Chapter 27
◎ Two-in-one ◎
After the small boat was upgraded, the narrow single bed in the cabin became a wider single bed.
Yu Chi lay comfortably on the bed, feeling the warmth from the quilt, and squinted her eyes happily.
It was already one in the morning. Although she wasn’t sleepy yet, she had to force herself to sleep to maintain a regular schedule.
However, as soon as she closed her eyes, the image of her stabbing the dagger into the man’s heart appeared in her mind. The impact it had on her at the time was not strong, as if it was through a layer of gauze, and she couldn’t feel it clearly.
Or perhaps this world was too game-like, making her unable to even realize that a life had disappeared at her own hands.
She thought about it in a daze for half the night. The man’s face, the blood, the dagger that fell to the ground after the body disappeared, the next assassin… When Yu Chi woke up, she only felt a splitting headache. She touched her forehead—
Hot damn, I have a fever again.
Enduring the heartache, she swallowed the fever medicine. Yu Chi slowly got up from the bed and began to prepare today’s breakfast.
Actually, this kind of life is not bad. There are no complicated interpersonal relationships, and I don’t have to care about anyone’s opinion. I can do whatever I want, she thought as she prepared the ingredients.
Yu Chi took out the previously slaughtered large chicken from the [Two-Sided Mirror]. After being disassembled by the system, it had turned into pieces of chicken meat. She picked out some, washed them, and carefully stewed a pot of chicken soup.
The chicken soup warmed her stomach, and her mood improved a lot after drinking it. The rest could be saved for lunch.
After breakfast, Yu Chi picked twenty Ice Crystal Grapes from the [Two-Sided Mirror], washed them, and casually threw one into her mouth.
She felt the juice burst out with a single bite, and her somewhat drowsy head immediately cleared up.
What fragrant grapes!
Yu Chi had always been a big-hearted person. After finishing the grapes, she had long since thrown away her unhappiness and began to seriously prepare for what she needed to do today.
In just two days, the natural disaster would arrive.
Yu Chi didn’t know the type of natural disaster, but she just needed to prepare for the most troublesome one.
For the natural world, the more dangerous natural disasters are usually volcanic eruptions, storms, earthquakes, and the resulting tsunamis, fires, landslides, etc. Next are extreme high and low temperatures, droughts, and floods.
Of course, special natural disasters are another matter, such as meteorite impacts, solar storms, and unknown viruses (let’s temporarily classify them as natural disasters).
She was currently on the sea and had an item like an automatic air conditioner that could regulate the temperature. First, she could rule out extreme cold and heat, and drought. Next were volcanic eruptions, solar storms, and unknown viruses.
By this calculation, the natural disasters she needed to worry about the most were sea storms, tsunamis, and meteorite impacts.
However, although natural disasters sounded terrifying, if they didn’t want to wipe out all of humanity, the first natural disaster probably wouldn’t be too big.
Due to material limitations, she couldn’t upgrade her small boat to level 4 in these two days. But if there really was a sea storm or tsunami, her mermaid form might have a lot of advantages.
Besides her physical strength, a mermaid also had a faint ability to control seawater. But it was probably because her current strength was insufficient that she couldn’t fully utilize this ability.
As for the meteorite impact—Yu Chi thought of the protective shield she had obtained before.
After the protective shield was bound to the small boat, its durability would increase as the boat was upgraded. The defense of a level 3 protective shield might be able to withstand small meteorites.
After this analysis, Yu Chi suddenly felt much more at ease.
She was, after all, one of the top players in District 1. If even she couldn’t survive the natural disaster, one could imagine what a tragic state District 1 would be in.
However, even though she said so, she still had to make some preparations. For example, no matter what natural disaster it was, food and water would become very scarce.
Currently, there were many water purifiers for sale on the market, but it was difficult for ordinary individual players to produce so many materials to manufacture them like her.
In fact, some player shops were even opened by several people in partnership. Their profits were not enough, so they would think of increasing the price of the water purifiers.
Compared to the beginning, the speed at which water purifiers were sold was much slower now. Some players felt that with mineral water, there was no need to buy a water purifier. It was better to wait until water purifiers became common in the future and the price dropped before buying one.
Yu Chi planned to manufacture more water purifiers in advance. It would be difficult to obtain material sources during a natural disaster, so the sales of water purifiers would surely soar.
Secondly, there would definitely be many injured people during a natural disaster, so she also needed to hoard a large number of bandages and adhesive bandages, at least not just selling a hundred or so a day like before.
As for more things, like food and clothes, she couldn’t prepare enough, since she was also lacking in these.
She didn’t know if more players would come out and show their abilities then.
I hope there will be more and more life-skill players, Yu Chi prayed silently. She still wanted to have whatever she wanted to eat and buy whatever she wanted to buy, just like before, such as beautiful clothes, miscellaneous small items, and the like.
Yu Chi opened her player shop and entered a large amount of wood, metal scraps, and other basic materials in the acquisition interface.
Then she listed 300 Ice Crystal Grapes for sale, each for 20 Purification Crystals.
Special materials like Moonlight Grass, Ice Crystal Fruits, and Frostflame Flowers were relatively scarce for her, and she couldn’t go back to Cold Moon Island to collect them again in a short time.
The growth effect of placing them in the [Two-Sided Mirror] was also unknown, which made her feel constrained when using them, always worried that they would be gone after being used up.
But Ice Crystal Grapes were different. She had thousands of them. She believed that after they were used up, a large wave would soon grow again, so they could be developed as a sustainable crop.
Speaking of Moonlight Grass and Frost Crystals, if it was an extreme cold type of natural disaster, these two would be of great use.
The former could heal frostbite, and the latter could be used to make cold-resistance potions and items.
The grapes were sold out in an instant after being listed in the shop. The hand speed left Yu Chi dumbfounded.
Are these players richer than I imagined?
What she didn’t know was that the players had now developed a habit. No matter what new product was listed in the [DazedFish Shop], the first thing to do was to snatch it up.
—A piece of advice from a player who didn’t manage to get a [Frostflame Flower].
Yu Chi had only listed ten [Frostflame Flowers] after she came back, and there were a total of forty thousand players in the entire District 1. Although the price was expensive, the effect was good.
Before this flower appeared, all players could only wait slowly for their skills to recover after overuse. But [Frostflame Flower] could increase the speed of Spirit recovery.
Just imagine, in a fight, while others were still accumulating strength, you had already recovered. You could even recover while fighting!
Now, the price of [Frostflame Flower] in the player trade section had been hyped up to several thousand crystals. Scarcity makes things valuable. As long as Yu Chi didn’t take out any more [Frostflame Flowers], the price would continue to rise.
And although the effect of Ice Crystal Grapes was not yet apparent, because they were of the common grade and the price was cheap, there were still many people eyeing them.
Yu Chi no longer paid attention to the other players. After putting the things on the shelves, she entered the [Two-Sided Mirror] space.
But she was startled as soon as she entered… was this her [Two-Sided Mirror] space?
She saw that all the common crops in the space had grown wildly. The rice paddies were already as tall as a person, and other crops like apples and watermelons had also become very exaggerated.
And this was just after one night!
The apples had become as big as basketballs. She didn’t know how the tree managed to keep them from falling off.
The watermelons and durians were even more exaggerated. It was no exaggeration to say that they were giant plants.
…This reminded her of a farming game she had played before.
Could it be that I applied too many elven blessings?
…Yu Chi belatedly realized the reason. She had been dizzy yesterday and had applied the same number of elven blessings to both the common plants and the spirit plants.
The spirit plants were fine, but the common plants had some difficulty bearing it.
This should be the reason for the plant mutation.
Since they couldn’t give back a qualitative change, they had to keep getting bigger, bigger, and bigger… good, obedient plants!
She just didn’t know if the seeds produced by these crops after they were harvested could continue to grow into giant crops.
Yu Chi broke off three grains of rice. After returning to the small boat, she steamed them in a pot. Soon, white, tender, and chubby, palm-sized rice was freshly cooked.
The alluring aroma of rice immediately filled the entire kitchen.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had rice…
Although she had just finished the chicken soup, Yu Chi still swallowed.
She let the rice cool for a while, then held it in her hand. She first took a bite from the tip. The sweet taste of the rice grains spread in her mouth, giving her an instant sense of endless happiness and satisfaction.
This was rice that had been blessed by an elf. It didn’t need any side dishes at all. After one bite, it would create a strong temptation, urging you to take another bite, and another… and it was gone.
Yu Chi blinked. A feeling of fullness came from her stomach. Only then did she belatedly realize that she had originally only planned to take a taste.
…It didn’t matter. They were all hers anyway.
After eating and drinking her fill, Yu Chi sat lazily in her chair, making bandages and adhesive bandages while also making water purifiers. At the same time, she began to think about how many crystals she should sell these giant crops for.
On the market, one crystal could buy two loaves of bread, enough to fill one person.
Her rice was so special, so the price couldn’t be set too cheap.
Then let’s make it 10 crystals for one grain of rice… after all, although it had gotten bigger, it was still ungraded and hadn’t crossed over to common.
Yu Chi, who suddenly realized that one grain of rice was actually more expensive than a bandage: …
Well, bandages are so cheap. Everyone must be secretly thanking me in their hearts, so they’ll buy them all!
Yu Chi went to the [Two-Sided Mirror] again, bestowed elven blessings on the spirit plants in other places, took some seeds of the common giant crops and planted them on the side, and then also bestowed an elven blessing on them.
Besides the huge changes on the side of the common crops, there were also many changes on the side of the spirit plants.
For example, the Beautiful Mushrooms that she had briefly forgotten… had actually spread throughout the entire 300 square meters of space!
She had only taken a little over 100 Beautiful Mushrooms at first, and now there were thousands of them. If it weren’t for the fact that the other area was not suitable for her to plant, it would probably have invaded the space of other crops!
What terrifying Beautiful Mushrooms.
Yu Chi sighed, feeling that she shouldn’t bestow elven blessings casually in the future, otherwise these plants would be too lively. She used her elf form to control the vines and picked 1000 Beautiful Mushrooms, then listed them all in her player shop.
Although these mushrooms were numerous, their effects were also very good. They could randomly grant various buffs.
But they couldn’t be controlled. It was possible that after eating 10, only one would have the buff she wanted.
For example, her at the time—eating speed +20%.
Yu Chi: (Smiling)
Since [Frostflame Flower] was priced at 1000 crystals, this one would be 500 crystals.
Soon, the other players discovered that while they were frantically preparing for the natural disaster, the [DazedFish Shop] had listed another batch of excellent plants!
What plant sells for so much? Even if it’s excellent…
Oh, a random buff. Then it’s fine—wait, leave one for me.
Beautiful Mushrooms were more popular than Frostflame Flowers, not only because they were half the price, but also because of humanity’s terrible gambling mentality.
One mushroom gives a super-grade buff. Isn’t that awesome?
Yu Chi had not expected the Beautiful Mushrooms to sell so hotly. So when she saw that her account suddenly had 500,000 more crystals, she was stunned on the spot.
5… 500,000?!
Wasn’t I just gloating yesterday that I had more than 20,000 crystals in my account?
Ahem, well, it can’t be helped~ we life-skill players are just that rich, hee hee.
Yu Chi immediately opened the system mall, skipped the first few pages of common and excellent items, and her gaze fell directly on the rare-grade items.
As the number one player on the wealth ranking, she didn’t even have a decent weapon or armor. Was that acceptable?
Yesterday, when she saw that she had more than 20,000 in her account, she had been planning to be stingy and buy an excellent-grade weapon. But now, hmph hmph.
The items in the system mall were dazzling, but it wasn’t easy to filter out the ones that were suitable for her. Yu Chi scrolled for a long time before she saw a possibly suitable weapon in the corner.
【Item: Silver Moon Scimitar
Grade: Rare
Description: Automatically attunes to the master. You will have the effect you desire most.】
Price: 320,000 crystals
Yu Chi’s eyes widened. She was tempted, she was really tempted!
As everyone knows, life-skill players generally don’t need very strong combat power. However, this was not a real game. In this world, even life-skill players would die a miserable death without enough strength to protect themselves.
So Yu Chi had always been very grateful for the [Morph] she had obtained at the beginning, which had given her a lot of confidence to act.
And having experienced the benefits of strength, she naturally wouldn’t be stingy in this aspect.
Although the Silver Moon Scimitar was more expensive than the item in her budget, the best part was that it would actively attune to the master. She was not good at fighting, and even when she transformed into another form, she relied entirely on brute force.
But with this scimitar, she might be able to slowly change this state.
She placed the order directly, and 320,000 crystals were instantly cleared from her account… System, I bought so much, and you didn’t even give me a single discount.
Yu Chi held her Silver Moon Scimitar, half excited, half sad.
—With the system’s ability to eat money, no matter how many crystals she earned, it would never be enough.
The items in the system mall refreshed every day, and there would be a 90% off special offer item every day. Yu Chi had managed to grab one at the very beginning, but later she was too busy and had no time to pick up any more bargains.
Now that she had a weapon, Yu Chi began to look for armor in the system mall.
If she had a strong piece of armor, if the assassination situation from last night happened again, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about being killed in her sleep.
Yu Chi searched very carefully, but there were no rare-grade items she wanted among the ones that refreshed today, and only one Legendary grade item would appear every day.
Basically, they were all in the millions and tens of millions.
Yu Chi didn’t even dare to look, let alone covet them.
If she sold all the materials in the [Two-Sided Mirror], she could earn a few million, but Yu Chi’s heart would probably go with the disappearing crystals.
There was a decent piece of armor among the excellent-grade items.
【Item: Stealthy Umbrella
Grade: Excellent
Description: 1. Can reduce one’s presence.
2. For every 100 Contamination Crystals (level three and above) it devours, it can resist one fatal attack. The higher the level of the crystal, the stronger the protection.】
Price: 30,000 Purification Crystals.
For ordinary players, this umbrella was not very cost-effective. Although the price was only 30,000 Purification Crystals, it was a real money-eater, and it was not a wearable armor.
But Yu Chi had money.
There were no other suitable armors right now. After hesitating for a few seconds, she bought it. Although she could wait for the system’s products to refresh tomorrow, this armor was not bad… most importantly, if she saw a suitable one tomorrow, she could just buy it again →_→.
The Stealthy Umbrella had a very cute name. After being bound, it also became a very cute umbrella-shaped earring that could change color at will.
Yu Chi’s ear piercings hadn’t disappeared yet. She immediately put the Stealthy Umbrella earring on. She shook her head and looked at herself in the [Two-Sided Mirror] for a while, then nodded in satisfaction.
The crimson umbrella-shaped earring was small and exquisite, more beautiful than many accessories in the real world.
The Silver Moon Scimitar was probably a weapon, so it didn’t have the effect of changing size after being bound to her. She hung the scimitar on her waist for easy access in the future.
Now that she had both a weapon and armor, Yu Chi felt much more at ease and began to prepare other things in an orderly manner.
The player shop was helping her constantly collect materials; water purifiers were being mass-produced in the crafting interface; and bandages and adhesive bandages hadn’t stopped for a moment. In just this one morning, she had already made more than 200 bandages and 400 adhesive bandages.
The chat channel and forum were also scrolling rapidly. Yesterday, that [FiveStarSurvivor] had announced the news of the natural disaster on the forum. Although he had been met with a wave of curses, more players believed it and began to make preparations in full swing.
Many of the items in the player shops were sold out. Yu Chi went over to join the fun and found that she couldn’t compete with their hand speed at all… fortunately, she wasn’t lacking anything now.
It was just that she had hoarded some more sanitary pads and tissues—what if that player suddenly died? Although she couldn’t curse others like that, Yu Chi’s expression was a little guilty.
Of course, the fishing activity of the All-Purpose Fishing Rod couldn’t be stopped. It could always give her a surprise occasionally.
Yu Chi’s luck had always been good. For example, she had just fished up a pack of seeds—sweet potatoes.
This thing could be eaten raw, which meant that in a natural disaster, in a situation of water and electricity shortage, it could save many people’s lives.
Yu Chi immediately planted it and directly applied 10 elven blessings—she hoped it would grow a little more vigorously, ahem.
At night, Yu Chi went to the [Two-Sided Mirror] space in her elf form and picked all the mature plants.
Now that the [Two-Sided Mirror] space had a lot more spirit plants, its preservation effect on plants had been greatly extended. She didn’t have to worry about them rotting when placed in the space.
She didn’t know what the situation of the natural disaster would be like. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use these crops.
Yu Chi stretched, fishing while stuffing grapes into her mouth. In her spare time, she would scroll through the channel and look at the analysis posts on the forum.
【Let’s be honest, GrumpyBro has dropped from second to third place. Does anyone know the reason?】
Topic: I’m quite curious. The OP remembers that he was always second, and he even went up to first place before. How did he suddenly drop?
1L: You can ask Brother Lang. After all, he’s the one in second place now (smirks).
2L: A rough estimate is that he’s injured. I heard from an insider that GrumpyBro’s constitution is special, and there are always a lot of contaminated creatures over there.
3L: The natural disaster is coming soon, and he’s injured. Could it be…
4L: …Seriously, person above, you’re completely underestimating the strength of the number two on the ranking.
5L: The 3rd floor might be a fan of the number one →_→
6L: Tsk tsk, the struggle between the top three has always been like this. It’s just that our Brother Lang is more competitive.
…
Yu Chi blinked, remembering her chat with [GrumpyBro] yesterday. Could it be that his boat had collapsed, which was why his strength had greatly reduced?
She gloatingly sent a message.
【Are you okay?】
The other party was silent for a while, then sent back a very spiritual period.
Yu Chi: Satisfied.
The next day, the atmosphere in the channel and forum became even more tense. It was visible to the naked eye that all the content about idle chat had disappeared. Most of it was discussing what form the natural disaster would take.
Although the number one on the ranking might have malicious intentions towards her, it was also thanks to her information. Yu Chi pouted.
But if the number one was lying to her… it was fine. Yu Chi had specifically mentioned during the transaction that this was something she had exchanged with the number one for a high price.
There was no need for her to tell such an easily exposed lie. Others naturally believed it. If the news of the natural disaster was really a lie…
It could only be considered that he and others had been deceived by the number one together. There was no loss.
And the players would not be angry, but would rejoice.
Being deceived was better than dying, right?
At midnight that night, the whole world seemed to have suddenly changed. Yu Chi’s eyelid twitched. She saw a line of words suddenly appear in the bottom right corner of the system screen: 【Sea Era, Year 1, January 1st】
And the system’s message also popped up in front of all the players.
【Sea Survival Game Third Stage—Natural Disaster Arrives. After the game update, a natural disaster will be triggered on the 1st of every three months, lasting for one month.】
【This natural disaster is “Extreme Heat.” We wish our players a pleasant gaming experience!】
***
【Author’s Note】
Sailing Log 8:
It’s extreme heat, it’s extreme heat! The fish is most afraid of heat. It will soon melt into a pool of fish water → rainwater → rain pond → fish pond → Yu Chi.
When a certain turtle heard about it in the distance, it was so anxious that it crawled all over the place. After crawling for a long time, it finally moved forward one meter [Sobbing].
But as a persistent turtle, it is still working hard (clenches fist).