A 10% strength boost.
What kind of black tech was this?
But come to think of it, was this thing candy or a stimulant?
Chu Guang had no idea what it contained, and there was no production date or ingredient list on the packaging.
"The duration is actually ten hours."
A 10% boost looked pretty good. At a critical moment, even a 10% increase in strength could be enough to turn the tide.
The only problem was eating a lollipop in the middle of a fight...
It did not exactly suit his iron-blooded tough-guy image, Wu Yanzu-style.
And when it would take effect was another unknown.
After giving it some thought, Chu Guang decided to put it away for now.
Having another trump card in hand was never a bad thing.
The next morning.
The players logged in as scheduled.
Though their real-world jobs had exhausted them during the day, once they logged in, their fatigue was swept away. Every one of them was full of energy and vigor.
Old White's cement kiln had completely dried.
He and Gale made a trip to the construction site marked on the map, hauled back dozens of kilograms of limestone on a handcart, then went to the riverbank for several large buckets of clay and sand. Grunting with effort, they began their first test firing of Portland cement.
In fact, the formula for ordinary Portland cement could be found publicly online.
Simply put, limestone was crushed and mixed with clay and iron filings in specific proportions, then heated to 1,450 degrees Celsius in a specially made kiln.
The cement clinker produced this way only needed sand and water added to form cement mortar suitable for construction.
With the help of a few professional websites, they could even look up the precise material ratios for different cements according to construction requirements.
As long as they had done their homework before logging in, it was far easier than being transported to ancient times and having to figure everything out from scratch.
Considering it was his first time making the stuff, Old White chose the simplest recipe. It was not too demanding in terms of materials, and the shelter outpost's current conditions could barely meet its requirements.
Relying on his "inborn divine strength," he swung a hammer and smashed the stones picked up from the construction site as finely as possible. Then he fed them into the newly completed kiln together with clay and iron filings reduced with charcoal.
The charcoal was lit.
Blue smoke rose slowly.
Fang Chang eagerly helped out beside him, twisting the branch tied to a clay disk—an improvised bellows made from water pipes, bark, and cotton thread. It could force a large amount of air into the kiln and make the charcoal inside burn hotter.
"How are we supposed to tell the temperature inside the kiln?"
"No idea."
"No idea???"
"What else? Do you have an industrial thermometer? Stop talking nonsense. Just keep twisting that bellows and pump harder! Sigh... If only we could get a generator somewhere."
"..."
Old White sighed while stroking his chin, leaving Fang Chang rather speechless.
This guy.
Ever since becoming the "construction foreman," he had gotten more and more like an actual contractor.
As he twisted the branch, Fang Chang let his mind wander. He wondered where those two animals, Gale and Ye Shi, had run off to...
In fact, not only did the two of them not know, but neither did Chu Guang, the administrator.
Though he could use the system to confirm whether players were online or offline, as well as their approximate direction and distance, he could not fully track their precise coordinates.
At least, not yet.
Just as Chu Guang was wondering what those two players had gone off to do, he saw them walking toward him carrying buckets.
"Where did you two go?"
Faced with the administrator's question, Gale answered honestly.
"Near the mutant leech nest."
Chu Guang frowned.
"Didn't I tell you not to go there?"
"We didn't go inside. We only set traps near the nest... Look, these are mutant leech larvae."
Before Gale could say anything else, Ye Shi noticed the administrator's displeased expression. Afraid he would lose favor if he was too slow, he hurriedly placed the plastic bucket in his hand on the ground and began explaining.
Chu Guang glanced into the bucket and found several glass jars inside, each containing palm-sized larvae.
Their bodies twisted as they extended and contracted their malformed mouthparts, writhing together with their companions. They looked exactly like the tentacles in certain comics.
"Interesting... How did you manage that?"
Back when he was on Bette Street, he had never heard of anyone catching these things.
Mutant insects were rich in protein, but correspondingly carried a high parasite load. Those parasites could not be killed just by tossing the creatures into a pot and boiling them for a while.
On top of that, these things lived in unusual environments, rarely acted alone, and had hard-to-assess combat capabilities. Very few survivors had any interest in them.
"Blood! We used animal blood to lure them into glass jars with bait inside! The large leeches couldn't squeeze in, while the small ones got in and couldn't get back out!"
Ye Shi spoke excitedly, while Gale added a few words beside him.
"These mutant leeches seem to forage at night and return to their nests once daytime comes. Aside from a few crushed jars, these little guys were all still inside. I had only meant to give it a try, but it worked surprisingly well."
Chu Guang stroked his chin and nodded.
"I see... That really is a good idea."
No wonder Gale had asked him for some hunted meat yesterday. So he had planned to use it as bait to catch mutant leech larvae?
But then...
"...What exactly are you planning to do with these things?"
Chu Guang looked at Gale and continued asking.
"I don't know about regular leeches, but mutant leeches definitely aren't edible."
"I wasn't planning to figure out how to eat them. I'm going to use them for fishing."
"Fishing?"
"Mm." Gale nodded, a trace of excitement on his face. "When I was exploring the lakeshore before, I saw some large black birds catching fish from the lake! Since there are fish in the lake, we can get food by catching them!"
What a brilliant idea!
Chu Guang's eyes immediately lit up after hearing Gale's words.
It was not as though he had never tried fishing before. After all, fishing was much less risky than hunting.
The problem was that his fishing skills were truly indescribable. Even with professional fishing gear and bait, he had rarely managed to catch anything, much less without such things.
In truth, it was not entirely his fault. If fish were so easy to catch, why would survivors not settle by the lake?
The fish in Diamond Lake were mutants too—what survivors called aberrations.
After several unsuccessful attempts, during which he even lost the fishing gear he had painstakingly made, Chu Guang gave up.
"Do you know how to fish?"
Faced with the administrator's question, Gale paused before answering.
"No... But I looked it up online. There are fish traps, and I plan to try making a few."
Though he was not sure whether NPCs could understand what "looked it up online" meant, the NPCs had shown no reaction when they mentioned real-world matters several times before. It was probably programmed to automatically ignore such content, so Gale simply said it directly.
Chu Guang was overjoyed, but he merely nodded calmly.
"Fine. Since you know how to catch fish, I'll leave this to you!"
After receiving their orders, Gale and Ye Shi immediately ran off to make traps.
Catching fish was far more interesting than hauling bricks or chopping trees!
Chu Guang watched them gather some branches and plastic rope they had picked up from who knew where, then squat near the corner of the wall and start tinkering.
Ignoring them, Chu Guang now needed to figure out how to smoke meat with the tobacco leaves he had bought.
Yesterday, following the method used by the survivors on Bette Street, he had crushed the tobacco leaves and wrapped them around the meat. Then he slowly roasted it over firewood, allowing the tar rich in ketol compounds from the leaves to seep into the meat's fatty layer and kill parasites and microorganisms...
But perhaps it was just his imagination—why did it smell a little rotten?
"That shouldn't be right..."
He picked up a piece of hind leg meat and brought it close to smell it, frowning.
Under normal circumstances, meat smoked this way should carry the scent of nicotine, with a caramel-yellow greasy sheen across its surface.
Yet the piece of hind leg meat in his hand was clearly a dark red. It was cooked on the outside but raw within, and faintly carried the stench of decay.
"Could I have gotten the method wrong?"
Before you continue