Chapter 30: Community 135
The world forum was flooded with even more novel and interesting content. Chu Yun browsed through it rapidly, searching for information that would be useful to her.
The community roll-call thread had the highest traffic and still held the number one spot. The latest message read: “I’m from Community 9999.”
That was double the number from last time, but looking at the timestamp, it was posted last night. She estimated that the addition of new communities would slow down from here on out.
Various advice threads continued to crop up without end, full of truths, half-truths, and outright fabrications. The vast majority of people were just looking for a bit of hype to swindle gold coins out of others; very few genuinely and sincerely shared their experiences. After all, teaching the apprentice meant starving the master—most people were inherently selfish.
Ever since the forum enabled private messaging and coin transfers, many had exploited this path to scam players out of their gold. Initially, after some victims exposed the truth, the number of suckers dropped significantly. However, a small portion of players would still rather be scammed than not pay gold to seek out advice, all for that one-in-a-million chance.
Chu Yun thought it over, organized the experiences, lessons, and tips she had encountered or could think of, and posted them.
[Free Sharing of Survival Experiences—Entirely My Humble Opinions, Welcome to Add Your Own.]
[First: Food & Water.] Food and water are absolute essentials, and the optimal ratio is $1.5:1. Among foods, staples provide the strongest sense of satiety, followed by meat, with fruits and vegetables being the weakest. The satiety intensity ratio is $4:1:1.
Everyone can adjust this judiciously based on proportions, gold coins, and personal needs. The reason the proportion of drinking water is lower than food is that in the two game instances we’ve experienced so far, we have plenty of opportunities to obtain water through our own means. But if you truly hit an instance with a water shortage, then there’s nothing to be done!
The methods to obtain potable drinking water are as follows. Collecting rainwater: gather rainwater in clean containers, then boil, filter, or treat it with purification tablets before drinking. Desalination, foraging for water sources…
Chu Yun carefully detailed multiple methods and precautions.
[Second: Tools.] Having a good tool can help you better harvest survival resources and increase your survival odds. Crafting torches, making fishhooks, constructing simple shelters…
Chu Yun wrote out exactly how to source materials and the operational steps, word by word, with absolute clarity.
[Third: Protective Supplies.] The community provides medical bandages, rubbing alcohol, and cold medicine, which are only for wounds, colds, and fevers. Beyond this, we need to learn some basic care skills and locate additional wild medicinal herbs. The methods for stopping bleeding are as follows: …; The methods for locating medicinal herbs are as follows: …
She didn’t have pictures to explain, and the forum couldn’t transmit images either. Chu Yun could only use text to roughly describe the names and appearances of various medicinal herbs. She had done her best to help everyone; as for how to execute it specifically, players had to rely on their own learning and practice. After all, all these survival skills were things she had obtained from over a dozen years of tilling and fighting in the apocalypse.
The post was well-organized, logically rigorous, and the content was authentic and effective. Once this massive essay dropped, it immediately caused a sensation.
1F: Oh my god! Oh my god! This poster is practically an angel!
2F: Post read. Compared to those flashy trash posts that just try to turn heads and scam people out of money, this is completely different.
3F: Poster is such a good person!
4F: Good deeds will definitely bring good rewards.
……
99F: Those players lurking in the dark, come take a look! @So-and-So
100F: Sisters, we never have to spend money to buy those useless guides again! @So-and-So, @So-and-So
101F: Yes, bookmark it quick! What if the poster deletes the thread?
102F replied to 101F: Exactly, save it fast! @So-and-So
A notification popped up from her “Expedition Squad” group chat. It was Xu Dongdong tagging her: “Is that Chu Yun in the forum you, Sister Chu Yun?”
Chu Yun replied: “Mm.”
Xu Dongdong immediately started howling and spamming all kinds of flattery in the chat.
Chu Yun smiled faintly and didn’t reply.
In just a few minutes, the comments surpassed a hundred. Chu Yun ignored the replies below, exited the thread, and continued browsing.
[Anyone want to chat about the newly released Land Item Cards?]
Seeing that something she wanted to read had appeared, Chu Yun stretched her body and clicked in.
1F: What kind of fresh mechanic is this? Never even heard of it. It must be an item only a top-tier big shot can obtain, right?
2F replied to 1F: +1
3F replied to 2F: +2
4F: I heard it’s one of the items inside those ten supply packs from Island Survival. I heard a player who cleared the stage with me mention it. She saw this item card and said it grants you 1 mu of land. Collecting 5 Land Item Cards allows you to synthesize an instance—an instance that belongs completely to you!
5F replied to 4F: Does that mean you can have whatever instance you want? How do the resource settings inside work?
4F replied to 5F: Probably not?
6F replied to 5F: It’s not what you think. I’ll speak from personal experience—I was fortunate enough to obtain a Land Item Card. Inside, it’s just a completely barren patch of land with absolutely nothing on it. Right now, we lack every kind of resource, so who has the spare energy to mess with this stuff!
7F replied to 6F: If you put it that way, this item card is completely useless then?
6F replied to 7F: It’s not completely useless. For instance, you could start a farm or open a commercial street, but it’s very difficult to use.
8F replied to 6F: This item card is way too rare. Out of 5,000 people, only 10 items dropped. The fact that you have one means you’ve already surpassed 99.8% of the population!
……
Chu Yun didn’t dare mention that she not only had the item cards but had already synthesized her personal instance; she was terrified that if she said it, she would be publicly mocked for daydreaming.
Chu Yun made a specific note of this player who claimed to have a Land Item Card. If different communities could interact with one another, they could trade, but unfortunately, they were confined to their own designated communities.
After browsing the forum and working with her employees for a while, Chu Yun exited the game. For her few remaining rest days, she needed to properly rest and recharge.
The next morning at 6:00 AM, Chu Yun woke up in bed after sleeping for a full nine hours.
As per her routine, she headed to the beach for a run and martial arts practice. In this game, physical fitness was of paramount importance. The number of people out exercising was much higher than last time.
Chu Yun hadn’t stayed in the community for many days in total, so she counted as a new face, but because she was a celebrity in the community, those who recognized her began spreading the word.
Everyone watched this community celebrity with curiosity as she sprinted around the circular island of the community, lap after lap, outlasting wave after wave of people. After running for a full hour without pausing, she continued to practice her punches and kicks to one side. Her movements were vigorous and powerful; one could tell at a glance that she was an expert.
By the time Chu Yun finished her two-hour workout, it was only 8:00 AM. She returned home, took a quick shower, and entered Happy Farm with a bun clamped in her mouth.
Inside the farm, her five diligent employees had already begun their day’s work. They were beaming with joy as they looked at the crops in the soil. The seeds planted yesterday were still buried in the dirt, but looking at them this morning, they had not only broken through the soil but had grown a massive section taller, which gave them another pleasant shock.
The brook water mixed with the zombie crystal nucleus certainly delivered on its effect of accelerating plant growth.
The normal growth cycle for leafy green vegetables was 40–50 days, but accelerated by ten times, they could be harvested in 4–5 days—which happened to land on the final day of her rest period.
Staple crops like rice and corn had only sprouted a tiny shoot; Chu Yun estimated that these plants had a longer growth cycle.
The kiwi seeds planted yesterday had survived, growing a section taller than yesterday and pushing out several tender shoots on their branches.
The five mystery fruit seeds had also grown a dozen centimeters, achieving a 100% survival rate. As expected of a system-issued product. Because they were still in the seedling stage, it was impossible to tell exactly what fruits they were.
The employees hooked up the water pump, connected it to the solar generator, and went about watering the land. The brook water here seemed to come from nowhere and lead to nowhere, simply appearing out of thin air at one end of her farm and vanishing out of thin air at the other.
The brook water was crystal clear down to the bottom and felt ice-cold to the touch, resembling snowmelt flowing down from a mountain.
After they finished watering, Chu Yun walked around the fields to inspect them before exiting. This group of employees was far more experienced than her; she could completely hands-off the management.
Over the next few days, aside from popping into the farm for a quick glance from time to time, Chu Yun spent most of her time at leisure.
Xu Dongdong was a social butterfly, taking Chu Yun and Yu Wenhao to meet a large group of neighbors nearby.
For instance, two girls lived next door to Xu Dongdong. One had been a well-known celebrity in the entertainment industry before the game, someone whose fingers had never touched dishwater, but now she did every kind of dirty, exhausting hard labor.
The other was an Olympic champion in the sports world, who got along swimmingly with the celebrity. Across from Chu Yun lived a male university student from a top-tier institution who loved inventing all sorts of novel gadgets.
That sports champion, Li Huier, had organized a community group composed of female players called the “135 Sisterhood,” focused on women helping women and casually chatting when bored.
Chu Yun was also pulled into that group chat. She counted as a relatively late arrival; when she joined, the current membership stood at 955 people. According to Xu Dongdong’s intelligence, the community was split evenly between men and women.
Chu Yun gradually adapted to community life, aside from feeling occasionally stifled by being confined to this small island.
On the final day of her rest period, Chu Yun entered Happy Farm early in the morning. The brook water boosted by the zombie crystal nucleus could shorten plant maturation times by ten times. When she watered them yesterday, the green vegetables had already grown remarkably tall, and she estimated they could be harvested today.
Subsequently, her employees started work right on time.
The moment they walked in and saw such abundant produce, every single one of them grinned from ear to ear. As farmers, nothing brought greater joy than seeing the crops they tended bear fruit.
The leafy vegetables grew into a vibrant blanket of green, and while the nightshades had been tiny green pods yesterday, various heavy vegetables now hung from the branches.
Chu Yun walked along the ridges of the fields with a bamboo basket, harvesting row by row. Her half-pack of vegetable seeds estimated out to roughly 400 grains, which wasn’t too many. Deducting those that failed to sprout, roughly 350 remained. Combined with the batch planted before, the 350 seeds yielded five varieties: lettuce, garland chrysanthemum, rapeseed, cauliflower, and napa cabbage.
Uncle Li had told her the method for harvesting seeds from green vegetables, so she left 10% of each variety to let them naturally mature and age. Leafy vegetables could basically only be harvested once; after harvesting them, they took up hoes to shovel out the roots, tilled the soil again, and planted the remaining small half-pack of seeds.
The seeds all looked identical, and Chu Yun couldn’t distinguish the varieties, only hoping this half-pack would yield different types.
The ten bamboo baskets Uncle Zhang made for her later had been delivered. She now had twelve bamboo baskets; though they were large and deep, they still almost weren’t enough.
The fruit trees had grown to a person’s height, their branches beginning to spread out in all directions. The staple crops had entered their reproductive stage but hadn’t begun setting fruit yet. After watering the farm and doing another patrol loop, Chu Yun exited.
She presented each of her five employees with a handful of green vegetables to express her gratitude. When they received the vegetables, they held them like treasures, nearly choking up.
Uncle Li said the yield of her farm was high and the quality was excellent. Take that single head of lettuce, for example—it was as large as a basketball, over half again as big as normal lettuce she had seen. A single head of vegetable was perfectly sufficient to split across two meals.
The “135 Sisterhood” group had all heard of her grand exploit, coming every day to inquire about the growth status of the plants, acting even more invested than her, the farm owner.
When she went running or strolling through the community, passing players would also fix their eyes on her and smile with immense warmth.
Since vegetables had been successfully cultivated, Chu Yun didn’t intend to disappoint their eager anticipation. On the final day, Chu Yun planned to display half of the green vegetables in the community to sell them.
Thus, Chu Yun brought Xu Dongdong, Yu Wenhao, and her five employees to the center of the community to set up a stall.
They made quite a grand display, and since they were selling rare vegetables, a massive crowd swarmed over the moment they laid out the goods. If it weren’t for Chu Yun and Yu Wenhao holding the fort, the bamboo baskets almost would have been knocked over by them.
“Oh my goodness, this is incredible! To grow so many vegetables!”
“How much is it? Give me a pound. No, no, no, give me five pounds!”
“Quick, go call Sister Wang over! I’m terrified it’ll sell out if she’s late!”
……
Xu Dongdong organized the order amidst the chaos: “Line up first! Each person is limited to one pound! Everyone will get some, don’t rush!”
Although these words gave everyone peace of mind, they were all worried they wouldn’t get a share if they were late, so they all craned their necks to look toward the bamboo baskets.
Chu Yun didn’t sell them for a high price, charging 2 Gold Coins a pound, a baseline she set by referencing convenience store prices.
The players in the community hadn’t eaten green vegetables in a very long time; having bought some now, they couldn’t wait to go home immediately and stir-fry a small handful.
Some players who didn’t manage to get a spot in line went to the forum to show off, whipping up another wave of excitement.
With 2,000 people in the community, even with the purchase limit, it still wasn’t enough to divide. In the end, Chu Yun moved two more baskets out from the farm.
Tomorrow would mark the start of a new round of the game. Chu Yun adjusted the employee task duration for the farm instance to be permanently active, so that even if she couldn’t enter Happy Farm, someone would still till the land for her.
On the final day, Chu Yun prepared a fair amount of food and water inside her storage ring.
