Green Leeks

[Trading Market].

As soon as Colin opened the Parchment, he saw this newly added feature.

Clicking on it, he saw it was already filled with all sorts of materials.

Especially in the food category, Colin frowned as he looked: [Rotten Aberration Flesh], [Bones], [Rotten Eyeballs], [Fat Maggots], [Aged Corpse Leg].

"What the hell, it's all underworld garbage. How could anyone even sell this stuff?"

Colin's mouth twitched, feeling a bit disappointed; after all, he had money in his pocket.

Although he also saw some people who seemed lucky enough to have hunted beasts and obtained fresh food, upon clicking on them, it felt like these people had no intention of actually selling them.

[Fresh Wild Roe Deer Meat.]

[Item Description: One jin of rib meat cut from a roe deer, very fresh, more nutritious than bread.]

[Type: Consumable.]

[Remaining Time: 1 day]

[Price: Hardened Black Bread * 10, Filthy Dim Blood 500ml]

[Seller Note: If you have Mist Points, Level 3 Water, or other rare items, we can discuss the price privately.]

There were many items with similar labels, showing absolutely no intention of being sold; unless someone was a fool, they wouldn't choose to buy them.

Because at this stage, people's needs leaned more toward being full rather than eating well; not eating meat wouldn't kill you.

Ten pieces of black bread, if eaten sparingly, could last many days, but no matter how sparingly you ate one jin of Deer Meat, it wouldn't last long.

What's more, it also required 500ml of Filthy Dim Blood; by estimation, one would have to kill a hundred ordinary Aberrations to have a chance of collecting that much.

And those hundred couldn't just be weaklings like the Wailer.

"Wait."

As Colin kept looking, he suddenly discovered the trick.

Once an item was placed on the Trading Market, the [Remaining Time] in the item status seemed to stop moving.

In other words.

Colin rubbed his chin.

The listing and selling function of the Trading Market was being used by these people as a refrigerator.

Time frozen, no rotting, no spoiling, no change in taste—could you find a better refrigerator than this?

You couldn't!

"No wonder they're all listing their items."

Colin was caught between laughter and tears, then he suddenly thought of something and hurriedly opened his backpack, seeing that several meat chunks that were mildly rotten yesterday had become moderately rotten, and the moderately rotten ones had become heavily rotten!

In an instant, Colin's face turned green.

Mildly rotten meat didn't have much of a smell; the taste might have changed a bit, but it was perfectly fine to eat.

Colin had eaten some yesterday.

Moderately rotten meat had a more obvious odor, but it could still be eaten, though it might cause some stomach discomfort.

But heavily rotten meat was different; the stench was obvious and it was hard to swallow, which was why Colin hadn't picked up any of the heavily rotten meat chunks at his doorstep.

Immediately, Colin followed suit and listed the chunks he had on him.

Seeing that the remaining time had indeed stalled after listing them, Colin breathed a sigh of relief.

"I really have to say, these people are geniuses."

Colin chuckled and browsed the Trading Market again to see what strange and exotic things these guys had dropped.

As he looked, he suddenly realized that the item with the highest demand seemed to be water.

Yesterday, the problem of water shortage wasn't that obvious; many people had completed their daily tasks thanks to Colin's leaked secrets, obtaining bread to survive.

But very few people had found water.

Consequently, this problem erupted today.

A drop of water is worth a drop of gold—that is no exaggeration.

After all, not everyone was like Colin, able to see prompts directly from the mist and find water in one go.

The vast majority of people didn't even dare to stray too far from their houses, because getting lost in the mist meant certain death.

So, after a night of brewing, water had become the top priority for everyone.

If they couldn't get water, they would likely die of thirst.

"The number one trending topic on the World Channel is 'How to produce water'. Huh? How is there a trending topic feature?"

Colin was surprised.

He suddenly noticed that the World Channel seemed to have updated as well, adding posts and a search function, becoming a bit like Weibo.

And replying to posts no longer required consuming a megaphone.

At this moment, the top three trending topics were: first, "How to produce Level 3 Water."

Second, "How not to get lost in the fog."

Third, "Detailed tutorial on killing Aberrations."

Fourth, "One survival tip a day."

There were ten such topics listed, all related to survival; boxing, entertainment, and gossip were nowhere to be found.

"Holy crap, is this even the same trash heap I knew?"

Colin muttered to himself, and when he looked further down, his expression turned strange.

Because he discovered that his own name was actually seventh on the trending list. The posts inside seemed to be either thanking him or cursing him.

Uh.

The trash turned out to be me.

Colin opened the first topic with a wry smile, discovering that these people had indeed come up with quite a few useful methods.

For example, by heating monster limbs or other moisture-containing items, they could evaporate the liquid within to collect "foul-smelling water."

Through further distillation, they could obtain "Level 3 Water."

The water collected this way had a somewhat rotten taste, but at this point, no one cared about that anymore.

They would even drink urine if they had to, let alone this.

This also explained why the rotting flesh and similar items Colin had just seen were "hot commodities"; they were priced very cheaply, often exchangeable for just some wood or stones.

"What a loss."

Colin thought back to the flesh he hadn't bothered to pick up yesterday and felt like he had lost a fortune.

However, on the whole, survivors were lacking water, and a single portion of Level 3 Water posted for sale would often fetch an "exorbitant price."

Even then, demand still exceeded supply.

"One servant for a liter of water, trade fast, I only have one servant left!"

"+1, trading servants for water, these useless servants only slow down my axe-swinging speed!"

"Let me tell everyone a big secret: you can combine black bread and water to make oatmeal! It's much easier to digest than black bread; I couldn't poop today after eating that trash bread yesterday."

"Holy crap, is that for real? I crown you the second Colin."

"Where are the water sellers? Didn't someone just have muddy water for sale? It was gone in the blink of an eye. How can you guys bring yourselves to fight over such nasty muddy water? Are you even human?!"

At this moment, looking at these explanatory posts, a question suddenly popped into Colin's mind.

Wasn't their behavior the same in nature as him sharing the method for lighting the lamp?

Why weren't these people being sanctioned?

No way, with so many people across the server doing things that get sanctioned, was I the only one who got hit?

Colin felt his face darkening, but at this moment, a notification appeared in his mind.

[You ponder carefully and realize that only matters involving the system itself, and those that cause a significant impact, will be sanctioned, such as the Hurricane Lamp.]

[Although you believe your own intentions were not noble, and even feel a hint of guilt for it, however]

[You have saved many people.]

"Guilt. Significant impact, saved many people. There are still over six hundred people in the Regional Channel; yesterday alone, nearly four hundred people died in my region."

Can this really be considered saving many people?

Colin suddenly felt a chill; just how many people did this game intend to kill yesterday?

"Forget it, this isn't something I should be worrying about; the current priority is to survive."

Colin looked at those guys clamoring for water and rubbed his chin, "It's not that I want to harvest leeks; it's that you guys are delivering yourselves to me."