Chapter 14: Picture.JPG, I'm So Miserable That I Can Only Eat Junk Food

He had finally gotten his hands on all the remaining chests, but the best among them was only a golden chest. It seemed the quality of this first wave was mediocre. He glanced at the vehicle upgrade materials—he now possessed all of them. Yet, he wasn’t in a hurry. One water purification device wasn’t enough; he planned to make another. To reap rewards, investment was always required.

By noon, at 12 o’clock, his mileage had reached 610 kilometers. Lin Mu pulled over to the roadside, unhurriedly took out a bottle of Happy Soda and a Kengyki family bucket. “Let’s just make do for lunch. This is all I can manage for now.” Lifting the lid of the bucket, the fried chicken inside was still steaming. One bite and the oil sizzled. “Not bad, this tastes just like home.”

He casually opened the workbench, flipping through the items he could craft. Tools and daily necessities made up the majority, but what Lin Mu wanted wasn’t among them. That didn’t seem right. “Hey, panel, why is there no toilet?” That’s right; he simply wanted a toilet. He couldn’t possibly keep creating boxes for that purpose every time. While the smell didn’t bother him, the sight was rather hard to accept.

“Players must strive to upgrade. Unlock functional zones to access corresponding items.” So, he’d have to upgrade again? Lin Mu turned to look at the makeshift bed behind him. Perhaps after the vehicle upgrade, the modification skills would change in some way. Currently, using the modification skills yielded only minor differences, with little variation. Thus, he hadn’t bothered to enhance them; after all, these enhancements didn’t add much to the vehicle.

He opened the trading center, and another batch of junk had been exchanged. He glanced at the water purifier—another 100ml had accumulated, which he immediately put up for trade. Thinking a bit, he roasted two more pieces of snake meat to put up later.

“Ding! Successfully recycled one diamond resource chest. Received five units of universal material.” Lin Mu looked at the sudden notification. It seemed universal material was quite rare; otherwise, it wouldn’t only come from recycling diamond resource chests. Soon, a series of notifications about successful junk recycling appeared. Watching his materials soar, Lin Mu felt an immense satisfaction. “I can’t even use all of this—it’s endless.”

The very first thing he did with the new materials was craft another water collection device. With two running simultaneously, he could trade for even more supplies. Shutting off the workbench, Lin Mu’s hand hovered over the regional channel button. He winced; he knew exactly what would be happening there, especially once he listed the snake meat.

A bunch of idiots.

“Thank you for the water, kind soul. Thank goodness I didn’t throw my junk away.”
“I thought any trash could be exchanged—why can’t my ‘special’ waste be traded?”
“You’re going too far!”
“Big brother, I’m so thirsty. Could you spare me some water? I can send you a photo~ [Image.JPG]”

The photo showed a pair of snowy white legs, the angle just shy of the more private areas, with a hint of wild grass peeking through. Lin Mu snorted—what was so interesting about that? If you’ve got the nerve, take the photo a little higher. One picture and the wolves all come running, though most seemed to have gone private. Still, Lin Mu learned something new: apparently, you could send images in chat.

He considered for a moment, then snapped a few photos.
Anonymous: “Pictures.JPG x3. It’s miserable here; I can only eat this garbage food. My health is doomed.”
One photo showed the Kengyki family bucket set, another the bottle of Happy Soda, and a third the roasted meat on the stove.

“Damn you!”
“What am I seeing? Boss, can I just have a bone to taste?”
“I want Kengyki too~”
“...”

A notification chimed. Lin Mu was puzzled—he thought he’d disabled the messaging function. Opening the message, he saw a blueprint proposal: “Pistol Bullet Blueprint—do you want it?” Lin Mu raised his eyebrows, recalling previous messages. He understood; this was the same person who’d sold him the pistol blueprint before. But had he missed something?

He didn’t reply immediately; instead, he checked the trading center for blueprints. There weren’t as many as he’d hoped—just seven, including the bullet blueprint. The other six were mostly for water purification devices, which were useless to him.

Still...

“Repeating Crossbow Mechanism Blueprint: Iron Ingot x4, Wood x5, plus either 500ml purified water or 2x 500ml mineral water.”
“Standard Bolt Blueprint: Glass x2, Electronic Components x2, plus either 500ml purified water or 3x 500ml mineral water.”

He exchanged for both without hesitation. Such trivial materials were nothing to him now. He finally understood: the chance of blueprints appearing was far too low. The best strategy was to stockpile them before others realized that blueprints could be made permanent. Even if he didn’t need them later, he could sell them at a high price.

He calculated the cost and exchanged for any useful blueprints. Then he reopened the chat message.
“How do you want to trade?” he asked.

In less than three seconds, the reply came:
“Iron Ingot x10, Wood x10, 1L drinking water, and five loaves of bread.”

Lin Mu frowned. That was a hefty price.
“You’re asking too much. That’s exorbitant.”
The reply was instant:
“You need two bullet blueprints to make it permanent.”

So, haggling wouldn’t work—the other party was well aware.
“Hold the items for me. I’ll trade with you tonight. Right now, I only have one bottle of water and one loaf of bread. If you’ll take meat instead of bread, I can trade now, but the water can only be 500ml, and I can only give you two pieces of raw meat.”

This time, the reply took much longer—so long, in fact, that Lin Mu finished his meal and was about to drive off when the message came back:
“Materials and water cannot be less. For food, we want two loaves of bread and one piece of raw meat.”
“Deal.”

Lin Mu couldn’t be bothered to quibble over such trivial gains and losses. He couldn’t eat all this food by himself; it was better to exchange for blueprints as soon as possible.

He closed the dialogue, immediately opened the workbench, and made the bullet blueprint permanent.

“Pistol Bullet: Copper Ingot x10, Charcoal x20, Silver Ingot x1, Universal Material x1 (makes 50 rounds per batch).”

Reasonable—very reasonable. So that’s what universal material was for. But for others, using bullets would be difficult, since universal material was so hard to come by.

Lin Mu stroked his chin. Did this mean… others would be stuck with cold weapons, while he wielded firearms?