Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Happy Farm (End)

The Tak Fish farm was enormous. As the only farm that could rival Liang Chen Ranch, it produced a staggering amount of trash every day—there was no way a handful of processing plants could handle it.

But several of the waste plants had broken down, and the garbage had piled into mountains. The machines that sent the trash out were dead, yet the interior temperature stayed low. It wasn’t rotten enough to truly stink, but the smell still wasn’t pleasant.

Ling Mo didn’t mind. She ate what she could, and fed the rest to the fish.

She might have had a full day, but time was actually tight. She had no idea whether the next game would ever be this generous again, so she grabbed whatever she could while she could.

In the end, she worked nonstop from night until the next afternoon.

After she emptied yet another waste plant, the robot’s expression went beyond shock. Pity welled up in it, thick and endless.

Such a small girl, yet she could work like a machine. And still she couldn’t afford school. She could barely speak clearly. Her family must have dragged her down terribly… Lucky for it, it was a robot. If it messed up, it got repaired. Humans just broke.

Ling Mo stepped out of the plant and waited for the robot to take her to the next dump. There were about two hours left before the game ended. If she moved fast, she could probably do one more run.

However…

“That was the last one.”

Ling Mo’s eyes widened, disappointment spilling into her gaze.

“This is your payment.”

The robot’s chest opened with a soft mechanical hiss. Inside was a storage pocket space, and within it lay a palm-sized waist pouch.

Ling Mo took it and weighed it in her hand. It was light.

She couldn’t help feeling a little let down. The pouch looked like it couldn’t even fit a phone.

But then she remembered this was Interstellar. You couldn’t judge things here with common sense.

She opened it, and her eyes lit up instantly.

The pouch held all kinds of vials: the advanced recovery serum she’d drunk before that restored stamina and mental power, as well as D-rank and C-rank mental soothing solution.

Those were only a small portion. Most of it was a pale green liquid. Ling Mo recognized the label: nutrient solution. It wasn’t something sold in the System Shop.

And there was a lot of it.

The robot watched her stare at the nutrient solution, and a flicker of guilt flashed in its eyes.

Those bottles were leftovers. The farm owner had bought them, couldn’t finish them, and let them pile in the warehouse. Recently, the owner bought a new batch and told the robot to dispose of the old one. The robot had forgotten completely—until it went to fetch Ling Mo’s reward and remembered at the last second.

To keep its mistake from being discovered, it decided to go all the way. It tossed the old batch in as her “payment,” too. It was going to be thrown out anyway.

It had even added a pocket space token.

Compared to getting fired for a work blunder, one pocket space token was nothing. It just hoped this employee wouldn’t notice.

Did Ling Mo notice?

Of course she did.

This robot was clearly new to doing bad things. Its whole face screamed, I’m guilty.

But Ling Mo didn’t expose it. Besides the nutrient solution, advanced recovery serum, and mental soothing solution, her biggest gain was the waist pouch itself.

She’d just scanned it with mental power. It held 20 cubic meters.

And even stuffed full, it showed no bulge from the outside and weighed nothing.

With this, her pocket space had another layer of cover.

“Thank you.”

She transferred the contents into her pocket space, then strapped the pouch around her waist and tugged her shirt down to hide it completely.

The robot told her that since the work was done, she was free to do whatever she wanted with the remaining time.

Even though there was no more trash to collect, Ling Mo had no intention of wasting a second.

Thinking of something she’d glimpsed while hauling garbage, she sprinted toward a corner.

In a damp spot, she found the rotten log that had caught her eye.

It was about as long as she was tall, and so thick it was wider than two of her put together.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was the black wood ear mushrooms growing all over it—each one bigger than her face, with thick, meaty caps.

To be safe, Ling Mo pulled out the learning machine and scanned them. Once she confirmed they were ordinary wood ear mushrooms for Interstellar, she finally relaxed and started picking.

Not long after, she smacked her forehead. “I’m so stupid.”

Why was she picking them one by one? She could just take the whole log. It would be faster, and once the game ended, she’d have all the time in the world to harvest at her leisure.

And if she kept the rotten wood, maybe it would keep producing mushrooms.

With a thought, she pulled the log into her pocket space and set it in a shady corner.

There were plenty more rotten logs nearby.

Whenever she found mushrooms she didn’t recognize, she scanned them no matter how they looked. If they were edible, she kept them. If they weren’t… she kept them anyway.

Maybe one day they’d be useful.

When the game-over announcement rang out, Ling Mo grabbed the two closest rotten logs in the last possible second—then the world snapped away as she was teleported out.

[Congratulations, player. You have cleared the second game round.

Friendly reminder: the first three stages are the Newbie Protection Period in Easy Mode. After that, the game will become more and more difficult.]

The first time, she’d been sent into the System pocket space before returning to Blue Star. This time, she was teleported straight back to Blue Star.

She opened her eyes and immediately heard the news about the difficulty increase. Ling Mo clicked her tongue.

Especially when she saw the reason, she wanted to grab those people by the ears and shout into a megaphone: You complained it was too easy—happy now?

The internet was probably in an uproar. Ling Mo couldn’t be bothered to watch people spit venom at each other. She checked the time—only five minutes had passed since she entered the game.

But she’d barely rested in there. Even with advanced recovery serum and mental soothing solution, she was dead on her feet. All she wanted was to sleep.

Still, she needed a shower first. Three days without bathing left her sticky with sweat, and she’d picked up a faint smell of blood and rot.

The stench was… unforgettable.