Chapter 61
Lin Tu followed her usual habit and opened the lower-tier rewards first to build up her luck.
[Congratulations! You have obtained a C-Class special item—a pair of featherlight shoes.]
[A Pair of Featherlight Shoes: As the name suggests, these shoes are extremely light and difficult to damage. Wearing them will slightly increase your agility.]
As Lin Tu tore open the ticket, a pair of pale pink mesh sneakers appeared in her hands. It was probably the self-adaptive function of the special item ticket—not only did the shoes match the style of her other clothes, but they fit her perfectly.
Lin Tu put them on immediately and gave them a satisfied once-over before opening her B-Class reward for completing the side mission—
[Congratulations! You have obtained a B-Class special item—a bag of survival rations.]
[A Bag of Survival Rations: A total of eight packs. It can provide energy to any living or non-living thing. Including you, your pets, and the vehicles you use~]
Lin Tu tucked the survival rations into her pack. Last but not least was the S+ reward. Come to think of it, this was the highest-tier reward she had ever received. Lin Tu rubbed her hands together—
[Congratulations! You have obtained an S+-Class special item—Let Time Stand Still Until the Night Before the Tsunami.]
[Let Time Stand Still Until the Night Before the Tsunami: You can pause time in a space of 2m x 2m x 1m, a total of 4 cubic meters. Any items placed within will remain in the exact state they were in when placed there.
Note: This effect only works on non-living things.]
Lin Tu clutched the ticket, her gaze snapping to her storage shelves. What a coincidence—her two shelves pushed together were exactly 2x2x1 in size.
If time paused on those shelves, wouldn't she be able to stockpile a ton of cooked food? Not only would she not have to worry about spoilage, but she wouldn't have to worry about the taste deteriorating either.
Just thinking about enjoying crispy scallion pancakes fresh off the griddle from that stall at the market in a disaster world, or braised pig trotters chopped into sticky chunks right out of the stew pot piled over rice, or that auntie's hand-pulled noodles with the secret recipe that you couldn't find anywhere else—Lin Tu felt like she was ready to go again.
Still, Lin Tu didn't use the ticket right away. She planned to try upgrading her [Level 2 House] and expanding a room or two. Whether this spot would still be used for storage remained to be seen, and using the time-stop ticket here would only create complications later.
Having gotten such a useful special item ticket, Lin Tu wasn't as eager about the random rewards that followed.
[From "I, Hu Hansan, Will Return!": You have obtained the special ability "Return to a Past Place."]
[Return to a Past Place: From the post-apocalyptic world's animated show *Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf*. At the end of each episode, Grey Wolf gets ejected from the world, but he always returns right on time in the next episode. The system, deeply moved by this, decided to grant this skill to every player who gets ejected from a disaster world for special reasons.
You may use the short phrase "I, Lin Hansan, Will Return!" to mark a location. When you say "I, Lin Hansan, Have Returned!" you can instantly teleport back to that location.
Notes: 1. You can only use this when there are no mutated monsters within a 100-square-meter radius; 2. You can only use this in disaster worlds, and only once per disaster.]
Lin Tu already had two special abilities—[Beginner-Level Plant Affinity] and [Post-Disaster Economic Reconstruction]. Now she gained a completely different yet extremely practical one, and she was genuinely delighted.
Getting ejected from a world wasn't entirely a bad thing after all. The frustration she'd felt moments ago immediately dissipated.
[From "The Joker's Prank": The "Sunken Land" has fallen once more, and you are invited to return. You may now choose between the following two options:
Participate in the S-Class disaster "Abyss of No Light" and receive the designated S-Class reward;
Decline to participate in the S-Class disaster, and you will receive no rewards.]
Lin Tu's gaze lingered on the letter S for a moment before she made her choice.
The next two special achievement rewards—one was "The Legendary Western Spy." Lin Tu would receive a laptop, which she could use to look up resource points in the surrounding area after entering a disaster world. It was a fairly practical item.
The premise for using this special item was that the laptop's battery couldn't be drained. For others, that might call for careful deliberation, but for Lin Tu, who had unlocked [Permanent Electricity], it was a non-issue.
The other was "First Evolution." As a reward for obtaining her first evolution point, Lin Tu received an additional evolution point.
Evolution points and energy stones were actually the same thing, just with two different names and two different uses in [Anju] and [Infinite Calamity].
Evolution points were used to enhance the player's own abilities, while energy stones were used to build more advanced functions for the house.
Lin Tu opened the [Anju] app first. The dizzying array of Anju evolution options made her head spin.
After reading through all the options, she belatedly realized it was already two in the morning—and she'd only gotten through half of them. The other half came from the Evolution Club, but for some reason, the latter had shut down its app functions, forcing players to trade in person at Doomsday Town.
Lin Tu thought about the pile of messages on her phone. Yi Ying was waiting for her to join the next disaster, Professor Lü, who looked like he had money and wanted to spend it fast, had sent another invitation... plus the copy tickets she wanted to buy, and the low-tier special wood and stone needed to unlock [Level 2 House]...
In that case, she really needed to make a trip to Doomsday Town. Lin Tu closed her eyes and decided to rest for a while first. She'd set out early tomorrow morning.
.
Over the parched, scorched earth, a black strange bird with wings soaked in asphalt flew past. The sky was shrouded in gray haze—even though it was broad daylight with the sun out, it was hard to feel any clear sunlight.
A sprawling, endless town stood on this land. Judging by the sign at the town's entrance, this was town number 77,797.
After Lin Tu paid for the teleport, she blinked once—and found herself sitting in a rundown bus. Many other players on the bus were resting with their eyes closed, completely unsurprised by the scene. So this was how you got into Doomsday Town.
Lin Tu looked out the window. On the wasteland road, many private cars, especially trucks, were speeding past the bus toward the front. Once they reached the town entrance, the trucks began unloading. The goods varied—some water-damaged, some wrapped in trash bags, a mixed bag of everything. Their peculiar appearance immediately told Lin Tu they were supplies brought back from disaster worlds.
At the town's entrance, quite a few people were trading bulk goods on the spot. Since these were items brought back from disaster worlds, they inevitably had some imperfections. The goods with more serious flaws were sold by the players who brought them back at makeshift stalls—water-warped socks, squashed little bread rolls, instant noodles without seasoning packets.
The crowd was thick with people looking for bargains. There were also a few food stalls in the middle. Though the stalls were shabby and the prices weren't cheap, the food smelled good, and passersby with a craving would always shell out some points to satisfy their appetite.
Lin Tu got off the bus, checked the time, saw it was still early, and decided to wander around.
She passed a stall selling gloves, one selling towels, one selling cups and buckets, and one selling waist packs. Then she heard a chorus of "heave-ho" up ahead. She saw a truck surrounded by several people, unloading large pieces of building materials.
Lin Tu remembered her need to upgrade to [Level 2 House], and her eyes lit up as she moved closer.
"I'll give you 25 points at most for this. As for the rest of the truckload, I'll give you 50 for everything together," the middle-aged man in charge of receiving the goods said casually.
"No way! You can't price this like ordinary building materials!" The burly man had a sweat-soaked towel draped over his shoulder and wiped his forehead with it from time to time. "My brothers and I went through hell to get this stuff. It's way better than regular stone—the system says it can retain heat! The tax I paid to bring it into town was way more than for any of the other materials on this truck!"
"Heat retention? I've never heard of such a function. That thing you're talking about is probably something only the big shots can afford. If we take it, it'll just sit on our hands—who'd buy it? Look, we only take ordinary goods here." The middle-aged man spread out the booklet in his hands, looking apologetic. But his eyes flicked to the stone, and a glint of cunning flashed through them. "Tell you what, I'll give you 5 more points, max. You don't have much quantity anyway. Any more than that and I really can't do it."
Lin Tu walked closer, overhearing their conversation, and couldn't help but shift her gaze to the stone—from the sound of it, with that heat-retention property, this stone seemed to fit the requirements for low-tier special materials.
The burly man shook his head, his voice deep and muffled. "It's worth 60."
"Man, you're just stubborn!" The middle-aged man let out an exasperated sigh and was about to persuade him further when he saw Lin Tu walk right into their circle as if she owned the place, calmly reach out her hand, and touch the stone he'd been coveting.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?! Don't touch that!" The middle-aged man hastily swatted at her arm.
But Lin Tu nimbly dodged his hand and placed her own firmly on the stone. Her phone buzzed with a notification. She picked it up, and a smile spread across her face—it was indeed low-tier special stone.
Lin Tu turned to the burly man. "I'll take 30 kilograms."
The middle-aged man's face darkened.
The burly man looked troubled. "This batch is sold together, and I'm asking 60 points."
Lin Tu gave the stone a once-over. It was probably only a bit more than 30 kilograms, so she simply nodded. "Fine, 60 points."
These things were pricey in the system store—about 5 points per kilogram, so 30 kilograms would run 150 points. Getting it here for 60 points was an absolute steal.
Lin Tu was just about to pull out her points when the middle-aged man called out, "Hey, hey!" He stopped her, his face dark. "Didn't you see I was in the middle of a deal with him? What do you think you're doing, butting in?"
"I saw it," Lin Tu said sincerely. "But didn't you two not reach an agreement?"
"Whether we reached an agreement or not, it's not your place—" The middle-aged man gave Lin Tu a contemptuous once-over.
"You know who our Liu Ge is?" The younger man behind him added, "Liu Ge here handles all the building materials in this area! If you can't make it on your own, that's your problem, but don't go dragging others down with you!" He finished and looked at the burly man.
The burly man's face turned iron-gray, and the fist gripping his sweat towel clenched tight.
For some reason, Lin Tu got the feeling this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Not wanting to miss out on this shipment, she quickly said, "I'm genuinely interested in buying, and I can pay more."
"Damnit! Are you deaf or what?!" Liu Ge slammed his booklet to the ground with a thunderous crack. The noise scattered the surrounding crowd, and he made as if to snatch the points from Lin Tu's hand, shouting, "Today I'm going to teach you some manners!"
The burly man quickly tossed aside his sweat towel and moved to help.
It wasn't that he was judging by appearances, but Lin Tu really didn't look like she had much fighting capability. Besides, the kinds of people who came to these bargain-bin markets were ordinary folks just scraping by—otherwise, how could Liu Ge have gotten away with being this arrogant for so long?
But before he could even step forward, he heard a "Sis Lin!" from afar. Another person pushed through the crowd even faster than he could and rushed over.
At the same time, Lin Tu sidestepped with incredible lightness, dodging Liu Ge's charge. She was wearing a gray knit long dress with pleats on the side. As she spun, the hem flared open slightly, and she smoothly lifted her leg, revealing her long, defined Achilles tendon.
As a man who spent his days steeped in physical labor, the burly man could tell at a glance—just from that tendon—that her legs had serious power behind them.
Then, Lin Tu drove her foot hard into Liu Ge's shin.
In an instant, the burly man's intuition proved true, and a bloodcurdling scream like a stuck pig tore through the entire market.