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."