Chapter 115

Lin Tu studied the fuel engine blueprint in her hand, and as she recalled how she'd obtained it, a truth became clear to her.

"Fight Your Way Out" was such a simple and sincere game—it told everyone right in the name what the fastest way to clear it was. No need for much brainpower, no need for much skill. No matter the mission dungeon or the game storyline, as long as you killed everything, you got all the rewards.

Lin Tu snapped a photo of the blueprint and sent it to the group chat.

Yi Ying hadn't slept yet and exclaimed excitedly, "What's this? Sister Lin! Are my eyes playing tricks on me?! A FUEL ENGINE!"

Luo Yongzhi: "Sister Lin! Me! Look at me! I can do it! What do you need? I'll go through fire and water, no matter what!"

Guan Suixing chuckled. "Don't be so obsequious, you two. Sister Lin hasn't even said anything yet."

Dong Huadan: "Sis, that's awesome. This isn't easy to get. You didn't run into any danger, did you? I have some medicine here."

Only Liu Sheng hadn't replied. Lin Tu pinged him: "Where are you? I've got a fuel engine now. I can upgrade yours to a small SUV, and then you can take on the fifth highway segment with more security."

"He already cleared it himself, but he ran a lot and he's exhausted. He's gone to sleep now," replied another player.

"Oh?" Lin Tu scrolled up through the chat history and discovered that while she'd been in the dungeon, Liu Sheng had already boldly stormed through the fifth highway segment. During his run, he'd asked a few questions in the group, but since Lin Tu wasn't around, the other players had helped him.

Fortunately, he'd made it through without a hitch. He then decided to push his luck and cleared the sixth segment's mission in one go. Now he was sleeping like a log from sheer exhaustion.

Lin Tu let out a relieved sigh. "I'll learn this blueprint myself. All I need from you all—same as Liu Sheng—are the raw materials for making a fuel engine: fifty electronic components, fifty metal, and fifty rubber."

"Isn't a fuel engine assembled from fragments?" Yi Ying asked, puzzled. She'd thought the blueprint was used to combine fragments with other materials to piece together an engine.

The other players chimed in, saying they'd also seen veteran players in the regional channel claim that fuel engines could only be assembled from fragments.

"That's a story that starts from the beginning..." Lin Tu took a deep breath and began recounting her run.

She'd barely entered the eighth highway segment when she saw the road sign with a single warning: "Beware! Ferocious Dogs!"

But when she drove onto the highway, she didn't find any ferocious dogs. Instead, a tour group was waiting for her. Lin Tu got out first and walked over—

"You're finally here!" said a tour guide wearing a red flag, greeting her warmly. "Huh? You're alone? Why didn't you bring friends? If you bring friends, you can join more activities and earn more rewards!"

"So we still need to team up to access certain quests and get better rewards?" Yi Ying asked.

"Probably," Lin Tu replied. "So we need to meet up as soon as possible."

"Got it, Sister Lin," Luo Yongzhi quickly interjected. "Yi Ying, don't interrupt! Sister Lin hasn't finished yet! Let her continue."

Lin Tu then asked the guide what rewards were available.

The guide gave her a playful grin. "This reward is something every traveler in the desert longs for. I'm guessing you..." The guide's smile faltered as she caught sight of the SUV behind Lin Tu. "I suppose you must need something for your friends too. Why don't you take a look at this brochure? It lists all our activities and their rewards."

Lin Tu quickly spotted the ultimate reward in the brochure: fuel engine fragments.

Luo Yongzhi: "Wait, fragments? How did it turn into a blueprint?"

The other players had the same question, but they were too curious about Lin Tu's experience to interrupt.

"When I found out the reward was fragments, I also noticed that all the activities were dog-related," Lin Tu said. "I had to go to a place called Doggy Town to play games with dogs."

"The ferocious dogs?!" Guan Suixing blurted out.

"Not ferocious dogs. Because I noticed a lot of things that didn't add up. The dogs were all very docile, but the townspeople treated them terribly—beating and scolding was common, and there was even deliberate abuse like pulling tails and gouging eyes."

Lin Tu paused and continued, "So I thought back to the warning on the road sign. 'Beware of ferocious dogs.' Where exactly were the ferocious dogs?"

"I get it!" Luo Yongzhi shouted. "Sister Lin found the ferocious dogs and got a hidden reward—the fuel engine blueprint!"

Lin Tu: "..." His explanation actually seemed more plausible than what she'd done.

"No," Lin Tu said after a moment of silence. "I happened to be alone with a villager and noticed he wore a keychain made of dog paws. I thought it was weird and asked if the town had a grudge against dogs. He suddenly turned hostile, said something rude, so I chopped him down with one swing.

"Then I saw him turn into a dog, and it hit me: everyone in town was a ferocious dog! So I killed them all."

The players fell silent. What a merciless judge she was!

But if those things were monsters, they deserved it.

"After I killed the villagers, I found the abused dogs weren't simple either. Even though they'd been mistreated, they didn't hate the town at all. Instead, they tried to attack me after I killed the villagers, so I killed all the dogs too."

"At that point, since none of them were real people anyway, and to get the reward, I killed the tour guide as well."

Players: "..."

"Then I automatically cleared the level. I thought I'd get fragments, but it dropped a fuel engine blueprint directly."

"Kill them all!" The players immediately changed their tune, and Yi Ying was almost raising her fist. "Sister Lin, brilliant!"

"If you hadn't killed them, you wouldn't have gotten this blueprint!" Luo Yongzhi shuddered. Thank goodness Lin Tu was the one doing the run—anyone else wouldn't have gotten that result.

"Looks like we should try killing more during our runs too," Dong Huadan and Guan Suixing said, saying they'd learned their lesson.

Lin Tu let out an awkward chuckle. She actually thought it was a puzzle level, because there were clearly two factions, and if she'd found a smart way to eliminate the ferocious dogs and rescue the good side, she might have gotten a similar reward. But... no need to mention that.

"I'm going to learn this blueprint myself, so you don't need to spend money buying it from me," Lin Tu said. "Once you give me the materials I mentioned, I'll craft them for you directly, no extra charge. Upgrade your SUVs as soon as you can, and we'll meet up on the road."

That was perfect! The players only needed to gather materials to upgrade their SUVs, no longer worrying about being bottlenecked by the fuel engine.

"Sister Lin, the charcoal crafting blueprint sold!" Yi Ying recounted the afternoon's events with delight. "Now everyone in the regional channel says they trust only you. Just a moment ago, the camel-summoning technique also sold! Everyone's guessing who bought it!"

Something like that happened?

Overjoyed, Lin Tu quickly opened the light screen and saw that both blueprints had indeed been sold. Since she'd been in the dungeon, she'd only now received the traded items—

Three pale white cards, respectively: "Defense +1: Vehicle exclusive," "Speed +1: Vehicle exclusive," and "Gloves of Strength."

The first two were vehicle-exclusive. Lin Tu fused them directly into the SUV. She couldn't feel the defense boost, but the speed did increase slightly. The professional Butler immediately calculated the exact number—

"Top speed increased by 5 kilometers per hour."

Not bad. Lin Tu picked up the last card. She already had two glove cards, but she didn't wear gloves often. After a moment's thought, she let the Butler keep driving and went back into the house to rummage around, finally finding a pair of black sports gloves with exposed fingers and half palms.

She put them on, gave them an experimental squeeze, and they felt decent. She then applied both cards to the gloves.

The green card yielded the [Diligent Chauffeur: a robot that can understand basic commands. You can direct it to drive or stop the vehicle.]

Lin Tu activated the card, and the chauffeur immediately appeared in the passenger seat. Its head was an oval sphere, and its movements were a bit stiff, but it was functional. It wore a T-shirt and shorts, with a charging/fuel port on its chest, and its consumption was low.

"No! I don't want that!" the Butler immediately threw a tantrum. "I want to drive!" It finally had a chance to be useful!

Lin Tu: "... fine, you drive."

She grabbed the Diligent Chauffeur by the shoulders, lifted it, and carried it into the Anomaly Space.

Who said a chauffeur had to be a chauffeur? If it could understand basic commands, couldn't it do other things?

Lin Tu took out a hoe, demonstrated by digging a couple of times, and the chauffeur—no, now renamed the Diligent Farmer—took the hoe somewhat stiffly and began hoeing the ground.

"Very good, Diligent Farmer," Lin Tu praised.

She'd chosen a few flat spots on the mountain for farming. The one she'd brought the farmer to was the largest, where she planned to grow wheat.

"You hoe this field first," Lin Tu summoned a little black mass, then put the dandelion on the farmer's ear. "When you're done hoeing, touch the dandelion on your head, and I'll come back and teach you how to plant. Okay?"

Two heads are better than one, and even one and a half might be enough. Lin Tu was quite satisfied with her fully automatic farming machine. She'd been worried she wouldn't have time to plant all the fields, but now it seemed promising.

"Yes, master," replied the Diligent Farmer.

Lin Tu left the field in its care and returned to the car, relieved.

She found the player who'd traded her the Diligent Chauffeur, "Ye Liba," and noted the ID.

"Ahead..." The Butler's voice suddenly trembled.

"What is it? A four-star supply crate?" Lin Tu lifted her head from the light screen and looked forward. She saw a group of turtles crossing the road. "Where did those tur—"

She cut herself off mid-sentence.

These weren't just turtles. To be precise, they were turtles, but each one carried a human head on its shell. The heads all turned in unison to face the SUV, and the turtles stopped moving.

Among the heads were a woman with long, withered hair dragging on the ground; a toothless old man whose deeply wrinkled face formed deep ravines under the bright moonlight. Most importantly, every head wore an expression of pain and torment, as if they'd been torn off and grafted onto the turtles' shells.

Where did these turtles come from? Lin Tu forced back her discomfort. She remembered Lu Zhu mentioning that a senior player who'd done a nighttime driving mission had monsters come after him every night. So these turtles were tonight's trouble.

Lin Tu drew her pistol and aimed at a turtle's head, but it quickly retracted into its shell. She aimed at another turtle and found it equally alert.

Frustrated, she aimed at the human heads instead, but those agonized expressions made her hesitate.

"Reverse!"

Lin Tu ordered the Butler while firing at the shells. Unfortunately, the shells were too hard. After temporarily fending off the nearest turtles, she tore open the [Diamond Coating] and dripped the diamond-like liquid onto each bullet tip, coating roughly a full magazine's worth.

After reloading, she fired at the shell again. This time, the bullet easily pierced through, killing the turtle in place.

Turtle after turtle fell. The car reversed rapidly while Lin Tu kept shooting. Finally, when her ammunition ran out, only one turtle remained.

The human head let out a piercing "Ah!" and the turtle sped toward her.

"Little Black!" Lin Tu called out to the dandelion. It flew toward her fingers, and a lump of black stone formed in her hand.

Like skipping a stone, she threw the "stone" at the turtle's feet. The turtle, with its stubby legs moving fast, couldn't stop in time. With a loud "bang," it tipped over sideways and couldn't get back up.

"BANG!" An even louder sound echoed across the road. The human head, upon impact, burst open, spraying disgusting flesh and brain matter across half the highway.

Fortunately, Lin Tu was far enough away to avoid the splatter. She felt her heartbeat finally steady.

A moment later, the heads on the other turtles gradually turned translucent. Lin Tu heard a chorus of agonized screams. Then, human souls began to emerge from the heads, drifting up into the desert sky and vanishing into the night.

On the road, only a box remained.

"A three-star supply crate?" The car pulled up, and Lin Tu excitedly got out to grab the box.

Opening it, she received: electronic components ×50, rubber ×100, simple bow/crossbow crafting blueprint ×1, water purifier ×1.

No consumables this time, but she wasn't upset—another crafting blueprint was essentially the same as an item.

Lin Tu immediately listed the blueprint and the water purifier for sale, the former priced at two pale white items and the latter at one. Then, she sorted through all her supplies and put all her food up for sale, including bread ×27, mineral water ×32, ham sausages ×21, glucose hydrating solution ×3, beef 500g, self-heating hot pot ×1, self-heating noodles ×1...

The exchange prices were determined by the system, and the only accepted currencies were electronic components, metal, and rubber.

After learning the fuel engine blueprint, knowledge flooded into Lin Tu's mind like a spring. She suddenly knew which engines were better and, given the materials, could assemble one like fitting puzzle pieces.

She planned to stockpile those three materials and craft as many fuel engines as possible. At the moment, she could already make two.

Lying in the driver's seat, she placed the materials on the passenger seat and slowly began putting together the "puzzle."

—

The next morning, the regional channel was in an uproar again.

The cause wasn't her newly listed simple bow/crossbow blueprint—or rather, because of the "competitor's" tarnished reputation, Lin Tu's stock had risen even without her doing anything. Her blueprint, despite the price of two pale white items, sold within a second.

The regional channel was in a frenzy because of Lin Tu's newly listed fuel engine.

"Is it real or fake?!" someone couldn't believe it. "I'm a veteran player! I know upgrading an SUV bottlenecks at the fuel engine, and it's a long wait. So I've been eating and drinking regularly, not saving anything for it!"

"I'm a veteran too, and I'm shocked. Last disaster, I never saw anyone sell a fuel engine. Isn't this an ultra-rare item?"

"Why would you say that? Isn't Lin Tu selling one?" a new player said dismissively.

"Heh, you're still green. Do you know the gap between a tricycle and an SUV? On a tricycle, you can ride at best one segment a day. With an SUV, you can cover sixty kilometers in an hour. And some missions can't be completed unless you're fast. So having a car versus not having one is like two different games. To keep us from progressing too smoothly, the devs deliberately set the drop rate for fuel engine fragments ridiculously low. Most of the time, you can walk all the way to segment nine or ten and still not get a single fragment. You're stuck with a tricycle. It brings tears to my eyes!"

The veteran player typed a long message, clearly born of bitter experience, convincing most of the new players.

"If fragments are so hard to get, where did Lin Tu get a fuel engine? Is she like Lan Yanzhen and her group, selling counterfeit goods?" someone questioned.

"What happened before teaches us two things: one, don't casually doubt others; two, whatever you do, don't doubt the petite sister Lin Tu who sells blueprints. I'm buying this blueprint!"

No sooner had this person spoken than they jumped to the trading platform to place an order. But—

"SOLD OUT! Who! Who! Step forward! I swear I'll... take you down with me! You come out!"

"Come out! My fuel engine! Waaah! My fuel engine!"

Lu Zhu cradled the fuel engine in her arms, happily admiring the sleek machine. After a while, she piled the materials into her covered tricycle and selected "Upgrade." A white flash later, a sleek silver-gray small SUV appeared before her eyes.

She thought back to her last highway journey, where every fuel engine fragment had been hard-won, and one had even caused a falling-out with her friends...

This time was completely different! She'd unlocked the SUV so early! She would definitely reach the finish! Lu Zhu wept tears of joy as she stroked the smooth paint, her nose tingling.

A moment later, a picture of the beautiful SUV appeared on the regional channel.

Lu Zhu: "I bought it. Next time, be quicker."

"Ahhhhh! I'm so mad! It should've been my car! Why?! Come out! I challenge you!"

Lin Tu, who had been watching the drama unfold, finally couldn't help but laugh. She'd expected people to doubt the authenticity of her fuel engine and had planned to post the blueprint photo as proof. Instead... nothing at all happened.

"I've got the blueprint. I'll keep selling them," Lin Tu posted simply.

"Wow! Master ball!"

"Okay, resources ready. Waiting for it to be listed so I can buy. Thank you for your hard work."

"Okay, resources ready. Waiting for it to be listed so I can buy. Thank you for your hard work."

"..."

A string of identical responses followed like a chain.

A new player couldn't help but stifle a laugh, but was also surprised: "Are you joking or serious? Where did you all get so many resources?"

"Open source and cut expenses," a veteran player replied, now that survival pressure had eased. "Open source means doing more missions—the more, the better! Cut expenses means eating two meals a day. You have to learn to exploit the system—don't eat the moment you're hungry. This is a game, not real life. If you schedule your meals for morning and evening, you won't run out of energy and you'll save a meal's worth of resources every day."

"Oh my god! I've been so dumb!"

"Learned!"

The regional channel was suddenly harmonious.

While eating, Lin Tu opened her phone and pinged Guan Suixing in the group: "So? Did you upgrade?"

She'd sent the trade request to Guan Suixing the night before as soon as she'd crafted the engine.

"It's alright. The lines are smooth, I like it. That Lu Zhu on the regional channel is still showing off. Hmph, I'm actually the second person in the region to have an SUV," Guan Suixing muttered, then posted photos of her car in the group, earning envy from the others. "Upgrading to a medium SUV won't need a fuel engine, just materials—and a lot of them."

"Then that's on you. I've done what I promised your sister. From now on, I'll prioritize resource exchanges with you," Lin Tu declared, signaling the end of her role as a caretaker.

"I never needed it anyway!" Guan Suixing sniffed. "Thanks anyway."

"Everyone, gather your resources as soon as possible. Let's upgrade our SUVs quickly, then meet up and clear the disaster together."

"Yes!" The players were full of motivation.