【The fourth Polar Night has arrived. The initial energy is about to run out, and trains without energy will stop in one minute.】
As soon as this announcement was broadcast, An Bai clearly felt the train slow down considerably.
Fortunately, he had stored a great deal of coal. He hurriedly added coal to the boiler, and only then did the train return to its previous speed.
What surprised An Bai somewhat was that the amount of coal the train required was far lower than expected.
The manual stated: Ten pounds of ordinary coal can power a level-two train for one day.
By that calculation, An Bai’s coal could keep the train running for at least another seven days.
He habitually opened the chat channel, and sure enough, it had erupted once again.
“Help! SOS!”
“Does anyone have coal? My train has stopped.”
“I’ve come to terms with it. If I die, then I die.”
“Brother, don’t!”
“It’s useless anyway. It’s nothing more than a matter of dying sooner or later.”
“Putting it that way makes me feel like giving up too.”
“Maybe dying will let us return to the original world. Haha.”
The atmosphere in the chat channel was heavier than ever before.
In the end, lucky people like An Bai were few and far between. The vast majority were struggling just to stay alive, and gathering food consumed all their energy.
“Is any Survival Alliance still recruiting?”
“At this point, I doubt anyone would take you.” An Bai muttered.
“I will!” The person with the ID orca group leader spoke up.
“That ID sounds familiar.” An Bai thought for a moment. Wasn’t this the guy from the regional chat channel?
“Really?”
“Really. We’re recruiting five more people, first come, first served.”
“Oh, right. I’ll provide new members with one day’s worth of coal for free.” Before everyone could celebrate, he added,
As soon as he said this, the people immediately erupted into a commotion.
“Giving away fifty pounds of coal? He’s quite the man.” An Bai regarded him with newfound respect.
“Big shot, take a look at your child!”
“Brother Orca, I want to enter your heart.”
“Orca, Orca, I’m a seal.”
……
“Sorry, everyone, but recruitment is full. Go ask someone else if they’re still accepting members.” The orca group leader decisively went offline.
“What kind of person is he?”
“Coal is rare to begin with. He probably doesn’t have much in reserve either.”
“Exactly. How many people can actually produce fifty pounds of coal?”
“After all, there are plenty of people who talk big, but few who actually do anything.”
Clearly, alliance leaders as generous as the orca group leader were exceedingly rare, and only a small number of people successfully joined a Survival Alliance.
“Sigh, I hope nothing happens tonight.”
“I hope so too. In any case, I’m prepared to collect coal beyond my limits tomorrow.”
“As long as we stay inside the train and don’t make any noise, we should be fine, right?”
“Hopefully. I’m going to sleep first. Sweet dreams, everyone.”
……
As the train’s rumbling ceased, daytime arrived right on schedule.
When he pushed open the train door, a floral fragrance rushed into his face. This time, the place where they had stopped was actually a river valley.
The banks of the river valley were lush with aquatic plants and covered in all kinds of flowers.
To be honest, An Bai was still somewhat apprehensive when he pushed open the train door. After all, the resource bonus buff would expire today.
“The first thing I need to do is replenish the water I used before. After that, I need to gather energy and anything that can improve my strength.”
An Bai knew that luck was both reliable and unreliable. In the end, the only person he could truly depend on was himself.
After spending roughly fifteen minutes, he filled the bamboo bucket with water.
Without wasting time, he took the iron axe in one hand and the iron pickaxe in the other, then carefully began searching the Safe Zone.
This time, An Bai clearly felt that his efficiency had improved considerably. Before, he had needed to rest for five minutes after working for half an hour.
Now, he could search for an hour without even getting out of breath.
During his search, An Bai found another treasure chest. However, this time it was a silver-grade treasure chest.
After dragging the treasure chest into the train carriage, An Bai decided to look across the river. There was a small forest on the opposite bank.
He waded across the small river, which was knee-deep, and reached the opposite bank. The terrain here was somewhat steeper, and about three hundred meters ahead stood a mountain slope.
When he reached the small forest, he threw the iron pickaxe onto the ground, spat twice into his hands, and rubbed them together.
After taking a deep breath, he aimed at the bowl-thick tree before him, raised the axe, and hacked down hard.
With a sharp crack, the tree toppled to the ground.
Just as he was about to cut down a second tree, a commotion suddenly arose from deep within the forest.
The birds deep in the forest scattered in all directions, as if some great menace had emerged.
Before An Bai could react, a wild boar roughly the size of a bear charged out from the bushes ahead.
When the wild boar saw An Bai, it was like a cat seeing a mouse. Excitement flickered in its blood-red eyes.
“A wild boar this big?” An Bai decisively picked up the iron pickaxe from the ground, found a relatively tall tree, and climbed it.
The wild boar charged over with a roar, slamming its seemingly none-too-bright head hard into the tree trunk.
The tree, as thick as a washbasin, was struck so violently by the wild boar that wood chips flew everywhere, and several pieces of bark were knocked off.
An Bai was nearly shaken loose by the impact. If that collision had hit a person, they would probably have been smashed into pieces.
The wild boar shook its head as if nothing had happened, slowly backed away, and began gathering strength, clearly intending to knock down the tree.
“Does this wild boar have mad cow disease or something?”
An Bai tucked the iron pickaxe under his armpit and tightly “hugged” the tree with both legs to stabilize his center of gravity.
Then he raised the axe in his right hand and aimed it at the wild boar before him.
The wild boar backed away about fifty meters before stopping. With a roar, it charged toward An Bai at top speed, its four hooves kicking up clouds of dust.
An Bai stared intently at the wild boar and roughly calculated its path.
He took a deep breath and hurled the axe at a certain spot with all his might.
“Squeal!” A shriek rang out.
The axe struck the wild boar squarely between the eyebrows, and blood poured down.
The wild boar spun in place from the pain instead of fleeing. An Bai was secretly delighted at the sight; it seemed he had injured its brainstem.
The wild boar’s momentum combined with the momentum of An Bai’s thrown axe produced terrifying power!
Taking advantage of its weakness, An Bai drew out the iron pickaxe and brought it down hard on the wild boar’s head.
The iron pickaxe struck the wild boar’s head with perfect accuracy. The sound of breaking bone rang out, and the wild boar collapsed to the ground.
“This is a huge haul!” An Bai slid down the smooth tree trunk.
When he reached the wild boar, An Bai pulled the axe from its brow bone and then picked up his iron pickaxe.
Before An Bai could continue examining the giant beast before him, the system’s mechanical notification rang out in his mind.
【Congratulations, Survivor Andersen, on hunting a good grade wild boar. Would you like to perform disassembly?】
“Yes!” An Bai thought that handling a wild boar weighing nearly five hundred pounds himself would be troublesome.
【Disassembly will incur a ten percent processing fee.】
“I know. Why are you rambling? Hurry up and perform disassembly for me.” An Bai did not want another wild boar to spring out of the forest while he was moving this one.
【Disassembly commencing……】
A burst of white light flashed, and the wild boar’s corpse vanished, replaced by three lumps of wild boar flesh essence and twenty pieces of marbled pork belly.
Each piece appeared to weigh ten pounds.
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