The moment the return button was pressed, Lin Xia felt his eyes enveloped by a white light. A moment later, his field of vision returned to the third floor of the warehouse.
The third floor was now completely quiet, with not a single figure visible in the hallway, though traces remained of people lingering nearby.
Lin Xia guessed it was the survivor team from earlier. Before he teleported, they had already walked up to the landing of the second floor. They probably discovered that the third floor was completely covered in corrosive liquid, so they simply didn’t dare enter and left after circling around the doorway twice.
“How did this thing get so filthy?” Chi Zheng’s face darkened the moment he stepped off the food stall cart.
The “thing” he referred to was the mutated Big-Headed Lizard. Before the aurora erupted, he had been locked in a stalemate with it, not daring to reveal too much of his strength, so he missed seeing the Big-Headed Lizard’s heroic fighting stance in the later stages.
“It only knows how to spit corrosive liquid, and even then, the concentration isn’t high enough. What use is it other than polluting the environment?” Chi Zheng’s germaphobia flared up intensely as he grumbled while sweeping the warehouse.
Hearing this, Lin Xia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Why bother sweeping the warehouse? In any case, after the food stall cart upgraded, its defensive power was no longer afraid of these corrosive liquids, and it wouldn’t lose durability even if stained.
“Unbearable, the smell is too overwhelming,” Chi Zheng said with a long face. “It grew such a large head for nothing. Relying on sebum attacks, it spits glands and lymph everywhere? If it squirts it all out, where is it going to secrete corrosive liquid from? So stupid.”
In fact, Chi Zheng’s words truly misjudged the Big-Headed Lizard. These dense, net-like sebum glands on the ground were all leftover scraps from the food stall cart’s one-click collection feature—garbage that the system wouldn’t even accept.
At the very least, the Big-Headed Lizard had contributed a significant amount of edible parts. Without that crucial kill after the aurora erupted, Lin Xia would not have been able to gather enough ingredients required for the upgrade.
Speaking of the aurora, Lin Xia remembered that he hadn’t checked the rewards for the red quest yet. He opened the panel of the food stall cart and found that all the information on it had refreshed. Not only was there a new display page for the power system, but the entrance to the mall, which had previously been grayed out and unavailable, was now illuminated as well. Most importantly, the food stall cart had issued a new upgrade quest and opened up two task sectors: Challenge and Regular. Currently, these two sectors, along with the mall entrance, awaited host Lin Xia’s activation command.
The current attributes of the food stall cart were as follows:
—This is an ordinary electric food stall cart, born from your obsession. Manufactured from thick iron plates, its basic defense is 110, capable of withstanding 2 attacks from Level 2 mutated beasts. The glass is explosion-proof tempered glass with a basic defense of 50, capable of withstanding 1 attack from a Level 2 mutated beast.
Thermal Insulation Performance: Level 2, minor insulation. However, it remains insufficient to withstand extreme cold weather. Under conditions without an additional temperature control module, the vehicle body can ensure that personnel inside do not experience hypothermia within -20°C.
Gas System: One built-in gas stove. Fuel can be used for a fee, with the current price at 1 energy unit per cubic meter. Complimentary seasonings are included, capable of cooking various foods.
Furniture: 3 chairs, 1 wooden board bed (with mattress).
Power: Electric (standard electric vehicle speed).
Mall System: Awaiting activation.
Quest System:
1. Upgrade Quests
White Version – Ordinary Enhancement: (1) Store 100 catties of edible ingredients. (2) Using the gathered ingredients as raw materials, combine two recipes and produce the finished products to submit for audit.
Reward: Food stall cart defense +3, seasoning refills, 10 liters of pure water.
Yellow Version – Intermediate Enhancement: (1) Store 200 catties of ingredients. (2) Using the gathered ingredients as raw materials, combine 10 recipes, requiring that the ratio of the recipes must perfectly consume all ingredients with no leftovers or waste. (3) Produce 10 servings of finished products for each recipe and submit for audit.
Reward: Food stall cart defense +12, seasoning refills, a simple bedpan, 20 liters of pure water. The audit evaluation must reach a passing grade.
Orange Version – Advanced Enhancement: (1) Discover four new ingredients never used before in this world. (2) Using the gathered new ingredients as raw materials, combine four recipes and produce finished products for each recipe to submit for audit. (3) Consume the finished products and survive for 48 hours. (4) The audit rating must reach Excellent. (5) The quest must be completed within a time limit of 144 hours.
Reward: Food stall cart defense +50, thermal insulation performance +1 level, seasoning grand gift pack, basic medicine chest +1, 50 liters of pure water, one integrated restroom (no shower).
Red Enhanced Quest – Triggered after completing the Orange Quest
Sell off all finished products and obtain the approval of over 60% of the diners. Time limit of 24 hours. Quest failure will deduct 2 upgrade rewards; insufficient rewards will be deducted from the owner’s body.
Reward: Power coefficient +1 (over-speed electric vehicle mode) / added wading mode. 60% of the sales amount belongs to the owner, which can be exchanged for mall currency to shop.
Regular Quests: Awaiting activation.
Challenge Quests: Awaiting activation.
Lin Xia read through the updated information from beginning to end, not missing a single word or sentence.
After reading, he was in no hurry to activate the new quest system or mall entrance. Instead, he walked to the door of the food stall cart, poking his head out to examine his newly acquired power system.
Since the system gave it the evaluation of an electric vehicle, the driving mode was no different from a car. Accelerating or decelerating could be accomplished simply by depressing or releasing the pedal. Above the pedal was a small steering wheel, which could not only control the steering of the food stall cart but also featured two modes on it: reversing and wading.
Since wading was a reward option for the next upgrade quest, it was currently still in a grayed-out, unavailable state.
“Wading…” Lin Xia rubbed his chin, feeling a bit tempted.
He had read the introduction to the rewards and knew that although this mode was named “wading,” it would actually be more fitting to call it an “underwater navigation mode”.
According to the mode description, when the food stall cart added the wading mode, a retractable enclosed chassis would be installed at the bottom of the cart compartment, and the hubs of the wheels could pop out blades, allowing the food stall cart to advance through the water using the power of an electric vehicle. Of course, the chassis would also experience wear and tear, and its sturdiness depended on the defense of the food stall cart. If the durability fell below 10, the wading mode would default to a malfunction and require the maintenance services of the system mall, at which point the mode would automatically shut down.
Lin Xia checked the maintenance costs for the wading mode in the system mall, and then sucked in a breath of cold air.
—A 20% discount applies for the first use, but even the cheapest single-blade repair started at 40 points. And that was just the price for minimum operation. If four blades were repaired together, although a package deal could be selected, the cheapest option was still 150 points, not to mention the replacement fee for the chassis after sustaining an attack, which exceeded 100 points per instance.
Lin Xia looked at his own account; the balance was 360 points.
Great, he would go bankrupt if the chassis broke three times.
He had risked his life setting up a stall in the Black Fog Farm’s Outer Dining District and had only earned a total of 600 Mall Coins, with 40% of the gross sales drawn away by the system.
Judging by the system’s intent, as the level of the food stall cart increased, various expenses would increase along with it. Not to mention that usage would cause wear and tear, and there were repairs from being attacked by mutated beasts. Replacing the glass earlier had been a relatively low-tech service, but if it came to repairing the power module or the like, the price would be staggering.
Money truly wasn’t enough to spend.
The impoverished youth Lin Xiaxia lamented the hardships of life for the countless time.
He opened the system mall again.
Truth be told, the goods listed in the mall were truly a dazzling array—ranging from emergency rations to interstellar spaceships. There was almost nothing it didn’t sell as long as one could think of it. Lin Xia even saw a privilege card for Black Fog Farm; as long as he bought it, he could move freely within the farm for 24 hours, exempt from attacks by ingredients and diners.
This was truly a good thing, especially for a “substitute ingredient” like him who needed to set up a stall and do business in the outer areas of the farm. If he had this privilege card, it could at least guarantee that his life would be worry-free when entering and exiting the farm.
However, the price of this card was naturally shockingly high, with several zeros trailing behind the digits, making Lin Xiaxia, who was accustomed to living thriftily, feel it wasn’t worth it.
With this money, wouldn’t it be better to buy something else!.
So after thinking back and forth, he ultimately spent a huge sum (80 Mall Points) to install a basic fresh-keeping refrigerator for the food stall cart. Although they could also move the old refrigerator from home onto the cart, driving this way would be very unsafe, and there wasn’t enough space inside the cart either. It was better to directly choose a folding model that could be integrated onto the food stall cart.
Yes, the fresh-keeping refrigerator could also be folded, similar to that “microwave oven” Lin Xia had submitted for audit. One only needed to open the cabinet door to see a bottomless space inside.
Of course, the basic model Lin Xia bought wasn’t that extreme, with a total capacity of only 100 liters. Yet Lin Xia was still very satisfied, because this refrigerator could be upgraded with extra money later on, and its fresh-keeping effect lasted up to a year. This already far surpassed all current fresh-keeping technologies in the Alliance, making it simply a grand weapon for hoarding food in the apocalypse!.
I still need to earn Mall Points; the purchasing power of this stuff is far stronger than Alliance currency. Lin Xia muttered silently in his heart while wiping down the new refrigerator.
It was a pity he had to set aside a portion of points to use for emergency repairs; otherwise, he also wanted to buy a planting box and then look for some vegetable and fruit seeds in the planting store. Was it possible that in the near future, he could also hope to achieve freedom with fruits and vegetables?!.
Just as he was thinking, Chi Zheng, who had gone down to do the grand cleaning, returned to the cart. He was curiously sizing up the extra power module inside the vehicle.
“Our cart can move now?”.
Lin Xia nodded and pulled him over to look at the refrigerator he had just bought.
“If I had known Zenith’s biological specimens were so valuable, I should have been more careful with those moths. If I could have left a whole corpse, maybe they would have been edible too.” Chi Zheng looked remorseful.
That was all money! Even if they sold for a few more dollars, they could at least buy a crate of emergency biscuits in the mall; throwing them in the trash can was a complete waste.
“Once we’re done loading up goods here, I’ll take you to look at the office area of the central supermarket. The manager’s office has documents concerning transactions with Zenith. I remember there are at least three shipments of containers to be delivered to the Fourth District; the other two shipments might still be at the pier or the airport. We can slip over there to hoard some as ingredients, so we’ll have a family asset when doing upgrade quests in the future.”.
Since he put it this way, Lin Xia nodded along.
Although he didn’t plan to open the second upgrade quest for the time being, planning ahead was always necessary.
He had now roughly figured out some of the tastes of the black fog diners. If it was still in the hole-in-the-wall dining district next time, completing the quest wouldn’t be a big problem, and taking the opportunity to earn a bit more Mall Points wasn’t impossible either.
He was still thinking about that foldable integrated planting box!.
“Alright!” Lin Xia clapped his hands. “We’ll go downstairs to the fresh food warehouse right now to sweep for goods. Once the cart is loaded up, we’ll set off for the supermarket office area and strive to hoard more black fog ingredients this time!”.
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