Wu Zhen quickly adapted to the game's early pace, treating this family-building game entirely like a life simulation and farming game.
During the day, she would stand guard at the escort agency, leveling up her 【Brawling】 skill on the side. At night, she would practice 【Trickery】 on her own door lock, then go out to gather weeds nearby to sell in town the next day.
As her 【Gathering】 skill level increased, the quality of the wild plants she harvested improved, and occasionally she could even collect medicinal materials of considerable value.
Once, being too greedy with her time and not lowering her fatigue level promptly, she even passed out in the wilderness. When she woke up, nothing was missing; it was just that her 【Brawling】 skill had, as one might happily expect, risen to lv.8.
The player scratched her head, refusing to ponder how many creatures had fallen victim to her.
However, this incident made Wu Zhen pay much closer attention to her fatigue value. After all, passing out in the wild wasn't very safe. What if someone with a high brawling level came along and stole all the weeds she had worked so hard to gather?
Besides that, she planted a pear tree in the courtyard, successfully unlocking the 【Farming】 skill. She spent two days rearranging the entire yard, planting some vegetables as well, striving for self-sufficiency when her hunger meter approached the danger line.
During this process, the 【Ancestral Home】 evaluation score gloriously rose to 10.99.
Perhaps the house's greenery had already met the standard, and any more would be overkill, as similar renovations afterward no longer moved the score.
Wu Zhen regretfully abandoned the idea of turning the house into a Christmas tree.
Aren't we all min-maxers here? Why are you so concerned about aesthetics?
This kind of gameplay was a great time-sink. By the time Wu Zhen emerged from her pleasant state of busyness, winter had arrived in the game.
The game started in spring, meaning a full year had passed.
During this year, for the sake of efficiency, she mostly played with time acceleration on, and every day was filled with tasks—there was no helping it, grinding skills and farming took up the whole day, and she had to make sure to sleep on time to reduce fatigue—so she had no extra interactions with NPCs, and their favorability naturally remained completely unchanged.
When they came and went from town, they would even deliberately avoid her courtyard.
In short, after a year's buffer time, not only had their relationship with the player not improved, but they seemed even more afraid of her—the player couldn't be bothered to distinguish between fear and caution, simply lumping it all under "being scared."
Thinking about it, it made sense. After all, probably no decent person wanted to deal with the King of Fighters of Qingni Town.
Especially the manager of the medicinal herb shop she often traded with. Every time he saw her, there was a certain aesthetic to his demeanor—"really doesn't want to talk to her, but has to put on a smiling face while worrying she'll notice, thus desperately pretending to be friendly."
Wu Zhen opened the assets panel.
After a whole year of diligent work, her savings had accumulated to thirty-seven taels of silver. As for assets like the property, the plants and flowers in the yard, and the vegetables in her backpack, they could be found under the 【Assets】 category.
All her unlocked skills had generally reached levels between lv.5 and lv.7, with 【Brawling】 even breaking past the lv.10 milestone.
Mhmm, a perfectly flawless first year of the game!
Wu Zhen flipped through the calendar. Tonight was New Year's Eve. The town had no curfew on such festive nights; townsfolk could freely go out after dark, and it seemed there would even be some fireworks.
She hadn't experienced the New Year's Eve customs in the game yet, so she happily gave herself a day off, planning to join the festivities. Taking some silver with her, she merged into the cheerful, laughing crowd.
Lanterns hung along the streets, illuminating the night brightly. Children carried small rabbit-shaped lanterns, playing and laughing in the alleys, saying they were going to stay up late with their lanterns. Wu Zhen bought one for herself and followed the flow of people towards the riverside. Amidst cheers, small fireworks burst open one after another in the sky above the riverbank.
It was at this moment the player switched to the third-person perspective.
On the screen, the little character's dark eyes also sparkled, reflecting the lantern light.
Very focused, like dancing flames.
The player, quick-eyed and swift-handed, took several screenshots for herself. After the fireworks ended, she happily carried her lantern home.
She hung up the lantern, walked to the bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
...
The next day was the new year.
The player woke up, stepped outside, and discovered it was snowing.
A layer of snow covered the courtyard, pure and clean.
She built a small snowman in the yard, took a radish from her backpack, and carved it into a pointy nose for it.
Just as she was about to put it on, she noticed her rising hunger meter and took a bite out of it.
The radish she finally placed on the snowman had a missing chunk.
The first day of the new year, in the snowy white winter, for a moment, Wu Zhen surprisingly couldn't think of anything to do. She tilted her head, feeling like she had forgotten something.
Wu Zhen opened the game's main title screen.
On the title screen was a line of large text:
"From Zero: A Cultivation Clan Simulator."
Wu Zhen: ...
So that's where the problem was.
She had completely forgotten about the "clan" and "cultivation" aspects; she hadn't remembered either of the two main storylines.
She seemed to have a special encounter called 【A Thread of Immortal Fate】 too.
For convenience and ease of memory, Wu Zhen had set her birthday as the first day of the Lunar New Year. After this birthday, she would be sixteen, with a long time left before dying of old age at eighty.
If she still hadn't triggered 【A Thread of Immortal Fate】 by then, the cost of reloading a save would be too high.
After some thought, Wu Zhen decided to spend a month repeatedly saving and loading saves to grind for 【A Thread of Immortal Fate】.
Southeast of Qingni Town, past two villages, lay a range of large mountains.
While wandering around Qingni Town, Wu Zhen had heard stories about immortals living in those mountains and had even obtained a 【Clue】, which greatly increased the probability of special events occurring.
Mainly, while grinding for the special encounter there, she could also hunt some wild beasts and gather some medicinal herbs, giving her somewhat stagnant skills a chance to level up.
She had almost gathered all the weeds in the nearby area.
Wu Zhen opened the save interface, overwrote the first slot below the auto-save, and then traveled light, heading southeast from Qingni Town.
A trail of footprints marked the smooth expanse of snow, emitting a soft crunch with each step.
Over the past year, she hadn't explored the map much, her range of activity basically limited to the area around Qingni Town.
So this journey felt very fresh to her.
When her hunger got high, she'd take some vegetables from her backpack to munch on. When her fatigue became unbearable, she'd find a hidden spot to sleep. In this state, she made quick progress, taking only two days and one night to pass through the wilderness and villages, arriving at the foot of the southeastern mountains.
Wu Zhen looked at the large mountain before her, pulling out the simple wooden bow she had made last year while practicing blacksmithing.
This season, there should be beasts leaving their dens to forage, right?
【Archery】 lv.2
Full of anticipation, Wu Zhen headed up the mountain.
.
【Wu Zhen】 did some gathering.
【Wu Zhen】 did some gathering.
【Gathering】 leveled up to lv.8
【Wu Zhen】 practiced archery for a while.
【Wu Zhen】 practiced archery for a while.
【Archery】 leveled up to l
v.3
……
For the player, a month in the mountains wasn't hard to endure.
Even when she really needed to reduce fatigue, she could always find one or two caves sufficient for sheltering from the wind and snow, and light a fire for herself.
Then it was just gathering and hunting.
Her archery skills weren't refined, and there were times when close-quarters combat was necessary, such as when encountering wild wolves out foraging.
The end result, of course, was Wu Zhen obtaining a wild wolf carcass.
After entering the mountains, she discovered the game offered two modes to choose from. One was switching to a 2D perspective, marking gathering points and wildlife on the map. Encountering wildlife would trigger combat directly. As long as she didn't run into them, she could pass by peacefully and leave them behind.
Aside from a slight reduction in obtainable resources, this mode was very convenient. However, for an immersive experience, Wu Zhen still moved using the first-person 3D perspective.
A month later, she descended the mountain with a backpack filled to the brim.
Then, just before starting her journey back, she suddenly remembered: the mission that brought her here this time was supposedly to trigger that ["A Thread of Immortal Fate"].
Wu Zhen: "..."
Darn it! Forgot again!
With regret, the player loaded a saved game.
After a ["loading..."], she was back at the start of the month.
On her second trip into the mountains, Wu Zhen had far less patience. After adjusting the perspective and map mode, she sped through exploring the map.
She didn't encounter any so-called immortal beings, but she did spot two or three hunters.
They seemed very surprised by her appearance, and one even knelt down on the spot right then and there.
Sigh. Reload.
["loading..."]
Reload again.
["loading..."]
...
Anyway, after who-knows-how-many reloads, the player had completely transformed into an emotionless auto-battle and map-exploring machine.
This mountain range was vast, composed of several stitched-together maps. A month's time was just enough for Wu Zhen, with her stops and starts, to reach the deepest part of the mountains.
Here, there were absolutely no traces of human activity.
Wu Zhen glanced at the date—today was already the last day of the month. Looks like she'd have to reload again this time.
She was actually quite accepting of the cycle of saving and reloading. After all, in some dice-rolling games, she had once rolled for an entire night just to get a critical success, having honed an astonishing willpower.
But since she'd come all this way, and the scenery looked nice, Wu Zhen switched to a follow-camera perspective, planning to take a few screenshots before leaving.
She opened photo mode, positioned her character sitting quietly on a snow-covered rock, aimed the camera at the character, and adjusted the filter.
After taking one shot, Wu Zhen felt like there was something at the edge of the frame.
She shifted her gaze over, scrutinizing it carefully.
Beneath the deep snow, she seemed... to see a corner of snow-white clothing.
It blended with the surrounding world, somewhat indistinct.
Wu Zhen tilted her head, jumped down from the rock, and followed the line of the cloth with her eyes.
There was a person in the snow.
She slowly walked forward, pushed aside the layered branches, crouched down, and reached out to brush away the fine snow from the brow of the person lying unconscious there.
Long eyebrows sweeping towards the temples, ink-black hair like clouds.
...Oh my.
And a rare beauty at that.
[Special Encounter - A Thread of Immortal Fate - Triggered]
Wu Zhen knew.
She had found what she was looking for.
