Chapter 29: Ringer and Durank

Day 12 of the game!

Clear skies!

Southwestern winds, a gentle breeze!

Breakfast: sea snails cooked with bean sprouts.

The fist-sized conch was beautiful, but the undigested algae in the conch’s stomach looked like sh*t, so who said it was edible?

With a full stomach, Ye Jun wrote down his diary entry for the day.

Then he started a busy day.

He was going to remodel the merchant ship.

The merchant ship wasn’t small, but Ye Jun had to grow vegetables and fire up the forge so the deck was pretty much full.

Plus, there was a lot of wood that could not be stacked in the hold, as freshwater had to be stored inside the hold.

So, Ye Jun built a simple raft, stacked all the wood on it, and then used a rope bolted to the stern to keep the raft afloat in the sea.

In this way, the spatial burden of the vessel was greatly reduced.

Then, Ye Jun began to build wooden frames.

The vegetables were currently grown in wooden boxes stacked on the deck, taking up a lot of space. It wasn’t being used wisely.

Ye Jun intended to create three layers of wooden shelves, each of which could be used to grow vegetables. With this, the area available for the vegetable farm would be expanded by three times.

The inspiration for this came from a show he once watched on modern soilless greenhouse cultivation.

The roots of the vegetables weren’t deep, and each layer of the wooden shelf only needed to be able to store twenty centimeters of soil. The three layers of wooden shelves, in addition to the space for the vegetables to grow, were only just over a meter high.

With plenty of wood, a silver-grade construction hammer, and Ye Jun’s status as an Intermediate Builder, it wasn’t difficult to build a few wooden frames.

In just one morning, a neat row of wooden frames was constructed.

Each of these wooden shelves had 20-centimeter baffles that could hold 20 centimeters of soil, with gaps that were for easy draining.

In this way, it was permeable to light, air, and water.

It was perfect!

Ye Jun had Yang Tianxing dig up some northern black soil for him to fill up the wooden frame, then purchased some seeds and planted them in.

Fruits, vegetables, peppers… He bought all kinds of seeds.

By the time the ship was full of green, it would be a proper seagoing estate.

In doing so, not only did the number of plants double, but a large space was also made available on the deck. It was no longer as difficult to maneuver around as it had been before.

Ye Jun had slightly modified the furnace again. After becoming a Forger, he mastered the knowledge of forging and furnace construction.

After the modification, the furnace’s utilization of flame had increased considerably, enabling it to smelt more ores at once.

Ye Jun threw 10 pieces of iron ore in and began to refine iron ingots.

These days, he had received quite a lot of iron ore, and after forging the iron anchor, he had over 200 pieces left.

This bunch of iron ore was enough to smelt into 20 iron ingots, each of which could be used to forge something.

Weapons made of iron ingots, such as daggers, arrows, and so on. Although their sharpness and durability were far less than bronze-grade weapons, they were still extremely valuable to ordinary players; each iron dagger could easily be sold for over 100 copper coins.

However, the time spent on this amount of profit was a bit uneconomical for Ye Jun.

So Ye Jun intended to use the iron ores to forge a batch of kitchen knives, scissors, shovels for farming, hoes, axes, and other tools for his use.

After a busy morning, Ye Jun forged a kitchen knife and an iron pot.

He attached a wooden handle to the iron pot and weighed it in one hand. It was a good thing he forged it himself. It was smooth, much smoother than the branded pots he used to buy at the supermarket.

Ye Jun was simply too moved.

All he ate recently was stewed, boiled, and jumbled in a pot. Now, he could finally stir-fry.

Ye Jun couldn’t wait to give himself some stir-fried shrimp.

Have you ever seen a fist-sized shrimp?

The doll had pulled up large shrimps from the bottom of the ocean, each one an arm’s length.

Each shrimp was the size of a fist. Reshaped with a fancy knife, drizzled with some soy sauce, it looked like a pork meatball.

If it wasn’t for Ye Jun’s improved health, causing him to have an exponential increase in meal size nowadays, two of such large shrimps would have filled him up.

To add to that, he got a glass of fruit wine for himself!

Under this blazing sun, it was simply refreshing!

These fruit wines were all brewed by Ye Jun from those fruits he traded for.

There was too much fruit to store for long, so Ye Jun simply bought a brewing manual from the in-game store and gained a Brewer title as a result.

Ye Jun’s cabin was already stocked with two large barrels of fruit wine. If he couldn’t finish it, he could take it out and sell it for a lot of good things.

Apart from the fruit wine, Ye Jun also bought some wheat to brew beer.

With the brewing skills available, it would be a pity not to have some beer on a hot summer day.

But those wheat were still in the malting stage, so it would be ten or so days before he could have a glass of beer.

With a full stomach, he took an hour-long lunch break.

Nowadays, Ye Jun kept regular hours, more regular than when he was in normal society. He didn’t need to work overtime; he just slept early, ate and drank at fixed times, and had lunch breaks. His body was exceptionally well.

This was called living. Back in modern society, it wasn’t called living, it was just called surviving.

For Ye Jun, modern society was more like a survival game. The pressure of medical bills, mortgage loans, and car loans forced him to work overtime and not dare to take a day off. He also had a boss who was like the Grim Reaper as he could take him out at any time.

But for other players, they weren’t so lucky.

The number of posts complaining in the channel was increasing.

It was a surprise that wild animals would actively attack players since the game had passed the newbie protection period.

In the wild, players were constantly on guard against wild animals, and even when they were sleeping, they might wake up with a few poisonous snakes hiding under their covers.

This also caused a large number of players to be eliminated.

At this moment, though on lunch break, Ye Jun was lying on his side on the bed, going through the conversations and posts in the game channel, just like back in the days when he used to browse the forums.

“I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got rats inside my shelter, and they’re biting my toes every night!”

“Dude, you’re lucky you caught a rat and got a refill. I woke up with a snake in my pants…”

“Pull the snake’s fangs out…”

“The brother upstairs seems to have a lot of experience!”

“I think I know this big shot, nicknamed by Hupu[1] as the Grass Carp Giant.”

“Awesome…”

The chat was sidetracked again.

Still, such bittersweet posts were in the minority, as the vast majority of posts contained pessimistic scenarios.

The game was divided into Single-Player Mode and Group Mode.

In Single-Player Mode, no one would know about one’s elimination, but in Group Mode, the blow dealt to the remaining players when a teammate was eliminated could only be imagined, and that pessimism was evident in these posts.

“I’m the only one left in my group, I don’t know what to do. If only I was the one who died, then I wouldn’t have to be on my toes every day!”

“Me too. I’m too slow to level up, and my teammates hate me for being a drag!”

“Yesterday, my two teammates got into a fight over a wild fruit and now they’re not talking. I feel like this team has fallen apart!”

“Ringer: I’m the teammate mentioned upstairs. The few of us have been friends for decades before this Durank guy came along, so who is this guy who showed up halfway to steal food from me?”

“Durank: I level up faster than you, and I find more fruits than you do…”

“Ringer: The four of us have been brothers before you came along.”

Durank: “…”

At the same time, a post titled ‘Magical Bloodline Fruit that can awaken a player’s ancient bloodline’ quietly appeared, quickly attracting much attention.

[1] [Annotation text missing]