She turned to her side, leaning against Lei Yan with a hand resting lightly on his chest, and whispered, “Brother Yan, do you think what Ah Xuan said is true? Will there really be natural disasters for several years in a row…?”
Lei Yan replied in a low voice, “Ah Xuan being able to conjure a wild boar out of thin air proves he must have obtained some miraculous ability. Perhaps it really was a god telling him in advance? Even if it’s not, we don’t really have anything to lose, do we?”
Lu Xuan said all the silver from selling the ginseng would be used to buy grain. Grain was a hard currency; it was a good asset whether a natural disaster occurred or not. Keeping it for themselves to eat or finding a way to sell it later if nothing happened wouldn’t be much of a loss.
But if it were all true, the supplies Lu Xuan prepared in advance would be the treasures that saved their entire family’s lives.
He took Lu Qing’s hand and comforted her, “In any case, as long as our family is together, we don’t have to fear any difficulties.”
Lu Qing was silent for a moment before squeezing his hand back, her tone gradually becoming firmer. “That’s right, as long as we are all together, we have nothing to fear.”
Saying that was one thing, but the couple inevitably had their minds racing, and they barely managed to fall asleep well into the night.
On the other side, Lu Xuan waited until he had lulled Lu Chen—who had been sticking to him like glue—to sleep before returning to his room.
With no outsiders around, the viewers in the livestream urged him impatiently.
[Host, hurry up and take inventory! How many supplies did you actually find on this trip? We want to see!]
[I joined halfway through and missed the earlier parts, I want to see too!]
Lu Xuan said, “See what? If I took out all that prey, would this small room even hold it? Besides, the prey is covered in blood; it wouldn’t be easy to clean up.”
[Eh—so we’re not taking inventory?]
Lu Xuan said coolly, “If you want to know, I can just give you a rough list, right?”
[Then tell us! Hurry up and tell us!]
[Waiting.]
Lu Xuan didn’t stall; he began to report his harvest in order, just as he had shown Lu Qing and the others.
Aside from the common medicinal herbs, mushrooms, wild fruits, and wild vegetables he’d shown Lu Qing, there were twelve wild boars—eight from the first day and four more he’d encountered and slaughtered along the way.
There were twenty grey wolves, all from the first day; he hadn’t encountered any more since then.
One tiger and two deer, all encountered on the way back. Both were treasures from head to toe and could fetch a fair amount of silver.
There was also a black bear, which he’d had a narrow encounter with in a cave on the fourth night while looking for shelter; he’d killed it as well. However, because the cave smelled too strongly of the beast, he hadn’t stayed there, instead roughing it out for the night on the branch of a nearby tree.
As for the biggest harvest: the precious medicinal herbs.
Counting what he’d shown Lu Qing and Lei Yan, he had one five-hundred-year-old ginseng, one over three hundred years old, and two just over a century old.
The lingzhi and He Shou Wu filled half a basket each, numbering between seventy and eighty pieces in total.
[So many!!!]
[I didn’t realize it until you tallied it up—he actually found this many!]
[How much can all these sell for?]
[The host said earlier that one century-old lingzhi could sell for several hundred taels, and two- or three-hundred-year-old ones are even more expensive. With all these people, couldn’t he earn at least seven or eight thousand taels?]
[That’s conservative; I guess ten thousand taels!]
[How much is that in star coins, again?]
[If it’s ten thousand taels… that’s like ten million star coins?]
[Holy crap! Is that for real! Earn ten million star coins in five days? Is the host printing his own money?! That’s too outrageous!]
Lu Xuan said leisurely, “Who said I was going to sell everything? Selling just two or three of the ginsengs is enough.”
Anything becomes worthless when the quantity is too high. Although ginseng and lingzhi wouldn’t devalue too much, one had to consider whether a small town could actually afford to buy so many aged herbs.
“Alright, the inventory is done. Today’s stream is about over. I’m going to town tomorrow to sell things and purchase supplies, so those interested should come back tomorrow.”
With that, he cut the stream without giving the viewers a chance to protest, and opened the system backend.
After several days of accumulation, the popularity of his livestream was now vastly different from before he’d entered the mountains.
When the mutant blood-sucking vine first debuted, his concurrent viewers had only reached a little over 120,000. But the news that Wood-type ability users could contract mutant plants to enhance combat power was a massive piece of information for the Interstellar Alliance, and in the past few days, many people had flocked to the stream to investigate.
With the appearance of these new viewers—each with their own agenda—the concurrent viewer count soared, reaching over 500,000, and his followers surpassed 150,000.
The total value of gifts received in the last few days reached a staggering 200,000, so he hit two more achievements back-to-back.
These were “100,000 Followers” and “100,000 in Gifts.”
The reward for “100,000 Followers” was a one-million-viewer traffic voucher and 10,000 points; the reward for “100,000 in Gifts” was a Primary Energy Stone Pack.
The pack contained ten primary energy stones. They looked somewhat like obsidian—black with a hint of shimmering light—and were cubes measuring five centimeters on each side. Though small, they had a decent weight.
Like the energy fluid, he had no chance to use them yet. Lu Xuan played with them for a moment before storing them in his spatial ring.
What he liked best was naturally the 10,000-point reward. The traffic voucher was also good.
The ten-thousand-viewer traffic voucher had brought him quite a bit of traffic; this one was a million-viewer voucher. Even a conservative estimate would add another 100,000 to 200,000 concurrent viewers to his stream. Perhaps he could push his viewers to one million in one go, earning another wave of achievement rewards.
The last time he hit 100,000 viewers, he’d already received 10,000 points; wouldn’t a million viewers net him thirty or fifty thousand?
I have to say, achievement rewards are addictive. The Star Alliance is generous!
Lu Xuan converted all the gifts into points.
Counting the points remaining after his first day’s spending and the 20,000 points gained from the subsequent achievements, his account balance hit an unprecedented number—50,310 points!
At the same time, hitting two consecutive achievements unlocked more items in the store, including the larger spatial equipment he was particularly interested in.
He had expected to unlock at most a 500-cubic-meter space, but he hadn’t expected the 1,000-cubic-meter version to unlock simultaneously, priced at 30,000 points.
The volume difference between the two was massive, but the 500-cubic-meter version was 20,000 points—needless to say, which one was more cost-effective?
Lu Xuan clicked to purchase the largest one without hesitation!
The points that hadn’t even warmed up in his account vanished instantly.
Since he already had a ring on both his index and middle fingers, he didn’t buy another ring this time, but a black-and-gold bracelet instead.
He wasn’t sure what metal the bracelet was made of, but it had a high-quality feel. Like the ring, it could adjust to fit any wrist size. Lu Xuan slipped it on and checked the space inside, nodding with satisfaction.
Including the two rings, he now had a total of 1,200 cubic meters of space—more than enough to store his supplies.
Just then, another system notification popped up.
[Achievement “Spend 10,000 points” reached. Reward: One set of basic Bio-suits, unlocked Daily Discount functionality. Next stage achievement: Spend 100,000 points.]
Lu Xuan paused slightly.
Bio-suit? He remembered the viewers mentioning that before.
Lu Xuan clicked on the product description to take a look.
[Basic Bio-suit: Made from a specific biological fabric, it can automatically regulate temperature, with a range of up to twenty degrees in either direction.]
For instance, if the outside temperature reached forty degrees Celsius—enough to make someone in short sleeves sweat profusely—the bio-suit could adjust the temperature down by twenty degrees, instantly bringing it to a comfortable twenty degrees, allowing one to wear a thin coat without issue.
Similarly, at minus twenty degrees, the bio-suit could adjust it up to zero degrees, making a thick coat sufficient.
According to the temperature shown on the “Weather Companion,” the highest temperatures during heatwaves might exceed fifty degrees, and the lowest during extreme cold could drop to minus forty or fifty degrees. The functionality of the basic bio-suit was far from enough.
But compared to relying entirely on cotton-padded coats to survive the cold, having something was better than nothing, especially since it was a freebie.
For now, the basic bio-suit didn’t have purchase permissions unlocked, so getting a set before it was unlocked felt like a bargain no matter how he looked at it.
A moment later, thinking of the new function the system mentioned, he browsed the store and saw the word “Limited-Time” in the upper left corner.
After clicking it, a separate product page quickly appeared.
There were two rows on the page, totaling ten items, with the original price and the discounted price listed for each.
Lu Xuan raised an eyebrow and read the description of the daily discounts.
The daily discount items were all products currently on sale in the store, regardless of whether they were unlocked or not, with discounts ranging from fifty to ninety percent off.
The discounted items refreshed daily at 8:00 PM. If the items he needed weren’t in the rotation, he could pay points to manually refresh them.
The first refresh cost 100 points, the second 200, then 400… and so on. There was no limit to the number of refreshes, but after ten refreshes, it would cost a fixed 30,000 points.
He first scanned today’s discounted items, checked the remaining 300 points in his account, and without much hesitation, refreshed them once.
The product list had indeed changed.
He quickly memorized the prices of all the products and refreshed them again.
The items changed once more.
After refreshing five times and spending 3,100 points, Lu Xuan had a rough idea.
Simply put: most of the discounted items were high-end goods he currently couldn’t afford.
Hover cars, aircraft, smart robots, mechs, spaceships… all were items he had seen in the store before, but hadn’t known the prices of until now.
Now, the prices were finally revealed: the cheapest ones were over a million points, while the expensive ones reached into the hundreds of millions.
Of course, since it was a discount, there were definitely things he could afford.
The first to third items at the front of each refresh were always the cheap goods, like nutrient solution, nutrient solution, nutrient solution, bio-suits, and small packs of primary energy stones.
A single vial of nutrient solution was only 10 points; it would be a joke to discount something that cheap, so what appeared in the discount column were usually sets, like 100-vial or 200-vial gift boxes.
The bio-suits were individual items, and the energy stones were small 5-piece packs.
These items had purchase quantity limits, capped at five per item.
As for the pricing, nutrient solutions had the lowest discounts, a flat twenty percent off, likely because there was little profit margin on the original price.
The bio-suits were thirty percent off—original price 1,000 points, discounted to 700.
The energy stones were also thirty percent off—original price for five stones was 2,500, discounted to 1,750.
By the way, those high-tech products costing tens of millions or hundreds of millions had similarly small discount ranges, mostly twenty to thirty percent off.
Of course, discounted or not, those were luxuries he could only stare at for the time being.
Lu Xuan had considered that refreshing more might bring up high-value-for-money items he could currently afford.
However, having already spent over 3,000 on refreshing, it felt a bit extravagant, so he shook the thought off.
Instead of trying to find bargains among the cheap items, it was better to figure out how to earn enough to get a spaceship to play with.
He had driven plenty of sports cars, but he had never flown a spaceship.
Based on his current livestream popularity, earning ten million points or more wasn’t an unreachable dream. If he worked hard—or even if he didn’t—he should be able to afford a cheaper spaceship to play with within three to five years at the latest.
Thinking of this, Lu Xuan curled his lips into a happy smile.