Never mind the huge quantities of wood, stone, and dry grass—those could always be accumulated slowly over time. But where could hemp be found? Where was iron? And how on earth was she supposed to earn copper coins?
On top of that, upgrading the safehouse to Level 1 required her player level to reach 1 as well?
He Miaomiao, who had been bursting with energy ever since arriving here, experienced a rare moment of feeling dispirited for three whole seconds.
“Still, the harder it is, the more important it proves to be. My previous deduction was correct: the safehouse really is my most crucial reliance for surviving in Despair Valley. Good job, He Miaomiao! With a brain this sharp, you can succeed at anything!”
He Miaomiao checked her attribute panel.
Player: He Miaomiao (Lv0)
HP: 50/50
Attack Power: 5
Defense: 0
Agility: 5
EXP: 180/100
Personal Assets: Lv0 Safehouse (Durability 100, Defense 0, Monster Alert Radius 0m, Storage Box 4 slots (Wood 1, Stone 1, Empty 2), Arable Farmland 0 slots, Defense Structures 0), Stone Sickle Blueprint 1 (Inv Slot 1), Portable Free Slots: 7
The campfire and the rabbit meat currently roasting were not included in the tally.
“Not bad at all, He Miaomiao—much stronger than when you first got here!”
He Miaomiao decided to do what she could do first, temporarily setting aside materials whose sources were still unknown. She certainly couldn’t bear to sit idly in the safehouse waiting away the precious time she had with her Crit Talent active.
As she pondered, she recovered her stamina while flipping the rabbit meat beside the campfire.
She really, truly never wanted to eat raw rabbit meat again!
Barf—
Each piece of rabbit meat was only the size of a palm, and under the campfire’s heat, it quickly gave off a distinct, mouthwatering aroma.
He Miaomiao sniffed and felt utterly satisfied.
Before long, all 9 pieces of rabbit meat were fully cooked.
Learning from experience, she didn’t pick them up directly with her hands, but used her Loot skill on the meat instead.
[Cooked Rabbit Meat ×9!]
[Cooked Rabbit Meat ×9! (Critical Hit)]
He Miaomiao was pleasantly surprised: That works too?
By this time, her stamina had mostly recovered. She happily stowed away all 18 pieces of cooked rabbit meat, stood by the doorway to confirm there were no Corrupted Rabbits outside, and nimbly set off.
Primary goal: Gather stone and wood.
Secondary goal: Gather dry grass.
Tertiary goal: Search for and gather hemp, iron, and copper coins.
Quaternary goal: Slay Corrupted Rabbits to acquire raw rabbit meat, hoard more food, and see if any new blueprints would drop.
With enough food on hand, He Miaomiao felt a bit more confident than her previous outings. However, remaining as cautious as ever, she didn’t venture too far, targeting the wood and stone closest to the safehouse first.
She struck the terrifyingly contorted small tree three times.
[Wood ×1!]
[Wood ×1! (Critical Hit)]
Exhausted, she stopped and pulled out a piece of cooked rabbit meat to eat.
No seasonings or salt had been added while roasting the rabbit meat, so it didn’t have much flavor, but for He Miaomiao—who had just eaten raw rabbit meat not long ago—it could already be considered a delicacy.
After finishing it, He Miaomiao rested on the spot for a moment until she felt full of energy, then immediately moved a dozen steps to the left, standing beside a small pile of broken stones.
Four strikes.
[Stone ×2!]
[Stone ×2! (Critical Hit)]
She stopped, munched on rabbit meat, and struck twice more.
[Stone ×1!]
[Stone ×1! (Critical Hit)]
The pile of broken stones vanished. As He Miaomiao moved toward a small tree nearby, she took out a piece of cooked rabbit meat and held it in her mouth, though she didn’t eat it right away.
From stepping outside until now, she had performed gathering actions 4 times; 1 more time, and a Corrupted Rabbit would charge at her.
For safety’s sake, after striking the tree twice, He Miaomiao began chewing the rabbit meat, waiting for her stamina to recover a bit before delivering the third hit.
[Wood ×1!]
[Wood ×1! (Critical Hit)]
A Corrupted Rabbit sprinted over from the distance.
Now’s the time! Run!
Having calculated her state beforehand, He Miaomiao fled with all her might, making it back to the safehouse after taking two “HP -18” hits.
With food available, this time she spent less than half the time to obtain 4 logs of wood and 6 stones. Now that the Corrupted Rabbit was here, she didn’t lie down passively to wait like before either. Instead, she quickly gobbled down another piece of cooked rabbit meat, causing her stamina and HP to rise rapidly.
Once her HP recovered from 14 to 19, He Miaomiao swiftly launched her counterattack.
She expertly kicked the grazing rabbit, expertly ran back into the safehouse, and repeated the cycle. Throughout, she kept the rabbit tethered extremely close to the safehouse without letting it wander far, avoiding any waste of time and stamina running back and forth.
Soon enough—
[Raw Rabbit Meat ×1!]
[Raw Rabbit Meat ×1! (Critical Hit)]
He Miaomiao casually placed the two pieces of raw meat beside the campfire to roast, munched on another piece of cooked rabbit meat, transferred the wood and stone she was carrying into the storage chest, and headed out again to gather more resources.
Stone ×8
Cooked Rabbit Meat -2
Wood ×4
Cooked Rabbit Meat -2
Kill Corrupted Rabbit!
Raw Rabbit Meat ×2
After another round of extreme micro-operations, He Miaomiao stopped.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to continue, but after eating 9 pieces of cooked rabbit meat in a row, her stomach was completely stuffed.
There was no corresponding numerical metric on the attribute panel, but He Miaomiao knew she couldn’t eat any more and physically couldn’t swallow another bite.
It appeared that even though she was now a player, she couldn’t rely on unlimited eating to restore HP and stamina like players in certain video games—her stomach couldn’t handle it.
Still, this run had been immensely profitable, so taking a break didn’t hurt.
He Miaomiao placed the 2 newly obtained pieces of raw rabbit meat beside the campfire and picked up the 2 pieces she had placed before stepping out.
Cooked Rabbit Meat ×4
“Fighting 1 Corrupted Rabbit consumes 1 extra piece of cooked rabbit meat, but yields 4 new pieces of cooked rabbit meat in return—a net profit of 3 pieces. Thank goodness for critical hits!”
Next was organizing her resources.
On this outing, He Miaomiao had gathered a total of 4 logs of wood and 8 stones. After transferring everything into the safehouse storage chest and tallying them up, she currently possessed 9 logs of wood and 15 stones.
She checked the workbench again.
Stone Axe: [Wood ×15, Stone ×10]
Stone Sickle: [Wood ×8, Stone ×6 (Requirements met, craft now?)]
“In the real world, sickles are generally used for cutting grass, while axes are used for chopping trees. If I craft a Stone Sickle, there’s a high probability I can gather dry grass faster; if I craft a Stone Axe, there’s a high probability I can gather wood faster…”
He Miaomiao began analyzing aloud to herself.
Upgrading the safehouse required dry grass, but there was no rush. Since there were still many materials she hadn’t found, even if she gathered the required 120 portions of dry grass right now, she couldn’t upgrade immediately anyway, offering zero benefit in the short term.
On the contrary, if she accumulated 6 more logs of wood and crafted the Stone Axe first, she could gather wood much faster, and then craft the Stone Sickle as well, effectively boosting her overall efficiency.
He Miaomiao glanced at the panel.
Roughly 4 hours had passed since she first stepped outside carrying cooked rabbit meat.
“It was this much faster?“
One had to keep in mind that when she had no food, she had to run back to the safehouse frequently and lie down to wait for stamina to slowly recover. If rammed by a rabbit, she had to wait for her HP to fill back up before setting off again. As a result, it had taken her nearly 8 hours back then just to gather 30 portions of dry grass, 6 logs of wood, and 4 stones.
It was nothing like now, where in just about 4 hours, she had secured 8 logs of wood and 14 stones.
“Lighting the campfire first was indeed the right choice.“
The proof was right before her eyes.
He Miaomiao intended to keep going. However, before her stamina had fully recovered, the sky—bright just a second ago—instantly turned pitch black without any transition. For a moment, only the campfire in front of He Miaomiao remained lit.
She quickly checked the time.
“It turns pitch black at exactly 7:00 PM every night.”
He Miaomiao jotted down this line of text.
Originally, she had planned to keep working even after dark.
Gathering efficiency was too low, so she had to make full use of her time; otherwise, she definitely wouldn’t make it in time to upgrade the safehouse before the grace period ended.
However, as He Miaomiao looked outside from her doorless, dilapidated hut, she discovered that the light from the campfire could only illuminate the interior of this house. Even the area right outside the broken holes adjacent to the safehouse was enveloped in complete darkness.
She couldn’t see a single thing.
Not only that, she could hear the wind blowing harder outside, howling loudly, with the growls and roars of unknown creatures mixed in the gusts.
He Miaomiao attempted to take out a log of wood and ignite it on the campfire.
Failed.
Despite looking like ordinary wood, when placed on the campfire, it showed no change whatsoever, remaining in the exact same state as when she had smashed it off the small tree, without the slightest trace of being burned by fire.
It seemed crafting a torch by oneself was impossible without a blueprint.
He Miaomiao returned the wood to the storage chest and gave up on her idea of going out to gather all night—gathering resources was important, but her life was far more important.
When she couldn’t see anything, if she got rammed by a rabbit, she wouldn’t even be able to run in time.
Furthermore, even though eating food during gathering restored her stamina, He Miaomiao was indeed exhausted after all this tossing and turning. She simply leaned against the storage chest, sitting by the fire to rest while organizing today’s gains.
She opened her panel.
Player: He Miaomiao (Lv0)
HP: 50/50
Attack Power: 5
Defense: 0
Agility: 5
EXP: 260/100 (Upgradeable)
Skills: Appraisal (Primary), Looting (Primary)
Personal Assets: Lv0 Safehouse (Durability 100, Defense 0, Monster Alert Radius 0m, Storage Box 4 slots (Wood 9, Stone 15, Empty 2), Arable Farmland 0 slots, Defense Structures 0), Stone Sickle Blueprint 1 (Inv Slot 1), Cooked Rabbit Meat 13 (Inv Slot 2), Campfire 1 (Inv Slot 3), Portable Free Slots: 5
The progress was gratifying; her hard work hadn’t been in vain.
However, despite using Loot so many times today, it remained at Primary. It appeared her skills wouldn’t level up simply through repeated use; she likely still needed corresponding skill books.
Just as she was reflecting, a notification suddenly popped up on her panel.
[Congratulations to player He Miaomiao for surviving 1 day in Despair Valley! Despair Village 4 Channel is now unlocked!]
The pop-up window vanished, replaced by a new button on her panel. Tapping it open revealed an interface similar to a group chat, titled [Despair Village 4 (100/100)].
“There are other players here?”
He Miaomiao sat up straight in an instant.
Her heart was filled with both the excitement of encountering fellow human beings in an unfamiliar world and worry for her compatriots—if they, like her, came from the same real world.
However, before she could say anything, the group name changed right under her nose.
The number 100 rapidly decreased, finally settling at [Despair Village 4 (74/100)].
He Miaomiao’s eyelids twitched violently.
What does this mean?
26 people died today?
Flesh-and-blood… human beings, living just like her?
[Zhou Jieran]: “What is this place? Is this a prank? I don’t want to participate! Let me out, or I’m calling the police!”
[Feng Le]: “So hungry… so cold… so dark…”
[Duanmu Jing]: “Something seems off about this place. I was working overtime, and after a single blink, I ended up here. Am I dreaming? But everything here feels so real, and I don’t know any of you.”
[Yu Qiaoyun]: “I went out to check during the daytime. The smell outside the house was very strange, and I couldn’t find anything to eat.”
He Miaomiao’s eyelashes trembled.
Yu Qiaoyun?
Could it be the sister Yu she knew—Yu Qiaoyun, who lived right next door to her and had just given birth a few days ago?