Chapter 58: You Deserve to Be Rich
Once the rewards were settled, the instance dissolved, returning everyone to the dreary highway.
Jiangzhehu Inheritor was quick to compile the race results and send her report to Lin Huai.
In the Straight-Line Drag Race, Cute and Sparkling had claimed first place, Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar took second, and Peace and Violence rounded out the podium in third.
Lin Huai wasn’t surprised. With their higher vehicle tiers, their mechanical advantage over the rest of the field was undeniable.
As for the Circuit Time Trial, nobody from the core Elite Squad had entered, but quite a few members from the broader five-hundred-person guild had given it a shot. Glancing at the total head count of the main group, Lin Huai let out a helpless sigh. The casualties had been devastating.
From an active group of five hundred survivors, over one hundred had died during that single circuit event, leaving only 312 members alive.
To make matters worse, the player who took first place in the time trial wasn’t even someone from her guild.
Reading the winner’s username, Lin Huai raised an eyebrow in surprise. She opened a private message window and reached out directly.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Brother, congratulations on upgrading to a Level 2 car. Would you be interested in joining our Elite Group?
[Tchaikovsky Driver]: Whoa! The Boss is recruiting me in person?! Can I… can I really join?
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Anyone who can grab first place in that time trial definitely has the skill to back it up.
[Tchaikovsky Driver]: Yes! Yes, I want to join! Thank you so much for the chance, Boss! Mom, look at me—I made it into the Elite Group!
The truth was, with the main guild taking such heavy losses, Lin Huai had no choice but to start rebuilding their numbers. Still, she only handled this single invite herself before handing the rest of the recruitment drive over to Dragon Emerging from the Sea.
She had far more pressing business to attend to.
With those five extra emeralds from the rally, she finally held all the components needed to push her hearse to Level 5!
Before starting, Lin Huai climbed into the jade coffin to lie down for a short while, activating its Yin Energy Conversion perk. Once the shroud settled over her, she submitted the upgrade materials through her console. Then, stepping out of the cabin, she sat down on the roadside gravel to wait.
The acid rain drizzled steadily from the gray sky. Even inside her protective gear, the damp chill felt unpleasant. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a massive patio umbrella, planted it firmly in the ground, and coated the fabric with a layer of anti-corrosion spray.
Beneath the canopy, she set up a folding table and camp chair, leisurely lighting a portable stove to enjoy a hotpot lunch.
The coffin’s conversion effect made monsters treat her as invisible for two full hours, while the vehicle upgrade only took an hour and a half. She had plenty of time to spare.
Snapping a picture of her steaming hotpot, she dropped the photo into the Elite Squad channel. Predictably, it sparked an immediate wave of playful jealousy.
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Ah, Boss! I’m still grinding out my daily mileage through the mud, and you’re already kicking back with hotpot?!
[Old Wang from Building Materials]: Boss, how on earth do you manage that? Who sits on the shoulder having a picnic in the middle of acid rain?!
[Peace and Violence]: I assume she set up an umbrella overhead, right?
[Cute and Sparkling]: Boss, I actually have some amazing food on hand! Do you want to try some?
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: Sparkling, please, let’s spare our lives. With your cooking skills, I’m terrified you’ll poison the Boss…
[Cute and Sparkling]: I swear this batch is genuinely delicious! Don’t you guys want a taste?
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Sure, send a portion over. I’ll test it out for everyone.
Moments later, a system package flickered through the interface. Unwrapping it, Lin Huai found two piping-hot dishes arranged neatly on ceramic plates.
One was classic sweet-and-sour pork; the other was fluffy scrambled eggs with fresh shrimp.
Both dishes looked appetizing, smelling wonderful and glistening with rich color. Lin Huai took a bite with her chopsticks, and her eyes widened. The taste was surprisingly good.
Even more impressive, the food carried actual stat bonuses:
[Sweet-and-Sour Pork: Stamina +2, Fatigue -3]
[Scrambled Eggs with Shrimp: Stamina +1, Fatigue -2]
Lin Huai took a screenshot of the stats and snapped a photo of the dishes before sending both to the group chat.
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: It’s actually fantastic!
[Old Wang from Building Materials]: Holy crap, Sparkling really leveled up! The girl who used to burn instant noodles onto the bottom of a pot can actually cook sweet-and-sour pork now?!
[Peace and Violence]: She must have obtained a special item. Cooking talent doesn’t just appear out of thin air.
[Cute and Sparkling]: Hehe! I took first place in the drag race, and the system rewarded me with a Cooking Mastery Skill Card! Listening to the Boss was the best move ever—utility vehicles really do unlock exclusive perks!
[Cute and Sparkling]: From now on, everyone’s meals are on me! Special squad discounts, hehe!
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: Seriously?! In that case, make me an order of Kung Pao chicken first!
[Hungry Spirit Blue Knight]: Hmph! Back in the day, nobody ever went hungry on my delivery route. Now I’m practically drooling. Forget the small talk, Sparkling—whip me up a bowl of braised seafood soup right now!
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Haha! I want Buddha Jumps Over the Wall! Can you handle that, Sparkling?
[Fastest Hand at SF Express]: Come on, you two, stop dreaming! Dishes like that are way too complicated. Unlike you guys, I’m handsome and modest—I’ll just take a full Manchu-Han Imperial Feast! Hehehe!
[Cute and Sparkling]: …Well, the skill has to be leveled up. I’m only at Level 1 right now, so I only know how to make those two dishes…
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: …Sparkling, maybe you should just hand that food truck over to Lawyer He. His cooking is ten thousand times better than yours…
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Don’t worry about them, Sparkling. Keep at it. If you need any special ingredients to level up your skill, just let the squad know.
[Cute and Sparkling]: Hehe, the Boss is still the sweetest! To upgrade the skill, I have to master these two recipes first… Which means I need to cook ten thousand plates of sweet-and-sour pork and ten thousand plates of scrambled eggs with shrimp… Waaaah! Can you guys please eat them every single day? Pretty please!
[Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice]: Eating only those two dishes every day for months… um, that might be a little tough on everyone…
[Jiangzhehu Inheritor]: Sparkling, don’t worry about it! Just cook as much as you can and pass every single plate to me. I’ll sell them through the trading hall for you! All the profits go to you—I’ll only take a ten percent broker fee!
[Cute and Sparkling]: Miss Jiang… wow. No wonder your family is rich! Deal! I’m going to start cooking right now. Hehe, I suddenly love cooking!
Seeing Cute and Sparkling’s transformation, the other drivers with utility vehicles couldn’t help but feel eager anticipation, and Lin Huai felt the same way.
Because she carried a casket in her vehicle, she had discovered the crematorium and earned an undertaker work permit.
If she unlocked a dedicated skill card of her own down the road, what kind of ability would it grant?
Furthermore, Cute and Sparkling had shared another crucial piece of information: unlocking a skill card added a brand-new stat to the player interface—”Mental Power.”
The default cap for Mental Power sat at 100 points. Preparing dishes burned through this resource. Once fully depleted and naturally restored, the maximum cap would grow by 1 point, rising to 101.
In other words, practicing a skill would steadily push the upper limit of one’s Mental Power higher, which in turn expanded the growth ceiling of a player’s Spiritual Energy.
The discovery surprised Lin Huai. Having restarted her journey from first place, so many mechanics were completely different from the fragmented knowledge of her past life.
Did Chen Feng obtain a skill card back then? she wondered.
What about Master Cloud Cliff and Old Demon of Xiangxi? Did they already have skill cards of their own?
A sudden sense of urgency gripped her chest. If other players were already unlocking unique system skills, she couldn’t afford to fall behind.
