Midday.

  Under the glaring sun, Yu Zhiye hauled in his heavy catch and chuckled happily.

  “Lucky, lucky~ another treasure chest.”

  There’s always something about lootboxes that makes people happy about getting em’. Unless you’re cursed to be an unlucky black sheep, of course.

  Yu Zhiye put away the casket, conveniently filling up the last slot in his inventory.

  “Hmm. Though it took a while to find the new quicksand zone, the catch this morning is not bad.”

  On top of the chest, he fished up five more sandfish and even a random stick.

  “Should have enough points for the upgrade now…”

  Yu Zhiye gazed up at the blinding sun. “The resource generator should be ready to harvest by now?”

  Time to for a quick base run.

  A half-eaten apple appeared in Yu Zhiye’s hand and on the way back, he nommed on that cool, juicy snack.

  Crunch. Crunch. Crunch…

  Back in the base, the apple core got tossed to a corner. “Tonight, I’ll throw the seed into a bottle with water and see if it can germinate them.”

  It’s never too early to start planning for the future. Not enough water for farming now doesn’t mean it’ll be the same later.

  Of course, that’s for later. Now?

  Yu Zhiye touched the core and went into base-management mode.

  

  [Main Core (Lv. 2)]

  The core of this pocket dimension that stores all energy collected.

  [Core Energy Units]

  x8

  [Upgrade]

  x25 core energy

  “Hmm? Eight energy? Looks like the two points daily passive income cashed in not long ago. Cool. Cool.”

  And half of those extra two points immediately got invested back into the idle resource generator. More wood please!

  After booting that barrel up again, Yu Zhiye returned to the overview mode of his pocket dimension.

  

  [Shed (Lv. 1)]

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Only resources deposited here can be used for construction.

  [Resource Bank]

  

  [Upgrade]

  x16 wood, x16 sand, 5 core energy

  “Yup, finally enough resources for a construction upgrade!”

  As for what to upgrade? Well…

  Since the fishpond was quite tasteless now, that was out of the question.

  Upgrading the shed storage itself was a must sooner or later, but it wasn’t urgent nor did it bring any immediate benefits.

  The observatory… he’s still short some core energy and cobblestone to build that.

  That left…

  

  [Shack (Lv. 1)]

  Resting in the shack grants a well-rested buff.

  [Upgrade]

  x16 wood, x8 cobblestone, 5 core energy

  “Guess that’s it. The well-rested buff proved quite useful this morning. Upgrading the shack should make that even better, right?”

  Yu Zhiye held onto his hopes and tapped that upgrade button. Bling~

  Once again, all the interfaces faded away, locking him in the cutscene mode. All he could do was watch the magic happen.

  Visible to the naked eye, the shack’s walls grew more sturdy and a few wooden supporting beams grew into those solid walls as if they had always been there.

  If the shack before was like a house of cards that looked like it’ll get blown over by a gust of wind...

  Now it looked more like an actual hut, especially with the two new shabby wood doors that got slapped into place.

  Yet, the changes didn’t end with the shack.

  Out back—not far behind the shack—a ring of stones unearthed from the barren land and the circled area sunk down to form what appeared to be a fire pit.

  Then, sturdy sticks popped out from the earth and propped themselves across like they got set up by some invisible magician’s hands.

  Once everything was finished, what appeared was a wooden grill rack over a camp fire pit!

  It didn’t take a genius to guess what this was for, and the reappearing interface confirmed Yu Zhiye’s expectations.

  

  [Cooking Pit]

  Just add wood and it’ll burn.

  [Effect]

  Ingredient Purification

  Very simple description but extremely powerful effects!

  “Guess I won’t be needing flint and steel to start a fire! And there’s even a purification effect!”

  Purifying sounded like a scam in his previous modern world, but in any mysterious supernatural world, purification possessed a lot of meaning!

  “If this purification does what I’m expecting, then I won’t have to worry about parasites, diseases, or similar rot in the fish I cook!”

  Now that’ll be absolutely amazing! Of course, this still needs to be tested.

  “No spare wood to try this out right now. Hmm… Maybe tonight?”

  When the thought of grilled fish for dinner appeared in Yu Zhiye’s mind, he felt himself drool a bit, but quickly realized his consciousness body can’t even drool right now.

  Ahem. Back to serious business.

  Yu Zhiye checked the info of his newly upgraded shack.

  

  [Shack (Lv. 2)]

  Resting in the shack grants a well-rested buff.

  [Upgrade]

  x64 wood, x32 cobblestone, 10 core energy

  Except that the upgrade cost spiked up, not much seemed to have changed.

  “Guess I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see if there are any changes in the buffs.”

  It’ll be nice if that gets better, but even if it doesn’t, Yu Zhiye felt it was fine.

  Anyways, just the new cooking pit made everything worthwhile. Oh right, and the refurnished shack, too.

  The consciousness returned to the body and Yu Zhiye checked out the interior walls that looked much less decrepit. Even the ceiling seemed to have raised a little higher.

  The doors made the place somewhat darker, but that was just a matter of preference.

  “Well, just keep the door open to air the room from time to time.”

  After putting this matter behind him, Yu Zhiye went over to the side where he dropped off his new chest.

  He rubbed his hands together excitedly and prayed to the RNG god.

  “The toilet god that doesn’t belong to this era, the king of yellow and black who wields good luck, Notch, heavens above, authors beyond, or whichever fool is listening…”

  “Please, I’m not asking for much. Just bless me to get an elytra wings or at least a netherite sword…”

  Ahem. Ahem.

  The lid snapped open and what appeared inside was…