Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 147 - 62: The Real Reward

On the evening of February 25, after eating some remaining porridge and drinking some hot water, Chen Zhou felt that his condition had improved somewhat.

After cleaning up the dishes, he added some more seal oil to the oil lamp and lay on his bed, bored, flipping through "Robinson Crusoe," which he had read many times.

This time, he read very carefully.

He read from how Robinson became a sailor and encountered his first shipwreck, all the way to how Robinson got caught in a storm, ended up stranded on a deserted island, and eventually got rescued.

At the end, Chen Zhou tried reading aloud.

His voice echoed in the dim bedroom, a bit hoarse and tired. Since he hadn't spoken for so long, some words were pronounced incorrectly, and the sentences sounded awkward when read aloud.

However, as he continued to speak in full sentences, over time, his reading became more and more fluent. His tongue and vocal cords gradually regained a familiar feeling, as if he had returned to the past.

Reading aloud was slower than reading silently, but the detail level of the information obtained rose to a higher level.

As he read, Chen Zhou discovered an important detail that he had previously overlooked.

He remembered that before the challenge began, the description in the post regarding the reward was: "The reward for successfully completing the challenge is all the valuables that the challenger has the opportunity to obtain during the survival process."

Under this description, several different types of valuable items were listed, including various gold and silver coins.

It was precisely because the total value of these precious metals was not high that internet users in the forum joked that the organizers were taking kickbacks.

But after reading carefully, Chen Zhou realized that the treasures that challengers could obtain throughout the entire challenge were far more than just a bit of gold and silver coins.

It wasn't that he considered tortoiseshells or the ship's silverware valuable, but rather he discovered a new batch of treasures that possibly exceeded millions in value.

...

In the original story, Robinson acquired two batches of treasures during his survival on the island.

The first batch wasn't large, including a small amount of gold coins, silver coins, and a pile of copper coins, which came from a stranded merchant ship.

Knowing that the reward for successfully completing the challenge required him to find and keep it himself, Chen Zhou valued these "useless things" that Robinson dismissed.

In the process of transporting supplies, he did his best, searching almost every corner of the ship, not even missing the sailors' hidden private money, but after all the efforts, the total money he found was not much more than Robinson's.

The main reason was that this ship was a slave trader ship.

If the ship could reach its destination smoothly and find local indigenous people, trading people wouldn't require currency, as bartering was more cost-effective.

Since money wasn't needed, naturally no one would bring it.

The small amounts of currency found in the captain's and first mate's rooms were not used to buy slaves, but rather for purchasing supplies during long voyages.

Just calculating this batch of property, the value probably didn't even reach 720,000, and 200,000 would be hard to achieve.

The real jackpot for Robinson was the second batch of treasures.

At that time, Robinson had already lived on the island for about twenty-five years, essentially achieving self-sufficiency. Apart from some fine items like tobacco pipes and metal cookware, he hardly needed other supplies, with only the loneliness being unbearable to him.

On about May 16 during the twenty-fifth year, while it was the dry season, a strong wind blew all day, followed by torrential rain and lightning.

While resting at home, Robinson heard a cannon shot, knowing that a ship had encountered a storm and was forced to approach the island, using cannon fire to signal for help. He immediately left the shelter and made a large bonfire on the hilltop.

Robinson had a habit of storing firewood, so despite the rain, he used dry wood to quickly start the fire.

The bonfire burned intensely, and with Robinson continuously adding firewood, it burned from night until dawn. However, the ship never managed to reach the nearby sea.

It wasn't until the clouds cleared and the fog dissipated that Robinson finally used a telescope to observe the ship in distress.

Unfortunately, the fate of that ship was even worse than the slave trader ship he had been on.

In the stormy night, visibility on the ship was extremely low.

Perhaps the helmsman saw the bonfire on the hilltop and steered the ship toward the firelight, but being unfamiliar with the area around the island, they didn't know there were reefs in the sea and crashed into a hidden reef.

From what happened afterward, Robinson's bonfire not only failed to save the ship, it actually harmed them.

When Robinson returned home, brought food and a compass, sailed his self-made small boat into the sea to the ship that struck the reef, the scene was already very harsh.

The Spanish ship was firmly wedged between two reefs, with the stern and rearside completely shattered by the waves, leaving only the bow.

There were no survivors on the ship, only a dog.

After boarding the ship, Robinson discovered the drowned sailors and obtained urgently needed clothes from them.

In addition, he also found a few barrels of wine, several chests, a few firearms, four pounds of gunpowder, a coal shovel, a fire tong, a copper pot for making chocolate, and a grill on the ship.

Upon opening the chests, Robinson found three large bags of coins—over eleven hundred in total. In a small bag wrapped in paper, he also found six gold coins and several small gold bars.

From this, Robinson speculated that the ship was a raider ship departing from the southern part of America.

At that time, it was common for Europeans to raid for gold and silver treasures from deep within Latin America via the La Plata River, then bypass Brazil to Havana, enter the Gulf of Mexico, and proceed all the way to Spain.

These ships weren't loaded with cheap black slaves, but with a ship full of treasures, with 90% of the goods concentrated in the stern and mid-section holds, likely containing various gold utensils, statues, and a large number of gold and silver coins and gems.

As South America is rich in gold, the Inca Empire located there possessed countless treasures, even capable of building a grand temple made of gold and silver. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Although the 17th century was already the end of Spain's looting of the Inca Empire, the treasures obtained were still enough to fill a whole ship.

Compared to this ship full of gold and silver, the chest of items Robinson took probably only accounted for a thousandth or even a ten-thousandth of all the property's total value on the entire ship.

And the real good stuff had long sunk into the sea, unnoticed.

After finishing this passage, Chen Zhou felt his heart beating a few beats faster.

Now, he was very certain that the "all the valuables that the challenger has the opportunity to obtain during the survival process" mentioned in the challenge rules referred to the treasures on this Spanish Raider Ship.

If he could truly change the fate of this ship, guiding it to land successfully, or salvage the treasures that sank to the seabed, then the reward after the challenge would not be a mere 720,000.

It could be 72 million, or even 720 million!

Taking a sip of cold boiled water, he calmed down a bit, reminding himself not to be blinded by the huge value of the treasures.

Bear in mind, by the time the Spanish Raider Ship arrived near the deserted island, it would already be 25 years later.

Even if he could actually acquire that money, he would first need to figure out how to survive until then.

Furthermore, even if he managed to live until that time, getting hold of the ship's treasures wouldn't be easy.

Following Robinson's example, by lighting a fire on the hill to guide the ship to crash, after all the sailors on board died, no one would stop him from transporting the supplies, but the most important treasures would have sunk into the sea.

If he didn't follow Robinson, he would need to set up beacon fires in advance that could guide the ship along a safe route.

If the Spanish Raider Ship successfully got rescued and all the sailors aboard survived, why would they give the hard-earned treasures they looted to a wild man living on the island?

If those people were kind-hearted, they might just dismiss him with some food and practical tools, leaving him on the island to live out his life in solitude.

If they were the ruthless and cruel kind, they might even label him as a Demon, and then directly kill him.

Or capture him as a slave, take him to Europe for sale, and boast to others about how benevolent they were for saving an uncivilized soul.

Don't be fooled by the positive descriptions of these sailors and the captain in "Robinson Crusoe."

That's because Robinson was a Caucasian, and was a high-status white man from the middle class with a prestigious accent.

Chen Zhou estimated that if he were put in the same situation, after saving these raiders' lives, it would be a success if he wasn't chopped to death.

The Inca Empire, Indians, Australian Aborigines, or other indigenous peoples who suffered massacres had already used their lives, or even entire races, to remind him.

Blindly trusting raiders will inevitably lead to death at their hands.