A Forum Brimming with Talent

[Shelter upgraded successfully]

Bai Yi looked at the refreshed wooden hut. The rotten thatch walls had become crooked plank walls, the gaps that once let in drafts had been filled with withered yellow grass stalks, and the area had expanded to 50 square meters.

Though it was still shabby, at least it was no longer so drafty. Bai Yi was quite satisfied.

Bai Yi opened the log and turned to the shelter information.

[Broken Wooden Hut]

[Level: 2]

[Durability: 100/100]

[Capacity: 76/150]

[Traits: None]

[Upgrade: 0/200 Wood, 0/50 Stone]

[Description: A ramshackle house made of thatch and planks. Its only advantage is that it is slightly sturdier.]

New additions:

[Window]

[Wishing Well

Function: Toss in an item to receive a random exchanged item. (Each type of item may be exchanged up to five times.)

Description: A gambler's favorite and a poor man's gospel.]

The newly added window was embedded in the eastern wall like a cloudy eye. Through the blurry glass, he could see a stone well that had appeared out of thin air three meters away.

Bai Yi examined the Wishing Well through the window. He wanted to go outside and take a look, but the warning about the dangers of nighttime reminded him of that "Unseeable" presence that had been right in his face.

Bai Yi shuddered and abandoned the idea. He lay down on his battered little wooden bed and decided to browse the forum.

At that moment, the chat channel page of the log flashed with a red 99+ notification. When Bai Yi opened it, messages in the world channel were refreshing at a rate of a thousand per second:

"Help! Something outside is scratching at my door!"

"I just traded a rotten apple for a legendary item!"

"Fuck, you stupid Wishing Well! Give me back my fine-quality axe!"

"Huh? I won!"

"Asshole, what did you win?"

The chat channel was brimming with merriment.

Switching to the forum section, the once-empty forum was now packed full. Countless posts had appeared, and the number was still increasing by ten per minute.

Among them, many gilded pinned posts stood out in particular. They were all featured posts with over a hundred thousand likes.

At the very top was a post about time.

Mist World Day-Night Duration Theorem

Author: Unaware (players could choose a name for themselves)

Likes: 1.37 billion

On the first day after arriving, I did not engage in any strenuous exercise and only carried out basic eating and metabolism. By keeping my heart rate steady, I calculated that in the Mist World, daytime and nighttime alternated between 10.02 hours and 13.98 hours.

In other words, the relatively safe activity period is from 8:00 to 18:00. From this, we can roughly infer when night will fall based on the morning and afternoon displayed in the log, preventing players from failing to return to their shelters before nightfall due to exploration or resource gathering.

My proof process is as follows...

Because time was limited, I only conducted the experiment for one day, so the conclusion is for reference only. I will carry out multiple follow-up tests later to ensure the margin of error is reduced.

Here, I will share my training method. Others can learn it and verify the deduction for themselves. First, the human heart...

Finally, I sincerely hope everyone can survive. Farewell!

The post ended, and Bai Yi continued scrolling. The comments below were all saying:

"Calling it now, this is a god-tier post!"

"I understood the introduction, I understood the conclusion, and I understood the ending. I understood nothing else."

"Cut the pointless crap. I'm a martial general, just give me the conclusion."

"Then let me ask you, then let me ask you..."

The comment section was filled with admiration, gratitude, and people saying they did not understand.

Bai Yi tried to read the method for measuring time, but found that he could not understand any of it. He scratched his head. Had humanity evolved this much during the ten years he had been lying down?

After leaving a comment—"I bow before the master!"—he continued browsing.

The title of the second featured post was:

Dangers and Precautions in the Mist World

Author: Call Me Bei

Likes: 930 million

The main text was roughly divided into five parts:

1. Within one kilometer of a shelter, the chance of beasts appearing is extremely low.

2. Beyond one kilometer from a shelter, wolves and grizzly bears have been spotted. The possibility of other beasts cannot be ruled out.

(Photos of wolf and bear corpses attached below.)

3. Beyond one kilometer from a shelter, there is a chance of encountering aberrations.

(A photo taken from within the grass. A wandering humanoid figure could vaguely be seen in the distance.)

4. At night, there is a very high chance of beasts and Rotting Corpses, a type of aberration, appearing within one kilometer of a shelter. (Note: People with attributes below 8 are not advised to solo aberrations. I am the consequence.)

(Image 1: A Rotting Corpse corpse, mosaicked.)

Bai Yi was curious and tapped "HD Display" in the bottom-right corner.

[You witnessed an ugly Rotting Corpse. Sanity -8.]

(Image 2: A muscular man with two bone-deep wounds on his arm and thigh.)

(Attribute screenshot: [Strength 7.5] [Constitution 7] [Spirit 6] [Sanity 51/100])

5. Do not become obsessed with exploring. Upgrade your shelter to Level 2 first. Most beasts and aberrations hunt by scent. Thatch Huts leak scents. Also, the shelter's newbie protection only works when the shelter is intact.

(Image: A Thatch Hut with only its roof remaining, with a Rotting Corpse standing outside.)

Seeing this, Bai Yi laughed. Though he himself had been unlucky, seeing other people suffer misfortune was genuinely hilarious.

At the same time, he learned of the existence of aberrations. He was not sure whether the thing that had gotten right in his face earlier was an aberration, but the appearance of the Rotting Corpse made him realize that different aberrations might vary wildly in strength.

Rather than reading every post one by one, Bai Yi skimmed through them. One featured post caught his interest.

<Some Conclusions About the Wishing Well (Updated Anytime)>

It analyzed the Wishing Well, and it was more or less the same as the log's description. What was interesting, however, was the comment section beneath it:

"Fuck you, give me back my weapon, you ****, I ****"

"*****, Wishing Well, I **** you ****, I ****"

"I love you, Wishing Well! Wahahaha! I traded one piece of wood for a premium weapon! Wahahaha!"

(An image below showed the attributes of a two-handed greatsword.)

The curses below became even more vicious.

Bai Yi kept reading. When he saw that "a player once traded a Rotting Corpse's body for a premium weapon," he subconsciously glanced at the chunks of bone and flesh in his chest.

As he scrolled down, all sorts of titles made his eyes spin:

<How Players Can Efficiently Exploit the Unique Advantages Around Their Shelters to Develop Quickly>

<A Brief Discussion on the Relationship Between Sanity Loss and Aberration Danger Levels>

108 Ways to Use the Shelter Log

<The Most Suitable Exercise Methods for Ordinary People in the Mist World>

Item Quality Classifications (Updated Anytime)

A Complete Guide to Wilderness Cooking Techniques, and so on.

After reading for a while, Bai Yi reached the player marketplace.

Thousands upon thousands of listings were posted in the marketplace:

[Anonymous: Selling a worn stone axe (common quality), trading for 10 units of clean water.]

[8848 Titanium Phone: 1 hemostatic herb for 5 units of wood.]

[Wang Dabao: Buying armor blueprints at high prices. DM with your price.]

Bai Yi's gaze lingered longest on the post <The Most Suitable Exercise Methods for Ordinary People in the Mist World>.

This post had only been published recently, but its likes were rising especially quickly. It had dozens of authors, and their names formed a dense, lengthy list. They looked like real names.

The post proposed that specific breathing rhythms combined with scientific exercise methods were highly effective. Furthermore, in the Mist World, the human body's recovery ability seemed to increase slightly—though injuries could still become infected, perhaps even more severely.

It suggested that the air might contain an unknown substance that prevented exercise from producing the various negative effects it did on Earth. For the time being, they called this substance—spirituality.

Afterward, through formulaic calculations, the post provided over a dozen exercise regimens. People with different attributes only needed to apply the corresponding method.

The post concluded:

Look at the road we have traveled—when primitive humans braved the freezing winds of the Ice Age and walked out of Africa's caves, when the people of Xia and Shang carved the first pictographs onto oracle bones, when Yuri Gagarin broke through the atmosphere and gazed upon the blue planet, all these moments proved one thing:

Humanity's greatest weapon for survival has never been sharp claws and fangs, but the courage to explore and the wisdom to cooperate carved into our genes.

The crisis before us may be more dangerous than any we have faced before. We have crossed into an entirely new world to play a dangerous and absurd game.

But remember: the Homeric Epic was born when Troy's walls fell, the Renaissance sprouted beneath the shadow of the Black Death, and peaceful constitutions were rebuilt atop the ruins of the East.

Every desperate situation is an upgrade for civilization!

Let us turn fear into motivation, forge wisdom into weapons, and rewrite survival in the mist into the opening chapter of dawn in humanity's own unique way.

Because the only ones who can define the moment of humanity's end have always been humanity itself!

Fear is the instinct of living creatures. Courage is humanity's anthem!

Long live humanity!

At first, there were still some dissenting voices in the comments.

"Tch, is pouring out inspirational nonsense useful at a time like this?"

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm a martial general!"

"AUV, isn't that Martial General Bro?"

But gradually, the comments became unanimous.

"Long live humanity!"

"Long live humanity!"

"Long live humanity!"

Bai Yi silently watched the comments flood the screen.

"Heh!"

With a soft snort, his expression could not be seen in the dim room. He had spent ten whole years lying in bed. At the age when he should have been at his most high-spirited, he had suffered the most devastating blow. He had always felt that there was a vast generation gap between himself and modern humanity.

"I didn't expect humanity to still be this childish after ten years."

He muttered under his breath, but his hand moved anyway.

"Long live humanity!"

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