Chapter 21

Chapter 21: I Want Them All

Half-asleep, Ling Mo turned on the faucet, tested the temperature, and washed up. While she scrubbed herself clean, she opened her shop. As expected, all ten items had sold, and 200 coins had been credited to her account.

She’d meant to list more, but she was too tired. The moment she lay down after her shower, she fell asleep in a single breath.

Forget it. She could list more tomorrow. The world could wait—sleep came first.

She slept until noon. After washing up, she went into her pocket space to check the marrow-cleansing fruit tree and the medicine fruit tree she’d planted earlier.

If they could survive, she would keep buying saplings from the System Shop. If not, she wouldn’t waste more coins.

When she reached the planting area, she froze.

Two lush trees stood before her, branches heavy with vitality.

Just days ago, those saplings had been sickly—yellow leaves, thin trunks, the kind that looked ready to die at any moment.

Still, alive was alive. That was all that mattered.

She opened the System Shop and started picking fruit trees again. The medicine fruit could restore stamina and also prevent illness, but the second effect required long-term eating.

So she bought another medicine fruit tree, plus a healing fruit tree—one for treating illness, one for healing external injuries.

Then she bought an antidote fruit tree.

She had no idea what later games would throw at her. Better to have an antidote on hand.

That left her final choice, and it was a painful one. She’d fallen for two options: the featherwing fruit tree and the enhancement fruit tree.

One would sprout a pair of wings after you ate it, lasting an hour, and the duration could stack. The other strengthened the body, and paired with marrow-cleansing fruit, the effect doubled.

Who didn’t dream of having wings as a kid? But the enhancement fruit was impossible to give up.

Kids made choices. She wanted them all.

Everyone had just come out of the game. This was when people were flush with cash. Perfect time to sell.

She’d planned to keep selling machines, but thinking of the mountains of offal she had stored, she decided to move that first.

The temperature had stopped rising, but the heat was still over fifty degrees. Livestock were dying in waves unless you were willing to run air conditioning for them.

But air conditioning meant higher raising costs, and meat prices naturally climbed.

Worse, the power grid in many places was already overloaded. Some areas had started losing water and electricity. Without power, fridges didn’t work. Without fridges, meat couldn’t be stored.

And with the heat, many people couldn’t go out to work and lost their income. To save money, they wouldn’t even turn on the AC, let alone keep a fridge running.

Meat now cost several times more than grain. Regular people couldn’t afford it.

That didn’t mean people didn’t want meat. Protein was still important. They just couldn’t justify the price.

So Ling Mo started listing chicken, duck, and goose organs, plus pig, cattle, and sheep offal.

She went for low margins and high volume—cheap enough that anyone could buy it, and anyone could eat it.

If they didn’t have money, that was fine. They could trade other things instead.

As a shop selling alien technology, hers had been watched by countless factions from day one. Some even had people monitoring her store around the clock; the moment she listed something new, they’d be notified so they could snatch it first.

The machines they’d bought from her before were broken, but the technology inside was decades—maybe even a century—ahead of Blue Star.

So the moment new items appeared, they noticed. But when they saw it was only animal organs and offal, disappointment spread.

“Why aren’t you selling machines? We’ve got money ready.”

“Maybe she ran out. Those machines were huge—bringing them back can’t be easy.”

“Compared to Interstellar machines, I’m more curious how Soy Sauce Drunk brought any of this back to Blue Star.”

An old man spoke, voice calm but sharp.

They’d already tested it. A player couldn’t bring items out of the game.

So how did Soy Sauce Drunk do it? That was the part that didn’t add up.

They’d held meetings about it. Many believed her talent was special, allowing her to bring things out.

But talents hadn’t awakened during the first game round. Talent awakening started the day after it ended.

He was more inclined to believe Soy Sauce Drunk had stumbled upon some kind of opportunity inside the game, and that was why she could bring things back.

And the existence of her shop only strengthened that suspicion.

Meanwhile, Ling Mo’s sales exploded beyond expectations. She had to restock nonstop just to keep up.

Meat and vegetables both vanished the moment she listed them. Even offal people would have ignored in the past was now being snapped up.

There were also people offering high prices for game money, hoping to buy it from players, but not everyone sold.

After all, even with cash, you couldn’t buy much now. Better to keep the rewards—or spend them in the System Shop.

After about two hours, Ling Mo finally scraped together fifty coins. She rubbed her wrist, sore from listing item after item, opened the System Shop, found the enhancement fruit tree, and bought it.

After planting it in her pocket space, she opened the store homepage out of curiosity.

The homepage that once had only her lonely shop was now packed.

Most stores were labeled as official channels or major corporations. Among private shops, only hers—“Don’t Miss Out”—sat in the top spot, glaringly obvious.

She checked the time and went to the gym for her daily training.

As she got ready to run on the treadmill, she remembered the difficulty increase. She opened the game forum and scrolled through the posts.

As expected, it was wall-to-wall complaints.

Some people had even dug up the accounts that had said the game was too easy before. Those users were now public enemies, getting cursed out from every direction.

Everyone acted as if blaming them hard enough could force the game to go back to normal.