When Lux emerged from the Balance Commission, the sunlight shone right on her face.
She stood at the entrance, squinting to adjust to the light, and then looked at the scene before her—Exalting Sanctum, one of the most bustling markets on the Xianzhou Luofu.
Pedestrians were as thick as a weave, shops stood in rows, a few starskiffs drifted in the air, and in the distance were layers of pavilions and flying eaves.
“So lively,” Lux couldn’t help but exclaim.
But she didn’t know where she should go.
“Logically speaking…
I should start by punching trees, then get rich.”
Lux looked around, trying to find a tree.
The streets were lined with ornamental plants, neatly trimmed, but they were all bushes; chopping them would probably only yield a few sticks.
In the distance, however, there was a giant tree, towering into the clouds, its canopy blocking out the sky, with no end in sight.
This thing was too conspicuous, and so exaggerated that it clearly wasn’t an ordinary object.
If you used an infinite chain-mine on it in a game, the computer would probably crash.
“I definitely can’t punch that…”
Lux withdrew her gaze and decided to walk around first to familiarize herself with the environment.
She walked along the main street of Exalting Sanctum, passing one stall after another, and unknowingly turned into an alley.
A sign stood at the entrance of the alley—Aurum Alley.
Once inside, the style changed completely.
“Soda bean juice—piping hot bean juice—”
“Chaos-slashed beef offal!
A century-old master swordsman slicing beef offal live!”
“Qiongshi bird skewers, delicious and inexpensive, three skewers for just one stellar jade!”
The hawking of wares rose and fell, and the aroma hit her face like a wall.
Lux’s stomach gave a “gurgle.”
She looked down at her hunger level on the system interface—it had only dropped by one bar.
Although she wasn’t hungry, the aroma was truly too enticing.
“So fragrant…”
She swallowed her saliva, her eyes unable to help but glance at the stalls.
The beef offal was bubbling in the pot, the Qiongshi bird skewers were coated in a layer of shiny sugar glaze, and another stall was selling a golden-yellow cake that looked so crispy it would crumble at a touch.
Lux shook her head vigorously.
“No, no, Lux cannot let desire break her will!”
She was currently penniless, her pockets emptier than her face.
Even if she wanted to eat, she couldn’t; she had to find a way to make money first.
Wait, no, she didn’t even have a way to make money.
Just as she was worrying, she suddenly saw a few trees planted along the side of the alley—golden-yellow canopies, straight trunks, looking like ordinary ornamental trees.
“Trees!”
Lux’s eyes lit up.
She had Steve’s abilities!
Punching trees, crafting tools, mining…
She could perform this entire process with her eyes closed.
“I’ll just find a tree with no one around, punch it, and leave; wouldn’t that work?”
Lux was a woman of action; she did what she said.
She started wandering around Aurum Alley, scouting for a target.
But this alley had a lot of foot traffic, and there were people next to every tree—eating, chatting, zoning out, or occasionally passing by.
Lux could only sneakily squat in a corner, waiting for a group of people to leave before moving two steps toward the tree, pretending to look at the scenery if discovered.
But her movements were truly too suspicious, just like a dog thief.
Two patrolling Cloud Knights at the alley entrance noticed her and whispered, “What is that fox doing?”
Lux was completely oblivious, her mind filled only with “find a tree to punch.”
She didn’t notice that the system interface was silently refreshing—
[Confusion from passerby, Emotion Points + 0.01]
[Vigilance from stall owner, Emotion Points + 0.01]
[Curiosity from Cloud Knights, Emotion Points + 0.01]
Hard work pays off.
Near the railing in Aurum Alley, there was a narrow alley that usually had no one walking through it.
A lone tree grew there, its golden-yellow canopy poking out over the railing, looking very easy to bully.
Lux looked left and right—no one.
She crouched and snuck into the alley, rushing to the tree in a few strides.
“Hehehe, little tree, don’t be afraid, I won’t let your sacrifice go to waste.”
“Ora…
Ora…
Ora…
Ora!”
“Plop.”
The bottom block of the trunk disappeared, and a palm-sized log model dropped to the ground, floating and spinning twice before “whooshing” into Lux’s body.
A notification flashed in Lux’s eyes—an extra slot in her inventory: [Maple Log × 1].
She was stunned for a moment, then ecstatic.
“It worked!”
But the next second, her expression suddenly froze.
The tree in front of her…
was floating.
The bottom block was gone, but the trunk and canopy above didn’t move an inch, just floating in mid-air, maintaining their shape in defiance of the laws of physics.
Lux looked up at this floating tree and fell silent.
“…Newton’s coffin lid can’t be held down again.”
She shrank back guiltily, but then had a second thought—no one saw it anyway, and since she’d already started, she might as well finish.
She sped up, punching and looking back every three seconds, terrified of being discovered.
After getting three logs, she immediately opened the crafting interface—a 2×2 grid floating in front of her eyes, exactly the same as in MC.
She placed a log into the grid, made wooden planks, and then made a crafting table.
She placed the crafting table on the ground with a “click,” and a wooden crafting table with jagged textures stood firmly in the alley.
Lux squatted in front of the crafting table and skillfully crafted a wooden axe.
The moment the axe appeared in her hand, she almost laughed out loud.
“Great, as expected, Steve’s abilities all work!”
She stood up and weighed the wooden axe in her hand.
Although it was made of wood, the feel was surprisingly good, the weight was just right, and pixel particles vaguely flowed on the axe blade.
Lux’s eyes shone.
With Steve’s abilities, once she developed, she could just rampage all the way—
She was already fantasizing: once she saved up enough diamond armor, she would go challenge that white-haired general and make him send her to the Balance Commission.
Then, after gathering a full set of netherite armor, she would go straight to kick the ass of that Aeon of Elation.
“Punching the white-haired general, kicking the Aeon of Elation…
it’s not impossible!”
She was full of energy and swung the axe to get to work.
The wooden axe was much more efficient than using her bare hands; with a few “crack, crack” swings, the trunk disappeared block by block.
Every time a log dropped, she quickly picked it up and stuffed it into her inventory.
The moment the last piece of the trunk was punched away, the leaves on the canopy began to “rustle” and slowly drifted down.
A few sticks and saplings dropped out, bounced on the ground twice, and she picked them up.
“No apple?
Seems it’s not a fruit tree.”
Lux looked at her loot—24 Maple Logs, five sticks, three saplings.
“Not bad, not bad, a good start.”
She bent down to pick up the crafting table, confirmed that no traces were left in the alley, then clapped her hands and prepared to sneak off.
Just as she reached the alley entrance, a man was walking in.
Lux’s heart leapt to her throat; she quickly pretended not to see him, lowered her head, and hurried past him.
The man glanced at her, thinking this fox’s movements were a bit strange, but didn’t think much of it and continued walking inside.
He walked to the railing, leaned against it, and let the wind blow for a while, but always felt something was wrong.
He looked back at the alley, then at the outside of the railing.
“Wasn’t there…
a tree in this alley?”
He thought for a long time, feeling he might have remembered it wrong.
“Forget it, never mind.”
He turned around and looked at the towering Ambrosial Arbor in the distance, his mood suddenly brightening.
“Such beautiful scenery, it really makes one want to recite a poem.”
He gathered his emotions and blurted out:
“Ah—Ambrosial Arbor, your branches are thick and long, just like your trunk is long and thick…”
…
Lux now had 24 logs in her hand, enough to craft a bunch of wooden pickaxes, axes, swords, etc.
But just having wood was useless; she needed stone—stone pickaxes, furnaces; this was the key to early development.
Lux started wandering around Aurum Alley, looking for stone.
She squatted on the ground and tapped the floor tiles—”clack,” a stone brick was pried off by her.
The stone brick dropped to the ground, she picked it up and looked at it; the inventory displayed: [Stone Brick × 1].
Not stone.
Stone bricks are stone bricks, stone is stone.
Stone bricks can build houses, but can’t make stone pickaxes.
What she needed was that grayish, natural stone found in mountains.
Lux continued searching, walked up to a stone wall, and tried to pry one off—still a stone brick.
She found another rockery—good grief, it was a quartz block.
“Why is this damn place full of building materials?”
She wandered for ages but didn’t find a single piece of natural stone.
There were a few flower beds on the road, and the stones inside looked like raw stone, but when she squatted down to pry them out, an old man nearby glared at her.
“Young lady, what are you doing?”
“N-nothing, my shoelace is loose.”
Lux quickly stood up, pretending to tie her shoelaces.
She was wearing wooden clogs, which had no laces at all.
The old man’s gaze became even more suspicious.
She scurried away in embarrassment.
After searching for a while longer, Lux finally couldn’t help it and stopped a passerby.
“Um, excuse me, where can I find stone around here?”
The passerby looked at her and pointed to the ground.
“Isn’t it right there on the ground?”
Lux: “…”
“Not that kind of stone, I mean…
ordinary stone, gray, the kind that grows on the ground.”
The passerby’s expression became even more bewildered.
“Are you talking about…
stone from the mountains?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“Then why don’t you check out the stone gambling arena?
There should be some there.”
Lux was stunned.
Right, the stone gambling arena, there must be some there, maybe even various minerals.
“Then…
how do I get to the stone gambling arena?”
The passerby looked her up and down, their eyes full of “this person must have just popped out of a rock crack.”
“Go north after leaving Aurum Alley, but it’s too late to go now, it’s getting dark.”
“Oh, oh, thank you.”
Lux thanked them and stood there blankly.
The stone gambling arena has stone, but she was new here, it was getting dark, and the arena was probably closed.
Furthermore, her hunger level was down to only four bars.
She looked down at her status—the hunger bar had started to tremble slightly; in a while, it would drop to three bars, and she would start moving slowly.
“Sigh, it’s truly hard for even a clever Lux to cook without rice.”
She sighed, held her stomach, and continued walking forward.
Passing a corner, she heard someone talking nearby.
“For your requirements, we have to demolish this house and rebuild it,” a foxian in green clothes explained with a distressed face, “You didn’t mention needing to change the structure before, two days is too short.
How about cutting us some slack, how about three days?”
“I don’t care,” the foxian opposite her in red clothes said with a tough tone, “You said before that you could get it done in two days.
I don’t care what difficulties you have, it’s only two days.”
The red-clothed foxian turned and left after speaking, leaving the desperate-looking green-clothed foxian sighing on the spot.
“Sigh, how is two days possible…
both sides are right next to other houses, we can’t just knock it down, just the demolition will take a day…”
A small white hand rested on his shoulder.
“Um—”
The green-clothed foxian turned his head and saw a little foxian wearing a maid outfit standing next to him, her ears perked up, her tail wagging behind her, looking at him with shiny, expectant eyes.
“Are you guys in need of help with demolition?”