[Obtained “Bass”]
[Obtained “Crucian Carp”]
[Obtained “Crab”]
[Obtained “Octopus”]
[Obtained “Rare Blind Box”]
[Obtained “Common Blind Box”]
Watching Ye Mian pull her rod six times in just a few minutes, yet being unable to see what exactly she had caught, Xue Kai was as anxious as an ant on a hot griddle. Scratching his head and face, he finally couldn’t help but say, “How about taking a break?”
Although Lu Ning was relatively more composed, a hint of curiosity couldn’t help but show in her eyes.
Ye Mian was actually still a bit dazed; her movements were entirely out of habit. She turned her head to look at the two of them, her expression somewhat subtle: “Go get a basin.”
Did she have a big harvest?
Xue Kai immediately turned and ran back: “Right away!”
Almost as soon as he finished speaking, he was already on his way back with a plastic basin.
He was so fast that even Lu Ning felt inferior.
Seeing him arrive with the basin, Ye Mian temporarily put down her fishing rod and shook out the catch from the fish basket.
After seeing what was inside, the two crouching nearby made puzzled sounds almost simultaneously: “Huh?”
“Is this really connected to the ocean…?”
“I underestimated this fish pond…”
“Actually,” Ye Mian opened the system warehouse and looked at the two blind boxes that had indeed appeared in the slots inside. She felt a mix of joy and complexity, “There’s more.”
“Hmm?”
“Something else?”
The two crouching figures raised their heads in unison to look at her.
Ye Mian nodded, then opened both blind boxes in front of them.
The two couldn’t see the system interface; they could only see her hand tapping the air a few times, and then her mouth opened slightly, revealing a surprised expression.
The common blind box contained a seasoning gift pack, which was alright.
The focus was on the rare blind box.
[Congratulations on obtaining “Treasure Map” X1!]
Are you serious?
Or was it not the kind of treasure map she understood it to be?
Ye Mian tapped the yellowed parchment to take it out. From the back, it looked similar to those three recipes, but upon opening the front, it truly was a simplified map.
It depicted several mountains, with various paths going up and circling around the mountains. There was also a tower-like icon, and a pentagram marked in the center, representing the location of the treasure.
It looked quite like a place that existed in reality.
After looking at it, Ye Mian handed it to the two of them.
“It says it’s a treasure map. Can you tell where this is?”
“Huh?”
Xue Kai took the parchment with a face full of question marks, looked at it, then handed it to Lu Ning first before running back into the house to bring out the map for comparison.
“That’s right, it’s here. This ultra-high signal tower is located between Salt City and Carp City; it’s quite famous.”
Ye Mian and Lu Ning both looked at the spot he pointed to and were stunned. It wasn’t anywhere else but the mountains behind the towns and industrial park they had decided to visit that morning.
Thinking that neither of them went out much and were likely a bit directionally challenged, Xue Kai reminded them: “When the time comes, if you’re lucky enough to encounter local Evolutionaries, you can ask them exactly which mountain it is and which path is the shortest to get up there, so you don’t get lost.”
“Okay.”
Handing the treasure map back to Ye Mian, Xue Kai asked a question that occurred to him: “The treasure in the mountains—could it be some rare mutant beast?”
Lu Ning shrugged: “We’ll know once we find it.”
Neither she nor Xue Kai held much hope; after all, if there were any real treasure, it would have been found and taken long before the mutation.
Ye Mian didn’t think too much about it either. After putting it in the warehouse, she continued fishing.
However, perhaps it was a bit of a lucky start; although fish continued to take the bait afterward, no more blind boxes appeared.
In an hour, they harvested over fifty fish plus some shrimp and crabs. The plastic basin Xue Kai brought was completely insufficient, so he and Lu Ning went to the open space behind the rice fields to dig a temporary pond. It could be used to raise fish and also to add or drain water for the rice fields at appropriate times.
However, the harvest didn’t bring pure joy. Looking at the pond full of fish, Xue Kai suddenly made an “ah” sound: “I’ve always lived in inland cities and don’t usually eat seafood, so I don’t really know how to cook it.”
“How about you two bring back a chef?”
Lu Ning thought for a moment and said, “A chef might be difficult, but we should be able to find some relevant cookbooks.”
“That works,” Xue Kai reluctantly accepted. “Then tonight we’ll just have some simple steamed and braised fish.”
Ye Mian was naturally fine with whatever she ate, but after tasting the fresh and delicate fish meat, the vegetables were silently demoted to third place in her mind. First place was, of course, the rabbit meat she had eaten for two meals straight.
After dinner, taking advantage of the quiet evening, the three of them held a brief meeting to discuss a few things.
First, since it was rare for them to go out, they should bring back whatever they could find, especially farming tools or semi-manual agricultural machinery.
Second, there was too much food harvested at the moment, so they could slow down on planting. They should first plan the expanded area after the upgrade—which land would be used for what, and which patches would be set aside to prepare for seeds they might obtain in the future.
The last thing was incidental but quite important—a message board.
Yesterday, Xue Kai had picked up some items from the stationery section of the supermarket, and now he found an erasable magnetic drawing board and hung it on the wall.
“Since we can’t see the system interface, Ye Mian, you can write down the tasks you need our help with on here. That way we can save a lot of time on explanations.”
“Also, if there’s anything you want to eat or don’t want to eat in the future, you can write it on here. I’ll do my best to satisfy you.”
“You can also quietly write down some suggestions or opinions—for example, if today’s dishes were too spicy, or who made noise at night, and so on.”
Xue Kai had spent the whole day thinking of these things. After all, just a few days ago, the three of them were complete strangers. Even if they were getting to know each other, it would take time.
So, not everything could be said face-to-face; writing it out would be more comfortable.
Ye Mian was the first to nod: “This is good.”
“Mm,” Lu Ning didn’t have any objections either, “Let’s focus on the tasks.”
“Of course.”
At this, the two of them looked at Ye Mian in unison, wanting to know if there were any new tasks.
Ye Mian stood up and walked over as they wished, picking up the pen and writing a few words.
“Today is a good day to sleep early.”
“…”
Putting down the pen, Ye Mian turned to the two who were helplessly smiling and gave a slight nod: “Then I’ll go up to rest first. Goodnight.”
It wasn’t that she truly had an obsession with sleeping early, but there really weren’t any tasks that could be done immediately.
Of the three main tasks yet to be completed, the mysterious plant was already growing, the employee task would have to wait until they went out to see if they could find someone suitable, and the remaining one—extra daily harvest—couldn’t be rushed.
After all, yesterday there were 9+1 points of spiritual essence, and the number of extra harvests was only a dozen or so times.
In Ye Mian’s view, to complete this task, several conditions had to be met: first, the spiritual essence value had to be at least 9 or above; second, a large number of crops had to be planted, such as the hundreds of sweet potato seeds in the warehouse; and finally, there had to be enough manpower.
“Better wash up and go to sleep.”
Closing the task interface, Ye Mian first went to the bedroom to get the clothes she would wear tomorrow, then went to the bathroom.
A silent night passed.
In the morning, after standing downstairs for a while with sleepy eyes, Ye Mian realized something seemed wrong.
—Although there was the familiar scent of corn in the air, it was overly quiet both inside the house and outside, as if no one else was there besides her.
“Hmm?”
Ye Mian walked a few steps, then remembered to turn and look at the message board on the wall. She saw that a sentence had been added below the line she wrote yesterday.
“We went out for morning exercise and to scout the terrain for new fields. We’ll be back soon.”
They really did start using it immediately.
As soon as she stepped out of the house, Ye Mian saw Xue Kai and Lu Ning on their way back not far ahead, with Da Hei actually following at a moderate distance behind them.
When the two people and the dog drew closer, Ye Mian noticed that Lu Ning was carrying a bird with black and white feathers.
Unlike the previous mutant osprey, this was a low-level mutant bird. Aside from being slightly larger and having an excessively long and sharp beak, it hadn’t undergone any other mutations.
Ye Mian instinctively thought Da Hei had gone hunting again, but a closer look revealed otherwise—the bird had no wounds, and not a single feather was missing.
It couldn’t be that the bird had flown into Lu Ning’s fist on its own, could it?
“What’s this?”
“Found it outside the farm,” Lu Ning placed the bird on the ground to show Ye Mian. “It looks like a natural death, but Xue Kai said he seemed to smell a bit of a burnt scent, so it’s likely it was killed by an instantaneous high-voltage shock.”
Xue Kai shrugged: “After all, it’s completely unharmed. It can’t possibly be a gift from nature.”
And the outside world had long been without electricity; only the farm still had power.
Ye Mian realized something: “It might be because the farm’s defense has been upgraded. If someone intrudes without permission, it triggers a penalty mechanism.”
As she spoke, she opened the farm information in the system. Sliding down, she found new content.
[Farm Log]
[3.17: The farm has been upgraded!]
[3.18: The defensive power grid has been activated and successfully took down an illegal visitor.]
So that was it.
Hearing that it was the credit of the farm’s own defense, the two were somewhat relieved.
On their way back, they had been worried about whether there was some other unknown danger or if some new problem had arisen among the mutants.
“So, can we eat this?”
After Ye Mian nodded in confirmation, Lu Ning dragged the somewhat plump bird to a corner. As usual, she would be responsible for processing it.
Xue Kai went straight into the kitchen to prepare more breakfast.
Ye Mian had seemingly gone upstairs to rest very early last night, but she had actually lain in bed for a long time looking through the “Encyclopedia of Tools” and the “Illustrated Guide to Plants.” Now, walking a circle around the fields and looking at the rice paddies that had turned golden just like the wheat, her mind slowly cleared.
Just now, she had glanced at today’s spiritual essence value. It wasn’t high, only 5+1.
Coincidentally, the mysterious seeds planted the night before yesterday still showed no signs of movement, and the growth rate of the peaches and olives was slower than imagined—they were just slightly taller than a person, with sparse branches and leaves, not yet fully grown.
So today truly was… a rare moment of leisure.
However, the next morning was entirely different—busy and tense.
Seeing Lu Ning warm up and practice on one side, and Xue Kai preparing various cooked and raw foods on the other to make it convenient for Ye Mian to take out and find suitable trading partners.
Ye Mian then put away the detailed route map she had just received, as well as the thick map that Xue Kai thought she might need more and thus handed to her for safekeeping. She went outside to feed Da Hei first, then found the Wild Sanqi, tormented it for a bit, and successfully got two hands full of pollen, making the final preparations for her journey.