The lingering light of the setting sun filtered through tiny gaps in the forest, draping everything in a thin veil of red. Even the sharply edged clouds overhead seemed tinged with a warm orange glow.
Fang Mo, who had just woken up, was a little dazed. The three ultimate questions of philosophy slowly surfaced in his mind.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What am I supposed to do?
His memories were still frozen on the moment before his death.
If he remembered correctly, Fang Mo had been in the middle of giving his last words to his sister. Yet after only a moment of distraction, he had inexplicably appeared here.
Clearly, this was no longer Earth.
As far as the eye could see, everything in this world was made of blocks.
"Wait... did I seriously transmigrate?"
Looking at the blocky world before him, Fang Mo was deeply shocked. As a veteran Minecraft player, he naturally recognized this as Minecraft's Overworld at a glance. Although he had once made wishes like, "No regrets entering MC in this life; in the next, may I become a Block Person," he had never imagined that wish would actually come true.
"Going by the game's usual progression, shouldn't the first thing I do be punching trees?"
Since it was a game he knew well, Fang Mo quickly got into the swing of things and fixed his gaze on a square-shaped tree not far away.
But just as Fang Mo was about to start, he suddenly realized a very serious problem.
"Wait..."
Fang Mo hesitantly looked at his palm. "Don't tell me I really have to dig the tree apart with my bare hands? Can I even do that?"
Yet what Fang Mo had not expected was that the instant this thought arose, a sharp pain suddenly exploded in his brain. In his daze, he even seemed to hear his soul being torn in half. Then a flash of white light appeared, and a sharply angular Block Person abruptly materialized before him.
"...!?"
Fang Mo jumped at the sudden appearance, but a strange sense of familiarity soon welled up from deep within him.
It was as if some dormant instinct had awakened. A trace of understanding rose in Fang Mo's heart, and then another field of vision appeared in his mind: Steve's first-person perspective, familiar to every MC player. It showed not only health, hunger, and an inventory, but even the MiniMap Mod's map in full detail.
Through Steve's first-person view, Fang Mo could even see his own body standing some distance away.
"Uh..."
Fang Mo stared blankly at the Block Person before him, an utterly absurd thought surfacing in his mind. "Did I... awaken a Steve as my Stand-in Steve?"
The concept of a Stand-in originated from an anime. It referred to the physical manifestation of a person's subconscious.
Fang Mo suspected that he liked Minecraft so much that he had awakened a Steve as his Stand-in. And as though it were instinctive, he could control his Stand-in as easily as an extension of his limbs—more smoothly even than when he controlled Steve in the game.
Ah... ahahaha, the Golden Finger is here!
Looking at Stand-in Steve before him, Fang Mo felt an unprecedented sense of exhilaration.
It was like being able to stay home and cook hot pot instead of going to work on a bitterly cold winter day with heavy snow drifting outside. Even his soul trembled with a joy that felt like transcendence.
Steve's appearance dispelled Fang Mo's last lingering worries, and he soon began moving again.
First, he needed to punch trees.
Fang Mo controlled Steve to walk beneath a tree. With a swing of his right hand, the tree soon turned into several log blocks, which Steve absorbed into his body.
Then, with a thought, Fang Mo opened Steve's backpack. As he turned the wood into Planks and crafted a Crafting Table, he examined Steve's equipment slots and immediately noticed an obvious off-hand slot.
In the game, this slot was used to equip Steve with a shield.
Seeing that, Fang Mo had a rough idea of what was going on.
Veteran players all knew that Minecraft had many different versions, such as Bedrock Edition and JAVA Edition. Older versions were generally plain and simple; combat mostly depended on how fast your hands were. Slightly newer versions added plenty of equipment and features, like shields and Sweeping Blade.
If this world also had versions, Fang Mo guessed that this had to be at least version 1.12 or later.
But Fang Mo soon realized he had guessed wrong.
After crafting a wooden pickaxe and digging deep enough to make a full set of stone tools out of Cobblestone, Fang Mo happened to encounter a Zombie trying to sneak up on him.
Although he had killed countless Zombies in the game, this was not a purely game-like world after all. Fang Mo was inevitably nervous during his first battle, so he controlled Steve to swing his sword wildly. The attack speed was downright absurd—the Zombie was chopped apart before it even hit the ground. With a scream, it turned directly into a piece of Rotten Flesh.
"Good lord... even Yasuo doesn't swing his sword as fast as you..."
Fang Mo could not help muttering, while also overturning his earlier assumption.
Steve's reliance on attack speed seemed to come from version 1.7. Based on that, Fang Mo guessed that this world might not have a clearly defined version... or perhaps it had fused the traits of many different versions.
With that in mind, Fang Mo began exploring the surroundings.
This was a remarkably pure MC world, almost no different from the game.
Not only was the sun in the sky square and the clouds square, but even the surrounding trees and dirt were all neat one-meter-by-one-meter cubes. The entire world resembled a vast, boundless sandbox, like a toy in a god's hand.
Fang Mo was currently in a forest.
This spawn point was not bad. At the very least, he would not have to worry about running out of wood.
Since it was getting late, Fang Mo did not go far. Instead, he cleared out some of the nearby trees. He planned to build a small house first, preparing for the approaching night. Once the leaves decayed, he might even get a few Apples for dinner.
However, Fang Mo was somewhat surprised when Steve accidentally discovered several piles of strange-looking plants beneath the trees while chopping them down. Once he broke them, a huge pile of bizarre fruits and vegetables burst out—Cucumbers, Broccoli, Kale, Raspberries, Waxberries, Grapes, and more—instantly filling nearly half of Steve's backpack.
"Hm?"
Fang Mo froze when he saw them. "Is this... Pam's HarvestCraft?"
At that thought, Fang Mo's expression suddenly turned strange.
He had not thought much of it when he found the MiniMap Mod earlier, but now Pam's HarvestCraft had appeared too. Seeing this, Fang Mo could not help recalling the strange voice that had echoed in his mind while he was giving his last words.
"Don't tell me... it turned my last words into a Modpack?"
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