as big as an airplane!

"A pterosaur?" Alex felt like his brain was no longer enough to process this. "Did we end up in Jurassic Park?"

P.S. I’ll make up the update in the latter half of the night. This time, Scorpion will definitely do it. Keep going!