Chapter 59: An Idle Farm
Ling Jing unlocked the Farm feature.
On the system interface, nestled right between Store Expansion, Equipment Upgrades, Interior Décor & Layout, the Mall, Recipes, and right before Quests, a brand-new tab had appeared:
—[Farm]
Ling Jing raised an eyebrow and tapped it.
The screen shifted, bringing up the Farm interface before her eyes.
It looked quite similar to the Interior Décor & Layout screen, complete with a navigation menu along the left side.
The main display in the center was largely blank, currently reading: [You have not yet established a farm]
The left-hand menu was split into four tabs: [Cultivation], [Livestock], [Farm Market], and [My Storage].
Ling Jing tapped [Cultivation] first.
[You currently have no plots under cultivation]
She tapped [Livestock].
[You currently have no livestock being raised]
“…”
Better check out what’s in the Farm Market first.
Ling Jing clicked into it.
Whoa—
The Farm Market interface looked just like the System Mall.
The selection was vast.
From land plots to seeds of every variety; from baby chicks, piglets, lambs, and calves to coops, cattle barns, and sheep pens.
Fertilizers, hay, and other animal feeds were all fully stocked.
However, the currency required for purchases wasn’t system points.
Ling Jing glanced at the upper-right corner.
Upon entering the Farm Market, the top-right corner no longer displayed her points balance. Instead, two round icons representing distinct currencies sat side by side.
One was green, the other red.
Plant Core Coins and Beast Core Coins.
At the moment, her balance for both was zero.
Did she need to convert them with points, or was there another way to get them?
Puzzled, Ling Jing tapped the small plus sign next to the green coin: 0.
This interactive button looked remarkably like a top-up prompt in a mobile game.
The moment she hit the plus sign, a “Top-Up” pop-up appeared.
[Would you like to exchange your Plant Core for Plant Core Coins? (Current Inventory: 1)]
Ah, so that’s it. You convert actual plant cores.
Ling Jing tapped confirm. An exchange window popped up, displaying an image of the plant core she currently held.
Beneath the image was a small label: [B-Rank Mutated Plant Core]
Exchange!
[Exchange successful]
In the top-right corner, her Plant Core Coin balance updated to 200.
Ling Jing then tapped the plus sign next to the Beast Core Coins.
She hadn’t brought the beast core along with her on this ride, so she wasn’t sure if the system would register it.
[Would you like to exchange your Beast Core for Beast Core Coins? (Current Inventory: 1)]
It works.
Ling Jing confirmed the prompt. On the pop-up selection screen, the label on the beast core read: [C-Rank Mutated Beast Core].
It turned out the two creatures had belonged to entirely different tiers.
Exchange!
Her Beast Core Coin balance jumped to 100.
A hundred-coin difference between B-rank and C-rank… Ling Jing nodded to herself, understanding the baseline.
With currency in hand, Ling Jing began browsing the wares in the Farm Market.
The items here certainly didn’t come cheap.
A bag of rice seeds cost 20 Plant Core Coins! A single 4×4 plot went for 100 Plant Core Coins!
A little chick cost 20 Beast Core Coins, while a chicken coop was a staggering 200!
Ling Jing thought it through. She already had rice and corn seeds in her inventory.
Money had to be spent where it counted most; wasting these coins on seeds was out of the question.
She exchanged for two 4×4 plots of land.
She wasn’t entirely sure what “4×4” translated to in real terms—four meters by four meters, perhaps?
Once the purchase went through, Ling Jing tapped into [Cultivation].
Beneath [You currently have no plots under cultivation], a clickable line of blue text appeared: [Place Plot].
She tapped it, and the screen shifted back into the familiar pixel-art perspective.
—Just like when she had placed the Chinese Restaurant.
The screen displayed the terrain she was currently standing in.
Even when she dragged the selector around, it would only move within her immediate vicinity.
Ling Jing certainly had no intention of dropping her farm out here. She didn’t even know where “here” was; she had only ended up in this remote corner by chasing that giant mutated beast.
Naturally, the farm had to be set up close to the restaurant.
It seemed she would have to head back before she could place the plots.
She glanced at the time: it was already 2:47 AM.
Good grief, almost three in the morning.
Time to head back to the restaurant!
This foraging run could easily be described as a roaring success.
On the way out, Ling Jing had spent six grueling hours pedaling that tricycle, starting at 8:00 PM and grinding until past two in the morning.
Her legs had practically turned to jelly.
The ride back was effortless by comparison. A flick of her wrist, and the electric motor sent the trike zipping forward.
Out in the desolate wilderness of the wasteland, Ling Jing pinned the throttle to the maximum, tearing back along her trail like a streak of lightning.
She even cut across a few shortcuts, saving a ton of distance she had wasted earlier being led in circles by that mutant.
In just forty minutes, Ling Jing pulled up to the front entrance of the Chinese Restaurant.
After stowing both the electric trike and the storage chest safely in the warehouse, she set about choosing a spot to build her farm.
How about right behind the restaurant?
Directly behind the building stood a dense grove of mutated trees that had grown unnervingly tall from toxic exposure. When she had first placed the restaurant, the system had refused to let her push the building further back, flagging the trees as physical obstructions.
However, the Farm interface had no such limitation. Wherever she dragged the 4×4 grid, the tiles showed up green.
Aside from the physical footprint of the restaurant itself, she could drop the plots virtually anywhere.
Place. Confirm.
Ling Jing lined up the two purchased plots side by side right within the woods behind the building.
Thump—
The moment she hit confirm, two plots materialized on the system screen.
In reality, the towering mutated trees occupying those exact coordinates vanished in the blink of an eye. In their stead sat two four-by-four-meter plots of tilled earth, neatly adjoining each other.
Around the perimeter of the plots, rustic wooden fencing and a matching gate generated automatically.
Above the fields, a protective dome of white light identical to the one shielding the restaurant materialized, blanketing the soil and the fences beneath a safe halo.
Perhaps because of their proximity to the building, the two barriers smoothly merged into one, expanding the total safe zone of white light.
Ling Jing opened the [My Storage] tab in the Farm panel and located the rice seeds.
Hiss… with this farm system, do I have to till the soil and plant the seeds by hand?
She tentatively tapped on them, and a prompt for [Plant] popped up beneath the rice seeds.
Ling Jing clicked [Plant].
[Please select a plot for planting]
The two newly placed plots appeared on the screen.
Whoa, now this really feels like a farming sim.
All she had to do was tap a few buttons!
Ling Jing selected the first plot.
Instantly, the prepared soil was fully and neatly sown with rice seeds.
—Satisfying.
Time to plant the corn seeds in the second plot!
The corn seeds were actually split into two varieties: sweet corn and waxy corn.
That mutated behemoth really had fused with quite an assortment of crops.
Ling Jing checked her inventory and saw that the vast majority were sweet corn seeds.
Deciding on variety, she tapped the waxy corn seeds.
In a flash, the second plot was fully planted as well.
Ling Jing looked up. Above the two freshly sown plots, specks of golden light hovered like a swarm of fireflies.
As she focused on them, a status prompt appeared above the soil: [Growing (Water Deficient, Fertilizable)].
Oh, right! They still need water!
She tapped [Cultivation].
This time, the screen no longer read [You currently have no plots under cultivation]. Instead, it showed the two seeded plots.
Beneath each plot were four action buttons:
[Water] [Fertilize] [Pest Control] [Harvest]
Except for the first button, which glowed blue, the other three were grayed out.
Presumably because she hadn’t bought fertilizer, there were no pests, and the crops weren’t mature yet, leaving them unclickable.
Ling Jing tapped [Water] on both plots.
Looking back at the soil, the floating text updated to: [Your crops are thriving].
Yes, this was the pure, unadulterated joy of an idle farming game.
—Absolute perfection!
