Xin Xiaoru froze for a moment when she saw it.
0.1 square kilometers, that’s 100,000 square meters, or roughly 150 acres… Isn’t that almost an entire mountain-sized territory for Youzhuang?
As for hiding coordinates within a 10-kilometer radius, that’s an area of three to four hundred square kilometers, roughly covering the land Yicheng Base helped build walls for and reclaimed.
Xin Xiaoru realized that the system was assigning tasks based on her current situation. It was giving her bait to lure this “fish,” then guiding her to establish a territory, or a base, that aligns with the system’s expectations.
Within this base, Xin Xiaoru is the ruler, but also the system’s worker. The system protects her, providing a safe home and environment, and in return, it requires her to accomplish certain tasks on its behalf.
The 2,000-guest mission wasn’t that much. The second batch of people who came to Youzhuang at the end of November had already been farming for over three months. By the end of this month, they would have their first harvest and begin paying rent, officially joining her army of paying guests.
Two batches totaling over 130 guests didn’t necessarily provide 130+ five-star reviews every day. Some people might be away gathering resources, not staying in the hotel for a few days. Others might be in a bad mood, perhaps life wasn’t convenient, or they had a quarrel with fellow guests, or after settling into a stable life they became dissatisfied. For whatever reason, their ratings could drop from five stars to four or even three.
Except for a small minority, most people couldn’t maintain five-star satisfaction consistently.
Those who could maintain five stars every day were either like He Guying, sufficiently clear-headed to recognize the hotel as the most convenient and safest place to live in the apocalypse, and consistently satisfied, or those naturally content, who, even after settling in Youzhuang and slowly working while eating and drinking for months, remained happy.
Everyone else would inevitably have two or three days under five stars within ten days. On average, Xin Xiaoru received just over a hundred five-star reviews per day.
By the end of the month, when the second batch officially became paying guests, she would complete around 100 tasks daily. With a total of 2,000 tasks, the mission could be completed in about 20 days.
Xin Xiaoru was satisfied with this pace. She eagerly anticipated the day of the upgrade.
However, during this process, she needed to remove some long-term low-rating guests.
She discussed with the people from Yicheng Base: if any of them were willing to go to Youzhuang, they could be swapped with Youzhuang’s long-term three- or four-star guests.
For Yicheng Base, this was a trivial matter, many were willing to go to Youzhuang, and exchanging a dozen or twenty people was no problem. But for Youzhuang’s residents, it was like a bolt from the blue.
They had come to Youzhuang, could they really be kicked out?
Xin Xiaoru didn’t openly mention the satisfaction ratings. If she had, it would imply forcing all guests to be content with the hotel. Some guests who were originally satisfied might, upon hearing about such a screening method, become dissatisfied, or their satisfaction might drop. Forcing themselves to be happy and grateful every day would suppress the genuine sense of contentment, ultimately failing to reach the system’s expected five-star standard.
So Xin Xiaoru only explained that her abilities were special and had their own selection criteria. Some guests hadn’t made mistakes or been lazy for months, but were subtly rejected by the abilities of her RV-hotel, and therefore could no longer stay.
“You can take your crops and livestock with you. If there’s a place nearby to go, I’ll take you there. If not, you can go to Yicheng Base if you want,” she said.
Hearing this, everyone panicked, especially the twelve people she singled out, including two child-powered guests, who all began begging.
Xin Xiaoru shook her head. “Sorry, my ability has its own screening mechanism. You’ve already learned to farm, and you’ll have work at Yicheng Base. As long as you work hard, you’ll have a safe chance to survive. Gather your things: the mature crops you can take with you; for the rest, I’ll estimate your current batch’s yield, subtract what you owe me for rent and previous grain, and calculate the proportion between farming and final harvest to determine how much food you should receive.”
She followed through, giving everyone five days to pack and organize.
But by the fifth day, half of them were still hoping for leniency, claiming they hadn’t finished with their fields yet and wanted a few extra days to wrap things up.
Maybe in those extra days, the boss’s ability would accept them?
Xin Xiaoru shook her head firmly.
“No.”
With those three words, feedback that had been mostly three stars over the past few days instantly dropped to two or even one star.
Xin Xiaoru didn’t have mind-reading, but the RV’s satisfaction feedback system, along with the comments, made her guests’ true feelings about the RV-hotel clear. It was mostly along the lines of: “You could have taken us in, why are you kicking us out?” “It’s too cold-blooded; claiming it’s about your ability upgrade is just an excuse,” and “So what if you upgrade? Are our lives less important? Losing a little upgrade energy, how much does it matter?”
Most of the gratitude from months ago had vanished, replaced by a stronger sense of loss and resentment.
Xin Xiaoru felt no inner turmoil. “A grain of rice earned and a grain lost creates grudges.” If she were in the guests’ position, she might not do any better, and her sense of satisfaction might fade even faster.
But that didn’t matter. The one in charge decides the rules. She was the RV’s owner and would not plan arrangements based on the guests’ perspectives.
By mid-March, Youzhuang and Yicheng Base exchanged twelve residents.
The newcomers to Youzhuang were ecstatic. Although their health wasn’t the best and they were pale and thin, they were so excited that they couldn’t sleep the night they arrived. They immediately set to work managing their newly acquired fields, picking bugs off the leaves, cleaning off the dust, tending every crop meticulously.
Their hard work and enthusiasm energized the rest of Youzhuang.
Previously, the locals had been anxious about the twelve familiar residents leaving, but now, inspired by the newcomers, it seemed like no big deal. After a few months, everyone had proven competent. Even if they didn’t understand all the standards, following the previous methods meant they were unlikely to make major mistakes.
Moreover, those leaving had often complained or gossiped, so avoiding them might even improve evaluations.
The once listless residents regained their energy. They farmed, reclaimed land, and under the influence of the newcomers’ enthusiasm, they valued life in Youzhuang even more.
If things continued like this, it took less than ten days for Xin Xiaoru to notice that everyone’s overall satisfaction had risen. The daily five-star feedback went from around 100 to 110 and eventually stabilized around 125, with the five-star satisfaction rate approaching 95%.
The remaining seven people, however, sank to three stars under various anxieties.
When others chatted with the newcomers, they realized how much the Yicheng Base lacked, food, clean water, electricity, and came to appreciate life in Youzhuang even more. But these seven, talking with the newcomers, only noticed things like: “Those who know farming can farm; one person can manage an acre,” “Those with technical skills can do technical work,” and “If you can’t do anything, do manual labor for construction. Without electricity or machinery, building defenses and making knives or metal tools requires a lot of labor.”
With so many options, isn’t this better than endlessly farming in Youzhuang?
And apparently, Yicheng Base not only doesn’t charge rent but even pays wages!?
Even if it’s hotter and they can’t use air conditioning at night, that’s still bearable!
So, by late March, these seven people voluntarily decided to leave Youzhuang to make a living at Yicheng Base.
Xin Xiaoru organized their information, coordinated with Yicheng Base, and the exchanges were completed quickly.
In this way, after swapping 19 people in about a month, Youzhuang’s five-star satisfaction rate skyrocketed to a perfect 100%, almost the same as the state when all the people were rescued, if not better.
Xin Xiaoru was very pleased.
At the end of March, Yicheng experienced a heavy rainstorm.
Everyone in the 100-person Extra-Dimensional Hotel wore raincoats and braved the downpour to harvest the first batch of crops.
They finally had food!!!
Although the rain was fierce, loosening the soil in some areas and washing over some crops, causing some losses, everyone only had two acres to manage. They patiently dug out the buried crops, collected them, and brought them back to the hotel to clean and store.
During harvest season, the vegetable market transit station opened every day. Xin Xiaoru took everyone to store their food there. The damp, wet vegetables and grains, upon entering the Extra-Dimensional Warehouse, immediately released moisture as if all the water that would have taken a week under the sun to dry was extracted in a minute, leaving the most complete, perfectly preserved, and dry food.
Everyone was overjoyed and continued harvesting under the heavy rain.
Amid the rain, the fields were filled with laughter and excitement.
Meanwhile, dozens of kilometers away at Yicheng Base, the researchers were looking quite gloomy.
Their research building was a new radiation-proof structure built since the apocalypse, the only place in Yicheng Base with electricity.
Now, the researchers were holding a meeting, analyzing newly gathered data and discussing the results.
The good news was that over the past two months, rainfall had been increasing, nearby wildfires were gradually being brought under control, and the underground water table was being replenished.
The bad news was that the rainwater contained increasingly high levels of acidic, corrosive, and even radioactive substances.
Although not yet at a level that directly threatened human life, if this trend continued, the external environment would grow progressively worse. Human mutations, caused by food and water intake, would shift from being influenced externally to manifesting from the inside out.
Changes in rainwater, or in water environments more broadly, would ultimately have a fundamental impact on all humans and all living organisms. Solar flares and cosmic radiation mostly affected urban areas full of electronic equipment, but now water carrying radiation flowed through mountains and plains into every living being…
Would the mutations only affect city dwellers?
What about animals that didn’t use electronic devices, or even plants, could they also mutate?
The research building submitted this report, and the leaders of Yicheng Base continuously held meetings to discuss it.
Back before the apocalypse fully arrived, they had already stored massive amounts of water and soil in preparation for the eventual complete deterioration of the external environment.
But even with these reserves, to sustain people long-term, they could only support ten thousand at most. At absolute maximum, maybe twenty thousand.
“The shelter… it really needs to be officially opened…”