“I can provide edible salt. I’d like to exchange it for a container to hold water, preferably a larger one. The price is negotiable.”
An Bai posted this message in the player trading channel, then stepped out of the train again to gather supplies.
The white mist was like a city wall, cutting him off from the outside world and leaving only an area with a radius of 1,000 meters.
Fortunately, the fogless zone where An Bai was located had a stream running through it, along with plenty of shrubs and trees bearing many kinds of wild fruit he did not recognize.
Using the photograph-based identification function of the Survival Manual, An Bai gathered a large amount of edible wild fruit over the next three hours.
By a rough estimate, it weighed approximately thirty pounds.
At this moment, An Bai opened the player trading channel in the manual again and discovered that more than two hundred people had already sent him private messages.
Most spoke to An Bai in a pleading tone, with the obvious implication that they wanted to get something for free.
An Bai did not even bother looking at these people before blocking them all.
Who in the apocalypse was not suffering? Everyone was suffering. If they wanted to survive, they still had to rely on themselves.
Of course, some people sent him their nude photos. An Bai merely paused for “one second” before swiping past them.
There was no way he could see through them, so they were just wasting his time.
In the end, An Bai finally found a “sincere” seller. The seller directly sent An Bai a photo of a bamboo bucket with a capacity of approximately 100 liters.
“How much salt do you want?” An Bai replied to this person, whose ID was Dawn Wind and Waning Moon.
“This should not be ordinary crystallized salt, right?”
“That’s right. It’s a fruit with high salt content, and I have some.” An Bai did not conceal the truth.
“There are fruits that contain salt?” The person was somewhat doubtful.
An Bai directly sent over a salt peach and asked the other person to use the manual’s photo identification function.
“It really does contain salt!”
“How many Salt Peaches do you want?” An Bai asked.
“Twenty?” Dawn Wind and Waning Moon even added a question mark.
“That’s too many.” An Bai frowned slightly. There was no way this person did not know the value of the Salt Peaches.
“Then how many will you give me?”
“At most, I’ll give you five!” An Bai replied.
“Ten!”
“Take it or leave it!” After saying this, An Bai immediately exited the chat interface and began looking at the other people who wanted to trade with him.
“How about eight? This bamboo bucket took me an incredible amount of effort to make.”
Seeing that An Bai did not respond, Dawn Wind and Waning Moon was also afraid that An Bai would block them.
Unable to hold back any longer, she hurriedly replied, “Five it is!”
“Deal!” Seeing the two brief words on the screen, the person with a neat head of short hair felt a surge of inexplicable anger.
She lightly bit her lip, but still put up the bamboo bucket. After all, she needed salt.
After inspecting the bamboo bucket and confirming that there were no problems, An Bai was in an excellent mood and sent her a friend request.
“I look forward to our next cooperation.”
He then closed the manual directly, without caring whether she accepted or not.
After spending another ten-odd minutes, An Bai filled the bamboo bucket with water and properly placed it in the corner of the train.
Now, the eight-square-meter train carriage looked rather cramped.
In less than two days, An Bai had already collected quite a few resources.
More than eighty pounds of solidified pine resin, thirty pounds of wild fruit（including one Potato）, more than 140 Salt Peaches, and nearly 200 pounds of water stored in the corner.
“By the second day, food and water will have depreciated somewhat, but they’ll still be in high demand.”
An Bai estimated that it would not be long before the prices of his pine resin and Salt Peaches skyrocketed.
The Bronze Shop ranked food, water, energy, and materials in that order.
After a few more days, the people who survived would have reserves of the first two items to varying degrees, so the prices of the latter two would rise.
“Materials must be used for the train upgrade.”
After eating a few wild fruit, An Bai picked up the wooden pickaxe and wooden axe and left the train.
He prioritized chopping down the smaller trees, but even so, An Bai spent half the day hacking at one with the wooden axe.
He even managed to put a notch in the wooden axe.
“What a useless weapon.” An Bai threw down the wooden axe and started pulling with his bare hands.
After exerting tremendous effort, he finally pulled the small tree out of the ground.
An Bai used his knee to break the tree into several sections and stuffed them inside the train.
“I still need to gather some soil.” An Bai thought of the one remaining Potato.
Potatoes are tuberous plants. They can be cut into pieces for planting and are easy to grow.
Inside the fogless zone, An Bai carried several relatively square stones into the train and used them to enclose an area roughly half a square meter in size and about thirty centimeters high.
He then filled the area with soil.
Just like that, the miniature vegetable garden was complete.
After finishing all this, it was almost dark. The manual also indicated that night would begin in half an hour.
The mist outside also grew somewhat dim because of the fading light, giving off a gloomy feeling.
Taking advantage of this interval, An Bai quickly used the wooden cup he had exchanged for earlier to scoop water from the stream and water the miniature vegetable garden.
He could not bear to use the drinking water from the bamboo bucket for that.
【Beep beep beep, night has arrived, and the sleeping monsters will awaken as well】
An Bai immediately closed the train door, then hid in a corner and opened the manual, preventing the nasty things outside from seeing the light inside the train.
The number of people displayed in the manual had decreased by another five million from before. There were now only 2.915 billion left, while 970 people remained online in the regional chat.
“Terrifying. It’s only been a few days, and nearly 100 million people have already died!” someone said.
“My best friend is dead.”
“Most of those who died were the elderly, the weak, the sick, the disabled, and people with no sense of time. This situation is expected to improve later.”
“Does anyone have water and food? I’m about to die. Please save me!”
“In this world, death might be a form of release.”
In just two days, the atmosphere in the chat had become considerably heavier.
“Hey, is anyone interested in forming an alliance? We could establish an alliance pact based on mutual assistance, mainly to help everyone get through this difficult time.”
“Good idea. I think we can do that.”
This statement received responses from many people.
An Bai merely watched coldly from the sidelines. An alliance pact without any restraints was more fragile than paper.
The distance between nearly every Survivor was 500 kilometers. There was no way they could manage anyone else.
“What if someone takes the benefits and then blocks you?” someone voiced their concern.
“I am the chief of XX on earth. I can provide three days of water and food free of charge to anyone who joins my alliance pact.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely!” The person with the ID Lubabachaka spoke up and also sent a photo of himself.（PS: The manual automatically translates every language）
Once the photo appeared, he was indeed the chief of XX, and An Bai narrowed his eyes slightly.
It was not because he was a chief, but because of the food and water behind him. There was more than twice as much as he himself possessed, including quite a few dead wild beasts.
As expected of a chief from Africa.
“Do you have any requirements?”
“No requirements. After three days, I will provide additional resources based on your contributions to the alliance.”
Clearly, many people were tempted. Numerous people troubled by shortages of food and water requested to add him as a friend.
Similar alliances also began to form. With certain interested parties pushing things along, some people began seeking cooperation.
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