Chapter 13: Starting to Farm
Since Xu Dongdong said the system forum was open, she clicked in to take a look.
Most of the posts were missing person notices. Having transmigrated into this world, the original owner of her body was an orphan with no friends or family, so Chu Yun skipped past the long string of missing person threads and scrolled down to find the information she actually needed.
The most popular thread was a roll-call post.
“Community Roll Call: Investigating the Number of Game Participants.”
The thread had been active for several days. The latest reply, sent just moments ago, read: “I’m from Community 5000.”
Doing the math based on the head count, there were only a few million players just a few days ago, but now the number had surpassed a hundred million. It seemed like sooner or later, everyone would be dragged into the game.
Another hot thread was about items. The forum was probably one of the few remaining entertainment outlets here, so it was incredibly active with people posting out of sheer boredom.
2L: “An everlasting lighter! This is the item reward I got for defeating ten zombies. Pretty awesome, right? No more rubbing sticks together to make fire!”
3L replied to 2L: “You call that an awesome item? I’ve seen something way better. Ever heard of the Ubiquitous Faucet? As long as you have it, water will flow out no matter where you plug it in. Sometimes it even pours milk or cola.”
4L replied to 3L: “Holy crap, an item that overpowered must be incredibly rare!”
5L replied to 3L: “Feels like we’ve transmigrated into some magical item shop.”
6L replied to 3L: “If you ask me, the most practical items are spatial ones. You can always buy water at the convenience store or find it if you look around, but without a spatial item, it doesn’t matter how many supplies you have—you can’t carry them anyway. I actually saw a guy with a spatial item. He was high-profile as hell, pulling out good stuff left and right without a care. But the guy was also a beast at fighting; the people who tried to steal his item got beaten raw.”
7L replied to 6L: “Obviously! You wouldn’t dare be that reckless if you didn’t have the skills to back it up!”
Scrolling through, all sorts of bizarre and exotic items cropped up. Chu Yun’s spatial item was actually considered quite normal. After all, with a baseline population of a hundred million people, even a one-in-a-hundred-thousand probability meant this game would yield around a thousand rare items.
Throughout the entire thread, she didn’t see a single mention of a Land Item Card. Since hers was a matching reward given by the system for discovering a special resource point, she figured the item had either been out for too short a time, or perhaps others were keeping it tightly under wraps just like she was.
Chu Yun exited the thread and continued scrolling.
“Shocking! Zombies appear in Highway Survival, and the partner I stayed with for days actually pushed me into the horde out of pure selfishness.”
The comments below were a barrage of curses. Most people sympathized with the original poster and condemned the partner for being morally bankrupt and a total piece of trash. However, some people called the poster an idiot, arguing that everyone is selfish in the face of profit, and you can’t blame others if you lack the judgment to see their true colors.
Chu Yun couldn’t help but think of the fat man Yue Shan and Zhang Xiaomei. It was a textbook case of a man dying for lust and a bird dying for food!
Clicking her tongue, she exited the thread and kept scrolling.
“Survival Guide Thread: Requesting all the big shots to selflessly share their life-saving skills. A humble working stiff is begging online.”
“+1.” “+2.” “+10086.”
One particular survival expert stood out from the rest.
“I used to be a wilderness survival content creator, so I have a lot of authority in this area. When facing natural disasters or other challenges, mastering certain survival skills and knowledge can save your life in a critical moment. 1. Find clean water; if none is available, use various filtration methods. 2. Utilize plants in the natural environment to craft simple survival tools. 3. Learn basic survival skills, such as building simple shelters, foraging for food and water, and avoiding natural predators. 4. Learn to identify wild plants.”
The most important sentence followed:
“For details on how to filter water, craft survival tools, and identify wild plants, please DM me. Not 998, not even 98—for just 10 Gold Coins, you can get the invaluable experience I’ve accumulated over many years.”
Although you couldn’t add friends directly on the forum, it had a private messaging function. Since personal interfaces were linked to the forum, gold coins could be transferred through chat. A lot of people were using this loophole to scam others.
Once this thread dropped, opinions were mixed. Some players called the creator a money-grubber, while others argued that paying gold coins for knowledge was completely fair. Amid the debate, a few suckers who had already fallen for it stepped forward to speak out.
“Don’t believe him, everyone! The guide he gives is stuff even kids know. He’s just trying to swindle your gold coins.”
“I got scammed too. Damn it, the 10 Gold Coins I painstakingly hoarded are gone. I’m about to lose it!”
……
Quite a few people had taken the bait.
Chu Yun found it both funny and pathetic. No matter where you went, online scams were ubiquitous.
As it was getting late, Chu Yun closed the world forum and lay down on her comfortable bed to rest.
The next morning at 6:00 AM, Chu Yun woke up on the dot, driven by her biological clock, and began her daily morning workout.
Not far outside her door, Xu Dongdong was already practicing punches under Yu Wenhao’s guidance. Chu Yun didn’t disturb them, quietly walking past the back of the buildings toward the beach.
Passing through the peaceful woods, Chu Yun pulled a pack of vegetable seeds out of her storage ring, taking out a single seed to dig a hole and plant it.
[Damage to public property detected. Please stop immediately! Please stop immediately!]
The sharp system voice suddenly blared overhead, startling Chu Yun and making her feel a bit like a thief caught red-handed. So I really can’t plant things out here. It seemed she could only farm inside her system-allocated Land Item space.
Lost in thought, she walked onto the beach. The morning air by the sea was incredibly crisp, and clean white foam washed onto the sand, leaving behind ripples. Breathing in the slightly damp air, her mind settled into a calm state. Putting aside the questions she couldn’t answer, she started running. This had been her favorite exercise since the apocalypse; she loved the feeling of sweating profusely. When exercising, she could completely empty her mind, free of pressure, without having to think about tomorrow.
Gradually, more people came out to exercise. The Highway Survival instance had likely put immense survival pressure on most players, so everyone tacitly prioritized building up their stamina. Since they all lived in the same community, even though they didn’t know one another, they gave silent nods of acknowledgment as they passed.
An hour and a half later, a sweating Chu Yun returned to her single suite. At the same time, Xu Dongdong brought her a hoe. He said it was a survival tool a player had obtained in the labyrinth instance, which he had traded a mantou for. The player had even repeatedly urged Xu Dongdong to use it carefully, claiming it was his sole guarantee of survival and safety.
Looking at this farming tool being treated like a weapon, Chu Yun was filled with mixed emotions. When will I have my own proper cultivation tools?
Back in her room, Chu Yun took out a boxed meal and began to eat. She had three boxed meals left, which was exactly enough for today and tomorrow. She would need to restock before entering the next round of the game.
After eating, she entered Happy Farm to start farming. Chu Yun had no prior experience growing vegetables, so she relied entirely on brute force to dig up the earth. Tilling just that single small mu of land took her a full two hours.
After hoeing the field, Chu Yun counted out the seeds one by one and planted them. She only had one pack of seeds, so she needed to use them prudently.
Once the soil was loosened, Chu Yun sowed the seeds. Since they were rare, she literally counted the exact number of grains as she planted them, lightly covering them with nearby soil using her hoe. As she figured things out along the way, practice made perfect, and her movements grew faster and faster.
Chu Yun mused that professional work should still be left to professionals. Once she gathered five Land Item Cards and synthesized a farm instance, she would issue a vegetable-planting mission and hire other players to work for her.
She had always been a worker drone for bosses and a worker drone for the system. If she could enjoy the pleasure of being the boss for once in this lifetime, that would be pretty excellent.
After sowing the seeds, Chu Yun used the iron bucket she bought at the convenience store to fetch water from the brook, watering the vegetable patch bucket by bucket. Whether it was her imagination or not, she felt like the seeds buried beneath the soil immediately sprouted new shoots after being watered. The brook water mixed with the zombie crystal nucleus certainly didn’t disappoint; the growth rate was massively accelerated.
When Chu Yun entered Happy Farm the next day to check, the seeds she had just buried yesterday had already grown ten centimeters high.
With no survival pressure over these two days, Chu Yun lived exceptionally leisurely. Aside from her daily workouts and browsing the world forum, she routinely visited her neighbors at Xu Dongdong’s invitation. After all, their range of activity was limited to this tiny community, and without any recreational activities, it was honestly quite boring.
Over these few days, she had become much closer to Xu Dongdong and Yu Wenhao. Xu Dongdong was enthusiastic, while Yu Wenhao was honest and reliable. The three of them got along swimmingly for some reason, so they decided to team up for the next round of the game.
The night before the game, the three gathered in Xu Dongdong’s room to discuss safety precautions for tomorrow.
“We don’t know what tomorrow’s game will be, so we need to be fully prepared.”
Yu Wenhao was taking notes on a sheet of blank paper—the paper and pen were part of the loot Chu Yun had scavenged from the Highway Survival instance’s processing factory.
“Water, food, and weapons are essential, but we can’t carry too many things. After weighing our options, we need to make some compromises.”
Xu Dongdong agreed, “Yeah. I tested it, and the backpack can only hold three days’ worth of drinking water, five days’ worth of dry rations, plus a few indispensable small tools.”
Yu Wenhao added, “Even though the system will allocate us to the same server, we won’t be spawned in the exact same spot right off the bat. So we need to hold out until the moment we meet up.”
Seeing the two of them going further and further down the path of supply-gathering panic, Chu Yun had to interrupt: “I have something to confess. I have a spatial item, so…”
“Really?!” Xu Dongdong’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in disbelief. “Does that mean we can pack a ton of things?!”
Chu Yun maneuvered her storage ring to manifest a bucket of water. “Absolutely real.”
Xu Dongdong immediately started howling, “Oh my god! Oh my god! I knew you weren’t ordinary, Sister Chu Yun, but I didn’t expect you to be this amazing! You actually have a rare item with a one-in-a-hundred-thousand drop rate!”
Chu Yun cut off Xu Dongdong’s flattery and restarted their hoarding plan.
With the aid of the item, besides the essential supplies in their backpacks, Xu Dongdong and Yu Wenhao stored twenty 3L jugs of mineral water, two boxes of instant noodles, thirty pieces of bread, thirty mantou, and ten bandages inside Chu Yun’s storage ring. The gold coins for the communal supplies were split among the three of them. In addition, the two men’s bowls, chopsticks, and some heavy supplies were also placed with her.
Seeing how much they trusted her by storing their supplies with her without a moment’s hesitation, Chu Yun realized once again that these were two exceptional teammates.
“Finally, our goal is—”
“Clear the stage! Clear the stage! Clear the stage!”
After preparing all the supplies, Xu Dongdong gave everyone a final morale boost.
After their discussion, the three returned to their respective rooms to rest. Chu Yun calculated her assets; after deducting 90 gold coins for the communal supplies and some of her personal expenses, she had 2,750 coins left.
Compared to the 0 coins she had last time, 2,750 coins could be considered a massive fortune. Holding onto this hefty sum, Chu Yun went to rest peacefully.
