In the previous instance, she had experienced prolonged rainfall, to the point where the entire house was submerged underwater.
But this time, the situation was clearly different.
Mu Shan heard unusual noises from the Sunroom—“clang clang”—heavy objects colliding repeatedly, and the “whoosh whoosh” of wind that sounded like a giant beast roaring.
She quickly donned her raincoat and rushed to the upper level of the stairs. The moment she opened the double safety doors, a fierce gust carrying raindrops slammed straight into her face.
Rain had really entered the Sunroom!
The sky was too dark; she squinted but could not make out the situation inside the Sunroom. She only felt the gale carrying sheets of rain surging in madly.
It must not be that the glass roof had been smashed and leaked!
To prevent water from entering the basement, Mu Shan only cracked the main door open just wide enough for one person to slip through sideways. She used her body to block the wind and rain, inching her way out of the safe house bit by bit.
“Whoosh—whoosh—”
The gale whipped up, and the downpour lashed like whips.
The wind, roaring like dragon and tiger, brought an intense sense of oppression. Mu Shan braced against the enormous wind pressure; even those few steps to climb out of the basement took tremendous effort.
In a mere dozen seconds, her head and face were completely soaked, with strands of hair plastered messily to her forehead. But Mu Shan did not dare slacken for even a moment. She pressed her body tightly against the wall and inched toward the open Sunroom door.
The entrance door had been blown open by the storm at that moment, “slap slap” smacking against the wall repeatedly, like a fragile piece of paper.
The fierce wind outside poured torrents of rain into the Sunroom. With just a glance, she could see numerous broken trees smashed against the walls and barbed wire fences.
The rain did not fall in drops but whipped sideways in sheets. The visible curtain of rain brought an overwhelming impact, making it impossible to close the door.
Mu Shan gripped the wall with both hands and slowly made her way to the doorway. Seizing the right moment, she lunged forward and grabbed the handle.
But a simple “close the door” motion that was usually effortless now felt impossible, as if she were wrestling a giant.
The fierce wind nearly flipped her entire body over.
At such wind speeds, the raindrops felt like high-pressure water jets, preventing her from opening her eyes at all.
Mu Shan clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, enduring the rapid battering of wind and rain on her face and body. She gripped the door handle tightly and used her upper body to push the door panel forward inch by inch.
Fine twigs kept piercing through the barbed wire, “crack crack” smashing in.
The storm outside grew even more violent. Mu Shan heard the “rumble—” of thunder in the forest and exerted all her strength. Her feet nearly dug pits into the ground before she finally slammed the door shut.
“Click.” The moment the entrance door closed, the rampaging gale and rain in the Sunroom abruptly stopped, as if the wind hag had put away her bellows.
Mu Shan was drenched and utterly exhausted, leaning against the wall on the verge of collapsing to the ground.
“Crack—”
Lightning tore through the sky, illuminating the pitch-black forest for an instant.
Mu Shan took out a camping lantern from her backpack and began inspecting the damage in the Sunroom.
The heavy impacts she had heard from the basement were actually the sound of the metal racks toppling over. Those racks were usually used for drying clothes and bedding, but now they had been blown all over the room and completely fallen apart.
The orange tree had been snapped off, leaving only a bare stump of a branch.
The fields were a total mess; her potatoes and carrots had been uprooted, leaving only scattered stems and leaves strewn across the ground.
Mu Shan picked up a damaged plant. The leaves were gone, but beneath the roots hung a few miniature, immature little potatoes.
Even if planted back now, there was no guarantee they would survive and yield a harvest.
Mu Shan numbly set it down and checked the next one.
Though the Sunroom fields were not large, she cherished them greatly. She checked the vegetables’ growth every day for pests or diseases and never neglected watering or weeding.
Chinese people always liked to plant something; only with land did they have a home. Unfortunately, such a beautiful vision was hard to realize in an instance.
Not a single vegetable plant had survived.
Mu Shan felt her face cold and drenched. She wiped it, unable to tell if it was tears or raindrops.
The only consolation was that she had picked the oranges during the day and moved the baskets underground. The magical sunflower’s pot was also kept in the basement at night, so they had not been affected—not a total loss.
Mu Shan thought, At least she still had a basket of oranges. At this point, that was the only way she could comfort herself.
“That’s good, that’s good.”
The camping lantern’s dim yellow light illuminated a corner, accompanied by occasional flashes of lightning. Mu Shan could not sleep amid such a storm, so she rallied herself and began cleaning up the wreckage in the Sunroom.
She gathered the disassembled metal racks piece by piece, but no matter how she counted, one component was missing. In the pitch dark, she could not find it and could only stack them temporarily against the wall.
Many of the damaged vegetable plants from the fields were still edible. Mu Shan patiently squatted on the ground, sorting through them one by one. She stripped off rotten or old leaves; if tubers had grown underneath, she snipped them off and tossed them into a plastic bag.
In no time, she had collected half a bag of little potatoes.
Before she could feel happy, a faint “crack crack” came from overhead.
The sound was all too familiar. Mu Shan’s expression changed. She barely had time to hug her head and crouch down when the glass roof above exploded with a loud “bang—.”
The massive storm surged back in, countless sharp glass shards falling amid the rain.
A corner of the Sunroom’s glass roof had been shattered by a snapped tree, with two or three top panes completely broken.
Mu Shan curled up as low as possible, clutching the hood of her raincoat tightly with both hands.
She felt countless glass fragments pattering down from above—some hitting her body, others landing nearby. Fortunately, the electric scooter raincoat was tough and smooth-surfaced, protecting her from cuts by the glass.
The Sunroom, quiet for just a short while, was once again ravaged and destroyed by the storm.
Mu Shan crouched on the ground, her hands buried in the soil. Amid the gale that drowned out all other sounds, she roared, “—Main God System! Repair the Sunroom and reinforce the glass roof!”
Her voice shattered in the downpour, and the system’s virtual display was blurry.
【Payment confirmed, gold coins automatically deducted
Under construction, countdown: 5 minutes
High-risk environment detected, gold coin cost +100】
Mu Shan hung her head and lay flat on the ground. At that moment, she had no rebuttal for the Main God System’s unreasonable demands.
Safe house breached = player death.
It was not surprising that the system raised safe house fees in special circumstances.
Mu Shan’s raincoat billowed in the wind; in such gales, wearing it was better than nothing. Her clothes, pants, and shoes were completely soaked.
The rain poured through every gap into the raincoat; she was even pinned by the wind pressure, unable to make large movements.
In the face of nature’s overwhelming power, humans seemed so insignificant—even players with superpowers were the same.
Compared to the uncontrollable force, humans could only feel fear.
The system’s construction noises overhead were drowned out by the rain, completely inaudible.
Mu Shan did not know what was “under construction”; she could only guess the repair progress from the intensity of the rain and wind.
Those 5 minutes were the most agonizing she had endured since entering the game.
When the last gust died down and no more raindrops or debris fell, Mu Shan finally removed her filthy raincoat hood and looked up.
The Sunroom had been repaired, sealed tight once more. Rain pattered on the glass roof, forming dense circles of water.
The breaches in the outer barbed wire had also been mended, but mended or not, the system offered no guarantee against future tree impacts.
Mu Shan moved her numb legs, shivering as she stood. She slipped back into the basement and changed out of her soaked, clinging clothes and pants.
After donning dry clothes, she returned to the Sunroom.
Judging by its intensity, the storm would not let up anytime soon. She did not dare risk the Sunroom being destroyed a second time; no one could sleep soundly in such conditions.
Mu Shan found the half-bag of little potatoes that the wind had blown to the corner earlier and clutched them preciously.
She wondered if He Yuncong had woken up or returned to his safe house. In this weather, even the mightiest bigshot would struggle to survive in the wild.
[Mu Shan (Collector): The storm’s here—are you okay?]
She sent him a message via the system friends interface but received no reply. He was not still unconscious, was he…
In the Humid Heat Forest, no one slept that night.
Time ticked by; the first glimmer of dawn pierced the pitch-black forest.
From midnight to sunrise, the rain and wind gradually subsided.
Mu Shan had battled the storm all night. She reassembled the metal racks, salvaged all edible vegetables from the fields, did some basic cleaning, and cleared away branches and debris.
The sun rose, and the sky was a clear blue.
Exhausted, she stood in the center of the Sunroom, gazing at the glass roof littered with dead branches and leaves, and the deformed, twisted outer barbed wire.
Her rain-paled fingers gripped the door handle and twisted it open.
The world looked like it had been beaten up.
Trees in the forest lay toppled every which way, many uprooted entirely. Shrubs and herbaceous plants were flattened to the ground.
The tree that had smashed her home’s glass roof still stood there, snapped in half, its crown even crushing part of the brick wall.
The system had only repaired the barbed wire and glass roof for her, not the walls.
At that moment, her safe house resembled a dilapidated public toilet.
Mu Shan wiped away the tears welling up involuntarily in her eyes.
It did not matter.
She could pick herself up and start over.
She materialized an item card from the previous instance【Garden Shears】and wielded the oversized shears longer than her arm, snipping off all the branches caught in the barbed wire and walls.
As she worked, the two “runaway” zombie workers finally limped back. They had been blown who-knows-where by last night’s storm, drenched and pathetic-looking.
One even had a triangular tree branch stuck in its head.
Seeing the comical sight of the zombie workers, Mu Shan laughed amid her bitterness.
Two zombies and one human huffed and puffed, clearing all the remaining debris around the safe house.
Exhausted, Mu Shan sat on a large rock, eating an airplane meal with cold water while counting her wallet.
The more she counted, the flatter it got.
No matter what, she could never pay the failure penalty for Side Quest 1 (3000 gold). The fact was set; a few hundred more or less made no difference.
She might as well go all in.
【Confirm purchase of ground defense structures (repair version)?】
【Confirm purchase of Sunroom insect-proof, sand-proof diamond mesh screens?】
【Confirm purchase of entrance door [Seven Locks] structure?】
【Merged confirmation, gold coins automatically deducted
Construction countdown: 10 minutes】
With payment confirmed, a gray canvas covered the outside of the Sunroom, marked “Under Construction.” “Clang clang” hammering echoed from inside, accompanied by occasional puffs of dust and debris.
The brick walls were rebuilt. Mu Shan added a layer of fine diamond mesh screens inside the barbed wire and glass roof, so insects could be kept out even when ventilating with the roof open. With the seven-lock entrance door, neither humans nor hurricanes could break in again.
But Mu Shan felt it was still not enough.
For the Sunroom to get sunlight, her house could not truly become a public toilet.
It was impossible to fully enclose the physical glass roof, leaving a safety hazard.
She browsed and filtered the system mall, finally selecting her desired item from Western magic orbs and Eastern spell barriers.
【Eight Gates Golden Lock Array Flags (Defensive)
Quality: Mid Xuan Tier
Description: Huaxia Daoist magic tool, refined by a certain Nascent Soul realm array grandmaster. Can activate Eight Gates Golden Lock Array (size unlimited), protecting the people within.】
Usage: Place the formation flags in the specified positions; during the formation’s activation, it consumes spiritual power (gold coins or equivalent power).
Note: “Heaven and Earth, the Profound Yellow, the Vast Universe and Primordial Chaos.”】
The gold coin value of the formation flags exceeded her imagination, but for the safe house, Mu Shan had no choice.
With a crisp jingle—“Ding ling ling—” gold coins scattered, and a sandalwood box containing the formation flags appeared in her hand. Inside were eight flags, each with a simple and ancient design, inscribed with different characters.
【Gold Coin Balance: 26】
That familiar 26 points.
She had returned to those penniless days once more.
The formation flags could only be deployed after the walls were repaired. While waiting for the system to finish construction, Mu Shan opened her card album.
The three cards she drew today were: 【Item Card
·A Tremendously Collapsing Tree】
【Environment Card: Stormy Weather】
【Character Card: A Coleopteran Insect Monster】
As expected, they were still filled with the system’s abundant sarcasm.
Mu Shan looked at the two cards of different instance types and gradually confirmed: The main god system definitely possessed independent thinking ability; it was not an ordinary AI.
It could create, derive, mock players, and toy with humans.
It knew how to stretch a person’s spirit to the limit and how to drop—the straw that broke the camel’s back—at the critical point.
Mu Shan sat gray-faced and exhausted on a rock.
She stowed the empty bottle she had drunk from, tossed the airplane meal box and pile of tree branch trash together, and had no chance for any other actions.
The two zombie workers standing guard beside her suddenly let out shrieks, startling her into a jolt.
“Aah—Heh heh ah—”
They flailed their arms and made terrified, creepy expressions.
Mu Shan reacted abruptly and looked toward the riverbank: Oh no, on the eighth day of the main quest, the insect monster’s third wave of attacks had come at this moment!