Chapter 2

Feng Jun's phone really had been a freebie with a prepaid top-up. Not only were its specs abysmally low and its performance sluggish, but... it also took forever to charge.

Lacking fast-charging technology, it took four hours to barely fill the battery, after which it could last a day and a half to two days.

If he kept clutching it and swiping away, it would not even last a full day.

What puzzled Feng Jun was how this phone could fully charge in around two hours.

He was so curious that he even forgot the distress of being about to lose his job.

Feng Jun was someone who enjoyed reading webnovels. It was actually a somewhat helpless choice. He also liked diversions such as going to bars, but those hobbies burned through money too quickly. Reading was cheaper; even if he read legitimate editions, a day's expense would not equal the cost of a pack of cigarettes.

Could I have encountered one of those legendary fortuitous opportunities?

Feng Jun truly could not stop himself from thinking that. After all, he seemed to have been struck by lightning... yet he was somehow completely unharmed?

He tried calling his colleague Wang Haifeng. The results proved that the call quality was excellent, and he could even tell that the other man was in a poor mood.

Wang Haifeng was one of the people Feng Jun was closest to at Hongjie Club. Though the guy was also only in his twenties, he held a coach's certification and possessed formidable professional expertise in fitness. They were close in age but worlds apart in status, yet they had a good personal friendship.

Feng Jun complained about what had happened that day and said he did not want to keep working there.

Coach Wang distractedly replied, "Oh, Liu Shuming bullied you? I'll deal with him later."

Liu Shuming was only an ordinary body-sculpting coach, and he was already in his thirties. Though his muscles were rather exaggerated, if it came down to a fight, he was no match for Wang Haifeng at all.

After hanging up, Feng Jun muttered softly, "Something's on that guy's mind."

Fine, other people's business had little to do with him. What he needed to consider now was whether he should still go to work tomorrow.

Although Hongjie Club was in the service industry, it was fairly proper. Since service staff had high turnover, the company calculated wages by the day. If Feng Jun resigned tomorrow, he would still have to be paid for these twenty-odd days of work.

But... Sister Ren in Finance had far too many faults to pick. He would inevitably have to listen to her nag for a long time.

More importantly, if he resigned, he would have to find a place to live by tomorrow night. That would cost money.

"Ugh, there are barely any good people in Hongjie," Feng Jun muttered as he scanned his phone. The battery was charging fast—hopefully it would not drain just as fast?

As he looked, he spotted Liaoliao on his phone and suddenly remembered: he had not harvested the crops in Liaoliao Farm yet.

Feng Jun had not installed Liaoliao Farm because he wanted to. He had installed the thing to curry favor with the higher-ups—strictly speaking, to curry favor with Hongjie Company's boss. Sister Hong liked stealing vegetables.

In the workplace, one did not need to be as cautious as in official circles, but when the boss had a hobby, lowly employees beneath them had better play along. Wang Haifeng had reminded him of that.

Sure enough, two days after he installed Liaoliao Farm, Sister Hong came to inspect the place. When she noticed the farm interface he had "accidentally" exposed, she asked for his Liaoliao account. As a junior staffer with a double degree, he now had a direct path to the ears of the highest authority.

But being close to the boss was not entirely a good thing. More than a month after Sister Hong added him, she casually remarked one day, "Your level has gone up. You can't stop planting pasture grass, either."

Feng Jun immediately woke up as if from a dream: the boss had a ranch too!

Feng Jun actually had a ranch as well, but the grass he planted himself was generally enough. Only when he was nearly out of grass would he think to plant another couple of rounds. How could he have imagined that the boss's ranch needed pasture grass too?

Sister Hong never planted pasture grass. Her level was high, so she planted crops with high added value.

What did she do if she did not plant pasture grass? She could only steal it. There were so many employees at Hongjie Club, after all; she had no shortage of targets to pilfer from.

Feng Jun could barely be considered one favored by heaven. Having received the boss's hint, planting pasture grass became routine for him. He also reminded himself not to harvest it as soon as it ripened. He had to wait until the boss had finished stealing before harvesting it himself—though he greatly disliked the feeling of being robbed.

However, Sister Hong did not harvest exactly on schedule either. As Hongjie's boss, she had countless matters to handle every day. Farm owners often waited half a day without seeing the thief arrive. In the end, he could only wait until the pasture grass had been stolen as much as it possibly could be before harvesting it.

That should count as doing right by the boss, shouldn't it?

Now, Feng Jun intended to do wrong by the boss. "I'm resigning anyway. I remember I planted nothing but pasture grass this time..."

Then he opened Liaoliao Farm. Looking at the ripe pasture grass in the fields, he controlled the giant hand on the screen and gave it a light tap.

Holy grass... it really was holy grass!

The next instant, his vision went black, and he found himself in a strange space. Everything around him looked like Liaoliao Farm. Before him were ten plots of land, all planted with pasture grass, while other plots beside them lay fallow.

There was even a doghouse some distance away. A bowl sat in front of it, empty—dog food had to be bought with money.

Besides, if he bought dog food, could the boss still happily steal vegetables?

Feng Jun stood frozen for a full ten minutes. Only after viciously slapping himself across the face and discovering that it hurt did he leap into the air. "Holy grass... this damn it, this damn it, this damn it..."

He was so excited that he could not form a coherent sentence. A fortuitous encounter—this was absolutely one of those legendary fortuitous encounters!

The facts proved that it truly was one. He actually had the privilege of harvesting pasture grass himself. He did not need a sickle or anything; he only had to reach out and yank, and he would pull up a handful. Truly, "holy grass."

But... harvesting grass was exhausting. Strictly speaking, manually collecting pasture grass from the fields was genuinely hard work.

It took Feng Jun nearly half an hour to pull up all the grass from one plot. This plot alone was a full half mu in size—why had they made the fields so huge? Had they eaten their fill and nothing better to do?

Then he stood up. "So... how do I get out? System, are you there?"

He hoped the system's avatar would be a celestial maiden in flowing white robes. If that was not possible, a robot would do. Just not a loli. Lolis and all that were the most annoying. He did not even know who he was supposed to act cute for.

Unfortunately, there was nothing at all. Forget the loli he hated most; there was not even a system notification sound.

Feng Jun looked at the ripe pasture grass in the remaining nine plots and muttered softly, "Maybe... I have to harvest all of it before I can leave?"

Six hours later, Feng Jun sat on the ridge between the fields, gasping as he looked at the ten empty plots before him. He desperately wanted to collapse right where he was and sleep soundly. "This damn work really isn't fit for humans. System... system, why aren't you coming out yet?"

There was still no response whatsoever.

"Fine, a loli will do," Feng Jun decided to surrender. "Loli... loli, why aren't you coming out?"

There was still no response whatsoever.

Feng Jun began to panic. Could he get in but not get out? His life might have had a few minor disappointments, but... he really was not psychologically prepared to become a farmer, much less a farmer inside a game.

Thinking of that miserable possibility, his heart could not help trembling. Could I get in but never get out, and my entire body turn into a stream of data made up of "0" and "1"?

After many attempts, Feng Jun finally returned to reality half an hour later.

First, he looked around at his surroundings. Then he reached out and pinched his thigh—there was no helping it. He had slapped himself too hard earlier, and his ears were still ringing a little. He felt that pinching himself was more appropriate.

The pain from his thigh told him that he had indeed returned to reality.

Then he let out a long breath of relief. "Damn it, I was saying that if I really had no choice, I'd have to go explore outside the farm."

The facts proved that there was no heaven-defying existence like a system in that strange farm space. The reason he could not get out earlier was because one tiny blade of pasture grass had remained in a field.

Just because he had not harvested every last bit of grass, he had nearly starved to death inside a game. What a painful realization that was.

"Looks like this farm strictly follows its programmed settings," Feng Jun told himself, an expression caught between tears and laughter on his face.

Next, as the beneficiary of this fortuitous encounter, he naturally had to first analyze where it had come from.

But in the next instant, Feng Jun's stomach let out a rumbling growl—he had gone seven or eight hours without food, and he had even been doing physical labor during that time.

Yet when his gaze swept over the time in the top-right corner of his phone, he was stunned again. "Damn it, it's still eight at night?"

After checking the date, Feng Jun could confirm that he was still living on the same day—the day he had drunk too much and then been struck by lightning.

In other words, although he had spent seven hours inside the farm, time outside had actually stood still!

"What an awesome thing," he could not help exclaiming. Then his imagination began to run wild. With such a heaven-defying treasure—or perhaps such a fortuitous opportunity—when he climbed to the pinnacle of life, what kind of flamboyant stride should he use?

Just as he reached the door to his room, a chubby young man hurried in from outside. Seeing Feng Jun's utterly exhausted appearance, he froze. "Holy grass, what the hell did you go do?"

This was Feng Jun's roommate, Zhao Qi, also a junior employee at Hongjie. He was usually responsible for valet parking and often received tips. His income was a little higher than that of a junior staffer with a double degree, and he spent money with a free hand as well.

Feng Jun disliked this person greatly. It was not because he envied the other man's higher income, but because Zhao Qi had been suspected both times Feng Jun lost money.

So, faced with the other man's question, he merely replied weakly, "I went and farmed half a field."

"Holy grass," Zhao Qi said unhappily. Yang City was a major city—where in the urban district could there possibly be land for him to farm? "I was just showing some concern for you. Will you die if you don't snap at people?"

Feng Jun looked at him for quite a while before giving a slight nod and speaking with complete sincerity. "I'm not lying to you. I really did go harvest grass..."