The raw materials were simply too easily depleted. After crafting just three simple pieces of furniture, only 5 wooden rods and 6 Wood Blocks remained.
Duan Lili spent another half-hour, lounging lazily while producing 16 Wood Blocks and 16 wooden rods.
She tried dragging a Wood Block into the material slot again. Wood Block + wooden rod couldn't synthesize anything other than a Small Wooden Axe, but Wood Block + Wood Block could synthesize stairs. Duan Lili checked the dimensions: 1 Wood Block + 10 Wood Blocks could create one 1-meter-high stair section. Based on the sandbox mode building method, stair sections could likely be combined infinitely, allowing construction to any desired height.
This wasn't needed for now, so Duan Lili didn't craft it.
Her variety of raw materials was pitifully small, and there was nothing else in her Personal Inventory. Duan Lili opened the Old Wooden Chest and dragged each item inside into the material slot to test them.
She tested each item individually. Placing dry grass showed it could be made into [grass rope]. Placing the snake gallbladder displayed a medicine bottle icon with the annotation: [Clears heat and detoxifies].
Clearly, neither was essential, so she set them aside for now.
Snake eggs and Snake Sinew placed alone showed no changes. Placing snakeskin presented three options: Snakeskin Clothing, snakeskin pants, snakeskin shoes.
Duan Lili examined the annotations closely. The notes for Snakeskin Clothing and snakeskin pants were identical: [Warm in winter, cool in summer; fits comfortably and closely; effectively prevents mosquito and insect bites; Defense +4.]
Defense +4!
The entire set of Coarse Cloth Shirt and pants she was currently wearing only gave +2 total. If she switched to leather clothes and pants, wouldn't that be +8?
The annotation for the shoes was: [Comfortable fit, highly elastic; Agility +5.]
This was also higher than the Coarse Cloth Shoes' +3.
Duan Lili was tempted, but upon closer inspection, the shoes required 1 snakeskin, while the leather shirt and pants each required 2 hides. She only had two hides total, enough for just one item.
After some thought, Duan Lili chose to craft the "leather shirt."
Besides the increase in Defense attribute, the description's "warm in winter, cool in summer" also appealed to her. Her long-sleeved, long-legged coarse cloth outfit felt hot by noon, and she had already rolled up the sleeves.
Not to mention the line about "effectively prevents mosquito and insect bites."
It took ten minutes to craft the leather shirt. When she held it, it was a small, dark bluish-green bundle, cool and soft to the touch. Stretching it with her hands made it expand significantly, showing excellent elasticity.
Thinking of the giant snake's bulging belly after swallowing its prey… Duan Lili twitched at the corner of her eye, quickly shaking the unpleasant memory from her mind.
She took off her coarse cloth shirt and glanced at her attribute Interface. Defense dropped by 1 because the individual Defense values of the Coarse Cloth Shirt and Coarse Cloth Pants were each 1.
Duan Lili stretched open the Snakeskin Clothing and slipped it on. It was soft and form-fitting, very close to her body but not tight at all.
Although it was also long-sleeved, it genuinely felt cool, much more comfortable, soft, and cooler than the coarse cloth shirt.
Now, Duan Lili wore Snakeskin Clothing on her upper body and Coarse Cloth Pants on her lower body. She checked her attributes:
[Level 1]
[Combat: 10]
[Strength: 10]
[Agility: 5+2 (Coarse Cloth Shoes)]
[Defense: 3+4 (Snakeskin Clothing)+1 (Coarse Cloth Pants)]
[Resistance: 3]
Although the combination of leather shirt and cloth pants was hideously ugly, wearing the Snakeskin Clothing raised her total Defense value to 8 and greatly improved her comfort.
Duan Lili stored the coarse cloth shirt she had taken off into the old wooden chest as well. With so few supplies at the moment, she made sure to keep everything, whether useful or not.
Next, she experimented with material crafting and synthesis.
She placed the snake sinew inside and tried wood blocks and wooden planks, but nothing changed. However, when she added the wooden rod, the interface shifted, and a wooden bow appeared in the finished product frame.
A weapon!
Duan Lili grew excited!
The small wooden knife really wasn’t very effective!
The wooden bow required minimal resources—just [wooden rod 1 + snake sinew 1]. But Duan Lili wondered whether snake sinew was a common find or a rare item obtained only by chance?
She carefully examined the item description, but it was quite brief: [Used in conjunction with arrows; does not provide additional combat power when used alone.]
That made sense. Without arrows, a bow was probably only good for plucking cotton.
But what about arrows? How were they crafted?
Duan Lili tried everything she currently had, even pulling out potato chips, loungewear, and a bundle of broken twigs to test, but she couldn’t produce "arrows." Despite this, she still crafted the [wooden bow].
The wooden bow wasn’t particularly heavy, and Duan Lili felt comfortable holding it.
Her excitement over the wooden bow stemmed from her experience in the archery club during university. After practicing for a year, her aim was fairly decent.
The raw materials for the wooden bow were a wooden rod and snake sinew, but the finished product showed no trace of the sinew’s texture. Duan Lili tested the draw, and the feel was quite good.
After resetting the bowstring (note: never dry-fire a bow, as it can be dangerous), Duan Lili reluctantly stored it in the old wooden chest for now.
Duan Lili was starting to grasp the logic behind the System’s crafting.
First, it involved raw materials, including both material and structural aspects. For example, tables, chairs, and stools required wooden planks and rods, while leather clothes and pants needed leather—all straightforward and clear.
Then, more flexibly, it related to properties. For instance, the long bow gave no indication that its string was made from snake sinew. In appearance and feel, the string was worlds apart from the original sinew, so why could it become a bowstring?
The answer was simple: the defining trait of a bowstring was "elasticity." Snake sinew possessed exactly that trait.
Bang! It became a bowstring!
Simple and straightforward.
Duan Lili loved it!
What did making arrows require? From her time in the archery club, Duan Lili knew it involved wooden shafts, metal, feathers, and so on.
Based on the System’s straightforward approach and her years of gaming experience, Duan Lili guessed that wooden shafts and feathers would likely suffice—metal might not even be necessary. After all, a small wooden knife could kill a giant serpent, and a small wooden axe could fell a large tree, so the requirements probably weren’t too strict.
As for wooden shafts, the wooden rod resembled one. Size didn’t seem to matter—Duan Lili had crafted chairs and stools from one-meter-square wooden planks, and they turned out normal-sized. Clearly, the dimensions of raw materials weren’t important; resemblance and similar properties were enough.
The real missing material was feathers.
Duan Lili began considering whether she could catch some small birds or pheasants…
Suddenly, she felt a stirring in her stomach.
Duan Lili froze, her thoughts still on catching birds and plucking feathers for arrows. Was it finally time to face this?
Duan Lili opened the Old Wooden Chest and placed the "bundle of broken twigs" into her Personal Inventory. Standing up, she glanced at the newly crafted stool. She removed the Small Wooden Hoe from the warehouse and placed it into the Old Wooden Chest, freeing up a slot to store the wooden stool in the warehouse.
She didn’t head toward the doorway. The entrance she had originally planned faced the small river, but the toilet was behind the house, at the edge of the forest.
Duan Lili walked directly to the southern wall, retrieved two Wood Blocks from it, and opened another doorway facing south. Now the house had entrances facing north toward the river and south toward the forest.
This saved her the trouble of circling the house just to use the toilet—unnecessary.
Entering the dry toilet, Duan Lili first tossed out two Wood Blocks to seal the entrance. She didn’t want a wild boar or rabbit barging in mid-business. That was no time for surprises.
With that, the toilet became a completely enclosed 4×4 cubicle.
Nice, and quite secure.
Duan Lili took out the stool and placed it beside the pit, then retrieved the "bundle of broken twigs" and set it on the stool before pulling down her pants and squatting.
As she relieved herself under the open sky, she peeled the bark off the "bundle of broken twigs."
The branches she had broken were all young and green-skinned, easy to peel. In the time it took for one biological process, Duan Lili peeled over a dozen small sticks. The exposed wood was milky white, smooth and free of splinters.
Looks… passable, maybe?
Life is full of firsts.
Like the first time slaying a giant serpent, or the first time using small sticks instead of toilet paper to clean up after a biological process.
First times are always tough. But Duan Lili had gotten through them.
As that netizen online had said, once you get the hang of it, you’ll find small sticks actually clean quite well…
When Duan Lili emerged from the dry toilet, she felt a mix of exhilaration and bewilderment, as if she had opened the door to a new world.
But the biggest drawback of a dry toilet was that waste was exposed to the air. Not only did it produce odors, but it also attracted flies and bred maggots.
Duan Lili pondered for a moment and recalled that ancient people would sprinkle plant ash into chamber pots to sterilize and mask odors.
Plant ash wasn’t available for now, but she could consider making some later. For the time being, she used the Small Wooden Knife as a shovel to dig up some soil beside the dry toilet, scooped it into her hands, and carried it into the toilet to sprinkle over the pit. It took several trips to fully cover the waste.
Satisfied, she stepped out of the toilet and noticed the marks she had made in the soil with the Small Wooden Knife. Suddenly, she remembered she had the Small Wooden Pickaxe with her.
It was presumably for mining, but she wondered how effective it would be for digging soil. Duan Lili casually took out the Small Wooden Pickaxe and started hacking at the muddy ground in front of her.
The entire "Small Wooden X" series were all child-sized toys. The Small Wooden Pickaxe was no exception. Duan Lili had to squat while hacking.
After ten strikes, with a "thud," a pit measuring exactly one meter in length, width, and depth appeared before her. Perfectly square and neat.
Duan Lili: "…"
Checking her warehouse, she saw an additional 【Earthwork 1】.
Duan Lili summoned this thing called 【Earthwork】 from the warehouse and placed it on the nearby ground. It was a perfectly square cube with sides measuring one meter, composed of soil mixed with stones and gravel.
Duan Lili poked the soil with her Small Wooden Knife, clearly feeling that its hardness was greater than the ground beneath her feet. When she had been shoveling soil with the Small Wooden Knife earlier, it definitely hadn’t been this hard.
This soil block had been hardened after being separated from the earth and entering the System.
It felt like it would be very useful.
Back when Duan Lili used to play sandbox games, she always loved using soil blocks because they could be obtained anytime, anywhere.
Duan Lili had already thought of many uses for it. But for now, she couldn’t leave such a large pit near her home, so she filled the soil block back into the hole.
The soil block merged seamlessly back into the earth, leaving no trace at all—not even the shallow pit she had dug earlier with the Small Wooden Knife remained.
Duan Lili walked to the river to wash her hands. Her current range of movement was centered around the house, extending north to the river and south to the edge of the forest.
She hadn’t been to the north bank of the river, nor had she ventured deep into the southern woods. To the east and west were riverbanks, where the view was relatively open, allowing her to see far into the distance.
Remembering that she had just used the bathroom for a major business, Duan Lili set up a two-meter wooden post by the river. She decided to use this post as a boundary: cooking and fetching water would be done upstream of the post, while washing hands and cleaning would be done downstream.
The water was flowing, and she was the only person here, but making this distinction made her feel more at ease.
Without scented soap or hand sanitizer, Duan Lili could only scrub her hands vigorously with water. Suddenly, she remembered the bitter leaf she had eaten with meat and egg rolls at noon.
Turning her head, she saw the large tree branch resting under the cool pavilion. She walked over, plucked a few leaves, crushed them in her hands, and rubbed the leaf juice all over her hands.
When she had eaten it at noon, the leaf was not only slightly bitter but also slightly salty. The salty taste likely meant it contained salt.
Duan Lili pretended she was washing her hands with salt, disinfecting and sterilizing them.
As she washed, she couldn’t help but think that soap could probably be made from animal organs and plant ash. Even without proper tools, she had the System as an external plugin—maybe she could synthesize it directly.
She also thought that since the bitter leaf tasted salty, it probably contained salt. Could this salt be extracted? If not, would she have to eat bitter leaves with every meal?
Shaking her hands, she wondered if it was just psychological, but after using the bitter leaf juice, her hands really felt cleaner.
Ah, right now, she had too many ideas and too few resources.
Duan Lili placed her hands on her hips and sighed. Looking down, she saw a large fish in the water, blowing bubbles in the shallow area.
She didn’t know if it was the same fish she had failed to catch this morning, but it certainly looked plump and delicious.
Duan Lili had eaten a very full meal at noon and wasn’t hungry at all, but she made up her mind—
Tonight’s dinner would be grilled fish!