Alas… reality slapped him in the face.
At a glance, there wasn’t much that was interesting.
If there’s anything new, it was the flint. But no iron. So not flint and steel.
“What’s this? Want me to start a fire caveman-style?”
Bleh! Absolutely tasteless, especially since he already got his own magical fire pit!
“Well, just turn it into arrows once I get a bow and some... feathers?”
Yeah, good luck finding chickens here in the desert. Bawk!
Next was two coils of strings. Add that to that last piece he acquired and now he got three.
“Great? Enough for a bow or another fishing rod? But… I’ll need the recipe first! Bleh!”
Yu Zhiye hopes that setting will really come back to bite the stinking author one day!
Finally, the best for last: another recipe.
[Recipe: Axe (Blue)]
x2 Stick, x3 Any Planks, Stone-tier Block, Iron Ingot, or Diamond
“Ohh~ A universal axe recipe! That means there’s no need to collect a different recipe for every tier-up! Cool, cool!”
Yu Zhiye didn’t know in what monkey year and horse month he’ll be able to craft a diamond axe, but...
“Once I building the crafting table, crafting a stone axe for self defense shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
That brings him around a full circle and back to the main point.
“Um. How do I use this recipe?”
That paper scroll looked so tearable, but Yu Zhiye really didn’t dare try that.
And since it was only day 3 of this survival game, it’s too early for other guinea pigs to show up.
But... Yu Zhiye really didn’t like the feeling of holding onto a treasure and not being able to use it!
“Could there be any other way I haven’t thought of, something obvious I have overlooked…?”
Yu Zhiye pulled up his system interface and blankly stared at it. If only there was a FAQ button!
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Helpless, he could only tap around the interface and eventually jumped to the blank recipes tab.
Yu Zhiye looked at the blank recipe box then dropped his gaze to the recipe sitting in his inventory hotbar.
Hey! They’re on the same interface!
Since there’s no issues switching items around on the hotbar, what if…
A finger touched the recipe and tried dragging it up to drop it into the recipe box...
“Um… will that work?”
Yu Zhiye let go and the recipe vanished like it never existed!
“Shit.”
Just when Yu Zhiye thought he lost a recipe for nothing, a new entry appeared in his recipe book!
It was the axe recipe he just dropped in there!
“Sweet! It actually works! Damn. How did my stupid brain not think of something so intuitive earlier?!”
Guess he wasn’t gamer enough.
Well, at least he still figured it out on his own. That brings a sense of accomplishment. No achievements though.
Maybe he was too late for that. Sad face.
But it’s never too late to learn new recipes!
Yu Zhiye dug through his other storage chest and fished out the crafting table recipe scroll.
A blink later and that got added to the recipe book.
“Now, I just need four wooden planks to test how it works… Bleh. Stuck again!”
Yu Zhiye’s gaze fell to the empty spare chest. Doesn’t look easy to break... at least not in a punch or two.
“Whatever. I’ll try dissembling it tonight when I have time.”
Right now, it’s more important to go fishing whilst he still can. There’s only two points left in his core!
If he wanted to build that observatory by tomorrow, there was still lots of work to do!
“But first…”
After hastily switching out his water supply, Yu Zhiye went out the door and arrived next to his barren fish pond.
“Since this pond is not in use, just fill it in to avoid any accidents…”
Yu Zhiye glanced at the x64 sand blocks he collected today.
Honestly, he didn’t need anymore sand, but… his hands just couldn’t sit still while he was waiting for the fish to bite.
Though his attempt at building a sand castle failed, but ahem, might as well gather more sand, right?
Shaaaa…
Sand spilled from his fists and poured into the basin below like an infinite waterfall.
“Look at me. I’m a magician! Haha…”
And soon, the street magician still had to head back out to work under the hot sun.
“There’s only twenty cobblestone left, and I’ll need to collect half of that to make ends meet for the observatory. Alas… it doesn’t look like there’s anybody to fleece today.”
Yu Zhiye gazed out at the human tracks in the sand. Every ten steps or so, there was a little arrangement of stones to mark their footsteps.
That apparently was what that four-eye’s exploration party came up with after getting fleeced by him yesterday.
Leave a mark on their route back.
Though some of those markers got lost after the nightly landmass rearrangement, many still got retained and that was enough for the smart to figure out a lot about the rules.
“Really can’t underestimate others. You don’t have to be a protagonist to come up with ingenious survival tricks.”
Yu Zhiye can only sigh. It’s a good thing that others found ways to reduce the risk of exploration, but that meant less work for him.
“What a bummer. And that even doubles in reducing the available stones for me to collect…”
Yu Zhiye looked in another direction and found the timid Mob Character A going around collecting stones for the explorers.
Poor guy working like a mule in the sun.
Oh, he’s not talking about himself, obviously!
Yu Zhiye wiped the nonexistent sweat on his forehead and trudged off to the quicksand zone that had moved even further away.
But not long after he tossed his line out and sat his butt down on the sand recliner he molded earlier, Yu Zhiye heard a faint cry in the distant.
He searched for the source and saw a rather familiar Miss Highschooler trotting over with one hand holding her floppy hat down while the other waving to get his attention.
Her soft cry got louder and louder...
“...Eiiih Big brother Big brother Steve! Come help! Uncle is trapped in flowing sand!!!”