At this moment, Wan Huanyu's mind was completely blank.
He had only one thought: a proud dragon falling into a pond is mocked by crabs.
He had actually been killed by some no-name nobody player.
Not a vegetable, not the cripple, not the lame one either.
Just an ordinary player.
Why?
Why?!
Wan Huanyu roared, ordering his subordinates to send people over to kill all three of them, and to buy a resurrection scroll to revive him at the same time.
But buying a resurrection scroll required 100 gold coins, and now the gold price had skyrocketed—100 gold coins cost 20 million credits.
Not only that, the people he could trust were all lying dead on the ground right now. The most trusted member of his guild, Huanyu Kuangwu, was still waiting for Server 48 to open. Even if he rushed into the newbie village of Server 017 and grinded to level 10 to reach the town, it would already be too late.
Wan Huanyu suddenly realized.
He was done for.
...
On the other side.
Chu Fu and the others had circled through five towns and Linjiang City, run a dungeon, auctioned off the dropped equipment and split the money, netting Chu Fu another 30 gold coins.
The gold price was soaring, but gold-tier equipment in the cities had dropped a bit more in price, because more and more players were crowding into the cities.
Chu Fu bought ten pieces of gold equipment with decent stats and returned to Fengdu Town.
Together with Jiao Jiao, she submitted the quest.
Jiao Jiao Bu Jiao let out a wail.
"No way, why did I get a residential property instead of a shop?"
She showed it to everyone.
[Permanent Residential Deed in Fengdu Town (Gold Tier)]
It was still a good item, but completely different from a shop.
Chu Fu consoled her: "A residential property isn't bad either. Maybe it's because you didn't have the ability to supply goods, so they didn't give you a shop.
But this property is definitely inside the safe zone.
For now, all we know is that Fengdu Town is located somewhere in the Fengdu New District, but the Fengdu New District is too large—we can't be sure where it's worth investing.
Assuming that when the game invades reality and everything syncs with the real world, this house will be property registered in your own name.
A property has a 'return home' function, just like a city-return scroll or a guild recall.
This way, in the future, returning from a city to the town will only take you ten seconds.
A free fixed teleport point saves you a lot of trouble!"
With Chu Fu's explanation, Jiao Jiao Bu Jiao was comforted and broke into a smile.
Next, the others went to trigger the Great Benefactor badge quest.
Everyone needed to accept this quest, since it was an extra gold-tier badge after all.
But to everyone's surprise, Shi Dacang refused to issue the quest this time.
"Everyone, although the town is desperately short on grain, please act within your means!"
"What does that mean? We can't go to the other towns anymore?"
The group immediately communicated in the team voice chat, making sure Shi Dacang couldn't hear them.
A flash of insight struck Chu Fu.
"When Shi Dacang said the town is still short on grain, that means the quest can still be accepted. But when he tells us to act within our means, it suggests this quest has certain trigger conditions we haven't met."
Without wasting a second, Chu Fu figured out the reason.
"You guys don't have any gold coins left in your pockets, do you!"
Everyone had sold off their gold coins on Chu Fu's advice.
"The question now is what the required amount of gold coins is for this Great Benefactor quest. Jiao Jiao, do you remember how many gold coins you had when you first came here?"
Jiao Jiao Bu Jiao nodded: "About five hundred gold coins."
"One jin of rice costs 1 copper coin. The quest requires 50 gold coins' worth of rice—one-tenth of your funds. That seems reasonable too!" Xie Lin said. "No worries, we still have over ten hours until tomorrow. We can sell off all the equipment we looted from the Huanyu Guild yesterday, and that should be about enough."
Yesterday, they had only split up the equipment that was easy to divide, along with the gold coins Wan Huanyu had been carrying.
Those silver, bronze, and black-iron tier equipment pieces needed to be sold, and that would take some time to process.
Someone in the guild was responsible for that, and after crunching the numbers, they came up with a price of 900 gold coins.
Chu Fu, Xie Lin, and Shen Chi each got 300.
Xie Lin borrowed 300 from Shen Chi and ran over to Shi Dacang to accept the quest. Sure enough, it worked.
"We should all accept this quest. There's no time limit—we can just complete one person's per day. But I'm worried the quest might have a limited number of times it can be accepted."
Everyone nodded.
They pooled their money one by one and ran over to Shi Dacang to accept the quest.
Finally, even Chu Fu went to accept it.
Shi Dacang's eyes lit up.
"Who wants to be a vegetable? You're also here to donate rice? Awakened ones, you are far too kind!
If you donate spiritual rice, I can give you a larger dwelling as a token of appreciation!"
So this NPC plays favorites?
But Chu Fu didn't hesitate and accepted the quest.
[System Notification: Do you accept the Epic Quest: The Great Benefactor.
Quest Giver: Shi Dacang.
Quest Content: Donate a batch of spiritual rice to help Linjiang City and the five towns get through this crisis.
Quest Completion Reward: Large amount of experience, badge reward: Great Benefactor Badge (Dark Gold Tier).]
Her Great Benefactor Badge was actually dark gold tier.
Chu Fu quickly told the others to go ask if they could also donate spiritual rice, so everyone could get a dark gold tier item.
Worst case scenario, she would just reclaim another piece of land to farm.
But Shi Dacang refused.
"Everyone, please act within your means. Spiritual rice is very expensive, and I fear you might not be able to afford it. Even doing good deeds shouldn't bankrupt you."
This time, even without Chu Fu's reminder, the others understood.
"50 million jin of spiritual rice costs 1,000 gold coins. Based on the hidden conditions we tested earlier, we'd probably need 10,000 gold coins to trigger this quest."
That condition was way too harsh. Even if ten people tried to pool together 10,000 gold coins, it would take maybe ten days of grinding. And right now, they couldn't buy gold coins anyway—the price was insane.
Chu Fu shrugged.
"Maybe that's good news too. It means in the future, when we're rich, we can donate and get another dark gold badge.
But the most valuable part of this quest is that we can run the hell-difficulty dungeons in the other four towns.
At our current pace, we'll reach level 20 in just five days!"
Chu Fu and the others' leveling speed could be described as utterly unmatched.
Since it looked like they'd hit level 20 in five days, they agreed to run the dungeon again early tomorrow morning, with two members submitting the quest at a time to stagger the completes.
Most importantly, because of the rice shortage, the entire server had been forced into farming on Fengdu Town.
Which, ironically, fit the town's name perfectly.
It was now noon.
Chu Fu led her chainsaw dandelion to harvest the spiritual rice again, accumulating a total of 55 million jin. Tomorrow she could submit the quest once more and take everyone to the hell-difficulty dungeons in the other towns.
As for the extra 500 jin, she planned to put it up for sale in her shop.
She'd spent the freshly earned 300 gold coins on renovating the shop, and the signboard had been hung up as well.
Fufu's General Store!
But selling only spiritual rice would be a waste.
In the game, having a player-run shop was an extremely rare privilege, so she had to make the most of it.
Luckily, the system didn't restrict what a shop could sell, which gave Chu Fu plenty of room to work with.
【Server 0308888 - Fengdu Town】【Who Wants to Be a Plant】: "Fufu's Grocery Store is now officially open! We accept consignment items with only a 2% transaction fee. We also buy and sell materials, equipment, skill books, special items, and more. In addition, we offer a wide selection of delicious food that boosts your fullness meter. All players are welcome to come and pay us a visit."
