The Real Daughter Returned and Shocked Everyone

I'm a fake heiress with nothing going for me but a pretty face.

So when they shipped me off to a wilderness survival show and put me on the same team as the real heiress, the one who spoke eight languages and held two degrees, everyone lined up to watch me make a fool of myself.

Day one of survival.

The real heiress used advanced calculus to work out the sun's angle of elevation, trying to locate a water source.

Me, I'd already found a damp slope of clay and was crouched there, mixing mud.

The real heiress applied the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns to ration our last two energy bars.

I was busy hacking wild greens out of the ground.

The live comments went wild mocking me:

A useless airhead is a useless airhead. Take her out of the mansion and she can't even feed herself. Sit tight, she's going to starve to death!

Three days later, a sudden downpour hit, and the crew confiscated every supply.

The lofty real heiress was so hungry her vision blurred, huddled under a tree shaking, too weak to even swear in a foreign language anymore.

Her fans panicked and flooded my stream, ready to watch me end up ten thousand times worse off than she was.

Instead, a few million viewers stared at their screens and fell dead silent, all at once.

On screen, I was sitting inside a deluxe, temperature-controlled earthen oven I'd built out of mud.

One leg crossed over the other, cracking open a clay-baked chicken, fresh out of the oven and sizzling with grease.

I sighed at the camera. "Ah. Too much chicken and you get all heated up inside."

...

Augusta Joyce stared at the clay-baked chicken in my hands.

Hunger and humiliation had wiped out whatever composure she had left.

She stormed over and jabbed a finger in my face, shouting.

"Lola Joyce, you cheated!"

"I'm the real Joyce heiress. Nobody knows what mansion life is like better than me!"

"Someone like you, who's never done a day of rough work in her life, could not possibly have this kind of wilderness survival ability!"

"You've definitely got a lighter and food hidden somewhere!"

She couldn't wait to pull rank as the real heiress and crush me with it.

To nail me to the pillory as the worthless airhead.

The comment feed instantly boiled over.

Augusta's fans started spamming the screen.

The hashtag #LolaJoyceCheated shot straight to the trending list.

The whole internet was denouncing me, the shameless fake heiress.

I didn't even lift my eyelids.

Unhurried, I tore off a drumstick.

Carefully picked out a small bone from it.

Then took a bite, grease running all over my mouth.

Poised as if I were dining at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.

I ignored her hysterics completely.

My indifference was a sharper insult than any comeback could be.

Augusta was shaking with rage.

"Director! Are you going to do something about this or not!" she screamed.

With the stream flooding and the pressure mounting, the production team and crew rushed over to the campsite.

Augusta kept fanning the flames from the sidelines.

"Director, search her oven and her camp, thoroughly!"

"Lighter, seasoning packets, energy bars, she's definitely hiding something!"

Nathan Barnes, the A-list actor on our team, walked over too.

He'd been starving all day, and it showed on his face.

He stood on Augusta's side, frowning at me, his eyes full of scrutiny and disapproval.

In that moment, the whole world had cut me off. I was the target of everyone.

The search began.

Crew members pulled on gloves and turned my camp upside down.

They expected to dig up all kinds of modern tools.

A few minutes later, the crew members traded looks.

All they'd found was a "stone knife," ground from a hard shard of rock.

A coil of rope twisted from plant fibers.

And a small pinch of salty "natural seasoning," extracted from the ash of a special plant.

The director looked at these things and swallowed.

Search result: nothing.

Every last item was native material from the island.

The director declared on the spot that my conduct was entirely within the rules.

He couldn't even help adding a compliment. "Lola Joyce, your hands-on skills are unreal."

Augusta's face flushed crimson in an instant.

The tide in the comments turned.

"Holy crap, she made all this out of rocks and grass?"

"And she calls this a fake heiress?"

"That survival skill is Special Forces level, right?"

Only then did I lift my eyelids.

I held out the glistening, grease-slicked drumstick in my hand.

Not toward Augusta, but toward Nathan, who stood off to the side looking miserable.

"Nathan the A-lister, want a taste?"

"It's wild chicken raised on cooling, heat-clearing herbs. Eat it and you won't get heated up inside."

Everyone assumed I'd seize the chance to humiliate Augusta.

Instead, I held the olive branch out to Nathan.

Nathan froze.

His reason and his pride lost the fight to the enormous rumbling coming from his stomach.

Driven by hunger, under Augusta's furious glare.

He reached out and took the drumstick.

Then, image be damned, he bit into it hard, a huge mouthful.

What he did was as good as publicly picking a side.

It was the loudest slap Augusta could have gotten.

I looked at the camera and spoke, slow and quiet.

"Some people, you know, even if they snatch back their identity, it doesn't change the fact that they're about to starve to death."

"Not enough blood to the brain. Guess the thinking ability drops right along with it."

Augusta wasn't letting it go.

She stared hard at my earthen oven and raised her voice.

"Without fluid dynamics and thermodynamics, there's no way you could build a constant-temperature kiln like this."

She opened her tablet and pulled up an elaborate 3D model.

Then she turned to the camera and lectured in a tone that came from somewhere far above me.

"Lola, I know you were raised by some backwater family. You've never had a real education."

"But this internal structure has to be precisely calculated..."

She wanted to pin me to the pillory of the uneducated using her wall of academic knowledge.

I yawned and brushed the dirt off my hands.

"What dynamics?"

"My grandfather calls it a heat-focusing hearth."

"The whole point is the serpentine flow technique."

"You stack it along the mountain's airflow, and the fire burns strong and the heat spreads even."

I sealed off her scientific challenge with a set of mystical theory she couldn't follow at all.

The comment feed exploded again.

"Serpentine flow technique, holy hell!"

"Half of me thinks it's superstition, half of me thinks it's incredible."

"So science ends where mysticism begins?"

Right then, a scream tore across the edge of the camp.

One of the crew directors clutched his stomach and dropped to the ground.

His face had gone bluish, his lips purple, his whole body convulsing.

He'd swallowed some kind of deadly wild berry.

The medical team would take half an hour to reach us, even at their fastest.

Augusta's eyes lit up and she rushed straight over.

She started analyzing the type of toxin, reciting the first-aid manual at high speed.

"We need to induce vomiting immediately, replenish electrolytes, keep the airway clear..."

Theory, all of it, laid out point by point.

But she just stood there, hands shaking, not daring to lay a finger on the director foaming at the mouth.

Her scientific theory was useless when a life was on the line.

I walked over and pushed Augusta out of my way.

I only glanced at the director's tongue and lips.

Then I turned, reached down at the roadside, and tore off a few unremarkable, saw-edged leaves.

I crushed the leaves, pried the director's mouth open, and shoved them in.

Then I turned to Nathan. "Get him up and moving. Make him vomit."

Nathan instinctively tried to stop me.

"Lola, you can't just do this. It could kill him!"

I looked at him coldly. "If you want him alive, do it."

Nathan was shaken by the way I said it, and hesitated before hauling the director up.

Everyone else held their breath at how reckless I was being.

Augusta sneered off to the side. "You fed him weeds? Anything goes wrong, it's all on you!"

A few minutes later.

With a violent heave, the director threw up a large pool of black water.

His purple lips, against all odds, flushed back to a healthy color.

His breathing steadied bit by bit.

I spoke flatly.

"That's the companion plant of the heartbreak vine. It's called reviving leaf."

"It cures that poison specifically."

"This is how nature checks and balances itself. Works a lot better than your chemical formulas."

"If we'd waited for your helicopter to fly in the antiserum, the grass would've been growing over his grave."

Dead silence all around.

That one move shattered Augusta's confidence in her theories.

The way Nathan looked at me changed completely.

From the earlier scrutiny to something like deep awe.

The comment feed went from mockery to a flood in an instant.

"Master, take me as your student!"

"Fake heiress? This is the god of medicine reborn!"

Night had fallen deep.

Augusta was jealous of my surging popularity, and even more jealous of the way Nathan's attitude toward me had shifted.

While everyone slept, she crept over to my camp.

She stomped every herb I'd spent the day collecting and sorting into pulp.

Then she poured out every last drop of the clean water I'd stored.

The next morning, I looked at the wreckage spread across the ground.

I didn't fly into the rage she'd been counting on.

I crouched down, studying the ruined herbs, my eyes cold as ice.

Nathan came over, saw the scene, and his brow furrowed tight.

He was about to open his mouth to comfort me.

I stood up and brushed the dirt off my hands.

"Back when I was a kid up in the mountains, the wild boars that stole our grain? I broke their legs."

My tone was calm, but there was a hard edge running through it.

Nathan froze.

He realized the "countryside" I was talking about was nothing like what he'd imagined.

The image he'd had of me as a delicate, fake little heiress shattered completely.

I didn't go confront Augusta.

Instead I turned and went into the woods, and gathered some plants all over again.

When I came back, I set up the stone pot and simmered a big pot of broth, deep green in color.

I made a point of doing it right in front of the camera, ladling out a big bowl and handing it to Nathan.

I called out at the top of my voice, "Nathan! Drink up!"

"This is the good stuff. Detoxes you, does wonders for your skin. It's a secret recipe you couldn't buy for any amount of money out there."

Augusta was sitting not far off.

She'd been under a lot of stress lately, and a few pimples had broken out on her face.

The moment she heard the words "does wonders for your skin," her ears pricked right up.

I used her vanity to build a trap tailored just for her.

I carried that pot of broth over to a "weak signal zone" the drones couldn't capture.

It was a blind corner, half-hidden behind leaves.

But I'd adjusted a big, glossy banana leaf ahead of time.

Using the sunlight's reflection, I cleverly bounced the blurry image from that corner to the edge of the main live feed.

Once all that was done, I pulled Nathan along and headed out.

"Come on, keep me company. I want to scout a water source further out."

I'd handed Augusta the perfect opportunity to commit her crime.

In the surveillance blind spot.

Sure enough, Augusta couldn't hold herself back and sneaked over.

Guilty as a thief, she glanced around, and once she was sure no one was there, she picked up the stone pot.

She drank the remaining half-pot of broth down to the very last drop.

Under the gaze of several million viewers she never noticed, she drank down her comeuppance.

Half an hour later.

The production team gathered everyone together for the routine interviews.

When it was Augusta's turn to speak, her stomach suddenly let out a thunderous rumble.

It was loud enough that even the sound mic picked it up crystal clear.

Her face flushed red in an instant, then turned green.

In front of all the cameras and every guest, she clamped both hands over her belly.

Squeezing her legs together, she bolted for the temporary toilet at a dead sprint.

Image gone, utterly humiliated.

The ingredient in that pot of "beauty broth" was a plant on the island that was harmless but powerfully stimulated the bowels.

To put it plainly, it was a super laxative.

The result was that, for the entire rest of the day, Augusta became the person who ran to the toilet more than anyone else on the island.

I watched her drained figure retreat.

Then I turned to Nathan, blinked, and put on an innocent face.

"Looks like Miss Augusta's got quite a lot of toxins in her. She really does need to work on that skin of hers."

Nathan looked at me, swallowed, and quietly took half a step back.

Day five of the survival challenge.

The production team announced the final mission.

Cross the most dangerous stretch at the heart of the island, the fog swamp, and claim the champion's flag on the far shore.

Whoever brought back the flag would take the final ten-million prize.

Augusta had taken an anti-diarrheal and pulled herself together.

She spread out the terrain map and the weather data, running fast calculations on her tablet.

Before long she'd sketched out what she called the optimal route.

The other contestants murmured their admiration.

She seemed to have found her confidence again, the genius, the true Joyce heiress.

She shot me a challenging look.

Everyone expected me to crush her once more with my so-called mysticism.

Instead, I did the unexpected and took a step back.

"The swamp's too heavy with bad air. Toxic vapors always rise after noon."

"Anyone who goes in gets turned around and lost, like walking into a wall of ghosts."

"I'm not going. I withdraw."

The comment feed exploded instantly.

"Lola chickened out!"

"She's out of tricks. Can't keep the mystic act going, huh."

"The second things get real, she folds. A fake heiress is a fake heiress."

Augusta seized the chance and mocked me without mercy.

"Lola, quit hiding your ignorance and cowardice behind that hick superstition of yours."

"This is the gap between you and a real heir to a great fortune."

"We believe in science, not ghosts!"

Nathan couldn't understand my decision either.

He came over to talk me out of it. "Lola, this is ten million on the line. Let's go together and watch each other's backs."

I shook my head and refused, firm about it.

The main group set off.

Nathan walked a few steps, hesitated, then doubled back.

He leaned in close and lowered his voice. "Are there really ghosts?"

I glanced at him.

Then, flatly, I translated it into the language of science.

"There aren't any ghosts."

"It's the humus in the swamp releasing methane and phosphine under the high heat of the afternoon."

"Combine that with the local geomagnetic anomalies, and it badly disrupts electronic devices."

"High concentrations of the toxic gas make people hallucinate."

"Her data model didn't account for the shifts in wind direction or air pressure at all."

"Go in now, and it's suicide."

It hit Nathan all at once.

He looked at me with a gaze full of shock and awe.

In the end he chose to believe me, and stayed behind at the starting point.

Augusta led the other few contestants and marched into the swamp, spirits high.

Nathan and I became the internet's laughingstock, the "cowards' duo."

Two hours later.

Just as I'd said, an eerie thick fog rose over the swamp.

Visibility dropped to less than a meter.

Every GPS on Augusta's team failed.

They all lost their bearings, and some even started hallucinating and turning on each other.

The live signal cut in and out.

The last thing it carried was Augusta's screaming, breaking down, and then it went dead.

The production team panicked outright.

The rescue helicopter couldn't get anywhere near the fog zone.

Millions of viewers flooded into my stream in an instant.

The comments turned from mockery to a wall of terrified spam.

"A divine prophecy!"

"Lola, save them, please!"

By then, in my own stream.

The viewers watched in horror as I did the opposite of resting.

I wove a thick cloak out of vines.

I made a few waterproof torches with a special tree resin.

I even used a bamboo tube and activated charcoal to build a crude gas mask.

I handed one of the masks to Nathan.

I stood up and rolled my wrists.

Facing the camera, I gave the first smile since the show began.

"All right."

"Now, it's time to go collect the toll."