Wellness Punk’s body was like a heavy sack of cement, dragged and hauled by Construction Site Palu and two other players into a crevice between the rocks on the leeward side.
His head bumped against the gravel as he was dragged, making dull thudding sounds, but he himself—or rather, this flesh-shell known as a “biochemical clone”—remained completely unconscious, his eyelids not even twitching.
His messy hair was covered in dark red dust, making him look like a corpse newly dug up from a mass grave.
A few flat pieces of shale were brought over and hastily piled on top of him, leaving only his head exposed to breathe.
No matter how one looked at it, this arrangement resembled a makeshift grave.
“Isn’t this setting a bit too morbid?” Keyboard Warrior No. 1 shrunk his neck, staring at the dimly glowing floating text above the body that read [Offline].
He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
“So, when we log off, we just become vegetables? If some wild wolves or dogs wander by in the middle of the night, aren’t we just offering ourselves up as fresh sashimi?”
The players around him couldn’t help but rub their arms, which were covered in goosebumps.
In this godforsaken place where they even dared to set the pain settings to 100%, no one doubted that the developers were insane enough to program a feature where offline players got torn apart and eaten by wild beasts.
There was no absolute safe zone here.
This realization was like a barbed whip, lashing heavily against everyone’s hearts.
The team, which had been flagging due to extreme fatigue, once again erupted with an astonishing will to survive.
“Stop staring! Keep slacking off if you want to become sashimi!” Li Lei’s voice rolled through the wind like a clap of thunder.
“If you don’t want to leave this body here to feed the dogs, get off your asses and finish the job!”
Fear was the ultimate driver of productivity.
The “human conveyor belt” of burly men in grass skirts cranked into high gear once again.
This time, no one complained about aching hands or being tired.
Every throw and catch was executed with an almost neurotic precision.
Ores weighing dozens of kilograms flew through the air in a blur of motion, landing continuously into the lander’s reclamation hatch accompanied by rhythmic shouting.
*Clang!
Clang!
Clang!*
The heavy impacts echoed in rapid succession—the first notes of civilization being struck on this desolate world.
“Last one!”
Construction Site Palu roared, his muscles bulging like engorged stone.
Hugging a chunk of high-grade iron ore half as tall as a man, he charged toward the lander like a wild bull, heedlessly shoving it into the already overflowing reclamation slot.
*Buzz—click!*
The warning red light, which had been blinking, suddenly went out.
In its place, a pleasing green fluorescent glow lit up.
The cold, emotionless synthesized electronic voice sounded like heavenly music to everyone’s ears:
[Main Quest: Pioneering (Phase One) completed.]
[Resource quota met.]
[Calculating Contribution Points…]
“We did it!”
“I knew we could do it! My liver survived!”
The group of grown men collapsed onto the gravel beach, panting heavily as their chests heaved, though silly grins plastered their faces.
On the planet’s surface, a settlement interface popped up before the players’ retinas simultaneously.
[Settlement complete. 100 Contribution Points distributed based on contribution rate.]
[ID: My Broadsword Is Thirsting (Contribution: 12%), obtained 12 points.]
[ID: Dragon Seeker (Contribution: 8%), obtained 8 points.]
[ID: Construction Site Palu (Contribution: 8%), obtained 8 points.]
…
[ID: Keyboard Warrior No. 1 (Contribution: 0.5%), obtained 0.5 points.]
“Holy crap! This is unfair!” Keyboard Warrior No. 1 wailed like a slaughtered pig as he stared at the figure in his account, which couldn’t even buy a single piece of compressed biscuit.
“I went to scout! Does scouting not count as work? This is exploitation! Blatant exploitation!”
Nobody paid attention to his temper tantrum.
Everyone’s focus was drawn to the newly illuminated [Item Exchange] icon in the bottom-right corner of the interface.
This was their foundation for survival in this world. Get faster updates on g.com.
However, the moment they clicked open the list, the warm atmosphere instantly plunged to absolute zero, as if doused in liquid nitrogen.
Sitting at the very top of the list was an icon revered as a holy relic by countless sci-fi fans—a hexagonal block emitting a silver-gray metallic luster.
[STC Standard Template Construct (Type I Outpost Core)]
[Description: Once deployed, provides a constant-temperature life-support forcefield with a 50-meter radius, a basic material printing station, and a 5-meter-high composite armored defensive wall.]
[Price: 200 Contribution Points]
Two hundred points.
The number weighed heavily on everyone’s hearts like a massive mountain.
“How are we supposed to play this? Did they add an extra zero to the price by mistake?” Breaking Bad stared at the icon, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull.
“Even if we sold all of ourselves, we couldn’t scrape together that much!”
*Grumble—*
No one knew whose stomach growled first, but soon, hunger spread through the crowd like a plague.
After several hours of high-intensity labor, the clone bodies’ blood sugar levels had hit rock bottom.
As the cold wind blew, many of them began to see stars from hunger.
Their eyes involuntarily drifted away from the unattainable base core toward the “cheap” commodities below.
[Polymer Compressed Rations (Chicken Flavor): 1 point/pack]
[Multi-functional Entrenching Tool: 5 points/piece]
[Self-heating Field Canteen: 2 points/piece]
“Forget it, I need to eat.” One player gritted his teeth, his finger trembling as he reached toward the ration icon.
“If I don’t eat something, I feel like this body is going to go into shock.”
“I’ll buy one too! A shovel isn’t expensive, and it can double as a weapon.”
“Yeah, why not just dig a trench to huddle in for the night, and save up for the base tomorrow?”
Short-sightedness was a common human frailty, especially when plagued by hunger and cold.
Once these hundreds of contribution points were divided among fifty mouths, they would never be able to pool enough for the base core tonight—or even by next week.
*Bang!*
A crisp gunshot tore through the noise.
The player who was about to buy the rations shuddered, his finger freezing in midair, his face turning pale.
Li Lei stood on a towering rock, wisps of blue smoke still curling from the muzzle of the Defender in his hand.
He wasn’t aiming at anyone, but his eyes, which seemed exceptionally cold in the night, made everyone avert their gaze.
“This is a survival game, not a weekend picnic. If anyone dares to spend their points on their own, don’t blame me for being ruthless.”
“By what right?!” Keyboard Warrior No. 1 yelled, crane-necking from behind the crowd.
“Those are my points! I’ll spend them however I want! What are you gonna do, crawl through the ethernet cable to beat me up?”
“Listen to him.”
The quiet Hardcore Lao Wang stepped forward.
“I’ve done the math. If we pool the points of the top twenty contributors, we have exactly 80 points. If we don’t have that life-support field tonight, the temperature will drop to minus forty degrees. When that happens, forget eating—you won’t even be able to keep this temperature bar filled.”
He pointed to the blue status bar representing body temperature at the bottom of their vision.
Right now, the bar had already shrunk by a third.
To survive or to perish.
It was a simple math problem.
“Damn it, let’s do it!”
Construction Site Palu was the first to step forward.
He tapped rapidly on his control panel.
“Transferred! Brother Lei, if this doesn’t build anything, I’ll be the first to flame you to death!”
“I’ll transfer mine too!”
“Count me in! Remember to save me a good bed!”
With someone leading the way, the rest stopped hesitating.
Streams of pale blue data converged into Li Lei’s account.
Even the most reluctant, Keyboard Warrior No. 1, seeing Li Lei tilt the muzzle of his gun toward him with a half-smile, tearfully transferred his pathetic 0.5 points.
“That’s more like it.”
Li Lei relaxed his tense shoulders as he watched his account balance finally tick up to [200].
With a solemn expression, he pressed down on the glowing silver STC icon.
[Deploying…]
Inside the space station.
Yao Qian looked at the 80 reclaimed contribution points, then at the basic base module that actually only required 40 units of energy to generate, and couldn’t help but whistle.
In an excellent mood, he slammed his hand down on the red deployment button on the console.
“Dispatch! Let’s give my warriors a little industrial shock.”
…
*Rumble—!*
Above the clouds, the sound of rolling thunder suddenly erupted.
The players subconsciously looked up, only to see the dark sky torn apart by a blinding flash of fire.
This was no lightweight delivery package, but a meteor hurtling down with unstoppable, cataclysmic force.
The multi-ton alloy drop pod ignored the shriek of atmospheric resistance.
Like a space-based kinetic weapon, it slammed straight toward the clearing the players had swept, carrying an aura of absolute destruction.
“Scatter! Get back!” Li Lei roared, sprinting backward.
*Boom!!!*
The ground trembled violently, as if a minor earthquake had struck.
A terrifying shockwave kicked up a wall of dust, knocking the men in grass skirts over like bowling pins.
Pebbles pelted their bodies with a rhythmic *pitter-patter*.
The visceral, realistic pain made them wince, yet their eyes shone with sheer excitement.
This was so hardcore!
This was what a real man’s game was all about!
Before the dust could even settle, the massive, pitch-black metal object began a dazzling transformation.
*Clack—hiss—*
Countless nanite manipulator arms poured from the core like a swarm of black army ants, interlocking, welding, and extending.
Accompanied by the heavy groan of hydraulic pistons and the sharp clangs of metal plates impacting, a circular steel fortress covering about two hundred square meters rose from the ground within minutes.
Thick composite armor plates sealed shut automatically with seamless precision.
The solar panels on the roof slowly unfurled like a steel lotus blossoming on the wasteland.
*Hum—*
A pale blue, hemispherical energy shield generator activated.
Its low hum drove away the freezing wind and dust.
The pitch-black Gobi Desert was instantly illuminated by this warm, artificial light.
This kind of industrial miracle built from scratch, even if seen a thousand times in Hollywood blockbusters, couldn’t match a fraction of a percent of the awe of watching it materialize before their very eyes.
Hardcore Lao Wang stared infatuatedly at the sharp, clean metal lines, his eyes turning slightly red.
For these modern-day people who usually lived on instant noodles in rented rooms, this steel fortress was not just a safe harbor.
It was the first nail they had personally driven into this cold, uncaring universe.
The heavy, airtight door at the front of the base slid open with a rumble to both sides, spilling out a warm, soft milky-white light, as if welcoming weary travelers home.
System light screens popped up in front of everyone, finally settling in front of Li Lei, the purchaser:
[Outpost construction completed.]
[Please name the current base.]
The public channel exploded instantly.
“Let’s call it ‘Dog House’! A humble name is easier to keep alive!”
“How about ‘Bachelor Pad’? There are no women here anyway.”
“Mount Pingding! Or Mount Liang! After all, none of us look like decent citizens.”
…
After a vote, Li Lei filled the system box with the name “Buzhou” on behalf of everyone.
[Naming successful: Buzhou]
—In ancient times, Gonggong struck Mount Buzhou in his fury, breaking the pillars of heaven and snapping the corners of the earth.
It was a dead end, but also a path to heaven.
In this freezing, alien night, the spark of humanity had finally kindled its first glimmer of light.