【Fence successfully installed.】
The completed fence was about one meter high. Each meter consisted of two horizontal pieces of wood and two vertical pieces arranged in a grid.
Qiyu was highly skeptical that such a short, makeshift structure could actually protect anything.
Not to mention against the two mutated creatures he had encountered earlier.
The mutated boar looked as though it could plow straight through the fence with a single charge, and as for the gale rabbit…
Qiyu held up his hands to measure the gap. Yes, the space between the wooden slats was wide enough for several gale rabbits to squeeze through at once.
【Current fence durability: 100/100. When durability reaches zero, the fence becomes ineffective.】
Qiyu realized that this must be a mechanic of the survival game. It seemed that whenever an enemy tried to attack something protected by a fence, the system would prioritize damage to the fence first.
The only question was whether 100 durability would actually hold up.
He walked inside and placed two plots of farmland.
This time, everything went smoothly. The once-barren ground transformed into light brown, moist soil.
【Ordinary Farmland, Plantable, 100% Harvest.】
Qiyu currently had two packets of seeds.
One was a packet of sunflower seeds he had obtained through a trade with another player.
The other was a packet of gale grass seeds he had obtained after defeating a mutated gale rabbit.
Qiyu wasn’t familiar with either plant, so he decided to plant the sunflowers first, following the order in which he had obtained them.
He evenly planted fifty seeds.
A faint countdown appeared above the soil.
【The plant is 23:59:55 away from maturity.】
Qiyu had never farmed before, so he watched curiously for a while. However, aside from the countdown steadily decreasing, the sunflower seeds showed no visible change.
He couldn’t stay here forever.
Qiyu closed the fence.
It was already 4:00 PM, and there were still two hours until dark.
He actually had plenty of things he wanted to do.
For instance, he really wanted to read the two books he had obtained from the silver chest, which were still sitting in his backpack.
And the meat he had gotten from killing mutated creatures—he really wanted to eat that, too.
But in this game, it got dark at six in the evening and didn’t become light again until eight the next morning.
During that long, dark night, he couldn’t go outside and would be stuck inside the wooden cabin with nothing else to do.
Daylight hours were especially precious. Whether it was reading or eating, he could save those things for the evening.
At the thought of everything waiting for him that night, Qiyu’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.
He spent the first hour chopping wood.
In the two days since he had entered this survival game, his need for wood had never stopped.
Wood was needed to craft furniture, and wood was needed to upgrade the shelter. Now there was yet another major consumer: fences.
An hour later, five trees lay felled, and his backpack had gained another 80 units of wood.
His luck had been pretty good—he had triggered three critical hits in a row.
With one hour left, he circled the safe zone, hoping to encounter a few more mutants.
Unfortunately, after walking for half an hour, he had only picked up a pile of rocks and harvested a newly spawned banyan plum. He hadn’t encountered a single creature.
With only half an hour left before dark, it looked like he wouldn’t find much more today, so Qiyu decided to head back.
If there was still time, he could chop down another tree or two.
Five hundred meters wasn’t far, and before long, he spotted the tall roof of the wooden cabin.
Qiyu’s footsteps suddenly halted.
He held his breath and silently slipped into the shadows behind a tree, peering in a certain direction.
The sound was coming from the cabin.
More precisely, it was coming from the fence he had just set up earlier that day.
A creature with colorful tail feathers…
A chicken? Or a bird?
Qiyu wasn’t sure.
It was enormous, about as tall as an adult human, and the one-meter-high fence looked like a toy in front of it.
Yet this beautiful mutated creature was merely pacing restlessly around the fence. It seemed especially fond of it…
No.
Qiyu suddenly realized that the mutated creature must have set its sights on the sunflowers he had planted.
But just like the mutated creatures he had encountered before, this troublesome chicken—although it clearly looked desperate to break through the fence—seemed to be restrained by some invisible rule and hadn’t actually launched an attack.
At some point, the barbarian fang dagger had already appeared in Qiyu’s hand.
His eyes gleamed.
It had practically delivered itself right to his doorstep.
The agility bonus from his jade boots made his movements even more silent as he crept closer to the mutated creature.
Just as Qiyu was about to strike, the mutated chicken suddenly raised its head and let out an alarmed squawk.
Had he been discovered?
Qiyu’s heart sank.
Just as he was about to strike first, a flash of color suddenly appeared in his field of vision.
A colorful streak shot toward the mutated chicken like lightning.
Qiyu, who had just started to rise, immediately crouched back down and melted into the shadows behind the tree once more.
The streak was moving so quickly that the naked eye could barely make out a blur.
Just as it was about to hit the mutated chicken, the bird raised its head and let out an enraged cry.
Qiyu saw its beautiful tail feathers begin to glow.
Immediately afterward, flames burst from its long beak, completely engulfing the colorful shadow.
When the streak crashed to the ground, Qiyu finally got a clear look at it.
It was a snake about as thick as a finger and roughly a meter long.
After being engulfed by the flames, more than half of the snake’s once-colorful scales had turned black.
The mutated chicken clearly understood the principle of striking while the iron was hot. It darted forward and pecked viciously at the snake with its long beak, which gleamed with a chilling light.
The two were clearly on completely different levels.
Qiyu watched calmly and assessed the situation.
In his mind, he calculated his chances of defeating the mutated chicken.
This chicken wasn’t any harder to deal with than the mutated boar.
The real problem was time.
He glanced at his personal interface.
There were fewer than ten minutes left before nightfall.
Seeing the snake writhe a few times on the ground before going still, Qiyu shot forward like a ghost.
With such a huge treasure chest dangling right in front of him, who could possibly resist?
But before he could get close, the chicken suddenly began swaying from side to side, spewing flames wildly in every direction from its long beak.
The attack was completely random, and Qiyu easily dodged it.
Thud.
Its heavy body crashed to the ground, sending grass and leaves flying.
Only then did Qiyu notice that the mutant chicken’s left claw had a small, charred snake head wrapped around it.
The snake had been pecked until its head was severed, but it seemed to have retaliated in its final moments, sinking its fangs into its enemy one last time.
Before Qiyu could take a closer look, a faint white light flashed, and the snake head wrapped around the mutant chicken’s claw vanished without a trace.
Realizing what was happening, Qiyu swiftly drew his barbarian fang dagger and slashed across the neck of the fallen mutant chicken.
The massive chicken’s body followed the snake’s fate, dissolving into white light.
【Obtained 20 kg of toxic brocade flame bird meat, 30 brocade flame feathers, 1 fire energy bead】
In addition, defeating the Level 2 Mutant Brocade Flame Bird dropped a fine iron chest.
Seeing that it wasn’t a brass chest, Qiyu wasn’t disappointed.
After all, the brocade flame bird had been an unexpected windfall to begin with.
It seemed, however, that not every Level 2 Mutated Creature dropped a brass chest.
An even bigger surprise came from the other three bursts of white light.
They came from the snake that had been killed by the brocade flame bird.
【Obtained 10 ml of Level 2 phantom color snake venom, 10 phantom color snake skins, 1 phantom poison needle blueprint, 1 phantom armor blueprint】
The snake that had been instantly killed by the brocade flame bird was actually a Level 2 Mutant Creature as well, and it had even dropped two blueprints!
Qiyu didn’t know that the phantom color snake’s lethality was no weaker than that of the brocade flame bird. It had simply been unlucky enough to encounter its natural predator, whose species and abilities happened to counter it perfectly.
However, the phantom color snake had only dropped materials—there was no treasure chest.
“It seems only mutant creatures I kill myself will drop treasure chests.”
Qiyu quickly gathered all the materials.
There were only four minutes left until nightfall.
He walked over to the fence and was surprised to find that the farmland, which had been nothing more than brown soil when he left, was now covered in countless emerald-green seedlings.
The sunflower seeds had sprouted.
No.
It wasn’t just that they had sprouted.
The delicate young shoots were dotted with flecks of golden light, like scattered specks of gold.
Qiyu saw 【Sunflower-Mutated】 displayed on the interface.
Qiyu fell into deep thought.
Could it be that both the brocade flame bird and the phantom color snake had been drawn here by the mutated sunflowers?
It was almost dark.
He cast a few lingering glances at the tiny sprouts, confirmed that the fence was still intact at 100 durability, and then returned to the wooden cabin.
After the upgrade, the cabin now had windows, so the room was still quite bright.
However, the world soon plunged into complete darkness.
Qiyu immediately looked out the window, only to find the night as black as ink.
He couldn’t see a thing.
Qiyu calmly took some wood from his backpack, chopped it into smaller pieces with his axe, arranged them on the floor, and lit them with a fire starter.
Sizzle.
A warm yellow glow rose through the darkness, reflecting in his bright eyes.
He took another piece of firewood and began whittling it with his barbarian fang dagger.
After just a few strokes, it had become a long, slender skewer.
He then took out a piece of barbarian fang boar meat, cut it into small chunks with the dagger, and threaded them onto the skewer.
As he worked, his movements were neither hurried nor slow, and his expression was serious and almost reverent.
The fresh meat touched the flames, and the fat began to sizzle.
A sense of peace and happiness unlike anything he had ever experienced before washed over Qiyu like a tide.
“Ouch, this is so good.”
Ignoring the heat, Qiyu eagerly took a bite the moment the meat was cooked.
The heat scalded his tongue, but he couldn’t bear to spit it out.
There was no strange bitterness, nor any overpowering gamey stench.
So uncontaminated meat really was this fragrant!
“Survival Game, I’ll be forever grateful to you.”
Qiyu was a grateful person. Even after his life had improved, he hadn’t forgotten to thank the Survival Game system that had brought him here and granted him this heavenly existence.
【……】
After devouring a large chunk of grilled meat, Qiyu sat in front of the fire and experienced for the first time what it meant to feel “so comfortable he didn’t want to move.”
He really wanted to lie down right there, think about nothing, empty his mind, and get a good night’s sleep.
No way!
There were still so many things left to do.
He forcibly pulled himself out of that drowsy, blissful state.
First, he needed to tally up the afternoon’s haul—the main items being the loot from two Level 2 Mutants.