Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Liang Chen Farm

A flock of gray birds suddenly swept down from the sky.

One landed in front of Ling Mo. Only then did she notice the transparent card clamped in its beak.

She took the card—and froze.

“Your task is to clean up cow dung on the grassland. Good luck!

“My dear employee ^0^~”

Not far away, a fresh pile sat in the grass.

A pile that was… absurdly large.

Was this even cow dung? It was nearly up to her calves.

Before she could complain, the card in her hand dissolved into a streak of gold and became a small cart and a shovel.

Ling Mo stared at the tools, took a deep breath, and walked toward the pile.

In the real world, she was already a seasoned scooper. Cat and dog poop, cow poop—it was all just poop. Probably.

At least the smell didn’t murder her. These cows ate natural pasture grass, so the dung was mostly fiber and oddly mild.

Still, the cart was tiny. The shovel looked like a child’s toy. Was the game messing with her?

Then she discovered the catch.

The shovel might have been small, but it cut through the dung effortlessly. With the lightest push, she could lift an entire mass cleanly, as if the weight didn’t exist.

And when she dumped it into the cart, the light on the cart’s handle blinked—and the dung vanished.

Ling Mo’s eyes widened.

Teleportation. Pocket-space-grade teleportation.

She remembered the system’s wording. It had mentioned Interstellar, and this place was called Liang Chen Star.

So this wasn’t some virtual arena.

They were in the interstellar era.

A chill ran up Ling Mo’s spine.

The system’s name surfaced in her mind: Game Assistance System. Was it really here to help them?

If it was, then maybe—just maybe—humanity wasn’t completely helpless in the face of catastrophe.

She glanced down at her bare feet, then pulled a sturdy pair of sneakers from her pocket space and slipped them on.

Pajamas and running shoes looked ridiculous, but nobody could see anyone’s face anyway.

She went back to work, moving faster. She didn’t want to lose eligibility.

Even with magical tools, bending nonstop was brutal. Before long, her lower back started to ache.

No. She needed a distraction.

That was a trick she’d learned in her last life while grinding through endless part-time jobs: if she focused her mind elsewhere, the exhaustion dulled, and the work finished sooner.

The best distraction was calling someone.

Unfortunately, she was single. And even if she weren’t, there was no way she could make a phone call here.

She looked around instead. If this was the interstellar era, maybe she could snag a few benefits.

A ranch this big had to have a dump or waste plant, right?

People looked down on trash, but trash had value. Even in normal life, collecting scrap could earn money.

And here, in the interstellar era, “trash” might be priceless: near-expired nutrient solutions, gene modification serums, even discarded mechs. Worst case, dried cow dung was fuel.

She’d even heard dung from grass-fed cows, once dried, made grilling taste better.

The thought made her grin.

“Heh.”

A few players who’d started walking over, probably intending to chat and form alliances, heard the laugh and abruptly backed off.

A woman happily collecting dung—laughing like that—was not someone they wanted to get close to.

Ling Mo didn’t notice. Lost in her own brilliant future scavenging plans, she kept working, hands moving faster and faster.

All day, she pushed her cart across the grassland in search of dung.

To the other players, it looked like a faceless girl in pajamas wandering the prairie with a cart, occasionally letting out an eerie little giggle as she cleaned up piles with unsettling enthusiasm.

By dusk, a gray bird flew down again and snapped her out of her reverie.

The card it delivered was written in a script she’d never seen, yet she understood it perfectly.

“Congratulations on completing the first task excellently. You are the best employee I have ever seen. Tomorrow’s task is hand-milking dairy cows. For now, deliver the dung in your cart to the waste processing plant, then rest.

—The most invincible, handsome ranch owner.”

Ling Mo blinked, then smiled despite herself.

The ranch owner had a strange sense of humor.

The words “waste processing plant” made her pulse quicken. Over the course of the day, she’d already plotted a dozen ways to “help” with waste disposal.

In other words, she was absolutely going to loot it.

But where was it?

The grassland stretched empty in every direction. No buildings. No fences. Not even a single animal.

Then the card flashed, and a golden arrow appeared, pointing toward the horizon.

She turned the card. The arrow didn’t budge.

“That way, then.”

After about fifteen minutes, a grimy industrial building rose out of the distance.

Right beside it were piles of dried cow-dung patties stacked like small hills, waiting for processing. In winter, those were premium fuel—and here they were being treated like garbage.

What a waste.